The manor did not announce itself.
That was the first thing visitors noticed — or rather, what they failed to notice. No gate with crests. No brass placards. Nothing that said this building contains power in the way buildings owned by people who needed to say so usually contained power. The Menhante estate sat behind a low stone wall in the specific, unhurried manner of a property that had been here before the street was named and intended to be here after the street was forgotten.
Seven in the morning.
The light inside was the light of a house already awake — not the frantic yellow of a household getting itself organized, but the low, deliberate warmth of a space that had its own schedule and had been keeping it for years.
At the top of the main staircase, a door opened.
