Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 726

Chapter 726: Incompetence

Disappointing. But survivable. The Association would review the footage and find exactly what they were supposed to find: New Dawn’s veterans engaging monsters in the vicinity of a rookie team during an active competition event. Aggressive, perhaps. Reckless, certainly. But the attacks were aimed at creatures, and if Kaiden’s team happened to be nearby, that was the nature of a shared competition zone.

Plausible deniability. The entire plan was built on it.

Then Vespera had arrived.

A week of silence. Seven days without a word, without a presence, without the faintest indication of where she’d gone or what she was doing.

The Shadow Monarch had appeared on a mountain ridge in front of millions of viewers and beaten her own children until Selena’s bones gave and the twins couldn’t breathe. The image of that was circulating now.

The image of the co-founder of New Dawn breaking three of the guild’s high-ranking members on live television. The PR damage alone would take months to contain. Sponsors would be calling. The Association would be calling. Every media outlet on the continent was already running the footage.

Magnus’s fingers dug into the desk.

But that was damage. Damage could be managed.

Vespera’s actions were her own, and the guild’s legal team could frame the beating as an internal disciplinary matter between a co-guild leader and subordinates who had endangered the organization’s reputation through reckless engagement. It was ugly. It was workable.

Then he remembered what Cassian had said.

’It was Father! He ordered us to do this! We were following his command!’

His son had screamed it across the ridge while being dragged through stone by his mother’s shadows. Screamed it on a live broadcast. Screamed it to an audience of millions who were already watching his guild’s fighters hunt a rookie team and were now hearing, from the mouth of his own child, that it had been ordered.

Magnus’s stomach dropped.

Calix too. ’Father sent us! This was his plan!’ Begging, crying, blaming him to save themselves, because when their mother’s shadows closed around them they’d stopped being soldiers and become frightened children looking for someone else to take the punishment.

The plausible deniability was gone. The careful architecture of a plan built on ambiguity and distance, the separation between the guild leader’s office and the actions of veteran-track fighters operating in a shared zone, all of it incinerated by his own son’s panic.

Magnus Ashborn stood in his office with his hands shaking and the broadcast feed burned into his retinas.

Then the door opened.

...

The common room was silent as Vespera’s entourage passed through.

Grace walked beside the Shadow Monarch, her heels clicking against the floor. The Vice Chairman of the Awakened Association was a striking woman in her late thirties, sharp-featured, impeccable in the Association’s formal dress uniform. Three bodyguards flanked her in formation, all in full Association tactical gear.

Behind them came the judge and the lawyer. The judge was gray-bearded, carrying a leather case. The lawyer was younger - mid-forties, glasses, slicked-back hair, a suit that cost more than most people’s cars, and a cologne that preceded him by several feet. He was the family’s legal counsel, and he walked behind Vespera without hesitation.

Elizabeth, Vespera’s trusted servant, trailed them all. The elderly woman was small and plain beside the rest of the entourage, dressed in dark, simple clothes, a half-step from Vespera.

Twelve New Dawn members lined the walls where they’d been rooted since the stream. Their eyes followed the procession. Nobody moved.

Until Mariana stepped forward.

"Lady Ashborn." Her voice came out steady, which cost her more than anyone would know. "Guild Leader Ashborn has requested privacy. If you’d allow me to announce-"

Vespera’s eyes moved.

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