In another part of Greyvale City, inside a dark room. This room lay within the undercroft of an ancestral estate, its upper halls adorned with portraits of esteemed ancestors and tapestries celebrating heroic lineages.
Yet here, beneath the polished veneer of nobility, the air felt colder and heavier, thick with a quiet desperation born from threatened ambition.
A single circular table made of black oak dominated the center of the chamber, its surface smooth and gleaming under suspended crystal lanterns that cast a muted amber glow over five figures seated evenly around it.
Each bore a name that held weight in Greyvale; each commanded lands, coin, and retainers sufficient to sway trade, politics, and law. And yet at this moment, they appeared less like lords and more like individuals ensnared in the unraveling threads of a carefully woven net.
