The knock came softly.Too soft to be polite.Too deliberate to be accidental.Lumi looked up from where he sat on the edge of his bed, the room still half-shadowed, curtains drawn against the Calder estate’s pale morning light.Another knock.He rose, opened the door.A servant stood there, head bowed, hands folded tight enough to whiten the knuckles.“Your father requests your presence,” the servant said. “Immediately.”No greeting.No explanation.Lumi nodded once.The door closed behind him with a sound that felt final.---They did not take him through the servants’ corridors.They took him through the main halls.That was the first warning.The Calder estate was awake in a way it hadn’t been since his return. Banners hung from balconies bearing the sigil of the house, freshly polished, gleaming like something newly earned. Servants moved quickly, adjusting drapes, polishing banisters that hadn’t seen hands in years.Preparation.Presentation.Lumi walked, confusion etched on his

Marionette’s illusion did not fall all at once.It bloomed.Reality peeled back like a curtain caught in a sudden wind, and the night path outside the Blackwell estate dissolved into something vast and impossible.Snow stretched first.An endless white plain under a bruised sky, flakes drifting slowly, sound swallowed whole. One demon stood alone there, claws half-raised, breath fogging as it turned in confused circles, its roar smothered by the cold.Another found itself on the lip of a volcano.Molten rock churned below, heat roaring up in waves, the air shimmering. The demon screamed as the ground trembled, scrambling backwards, wings flaring uselessly against an illusion that felt real enough to burn.A third landed in a forest of black glass.Trees sharp as blades, their reflections fractured, every step threatening to slice. The demon hesitated, terrified to move, trapped by a world that punished motion.Each demon was severed from the others.From the truth.From the night path

The moment Mireya failed to rise, the hall filled again—breath, movement, sound rushing back into the space that had briefly become an arena.Hunters crowded around Lumi.Hands clapped his shoulders.Voices overlapped.“Well struck.”“Impressive control.”Lumi barely heard them.Across the stone floor, Mireya remained seated, one arm wrapped tightly around her middle. Her jaw was clenched, eyes fixed not on the crowd—but on him.The Patriarch stepped forward.The room quieted instantly.He did not look at Mireya.His gaze remained on Lumi.“Today,” he said, voice carrying with practiced ease, “we have witnessed proof.”He gestured broadly.“Proof that the Calder bloodline does not stagnate. That it adapts. That it strengthens under pressure.”Murmurs of agreement rippled through the gathered houses.“My decision to send my youngest son away was not abandonment,” the Patriarch continued smoothly. “It was investment.”Lumi’s fingers curled.“And as you have now seen,” his father said, t

Scott woke before the bells.Not the formal ones that marked morning drills or the polite chimes that summoned staff—but the low, instinctive kind. The kind that dragged him out of sleep with his heart already halfway racing.Grey light filtered through the curtains.For a moment, he lay still, listening.The wards hummed as they always did. Steady. Unbroken. Blackwell breathing around him like a living thing.Normal.That word scraped at him.He sat up slowly, the memory of the previous night pressing in—not as images, but as absence. A hollow space where something important should have been. His mind circled it automatically, like a tongue worrying at a missing tooth.A name stirred again.Marionette.Scott swung his legs over the side of the bed.“Alright,” he murmured. “Let’s see what she remembers.”He reached for his phone.The screen lit softly in the dim room. His fingers hesitated for just a fraction of a second before scrolling, finding her contact without effort. Muscle mem

Lumi woke to the sound of movement.Not voices, not shouting—just the low, constant shuffle of a house being rearranged. Fabric dragged across stone. Footsteps pacing and repacing. Metal clinking faintly, then stopping, then starting again.For a moment, he stayed where he was.The ceiling above him was unfamiliar in a way that still unsettled him. Calder ceilings were high, arched, ribbed with dark beams that looked more like cathedral bones than architecture. Even the light that filtered through the curtains felt heavier here, weighted with age and expectation.He swung his legs out of bed and dressed carefully.The clothes laid out for him were formal. Dark. Trimmed with the Calder sigil in thread so fine it was almost easy to miss. He hesitated before fastening the last clasp, fingers lingering there as if the fabric might bite back.When he stepped into the corridor, the estate was already awake.Servants moved briskly, arms full. Banners were being carried down from storage, the