(Back at the ICU)The head doctor’s face was pale beneath the fluorescent light. He didn’t answer the nurse immediately. His gloved hands hovered over Celestine’s arm, watching the crimson glow pulse and coil beneath her skin like veins filled with liquid fire.He’d seen oddities before—radiation poisoning, biochemical reactions, even a few classified military patients whose blood carried experimental compounds, but this... this was something else entirely.“Get me the thermal scanner,” he said sharply. His tone carried a thread of authority that barely masked the dread edging into his words.A nurse scrambled to hand it to him. He aimed it at Celestine’s chest, then froze. The readings spiked so fast the device beeped wildly and went dark, smoke curling from its edge.The doctor’s throat tightened. “It’s... overloading,” he murmured. “Her body’s generating energy—actual energy—at levels that shouldn’t be possible for a human being.”The room fell silent except for the low hum of mach

For a long moment, Jackson stood there, alone beneath the fading light of Montgomery, his breath shallow, his heart pounding as though it too were struggling to keep up with the truth that had just been laid before him.The air around him shimmered faintly, golden sparks swirling like dust caught in unseen wind. The silence pressed in until even his thoughts felt too loud.Tyler was gone.Truly gone.And yet, somehow… not.Because the warmth that lingered in the space he’d vanished from still pulsed inside Jackson’s chest. The faint hum of fire beneath his skin—the heartbeat of the Flameborn—had changed. It felt stronger and deeper, like something that had been sleeping too long had finally stirred again.He flexed his fingers slowly, and the mark in his palm responded, glowing with renewed life. A soft rush of heat traveled up his arm, spreading through his veins like sunlight breaking through a storm.For the first time since Trey’s betrayal… since the day the Silver Phoenix unleas

Bella stirred awake to a strange stillness that didn’t belong to the morning. The air felt heavy, charged — the kind that comes after storms or the kind that lingers after something terrible has happened. Her curtains fluttered faintly against the half-open window, carrying in a whisper of smoke and the distant echo of sirens.She blinked against the sunlight that cut across her room, her mind slow to catch up. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep sometime after midnight, her phone buzzing nonstop with messages she’d promised herself she’d answer “in a minute.” That minute had stretched into hours — hours that had changed everything.Sitting up, she rubbed her temples and squinted at the mess of clothes strewn across her chair and the blinking red light on her phone at the bedside. Something about the silence outside unnerved her. Sky Tower’s skyline was visible through her window — still towering, still glimmering — yet the city below it felt wrong, and somehow off-balan

The revolving glass doors of Hart Industries Headquarters hissed open with a soft hydraulic sigh, ushering in a rush of morning air and a chorus of murmured greetings from the staff. For weeks, the building had carried a strange, uneasy silence like a heart that refused to beat without its pulse.Now, that pulse had returned.Jackson strode through the marble lobby in a fitted charcoal suit, his reflection splitting across the polished floor beneath the golden crest of the Hart Empire. The echoes of the Eclipse Incident—the chaos that had rattled not just the city but the global markets, still lingered like ash in the wind. Reports had flooded in: missing assets, panicked investors, leaks in overseas branches. Every eye on the thirty-fifth floor—the board’s sanctum—was waiting for the man whose silence had lasted too long.“Mr. Hart,” greeted his executive assistant, hurrying alongside him as the elevator doors slid open. “The board has been assembled since eight. They’re... restles

Elara stood by the panoramic window of her penthouse, the skyline of the city gleaming below her like a tapestry of gold and steel. The city pulsed with ambition, but she saw only pawns — lights she could switch off at will.Ever since the accident with Celestine and Evans, she had been in the shadows, refusing to carry out any actions whatsoever.But when she heard that a new female CEO had arrived in the city just after the eclipse with a world class project that not only had the potential to reshape the modern world but to put the Harts in their place, she became interested in being part of it.Since she returned to the city, one goal had been at the back of her mind, and that's to get back at Philip Hart through Jackson for all the pains he caused her.Her phone buzzed once on the glass table beside her. She didn’t need to check who it was. Only one man dared to call without being summoned.“Blake,” she said smoothly, lifting the receiver to her ear.“It’s confirmed,” Blake replied