The gates of the Silver-Crest Manor did not merely open; they screamed. The iron, forged by generations of blacksmiths to keep the world out, shrieked as Malphas’s hands curled around the bars, his muscles cording like steel cables as he ripped them from the stone hinges. The sound echoed through the valley, a death knell for the regime that had held the North in a chokehold of greed for a century.
Nyx walked through the threshold, her boots silent on the frost-covered gravel. She wasn't carrying a weapon, yet every guard who leveled a crossbow at her faltered, their fingers trembling. She didn't look like a girl anymore; she looked like an inevitability. Behind her, the Triumvirate moved in a V-formation, a wall of pure, concentrated dominance that suppressed the very air in the courtyar
