The relative silence following Kaelen's feral episode was short-lived and deceptive, like the stillness before a landslide. By mid-morning, the atmosphere within the high stone walls of the Blackfang Stronghold had reached a blistering boiling point.
The air in the war room was thick, heavy with the scent of old parchment, cold iron, and the sharp, ozone-like tang of Lucien's simmering fury.
On the central obsidian table, amidst strategic maps of the North and the dying, plague-ridden territories of the West, lay a small, unassuming scroll. It was wrapped in emerald silk—the color of a poisonous orchid—and sealed with the wax emblem of a coiled snake.
The "Invitation" had arrived via a messenger who had collapsed at the gates, his lungs failing and his skin already beginning to mottle with the tell-tale indigo veins of the Viper's toxin. He had died before the healers could even reach him, his last breath a rattling whisper of a name that haunt them all.
