​The atmosphere in the city grew heavy, as if the air itself were being withdrawn by a phantom hand. In the high-walled gardens of the Ricci Estate, the hum of life-sustaining machinery—the delicate, silver-threaded apparatus keeping Selena’s recovery on track—faltered. A red warning light flickered like a dying heartbeat. In the dark heart of the Syndicate’s secret bunker, the last of the Elders gathered around a cold blue monitor. They were the "Shadow Committee," men whose names had been scrubbed from public records but whose fingers still rested on the city’s jugular: the central power grid and the water filtration arteries.​"The game ends tonight," Elder Thorne rasped, his eyes gleaming with the desperate light of a trapped predator. "If we cannot own the city, we will turn it into a tomb." With a jagged motion, he slammed a lever forward. Sovereign Liquidation.​Immediately, the city’s skyline began to blink out. One by one, the districts fell into a terrifying, obsidian void.

​The air in the City Council’s High Chamber was thick with the scent of ozone and desperation. Outside, the muffled roar of the starving populace hit the reinforced glass windows like a physical weight. Inside, the Council members—men who had once trembled at Dante’s shadow—now looked at him with the hollow eyes of those who had found a new, more terrifying master.​The "Rescue Package" sat on the central mahogany table, a thick stack of ivory paper bound in deep blue silk. It was a contract of surrender. In exchange for the Maritime Consortium docking its grain ships, the Ricci Trust would be dissolved, its assets absorbed into a public-private partnership managed by Madam Vesper. It was a legal execution, signed in the name of "public safety."​Madam Vesper stood at the head of the table, her presence radiating a chilling, oceanic calm. She wore a suit the color of a deep-sea trench, her silver hair pulled back with surgical precision. Beside her, the City Governor held a fountain p

​The morning mist clung to the surface of the Ricci Basin like a shroud, but the air was electric with the hum of a thousand drones. High above the water, the world’s cameras were perched like vultures, waiting to broadcast the final capitulation of the Ricci Trust. On the shoreline, the crowds were a churning sea of desperate faces, their anger cooled into a hollow, expectant silence. They had been promised bread, and they had been told it would come at the cost of Dante Ricci’s pride. On the horizon, the flagship of the Maritime Consortium, the Vesperal Star, emerged from the fog. It was a sleek, white-and-silver titan of modern engineering, cutting through the water with an arrogance that mirrored its master. Behind it, the "Ghost Fleet", now revealed as a line of massive, automated tugboats towing hollowed-out cargo shells, followed in a formation that looked like a funeral procession for the city’s independence.​Madam Vesper stood on the bridge of the Vesperal Star, her silver

​The Diamond Heights Club sat atop the city’s highest peak, a fortress of ivory stone and generational arrogance. Inside the Great Hall, the air was thick with the scent of aged cognac and the desperate, dying breath of a crumbling aristocracy. The remaining members of the Vane and Thorne families sat around a table of polished mahogany, their faces twisted in a collective mask of indignation.​"We cannot allow this to continue," Julian Vane hissed, slamming his fist onto the table. "Dante Ricci has the money, yes, but he lacks the soul. He is a stain on the Golden District. If we allow a man of his... origins... to own the soil we walk upon, then the word 'elite' loses all meaning."​The council murmured in fervent agreement. They had gathered to sign the "Social Sanity Act," a desperate legal maneuver designed to ban "individuals of low-standing origins" from owning property within the district. It was a weapon of pure status, a final wall built to keep the "Janitor" out of their sa

The iron gates of the Ricci Ancestral Estate were a masterpiece of intricate black metal, but today they were the backdrop for a circus of spite. Inside the construction zone, the skeleton of the new manor rose like a silent giant, but at its feet, the air was thick with the rehearsed desperation of a falling star. Giulia, her expensive crimson gown now stained with the grey dust of the construction site, stood before a swarm of hovering news drones and reporters. She was a woman who had lost her credit, but she still clung to her arrogance as if it were a life jacket.​"This is an outrage!" Giulia screamed, her voice cracking as it projected across the live feeds. "Dante Ricci didn't 'earn' this land! He manipulated my family! He used the Greco name to build his empire and then threw me away like a used rag! I am the rightful mistress of this estate! I am the blood of the people who founded this district!"​The crowd of onlookers—many of whom had been displaced by the recent financia