The biting wind whipped Elias’s tattered woolen coat against his thin frame, but the old man didn't flinch. He stood planted on the frost-bitten tarmac, his single seeing eye fixed entirely on Damien.
"You think you’ve run far enough to escape the Council's leash, Alpha?" Elias’s voice cut through the howling gale with unnatural clarity. "The Iron Spires were built to hide what the Blackwood line could not control. Every forbidden blood-contract, every shadow-lineage experiment for the last three centuries—it’s all archived below the foundation."
Damien stepped forward, his boots crunching on the frozen gravel, his posture rigid. "If you know what's down there, then you know why we're here. The syndicate has the keys to the digital grid, but the physical ledger is the only thing that can
