The night after the skyline bled red did not bring rest to Crest Tower. It brought movement.It brought whispers. It brought the beginning of something that had no place in the light.Kai Vale did not sleep. He had tried. He had stepped into his private suite, turned off every light, locked every door, and sat on the edge of his bed.But the pulse inside him would not let him rest. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt it, a quiet throb, a soft echo, a whisper beneath the surface of his thoughts.Every time he inhaled, he felt pressure in his chest. Every time he exhaled, he heard something faint, like a voice trying to match his breathing.He pressed a hand against his sternum in the darkness. “Stop,” Kai whispered.The pulse answered. A soft beat. Then another. Then silence.Kai stared at the shadows on the far wall. He stood up and walked to the window. Crest City glowed faintly below him. The red had faded, but the memory of it remained like a bruise across the skyline.He whispe

The morning after Eren vanished into the undercity, Crest Tower looked unnaturally calm, as if someone had pressed a hand over the city to silence its heartbeat.But inside the upper floors, inside the heart of Crest’s empire, tension curled in every corner like smoke.Kai Vale sat at the long obsidian conference table, shoulders heavy, eyes fixed on the glowing contract projected in front of him. Thousands of lines of text shimmered across the surface. Every clause was legal. Every paragraph was sharp. Every sentence looked harmless.But Kai knew better. He could feel danger in the polite, elegant way the words were arranged.Liora Tenebris sat across from him, her posture perfect, her hands folded gently on the table. She wore a deep blue dress, simple yet powerful, and her expression was calm, too calm.Beside her stood two Tenebris legal officers, silent as statues.The large room was filled with soft light from the panoramic windows. Outside, the city was waking up slowly, unawa

The wind outside the old mountain station howled like a wounded creature. Snow pushed against the cracked windows, as if trying to break in. The world outside Rhea Vance felt cold, but the world inside her? It was colder.She sat alone at a metal table, the only light coming from a portable lamp that hummed softly. Her fingers hovered above the datapad, trembling slightly. She would have never admitted it, but the tremble was not from the cold. It came from everything she had lost in one single moment.Kai’s voice kept echoing in her ears. “For your safety, you must go.”The words felt like knives, each one twisting deeper. He did not shout. He did not threaten. That was what made it worse. He sounded calm. He sounded like a man who had already closed a door and locked it forever.Rhea had been loyal. She had served Crest since she was seventeen. She protected Kai even when he refused to protect himself. She believed in him even when the board mocked him. And yet here she was, cast

The storm clouds over Crest City had not moved for two days. They hung above the skyline like a silent weight, turning the glass towers gray and dull. The wind pressed against Kai’s headquarters with a low, steady hum, almost like the world itself was whispering through the walls.Inside the executive command hall, the lights glowed dim and pale. The long table stretched across the room, polished until it reflected every face like a blurry shadow. Kai sat at the head of the table, his expression calm, but his eyes carried the exhaustion of sleepless nights.His shoulders were stiff, his breathing controlled, but something in the way his fingers pressed against the armrest revealed the truth.He was tired. He was overwhelmed. He was no longer sure where the world ended and the Whisper Grid began.Around him sat his inner circle, those who claimed to remain loyal, those who whispered warnings, and those who questioned everything.Eren sat to Kai’s right, holding a set of encrypted fil

The desert wind carried sand across the abandoned base like dry whispers. Dawn was barely rising, the sky still dark blue with streaks of pale silver.Eren Vale stood on the landing pad with his shoulders tight and his jaw clenched. He had not slept since the Sahara mission. The memory of the collapsing basin haunted him with a weight he could not shake.The Vault headquarters stood behind him, buried deep beneath the city. The metal corridors hummed with electricity.Lights flickered from overworked generators. Guards moved fast, whispering updates that none of them understood. Everyone felt it. Something was happening. Something they could not name.Eren stared at the cracked device in his hands, the field recorder retrieved from the Sahara Free Zone only minutes ago.A rescue drone had found it half buried in sand, miles from where the basin collapsed. There were scratches on the metal, the Crest emblem burned almost beyond recognition.The device had only one file. One transmissio