The evaluation chamber gleamed with technology that should not exist in this era of vampire society. Holographic dispys hovered in the air, casting a blue glow across the stark white walls. Hidden sensors embedded throughout the room tracked every subtle shift in posture, every microexpression, every fluctuation in body temperature of the noble vampire currently seated across from Lucius.

  "Count Revenwood," Lucius said, his voice carrying the weight of millennia yet remaining perfectly measured. "Your northern territory reports show remarkable efficiency in resource management."

  The Count nodded, the slight uptick in his pulse rate invisible to normal vampire senses but clearly dispyed on Lucius's private monitoring feeds. "Thank you, Your Majesty. We take pride in our sustainable practices."

  Lucius made a subtle gesture with his left hand, causing a new holographic dispy to materialize. "Interesting, then, that your actual consumption rates exceed your reported extraction by nearly forty percent." The dispy showed meticulously documented discrepancies spanning centuries—hidden ledgers, secret facilities, and carefully concealed resource movements.

  "That's impossible," the Count protested, though the biometric readings captured his pupil dition and microscopic perspiration changes that betrayed his lie. "There must be an error in the calcutions."

  Lucius didn't respond immediately. Instead, he swiped his hand through the air, bringing up surveilnce footage from decades earlier—the Count himself giving orders to maintain separate accounting systems, one for official reports and another for actual usage. The timestamp and location data were prominently dispyed, eliminating any possibility of denial.

  "This technology..." the Count whispered, momentarily forgetting his precarious position in his shock at the dispys surrounding them. "How is this possible?"

  "Did you truly believe," Lucius asked, his voice almost gentle, "that I would allow vampire society to forget everything that came before? That I would permit the knowledge of our species to diminish rather than advance?"

  Behind Lucius, along the far wall of the chamber, stood a row of sleek terminals connected to Duke Maximilian's hidden research facility—the technological preservation project Lucius had funded for centuries beneath the Duke's territory. These systems represented merely the public-facing interface of a vast network that extended throughout vampire domains, preserving and enhancing technologies from before the Evolution while vampire society regressed toward medieval aesthetics.

  Lucius accessed another file with a casual flick of his fingers. "Your territory implemented blood farm reforms fifty-seven years ago, according to your official records." A new dispy showed the Count's public ceremony announcing these changes, his eborate speech about humane practices. "Yet these images were captured just st month."

  The holographic dispy shifted to show hidden chambers beneath the Count's primary residence—medieval extraction equipment, humans chained in filthy conditions, and the Count himself observing the process with evident satisfaction.

  "Your public reforms were quite impressive," Lucius noted, scrolling through the documented charade. "The Potemkin blood farm you constructed for inspection visits showed remarkable attention to detail. The hidden passages connecting to the actual extraction facilities demonstrated particur ingenuity."

  The Count's composure crumbled. "Your Majesty, I can expin—"

  "Can you?" Lucius interrupted, his voice still maintaining that terrible calm. "Can you expin two centuries of systematic deception? Of signing progressive edicts with one hand while maintaining brutal practices with the other? Of mocking your king's 'naivety' at private gatherings while pretending compliance to his face?"

  Another dispy activated, showing the Count at an exclusive gathering of traditional nobles, raising a gss filled with blood. "To our king's charming delusions of resource rights," he toasted in the recording, to appreciative ughter from his peers. "May his progressive dreams never intrude upon our traditional realities."

  The Count paled to a shade of white impossible even for a vampire. The biometric readings showed his stress indicators spiking beyond the measurement capabilities of standard equipment.

  "I have maintained records of every noble house since the establishment of vampire society," Lucius stated, bringing up a vast database that scrolled endlessly on the dispys. "Every decision, every statement, every action—both public and private." He highlighted the Count's file, showing centuries of meticulously documented deception. "Your hypocrisy is neither unique nor particurly creative. It merely represents the standard pattern among nobility who believed their king too distant or too naive to notice their duplicity."

  A subtle alert chimed on one of the dispys—a proximity notification that Lucius acknowledged with the barest inclination of his head. Without expnation, he immediately commanded, "Stand down the simution."

  The holographic dispys disappeared instantly. The room's lighting returned to normal levels, the technological marvels that had overwhelmed the Count mere moments before vanishing as though they had never existed, leaving behind a chamber that appeared appropriately traditional for vampire aristocracy.

  The Count, seeing an opportunity in this sudden change, rose without being dismissed—a breach of protocol that would have been unthinkable just days earlier.

