The grand assembly hall of the High Council in the Swiss Alps was no longer a place of majestic authority; it had become a tomb of desperate conspiracies. Outside, the freezing mountain winds battered the reinforced obsidian walls, but the chill inside the chamber was far more profound. The three Grand Elders sat on their elevated stone tiers, their silver robes appearing heavy and tattered under the dim, flickering torchlight. Below them, the stone floor was still marred by the jagged cracks from where their ancestral altar had shattered—a permanent, terrifying reminder of the night their ancient executioners had been reduced to dust in Manhattan.
For days, encrypted reports had been flooding into the European headquarters from the North American territories. The news was disastrous. Eve
