The Crimson Invitation

Astrid did not treat the envelope like a simple party invitation.

It came from the Queefdom, sealed in crimson wax and dressed in the kind of ceremony Baron von Queef favored when he wanted ambition to look inevitable. The message inside was not only an invitation to a masquerade. It was an announcement that Queef Palace was reopening and that VQU, or some new version of it, was being reborn under Baron's hand.

My Alchemical Romance had just returned from the Void Realm.

They were tired, wounded, carrying new problems, and still tangled in everything that had happened to Walter, Virgil, Cynthia, the Githyanki, and Gravenhurst's shifting factions. But Baron was already pulling them toward the next stage. The invitation named them as visionaries and innovators, flattering them into the shape of people who belonged at his public unveiling.

That was the danger of it.

The masquerade was social theater, but not harmless social theater. Baron was not simply throwing a party. He was reopening old power, laundering new power, and asking Gravenhurst to watch him do it under candlelight and spectacle. If the city had changed while the party was gone, the masquerade was where that change would be given a face.

Astrid also gave them Brilliance in a Bottle.

The gift was practical, almost too practical: preparation for a room full of elite conversation, political traps, and magical performance. A little more wit could matter when the party was about to walk into a gathering built by a man who understood image, leverage, and timing.

The invitation turned the next problem official.

The Void Realm rescue had been survival. The masquerade would be exposure. Baron was opening the doors to Queef Palace and calling it a rebirth.

My Alchemical Romance had been summoned to witness it.