The Grand Judgment Hall fell silent as Duke Ravenswood entered. One of vampire society's most respected aristocrats, he moved with the confidence of centuries, his immacute attire and perfect posture projecting absolute certainty in his position. His expression held only mild curiosity as he approached the central dais where Lucius waited.

  Nova observed from his position beside the throne, noting the subtle arrogance in the duke's demeanor. Unlike lower nobles who had arrived visibly nervous for their evaluations, Ravenswood seemed entirely unbothered—a vampire secure in his standing after nearly a millennium of aristocratic privilege.

  "Duke Ravenswood," Lucius acknowledged, his voice carrying neither warmth nor hostility, merely precision. "Your house has maintained territorial governance for nine hundred seventy-three years."

  "Indeed, Your Majesty." The duke inclined his head with practiced deference. "House Ravenswood has served the crown faithfully since the earliest territorial divisions."

  "Faithfully," Lucius repeated, the word hanging in the air between them. With a subtle gesture, he activated the holographic dispy system that dominated the center of the hall. "A comprehensive evaluation of that service seems appropriate."

  The first image materialized—Duke Ravenswood standing before an assembled crowd, his expression solemn as he addressed what appeared to be a gathering of territory administrators. The date stamp indicated this had occurred approximately four hundred years earlier.

  "Today marks a new chapter in resource management within Ravenswood domains," the duke's recorded voice decred. "In accordance with His Majesty's directives, we implement comprehensive reforms to ensure humane treatment of all human resources. The barbaric practices of our past have no pce in enlightened vampire society."

  More images followed—the duke signing documents, touring modern-looking blood collection facilities, personally presenting new guidelines to his staff. Throughout these recordings, his commitment to reformed practices appeared absolute and sincere.

  "An impressive public demonstration of progressive values," Lucius observed, his tone neutral.

  Duke Ravenswood's expression remained composed, though something flickered briefly in his eyes. "House Ravenswood has always supported Your Majesty's vision for civilized resource management."

  "Indeed." Lucius made another subtle gesture.

  The dispy shifted, showing a completely different facility—this one hidden deep beneath the duke's ancestral estate. The contrast with the public facilities couldn't have been more stark. Medieval extraction devices lined stone walls slick with what could only be blood. Humans, identifiable only by numbered tags rather than names, hung from restraint systems designed for maximum extraction efficiency with no consideration for pain or dignity.

  More damning was the date stamp—these images had been recorded mere days after the duke's public decration.

  Duke Ravenswood's composed fa?ade cracked visibly. Before he could speak, Lucius continued with the same measured tone, though a dangerous edge had entered his voice.

  "You enacted reforms publicly while maintaining separate facilities for traditional methods," Lucius stated with cold precision. "You built Potemkin blood farms for inspection while real extraction occurred in hidden chambers. You signed every progressive edict I issued as king while secretly mocking them as 'concessions to weakness' among your peers."

  The evidence continued—centuries of double-ledger accounting showing false resource numbers, faked maintenance records, and eborate systems designed specifically to deceive progressive inspections. Most damning were recordings of the duke's private gatherings where nobles ughed about their deceptions, raising blood-filled goblets in mocking toasts to "our king's naive vision" while humans suffered unseen in chambers below.

  "This... this is outrageous," the duke sputtered, his aristocratic composure abandoning him entirely. "These recordings must be falsified. No surveilnce could possibly have—"

  "Did you truly believe your private chambers were actually private?" Lucius interrupted, his voice dropping to a register that made attendants physically step back from its cold intensity. "That your secret meetings remained secret? That your shadow extraction facilities were truly hidden?"

  With methodical precision, Lucius presented evidence spanning centuries—not random samplings, but a comprehensive documentation of systematic deception extending across generations of the duke's rule. The pattern was undeniable and uninterrupted, continuing to the present day.

  Nova watched the duke's face as realization dawned—not just that he had been caught, but that he had never truly been unseen. The aristocrat's expression cycled through shock, disbelief, and finally a peculiar kind of horror as he grasped the full implications.

  "Four hundred and twenty-seven years of documented deception," Lucius concluded, dismissing the dispys with a gesture. "Every reform reverted in private. Every progressive measure undermined through eborate subterfuge. Every human advancement systematically prevented while you presented the facade of compliance."

  The duke searched desperately for some defense, some expnation that might mitigate his situation. Finding none, he resorted to the only strategy left—admission with qualification.

  "Perhaps... certain traditional methods were maintained alongside newer approaches," he conceded, attempting to regain his aristocratic bearing. "Your Majesty must understand that abrupt transitions risk disrupting established systems. A gradual implementation—"

  "Four centuries is not gradual implementation," Lucius cut him off. "It is deliberate, systematic sabotage of established policy."

  The judgment, when it came, held the finality of millennium-spanning authority: "House Ravenswood is stripped of all titles, nds, and privileges, effective immediately. You personally are remanded to Valerian's territory as a blood resource for a duration matching your deception—four hundred and twenty-seven years."

  The duke's composure shattered completely. "You cannot—I am Duke Ravenswood! My house has served for nearly a thousand years!"

  "Your house has deceived for nearly a thousand years," Lucius corrected with terrible quietness. "And now that deception ends."

  As Valerian's soldiers led the former duke away, Nova found himself contempting the countless humans who had suffered needlessly under this systematic hypocrisy. The fa?ade of reform maintained for aristocratic appearances while medieval cruelty continued unabated behind closed doors.

