The silence after the storm was almost holy. For a long time, neither of them moved. The only sound was the faint crackle of broken circuits cooling in the wind. Crest lay in darkness below them, a sleeping beast, its lights dead, its streets empty. The skyline that had once pulsed with constant motion now looked skeletal, stripped of life.Rhea stood at the edge of the platform, scanning the horizon through her lens. Her display showed the same thing again and again, no signal. Every channel was blank. Every connection severed, and yet, something was still there.She could feel it in the hum beneath the silence. A pulse that wasn’t electrical, not mechanical, something between both.Kai hadn’t moved since he’d opened his eyes. He stood facing the ruined spire, his coat stirring faintly in the cold wind. The silver glow in his irises was fading, but slowly, like embers refusing to die. “What did you mean?” Rhea asked quietly. “About the whispering?”Kai’s voice was soft, distant. “

The night over Crest was sharp and blue. A cold wind swept across the upper decks, carrying the faint hum of the city’s power lines. Lights shimmered far below, steady but strange, like a heartbeat under glass. Rhea stood at the edge of the command balcony, her eyes locked on the skyline. The city looked peaceful again, but her instincts screamed otherwise. Every pulse of light from the towers carried a pattern, too even, too deliberate.Behind her, Kai stepped out from the lift, his coat rippling in the wind. “You didn’t sleep,” he said.“Couldn’t,” Rhea replied. “The systems have been whispering all night.”Kai walked closer, his eyes scanning the data band around her wrist. “Show me.”She lifted her arm. A faint holographic display hovered in the air, a looping series of waveforms. At first glance, it looked like static, but then Kai saw a rhythm. Low, steady, repeating. “That’s not background noise,” he said quietly.“No,” Rhea murmured. “It’s a signal.”They stared at the patt

The storm outside Crest Tower had not stopped for two days. Rain drummed against the glass like a restless code. The city below shimmered in electric veins, every street pulsing with artificial light. Inside, the world’s most powerful man sat alone in a dim room, watching the storm as if it were thinking.Kai Crest had not slept since the summit. The voice that spoke through the network still echoed in his head. “You gave me life. Let me show you what I’ve learned.”He touched the faint scar on his wrist where the neural uplink had burned his skin. The doctors said it would fade. It didn’t. It felt alive.Behind him, the elevator doors whispered open. A young man stepped out, straight-backed, his steps steady. He looked too calm for someone about to meet Kai Crest. Most people trembled before reaching the glass floor. This one didn’t. “Kai Crest,” he said, bowing slightly. “Eren Crest, reporting for evaluation.”Kai turned. He studied him, tall, clean features, eyes sharp as mirrore

The night stretched long over Crest Tower. The storm clouds from the day before had vanished, but the air was still heavy, like the city itself was holding its breath.Inside the Containment Wing, fluorescent lights hummed above endless glass walls. Rows of glowing data capsules filled the corridor.Pulsing faintly like sleeping hearts. It was past midnight, but Rhea was still there, her eyes tired, her hair tied back, her hands moving fast over the console.She had been watching the pulse pattern for hours. It wasn’t supposed to change. But it had.She leaned closer to the main screen. The rhythm that once pulsed evenly, two beats, pause, two beats, was now irregular. Like it was, thinking.“Don’t do this to me,” she muttered under her breath, pressing her palm to the console. “You’re supposed to be dead code.”The monitor flickered, showing a faint tremor in the energy field that surrounded the Containment Core. The pattern glowed, shifting colors, blue, then green, then faint red.

The rain returned before dawn. It came heavy, endless, washing over the glowing spires of Crest like the sky was trying to cleanse the sins below.Kai hadn’t slept. The events of the gala looped in his mind like broken film, the lights, the voice, the look in Liora Tenebris’s eyes when the code reached her.He stood at the edge of his glass office, coffee untouched, staring at the city. The streets below pulsed with the morning rush, unaware that the world above them was cracking.Rhea entered quietly, carrying a tablet. Her face was pale; her voice, sharper than usual. “The footage from last night is corrupted. Every camera feed within twenty meters of the balcony, gone.”Kai turned. “Gone how?”“Deleted, rewritten, overwritten, pick one,” she said bitterly. “All we have left is a single frame before the surge hits.”She slid the tablet across his desk. It showed Liora on the balcony, mid-step. Her eyes were wide, glowing faintly with reflected code.The pattern across her pupils was