The villa was quiet too quiet outside, the breeze stirred the olive trees cicadas buzzed. But inside, a strange heaviness lingered in the walls. As if something ancient had awakened. Verity walked barefoot down the corridor, cradling Kael against her chest. The baby had fallen asleep after another fit of shimmering light that had flickered from her tiny fingers. It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes, when he cried, the air would crackle when she laughed, small lights would dance around her head like fireflies. Verity had stopped trying to explain it. “You’re not just our son,” she whispered to the sleeping boy. “You’re something more.” A low chime rang from the villa’s entryway Damon appeared from the library, shirt half unbuttoned, a tablet glowing in one hand. “Wasn’t expecting visitors,” he said. Neither of them moved to open the door immediately. Then— A voice. “Zia,” he called softly. “Zia the Neural Rebellion. You’ve come home.” Verity’s heart leapt. “Zia?” Damon

Isabel’s deeper plan is revealed through the actions of the glassbone council and it’s bigger than just Kael. The moon cast a pale silver net across the Alps as the glassbone council stepped from their private transport onto the helipad outside Lüftner Laboratories, a former biotech hub turned covert blacksite. Two silent operatives in black exo armor flanked the glassbone council team members, but they were only for show. No one here would dare touch them this was Isabel’s domain now even if she wasn't there physically. Inside the lab, deep in the glacier carved vaults, servers hummed like a heartbeat. Walls pulsed with light filtered through organic silicon the remnants of what once powered Virexon and the Architects’ global systems. This place had history blood history. Dr. Kriess, Isabel's lead bioengineer, the glassbone council met him near the corridor’s end. “Subject Vera is stable,” he reported. “Neural scaffolding is complete. But we’ve detected faint echoes of Architect co

The rain greeted her first not digital rain it was real rain. Cold, uneven, and alive where Vera stood beneath it, her arms loose at her sides, the hood of her borrowed coat sliding back to reveal her pale face. The drop point was an abandoned train yard in Venice, overgrown with rust and silence. Steel rails stretched like bones through the weeds. The truck that brought her here all the way from Florence had already vanished. Her boots were too clean for this place. With her breath clouded in the dusk, and every sound the distant clink of chains, the cry of gulls, the wind slipping between metal fences felt like something watching her. But Vera wasn’t afraid she was processing calculating she touched the microchip behind her left ear. It pulsed once, then went silent. Isabel’s last message had already burned through her mind it came from all the way from prison she had access to make things happen from inside. [ “Observe. Integrate. Identify the weakness in Kael. Once close eno

Ten Years Later.... Kael Alden sat in the back corner of Room 12B at Saint Helix High School, his dark eyes half lidded but every sense alert. The classroom buzzed with the usual chatter, pencils tapping rhythmically against desks, and the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. But for Kael, these were background noise beneath the roar inside his mind. Voices, thoughts with emotions along with the mental chatter of thirty children and a teacher layered and mingled in a dizzying storm of neural signals. He had learned early to filter and focus, but today the storm threatened to overwhelm him. Miss Hargrave, the math teacher with her sharp voice and colder eyes, paced at the front, chalk in hand. She stopped abruptly and fixed Kael with a piercing stare. “Kael Alden,” she said, her tone sharp like a blade, “care to explain why you haven’t handed in your homework again?” A few heads turned; the room quieted. Kael’s heart beat faster not from fear but tension the teacher hated him. Not b

The door hissed shut behind her as Verity stepped into the uplink chamber beneath the villa. The room was buried deep beneath firewalls, beneath encrypted layers of protection Damon had once described as “too paranoid even for a dying god.” But today, it felt paper thin too quiet and too exposed. The hum of the interface core grew louder as she approached. Cold metal under her bare feet. Her hand trembled slightly as she pressed it to the biometric lock. The floor lit with crimson veins, reading her neural signature. The walls dissolved into flowing holograms and then, Cipher appeared. Not as a person atleast not anymore but as construct made of smoke and secrets shifting outlines, no face, just a cloak of code whispering across invisible wind Verity stared them down. “You knew,” she said. Cipher said nothing. “You told me Kael was safe.” “Kael was never safe,” Cipher replied. “He was only... dormant.” Verity’s voice shook. “Dormant?” “He was born with Damon’s neural weave and