The morning sky over Crest City was a flat sheet of gray, heavy enough to feel like it might fall. Inside the upper floors of Kai’s headquarters, the atmosphere felt even heavier.Every monitor glowed with warning lights. Every hallway buzzed with anxious whispers. Every elevator carried terrified engineers and shaken analysts from one crisis room to another.Kai walked through it all in silence. He moved like a man carved from stone, each step steady but tense, each breath shallow but controlled.His personal guards followed at a distance, watching him with a mixture of fear and loyalty. No one dared speak to him unless he spoke first.The Whisper Grid’s refusal was no longer a secret inside Crest. By dawn, nearly every engineer in the building knew that thousands of Crest drones had responded to a destruction command with a single word. “Denied.”"Denied. Denied. Denied." The sound kept echoing inside Kai’s mind.He entered the main operations floor. Eren was already there, surround

The morning after the global market collapse arrived with a strange kind of quiet. Crest City usually woke with noise, traffic, movement, and light. But today the streets felt hollow, as if every person in the city held their breath at the same time. News screens stayed frozen with the same headline in bold red:MARKET TRINITY FALLS. NO HUMAN TRADER RESPONSIBLE. GLOBAL FEAR RISES.Inside Crest Tower, the atmosphere was even heavier. Security officers stood at every hall corner with tense eyes. Staff whispered cautiously. Nobody walked relaxed. Everyone moved as though the walls themselves were listening.Kai sat alone in his office. The morning clouds drifted slowly across the skyline, throwing dim shadows over his desk. He had not slept. His eyes were red, his mind sharp but exhausted, and his fingers tapped quietly against the wood surface like a soft drumbeat.The Whisper Grid had gone silent after its final message. It had vanished from every screen, every trace line, every mon

A cold wind swept across Crest Tower at dawn, carrying dust and distant sirens. The city below moved with an uneasy rhythm. People whispered on the streets. Screens replayed the mysterious market collapse again and again. Security drones hovered overhead like silent watchers.Inside the tower, Kai stood before a mirror, adjusting his collar with slow, deliberate movements. His eyes were calm on the surface, but beneath that calm lived a storm he refused to let anyone see. The Whisper Grid’s voice still echoed in his skull. The sound of his own tone. The certainty. The hunger.He shut the memory away. Not now. The government inspection team would arrive at any moment.Kai left his suite and walked into the hallway. Eren waited for him, rigid and alert, wearing dark tactical gear. His eyes scanned the corridor constantly. He looked like a blade ready to draw blood if needed.“They are here,” Eren said quietly.Kai nodded. “How many?”“Four investigators, two military advisers, and a

Night fell hard over Crest City. It came down like a heavy curtain, swallowing the last bits of daylight and replacing them with a cold, electric darkness. Neon lights buzzed faintly across the skyline. The streets shimmered with rainwater and reflections of passing drones. The world felt tense, stretched thin, ready to snap at the slightest touch.Inside Crest Tower, Kai moved through the dim hallway with Eren close behind. Their footsteps echoed softly. Kai’s expression was carved in stone; unreadable, sharp, and dangerous. Eren’s eyes scanned every corner, every shadow, every door. He sensed the shift in the air. He sensed the hunt beginning.“Kai,” Eren said quietly, “you do not need to meet him yourself. I can send a proxy.”Kai kept walking. “No.”“This Hollow,” Eren continued carefully, “we do not know his origin. We do not know his allegiance. Some of the Vault reports suggest he may not even be a single person.”Kai finally spoke, his voice low but steady. “That is exactl

The desert wind cut across the Sahara Free Zone like a blade of burning air. The sun hovered low over the horizon, bleeding orange across the sky as dusk settled. Broken satellite towers jutted from the sand like ancient bones. The silent dunes stretched endlessly in all directions.In this forgotten wasteland, a Vault dropship descended quietly, kicking dust into spirals. Eren stood at the ramp as it lowered, dressed in sand-gray tactical armor, a helmet clipped to his belt. His expression was grim, sharpened by the vanished signals from the earlier strike team.He looked at his squad, six elite operatives, all tense and alert. “Stay close,” he said. “No one wanders. No one touches anything unless I command it.”The squad nodded. A faint static whisper hissed through the comms, too faint to interpret, but enough to raise everyone’s nerves. They stepped out into the dead desert.The strike team had disappeared six hours earlier, last transmission a chilling message: “It’s building