Legacy rewritten.

You don't bury the past.

You confront it

And make sure it can't crawl back out.

Location: The North Compound.

Once a private boarding estate for elite Row members.

Now: abandoned on paper. Guarded in truth.

We moved at dawn.

Ezra handled the perimeter. Isla disabled the scanners.

I carried the last weapon my mother left me.

A small silver flash drive marked: "LEGACY."

Inside, it held a virus.

Not for computers.

For people.

The kind that shattered systems from the inside out.

The compound was built like a cathedral.

Columns. Vaulted halls. Old portraits of the first founders staring down like gods.

Their eyes followed us as we slipped inside.

We reached the inner sanctum.

And there, sitting in an armchair beneath a stained-glass skylight was the last founder.

Alden Vale.

The Keeper's father.

And the man who had created the Row.

He didn't look surprised to see us.

"You must be Evelyn's daughter," he said. "She always said you'd come."

I stepped forward. No fear.

"I'm not here to talk."

He nodded. Calm.

"Of course not. You're here to finish it."

Behind him, a glass case. Inside it, an original copy of The Row Charter.

Written by hand.

Bound in iron and ink.

The book that birthed Ravenshade. That turned trials into rituals.

Fear into currency.

"You think you're ending something," Alden said.

"But you're just replacing it. Systems don't die. They evolve."

He stood.

And I saw it in his eyes.

He didn't think I'd pull the trigger.

Not metaphorically.

Not literally.

So I did both.

First, I shoved the drive into the core terminal.

Isla ran the command.

The virus launched.

Within seconds, the names, the bloodline records, the trial history, all corrupted.

Erased from every backup, every archive.

Then,

I raised the gun.

"You built the Row to control people like me," I said.

"But I'm the one walking out of this room."

He smiled, even then.

"Then walk, child. And make sure the next thing you build… doesn't look like me."

I didn't shoot him.

Because death wasn't enough.

Living without power? Without control?

That was justice.

We burned the charter.

Not with matches.

But with light.

The skylight shattered as the morning sun poured in—

A beam hitting the book just as the flames from Isla's flare caught the pages.

It turned to ash in seconds.

One month later.

Ravenshade no longer existed.

The media dubbed it "The Fall of the Black School."

But for those of us who lived through it?

It was rebirth.

Ezra and I disappeared.

No trace. No names.

Isla stayed. She testified. Then vanished too.

The Row was gone.

But we weren't done.

Because in the corners of the world,

Other systems still breathe.

Still build thrones out of silence.

And we're coming for them.

My name is Nova Reed.

Daughter of a rebel.

Breaker of codes.

Watcher of the Watchers.

And this?

This is just the beginning.