The broadcast had cut, but Berlin’s plaza still smoldered with the weight of what had been shown. Broken marble, scattered corpses, the black ash of Executors dissolving in the air. And Ethan—glowing faintly even as his body crumpled, Cipher coils flickering like dying stars—was dragged from the ruins.Wren screamed his name, but the Council’s chains had already closed.Helena held her back, blood streaking her face, voice sharp. “Don’t! If you move, they’ll take you too.”Cain only smiled as the Executors—those still functioning—bound Ethan in living glyphs. His laugh was softer now, private, the chuckle of a man who’d thrown a match into a powder keg and was content to watch it burn.“Vessel secured,” one Executor rasped, its voice metallic distortion. “Cycle restored.”Cain’s smile widened. “Cycle restored? Oh no, my friends. You just invited the apocalypse into your house.”---They took him underground.Past the shattered plaza, past the tribunal’s balcony, into the cold stone bo

Berlin burned.The sky above was a bruise of smoke and red flame, sirens shrieking across the city. The ruins of the execution chamber still smoldered beneath the earth, but Ethan Vale—Cipher glowing in his veins like wildfire—stumbled through the wreckage, free and broken both.Each step was agony. His skin crackled with light, his heartbeat a thunder of alien rhythm. He pressed a hand against a shattered wall, leaving glowing streaks where his fingers touched.“Not… theirs,” he rasped, voice shredded. “Not… vessel.”The Cipher hissed back in his skull, serpentine, insistent. You are Ouroboros. You are vessel. You are cycle.He slammed his head against the wall hard enough to draw blood. The pain was real. Human. He clung to it like a lifeline.Wren’s voice echoed in memory. You’re not theirs. You’re mine. Fight it.His eyes burned. “I’m still me.”But his reflection in the broken glass was no longer his own. His eyes were split—half human, half Cipher, a swirl of ancient light.---

The slate’s glow finally dimmed, but the words burned hotter in Ethan’s chest than any Cipher flare ever had.ETHAN CROSS: LAST KING.Not anomaly. Not mistake. A title. A throne. A curse.His fists clenched, blood dripping from his cuts, hissing silver where it hit the archive floor.Wren knelt beside him, whispering softly as if soothing a wounded animal. “You’re still you. No matter what they call you. You’re Ethan.”He wanted to believe her. But inside, the Cipher seethed, whispering like fire. You are cycle. You are crown. You are not hers to tame.He shoved himself to his feet, swaying, half feral. “I need answers.”Wren touched his arm, steady but gentle. “Then we find them. Together.”---Across Berlin, the Council’s headquarters buzzed like a hive of hornets.Executors marched in iron formation, banners unfurling across the city. Loudspeakers echoed the decree:“Anomaly detected. Ethan Vale sentenced to public erasure. Witness the cleansing.”Citizens of Berlin whispered in fe

The city hadn’t stopped shaking.Berlin’s historic plaza, once a monument to order and tradition, was now a ruin—cracked stone, shattered drones, the faint stink of burnt ozone hanging over everything. Entire blocks had lost power. Screens across Europe still replayed the moment chains shattered, the moment the Council’s blade splintered like glass in Ethan’s hand.The execution had become an awakening.---Beneath the ruins, in an abandoned metro station, Ethan lay sprawled on a steel bench. His skin burned with phantom fire, Cipher currents still humming just beneath the surface. He looked less like a man than a broken conduit.Wren sat across from him, arms crossed, her expression a storm she couldn’t name.“You almost lost yourself.” Her voice was raw, jagged. “Do you even know what you looked like out there?”Ethan forced his eyes open. The whites were still faintly laced with Cipher glow. “Alive.”“That wasn’t you,” she snapped. “That was… something else.”He pushed himself upri

The city slept uneasily. Berlin’s skyline smoldered in the distance, faint embers glowing where Cipher currents had burned reality thin.Ethan stood on the rooftop of a gutted bank tower, staring at the fractured horizon. The Cipher pulsed quietly beneath his skin now, a restrained storm.Wren hovered near him, blades sheathed but hands restless. “Cain won’t stop. You know that. The Council won’t either. They’re moving pieces faster now, like cornered beasts.”Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Let them. The more they push, the faster they show me their weaknesses.”She studied him, the set of his shoulders, the glow in his eyes that hadn’t fully dimmed since the cathedral. It wasn’t just power anymore. It was something else. Something claiming him.---Helena arrived with her usual unhurried grace, stepping from the stairwell as though the ruins bent to make her stage.“I hear whispers,” she said, smoothing her gloves. “The Council is convening in Vienna. Officially, they’re calling it a ‘corre