The parliamentary hall smelled of molten wax and decades-old bloodstains scrubbed too late from oak paneling. Ayla's knuckles whitened against the podium's chipped edge—the fracture from Selena's wolf-guards' crossbolt still unrepaired. Above the vaulted ceiling, thunder growled like a caged beast. Hybrid students' wild rose corsages trembled in the gallery, red petals mirroring the raw wounds beneath Lila's bandages. Her wheelchair creaked rhythmically in the aisle shadows, gears grinding like a deathwatch beetle counting down to catastrophe.
"Article Seven isn't about equality tokens." Ayla's sakura pendant swung like a metronome, fracturing candlelight into Lucas' family iris crest on the frescoed walls. "It demands you stop forcing hybrids to bleed for basic dignity!"
Selena's balcony curtain twitched. "Spoken like a child who's never tasted real bloodshed." Her wolf-head brooch snarled under flickering light, its engravings warping suddenly—thorned roses twisting through lupine jaws. Lila's mother's crest.
Lila's wheelchair lurched forward. Ayla barely caught the silver dagger slipping from her sleeve before crossbows cocked overhead. The blade's hilt burned cold—same as the scalpel that carved Lucas' mechanical spine.
"Fifteen winters ago—" Lila ripped her gown's back open. Festering scars pulsed cerulean, their lattice mirroring Lucas' spinal implants' docking seams. "—your hounds branded me seventeen times for 'pureblood honor.'" Her voice rasped like rusted clockwork. "Now watch that honor eat you alive!"
(The storm ripped through stained glass. Newly hung Lucian-dynasty drapes billowed, exposing fresh iris embroidery—stitched by Lucas' own hand days prior)
Selena's dagger flew. Ayla pivoted, but Lila lunged—steel biting flesh with a sickening squelch.
"N—no..." Ayla's knees hit marble as Lila slumped into her arms. Blood jetted across the iris-stitched drapes. Gold threads moved, drinking crimson to emboss a three-dimensional hybrid crest—wolf ears fused with bat wings, fangs bared at the Lucian emblem's heart.
"Pressure the wound!" Ayla clawed at the drapes. Blood-soaked threads snagged her nails, embedding gold filaments under cuticles. Lila's pulse thready.
In the western gallery, Lucas' mechanical eye flickered rapid-fire—surveillance mode. Coolant vents exhaled vampiric runes only hybrids could read: "FLEE NOW." Wine sloshed as he knocked over his carafe, Merlot bleeding across senators' robes like fresh slaughter.
"Inspector abandoning his post?" Selena's brooch oozed black mist that smelled of charred nursery linens. "The Council expects thorough documentation of tonight's...educational demonstration."
(Ayla's pearl hairnet snapped. Strands lashed Lucas' reaching prosthetic, silver threads leaching cerulean hydraulic fluid onto his cuffs)
Hybrid chanting erupted overhead. Petals snowed down, each revealing Lila's mother's last testament in bioluminescent ink: "Blood-chains recoil on the whip-wielder." Ayla severed the final hairpin thread, its tip scoring Lucas' wristwatch deep enough to fracture gears.
"Your silence carves deeper than steel," she hissed.
Chaos erupted as storm winds shattered stained glass. The blood sigil tore free from drapes, fracturing into holographic runes—each a memory shard:
Lila at nine, screaming as branding irons kissed flesh.Selena at twenty-three, quill trembling while signing execution orders.Lucas at dawn, incinerating protest pamphlets in the monitor room furnace.
"Don't..." Lila's bloodied palm smeared across Ayla's eyes. "...carry these ghosts."
(Lucas' mechanical heart whined—overload. Coolant steam coalesced into a hologram: Infant Ayla swaddled in bloody linens, Selena handing the bundle to a masked physician whose iris-shaped monocle reflected Lucian blueprints)
"Muzzle the mongrels!" Selena barked. Crossbows thrummed.
Silver bolts pierced the sigil. Rune-shrapnel rained as ash. Ayla stared at her palm—burned with Selena's lipstick print—as Lila's fading breath rearranged cinders into ancient vampiric script:
"Blood-bound shall remake the chains."
Beneath the podium, Lila's wheelchair armrest creaked open. A hidden compartment released a rusted music box—its mangled lullaby syncopated with Lucas' faltering heartbeats.
Somewhere in the smoke, a wolf howled. Hybrid students' roses bloomed venomous thorns.
And deep in the subchambers, Selena's vault began to scream.