The autumn evening at House Riverside's estate should have been peaceful—a time for quiet reflection and family planning in the comfort of ancestral halls.
Instead, Lord Commander Edmund Riverside found himself staring across his private study at a figure who had appeared without triggering any of the sophisticated security measures that protected the family's most secure chambers.
The young man wore simple traveling clothes that suggested a merchant or minor family retainer, nothing threatening or remarkable.
His spiritual signature registered at mid-level Vanguard, respectable but hardly impressive for someone who had somehow bypassed defenses designed to stop even Supreme-level infiltration.
What made Lord Edmund's enhanced senses recoil wasn't the visitor's apparent power, but something far more unsettling—the absolute certainty in his posture that suggested he belonged exactly where he was, invited or not.
