Some Legacy families were cursed.
Or at least, that was what the other families whispered behind silk fans and crystal glasses—those fortunate houses that had produced sons in generous abundance, who had secured their patriarchalsuccession for another generation, who could afford to look down upon the less fortunate with the particular, poisonous cruelty of the blessed observing the damned.
The curse had a name, though no one dared speak it aloud in polite company... Filial Extinction.
Through the long centuries since the Legacy bloodlines first manifested upon this world—since the Original Progenitors had walked among mortals and planted seeds of power that would bloom into dynasties—the families had obeyed one immutable law: patriarchal succession.
Sons inherited. Sons ruled. Sons carried the bloodline forward with the cold certainty of sunrise following night.