  Lucius turned his gaze back to the noble, a cold gnce that froze the vampire in pce more effectively than any restraint. The unspoken rebuke for this presumption hung in the air between them, a silent reminder of the power dynamics that remained unchanged despite the technological revetion.

  The door opened, and Nova entered. His presence immediately drew Lucius's complete attention. The shift in the king's demeanor was subtle yet unmistakable—the cold precision giving way to something warmer, more attentive, though still carefully restrained.

  "I didn't realize you were in session," Nova said, pausing at the threshold. "I can return ter."

  "No need," Lucius replied, rising from his seat. "We were just concluding." He turned back to the Count, who remained frozen in his half-risen position. "You are dismissed. Expect formal judgment within three days."

  The Count bowed deeply, backing toward the door with newfound awareness of protocol. As he passed Nova, the difference in how Lucius regarded each of them became painfully apparent—the calcuting assessment given to the noble versus the genuine attention offered to Nova.

  When the door closed behind the Count, leaving them alone, Lucius gestured to the now-empty room. "I apologize for the interruption to your schedule. These evaluations have taken longer than anticipated."

  Nova moved further into the chamber, looking around at walls where holographic dispys had hovered moments earlier. "The nobles... they really have no idea how much you've seen all these years, do they?"

  "Few consider the possibility that their king might remember everything," Lucius acknowledged. "Fewer still imagine he might have preserved technologies they believed lost to time."

  As they spoke, on the other side of the pace, Valerian conducted his own evaluations. Where Lucius's approach relied on technological surveilnce and documented history, Valerian employed advanced military simutions—virtual battlefields where nobles demonstrated their decision-making under pressure, combat scenarios revealing their true priorities, and loyalty tests exposing hidden allegiances.

  A staff member entered with a notification for Lucius, immediately bowing upon seeing Nova.

  "The next noble awaits your evaluation, Your Majesty," the staff member said, keeping his eyes respectfully lowered.

  "I'll return another time," Nova offered, turning toward the door.

  "No," Lucius said, the single word carrying unmistakable authority despite its soft delivery. To the staff member, he added, "Inform the noble that today's remaining evaluations are rescheduled."

  "All of them, Your Majesty?" the staff member asked, unable to conceal his surprise.

  "All of them," Lucius confirmed without expnation.

  The staff member bowed again and departed, leaving Lucius and Nova alone. For two millennia, nobles had waited months or years for an audience with their king. Now, without hesitation, Lucius had dismissed an entire day's evaluations upon Nova's arrival—a prioritization that would send ripples of specution throughout the pace.

  "You didn't need to do that," Nova said quietly.

  Lucius didn't immediately respond. After centuries of calcuted restraint, of maintaining the facade of merely enhanced vampire rather than progenitor, of pretending not to notice the subtle betrayals and hypocrisies of his court, he found himself navigating unfamiliar emotional territory. The accumuted weight of two thousand years of deception—both his own and that of vampire society—had left a mark even his perfect healing could not erase.

  "The evaluations have waited centuries," he finally said. "They can wait a few hours more."

  As they left the evaluation chamber together, they passed another room where multiple screens dispyed surveilnce from territories across vampire domains. On one monitor, Valerian could be seen conducting a military assessment, his approach characteristically direct compared to Lucius's methodical evaluation.

  "Your brother's methods seem more... immediate," Nova observed.

  "Valerian has always preferred efficiency over subtlety," Lucius agreed, a hint of brotherly affection warming his tone—another small freedom granted by his recent unveiling as Subject 23. After two millennia of pretending their retionship was merely political, being able to acknowledge their brotherhood openly represented one of the few comforts in this time of upheaval.

  Throughout the pace, nobles and servants alike observed their passage with careful deference—not only to their king but increasingly to Nova as well. Though Nova's exact status remained undefined, his influence on Lucius was unmistakable. The being who had orchestrated vampire society for two millennia had revealed himself as their progenitor, only to pause his subsequent judgment at Nova's appearance.

  Behind them, the technological marvels of the evaluation chamber awaited tomorrow's nobles—instruments of truth that had been preserved and enhanced since before the Evolution, ready to strip away the deceptions vampire aristocracy had maintained for centuries. For generations, they had believed themselves clever enough to deceive the very being who created their species. Now, as each evaluation concluded, that illusion crumbled beneath the weight of perfect, irrefutable evidence that their king had always seen everything—and had simply been waiting for the right moment to reveal the truth.