The study was a tomb of dust and silence. Ancient tomes sagged on the shelves, their spines cracked and yellow, while the faint scent of oil and rust clung to the air like smoke that had never dispersed. A single lamp cast a pool of amber light across the desk, but the corners of the room were shadows so thick they seemed to breathe.Ethan sat hunched in the chair, his shoulders curled inward, one hand rubbing his forearm where the Cipher’s glyphs burned faintly beneath the skin. They pulsed in steady rhythm, glowing like embers that refused to die out, a prison and a lure at once. He hated them—hated the reminder of what he had become, hated the leash Cain had clasped onto his life. Yet tonight, he needed them.The Carthage File still echoed in his thoughts, page after page seared into memory. Every revelation was a blade cutting deeper: betrayals mapped in ink, names of ghosts who had never died, weapons buried and bought with blood. It was knowledge he wasn’t ready for, knowledge n

Blood slicked Ethan’s lip, metallic and warm, sliding across his tongue with every shallow breath. He sat hunched on the cot, sweat dampening his hairline, the aftershocks of the Cipher burn still rattling through his veins. Camille knelt close, pressing a strip of cloth against the wound with hands that were steady only in motion, not in spirit. Her eyes betrayed the storm she worked so hard to bury—eyes that flicked to his face, then away, as though the truth lived there and she feared him seeing it.Ethan caught the tremor in her jaw, the hesitation in her touch, the way her silence stretched just a little too long. He’d been around Cain long enough to recognize when someone was hiding a blade behind their back.“Why did he react like that?” His voice was ragged, scraped raw from the Cipher’s burn, but it carried weight. “What is Asset Zero?”Camille froze. The cloth in her hand stilled against his lip. For a fraction of a second, her expression cracked—like glass spidering under p

The night had been endless.Ethan sat on the edge of his narrow cot, his back bowed, fists pressed against his thighs. His knuckles were torn open, blood dried into the cracks of his skin from hours of pounding the wall, as if pain could drown out the voices that haunted him. Every time he shut his eyes, the Cipher’s laugh slithered into the dark corners of his mind, twining with his mother’s voice until he could no longer separate the two. The sound wasn’t a memory anymore—it was an infection, a parasite that ate away at his sanity.By the time dawn crept into the stone corridors of the compound, his jaw was locked tight, eyes raw from sleeplessness.The door clicked softly. Ethan snapped his head up.Camille slipped inside, closing the door with quick, furtive movements. She pressed her back against it, chest heaving as if she’d run the length of the halls. She clutched a worn leather file to her chest like it was both shield and weapon.Her face told a story Ethan didn’t want to re

Cain watched from the balcony that crowned the training yard like a god above his altar, a silhouette cut hard against dusk. The courtyard below was a patchwork of shadow and torchlight, the stone flags slick with the sweat of drills and the small, stubborn stains of blood that refused to wash away. Ethan and Wren stood shoulder to shoulder in the center, a tableau of brittle defiance: Ethan’s shoulders still bore the permanent quiet tension of someone who’d learned to wait for the strike, Wren’s fingers hovered near the sheathed daggers at her hips, ready to draw at a single, sliver-quiet signal. Camille lingered under the watch of the wall, one sleeve torn, a bruise blooming at her temple — bruises that had not broken her. Her eyes kept flicking up toward Cain as if testing the span between shadow and action, as if daring him to cross it.The guards who kept the yard tidy like a practiced rumor stiffened further each time Cain moved. Even the air seemed to contract when he walked: a

The waterfront was a furnace. Smoke rolled over the bay like a second tide, swallowing stars, choking the air with the stench of burning wood, oil, and blood. Fire crawled across rooftops as if the city itself had become a pyre, flames licking higher every time the night wind shifted. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance—hollow ghosts of alarms that no one would answer. Carthage’s guardians had already been bought, silenced, or buried. Long before Helena’s mercenaries touched its soil, the city had been sold.From the balcony of the war room, Ethan watched the chaos with a predator’s stillness. His jaw clenched, eyes locked on the figure that emerged through the smoke.Helena.She didn’t walk—she commanded. Her crimson dress moved like a living flame, flowing around her with the arrogance of royalty. Each step cut through smoke and ash as though she owned the very destruction surrounding her. Her blade gleamed in the firelight, catching sparks as if it had been forged in the heart of