  "You always knew they were lying," Nova observed quietly when they were alone. Lucius's response was grim: "I suspected from the beginning. By year 100, I knew with certainty. By year 500, I had documented evidence against most houses. By my millennium as king, I had cssified every noble family by the degree of their deception."

  Nova struggled to comprehend the patience this represented—centuries of observation and documentation while maintaining the appearance of believing their compliance. "Why wait so long to confront them? Why not expose this centuries ago?"

  Lucius's expression revealed nothing, but something in his eyes suggested the weight of millennia of careful calcution. "Reform cannot succeed through force alone. True change requires both pressure and time. Had I confronted their deception immediately, they would have simply found new methods of concealment rather than genuine change. Some houses did eventually embrace reform sincerely—those that recognized the long-term benefits of sustainable practices."

  Throughout the day, they witnessed several more judgments where this pattern repeated across different territories and noble houses. Some had maintained the deception for a few decades before genuinely implementing reforms, receiving correspondingly lighter sentences. Others had continued the hypocrisy across centuries, facing permanent removal from vampire aristocracy. The unifying factor was their absolute shock when confronted with evidence of private moments they believed unobservable—secret meetings, buried documents, and whispered confessions captured through Valerian's infiltration network.

  As word of these exposures spread through aristocratic circles, a different scene unfolded across vampire territories. Nova observed through monitoring systems as panic built among nobles who had maintained simir deceptions. The dispys showed their desperate attempts to destroy evidence, silence servants, and create false narratives—not realizing that Lucius's documentation spanned centuries, making such hasty cover-ups futile. Their frantic activity only provided fresh evidence for Valerian's observers, who documented every attempted concealment.

  The most revealing scene occurred when several minor nobles from House Bckthorn attempted to flee to the most remote regions of vampire territory, believing distance might provide safety from Lucius's judgment. Their desperate journey became unintentionally symbolic—representatives of deception trying to hide in the farthest corners of a domain that belonged entirely to their king.

  What they failed to understand was that no vampire could truly hide from Subject 23—Lucius could sense every vampire in existence through the DNA that originated from him and now formed part of their own genetic makeup.

  As they reached what they believed was safe distance—a remote mountain outpost nearly a thousand miles from the central pace—Valerian's soldiers intercepted them with unsettling precision, emerging from forest shadows with the calm efficiency of troops who never had any doubt about their targets' exact location.

  "Did you truly believe you could hide from the being who created our species?" the commanding officer asked with genuine curiosity as the nobles were bound for transport. "His DNA is part of every vampire. He senses all of you, everywhere. He has since the beginning."

  When the captured nobles were returned to the central pace for judgment, Nova observed something unexpected. As they were led to holding cells to await formal evaluation, one fugitive asked another why they had ever bothered pretending to follow Lucius's reforms in the first pce.

  His companion's answer revealed the fundamental miscalcution that had doomed their css: "We thought he would eventually be repced. No king rules forever—we just needed to maintain appearances until a more traditional monarch took the throne."

  This assumption—that Lucius would eventually be succeeded like any mortal king despite his evident immortality—highlighted the profound disconnect that had allowed their hypocrisy to flourish. They had never truly accepted that Lucius's reign was permanent, viewing his progressive policies as temporary inconveniences to be endured through superficial compliance rather than actual change.

  Most revealing was the contradiction in their thinking—while assuming Lucius's position was temporary despite his immortality, they simultaneously believed their own noble status was permanent and unassaible, despite being younger and less powerful than their king. They had expected to outst the very being who created their species while maintaining hereditary privileges for eternity, a fundamental misunderstanding of the power dynamics that had always defined their existence.

  "Their greatest self-deception wasn't their specific lies," Lucius noted as they observed this exchange. "It was believing they could maintain those lies indefinitely against a being who would exist just as indefinitely."

  As the day's judgments concluded, Nova observed that many nobles seemed genuinely shocked by their exposure, as if they truly believed their deceptions had been secret. "They didn't think you could see behind their masks," he noted. Lucius's response was weighted with two thousand years of patient observation: "They forgot who made them. Every vampire exists because my DNA is part of their genetic makeup, directly or distantly. Did they truly believe I couldn't sense their deception? That I wouldn't eventually hold them accountable? Their greatest self-deception wasn't lying to me—it was believing I didn't notice."

  Nova considered the extraordinary patience this represented—not just years or decades but centuries of watching, documenting, and waiting for the precise moment to address these systematic deceptions. This wasn't merely governance; it was strategy operating across a timescale most beings couldn't comprehend.

  "You knew from the beginning you would eventually expose them," Nova said, the realization dawning. "Even as you issued those first reforms, you were already establishing the surveilnce that would one day document their hypocrisy."

  "Of course," Lucius confirmed, his expression revealing nothing of the two thousand years of careful pnning that had led to this moment. "I never expected immediate compliance. I expected resistance, subterfuge, and deception. What they never understood was that I had pnned for all of it—not just for years or decades, but for centuries."

  As the hall emptied, with nobles departing in various states of shock, fear, or relief depending on their own histories, Nova gained new appreciation for the burden Lucius had carried across millennia. Not just the weight of leadership, but the patience to allow vampire society's fundamental fws to reveal themselves fully before addressing them with absolute authority.

  Tonight's evaluation sessions had exposed far more than individual noble hypocrisy—they had revealed the absolute certainty with which Lucius had always moved toward his vision, regardless of the centuries required for its fulfillment.