They returned to the estate and went straight to the deepest part of the archives—a subterranean vault that required Leo's biometrics and a physical key Fen kept on her person.
"My grandfather showed me this place when I was sixteen," Leo said as the heavy door swung open. "He said some truths are too dangerous to be digitized."
The vault was cold, lined with climate-controlled cases. Inside were not ledgers, but artifacts: a jeweled dagger with a broken blade, a blood-stained treaty, a lock of hair wrapped in silk.
And in the very back, a simple wooden box.
Leo opened it. Inside was a single, slim ledger. The cover was unmarked.
"This was my father's," he said, handing it to Luna. "The one he kept separate from all the others."
Luna opened it. The handwriting was elegant, precise. And devastating.
It detailed a meeting thirty years ago, between the heads of all four families. An agreement to eliminate a fifth family that had discovered the source of their power: a massive vein of rare earth minerals under the city, mined illegally with slave labor.
The fifth family—the Lǐng—had threatened to expose them. So the four families banded together and destroyed them. Every member. Every record. Every memory.
Luna's father had been the one to discover the truth. And he'd been killed for it.
"The Lǐng family," she whispered. "I've never heard of them."
"Because they were erased," Leo said, his face pale. "My father must have found a survivor. Or a descendant."
"The Archivist."
"Yes." He closed the ledger. "And they're not just after revenge. They're after justice. And they're using us to get it."