LOCATION: INNER VAULT – VAIRO ARCHIVE FACILITY

TIME: 11:04 p.m.

The flames reached the third floor before the alarms went off.

Digital records melted. Biometric backups fried.

Birth files. Bloodline registries. DNA tagging systems.

Everything the empire used to track, claim, and command its children…

Gone.

And on the steel walls, carved in fireproof spray:

> “IF YOU INHERITED IT,

YOU DIDN’T EARN IT.”

No name signed.

But the symbol?

A red hairpin.

Burned into the ...