The warehouse in Dock 9 buzzed like a hive of steel and desperation. The storm had passed, but its ghost lingered...mud streaked across the concrete, flickering lights overhead, the scent of rust and sweat clinging to the air. Inside, the air was thick with tension, the kind that made men flinch at shadows and reach for steel before words.Luka stood at the head of the room, eyes locked on a crude whiteboard covered in scrawled names, locations, and red circles like blood drops.“We strike the Brannick Estate in forty-eight hours,” he said, voice flat, commanding. “We hit fast, loud, and hard. No survivors. No hesitation.”The room quieted. Faces turned toward him...some hardened, some uncertain. Among them were leaders of the splinter crews: Nico of the Burnside Rats, Hektor from the Eastpoint Knives, and Zara from the Southside Screamers. They were killers, each one, but even killers hesitated when looking at the jaws of a fortress.Zara stepped forward first. “You’re sure about thi

The rain didn’t stop.By morning, the city was awash in grey, the skyline dripping like a half-finished oil painting. Thunder echoed over rusted rooftops and shattered glass. In the belly of Viktor’s domain, the Crucible spun its machinery...new initiates, blood offerings, messages sent in silence. The city was being reshaped.And Luka was its ghost.He sat in the planning chamber now...a brutalist hall beneath the meatpacking district, where old stone walls met LED projections and a live surveillance feed ran across an entire wall. The table before him was carved from a single sheet of black granite, etched with the outline of the city’s districts.Around him sat men and women who shaped the city’s underworld: cartel sons with manicures, mercenaries with slit eyes, politicians too clean to bleed. They listened to Viktor, but they watched Luka.He was the curiosity now.The boy who killed Carrick.The heir without a flag.“…northbound shipments are doubling this week,” said a stocky w

The night crackled with electricity, both in the air and in the silence between breaths.Deep beneath the city, in the bowels of what used to be a subway control hub, Luka stood in front of a wall-sized screen flickering with surveillance feeds...dockyards, alleys, rooftops, and roads crisscrossing the city’s crumbling underworld. Alessia stood beside him, arms folded, lips pressed into a thin line. Viktor paced in the background, his usual restlessness now a churning storm.“They’re not retreating,” Viktor muttered. “They’re redirecting.”Alessia nodded toward the south feed. “That’s the fourth crew we’ve seen move toward the cathedral district. That’s not random.”“It’s Vesper,” Luka said. “She’s pulling strings we can’t see yet.”Marco’s voice crackled through the comms. “Boss, we’ve got chatter. Something’s going down at Old Saint Thorne’s. Heavy foot traffic. No colors, but a lot of known faces. They're not even hiding.”Luka exchanged a look with Alessia. “She wants us to see th

The city didn’t sleep that night. It thrashed beneath sirens and silence, like a wounded thing trying not to die.Luka stood alone on the roof of the Cordell Building, overlooking Eastpoint. Smoke still curled faintly from the church’s husk in the distance. His coat flapped in the wind, wet with blood and sweat. Below, engines growled...teams returning, bodies being moved, territory already shifting like tectonic plates under his boots.Mirelle’s voice still echoed in his skull. “You’ve started something that won’t end with bullets.”He didn’t flinch when the roof access door opened behind him.Alessia emerged, her braid loose, her shirt stained at the collar.“Thirty-seven injured,” she said quietly. “Two critical. One of ours didn’t make it.”He nodded once, eyes still on the skyline. “Children?”“Safe. Shaken, but safe. Some were calling you the White Ghost. Said you came through the fire.”He gave a bitter chuckle. “Ghosts don’t bleed.”She stepped beside him, her voice low. “What

The tunnels beneath Old District Seven were older than the city above them...older than any record still kept in the archives, older than the Foundation itself. Some said they were remnants of an old military project, others believed they were built by a secret order before the war. But tonight, they would become a crucible.Luka stood at the edge of the chasm that had once been a service hatch, now cracked wide from decades of disrepair and pressure. The damp air rising from below smelled of rust, burnt oil, and something far older...something dead.He clicked on his flashlight. A white cone of light sliced into the abyss.“This is it,” he muttered.Alessia crouched beside him, eyes scanning the darkness. “You really think this Facility Nyx exists?”“I think they built it to be forgotten,” Luka said, his voice low. “But they buried it wrong.”Behind them, Vesper was pacing like a caged animal. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.“We go in quiet. No chatter unless necessar