They did not come to burn The Vanguard to the ground.
They came to conquer it—quietly, surgically, from within its own gilded corridors.
The decision crystallized days earlier, when Eleanor's final journal unlocked the truth: The Vanguard was not a single entity but a dynasty of seven ruling bloodlines, each one older than the last, each with its own archives, its own soldiers, its own secret claims to power. Together, those families directed the organization's hand in the shadows of every war, alliance, and collapse for the past three centuries.
Eleanor had written the names in her elegant, slanted script. Seven families. Seven thrones. Seven keys to the empire.
Only one of those families should have been extinct—their family.
But they had survived.
Tonight, they would announce their return.
Not with a request.
With a summons.
