---The Cipher storm ebbed like a tide leaving ruin in its wake. Ethan’s body sagged in the center of the scorched plaza, smoke curling from fissures etched into the stone around him. The serpent sigil still burned overhead, its colossal coils shimmering faintly against the night sky, an impossible constellation that made the city feel like an insect beneath a god’s gaze.Silence followed the chaos. The kind of silence that wasn’t peace, but dread holding its breath.Wren dragged herself up from broken rubble, ribs aching where Helena’s boot had connected, and wiped blood from her lips. Her eyes locked on Ethan, still kneeling, his body trembling as Cipher fire traced faint blue veins across his skin. He wasn’t just glowing—he was resonating. The air around him quivered, as if the world itself had been tuned to his heartbeat.“Ethan…” Her voice cracked. For the first time since she had met him, the wolfish certainty in her eyes wavered.Camille stumbled closer, coughing on smoke, her

Blue fire seared across the plaza like a second dawn, swallowing shadow and smoke in its glare. The serpent brand overhead pulsed in rhythm with Ethan’s heartbeat, each throb rattling the earth, each flare drawing the enforcers’ glassy eyes toward him in perfect unison.The Cipher storm had him.He could feel every thread. Every pulse. The enforcers weren’t enemies—they were signals in a network, nodes in a constellation, each tether visible in his mind. All he had to do was reach, and they would fall apart like glass struck by thunder.But he wasn’t stopping there.The Gate yawned open in his chest, blue fire spilling through cracks in his skin. His sword became a pillar of light, too bright to look at. The storm hissed in his ears, whispering not with one voice but with thousands, layered and endless.Open. Unchain. Become.“ETHAN!”The voice tore through the noise. Not the storm’s voice, not Ouroboros—it was Wren’s. Raw, panicked, furious.She threw herself against him, blades clat

The plaza fell silent for a breath. Even the Fleet paused, their hollow masks tilted as if listening. The Cipher inside Ethan flared in response, a tide pressing against his ribs, hungry, alive.Then the world broke open.The first of the Fleet lunged, claws raking the stone. Ethan’s sword rose in a blur, meeting the blow with a crack that lit the air in blue fire. Sparks of Cipher energy arced outward, striking the nearest husks. Instead of collapsing, their bodies convulsed, green fire flaring brighter.They shrieked as one, a dozen voices woven into a single wail.“Signal…”Ethan’s knees buckled under the feedback, but he didn’t let go. He pushed, forcing the Cipher into the blade, into the strike, and with a roar he carved through the soldier’s chest. This time, the wound didn’t heal. The green fire sputtered, then guttered out.The husk collapsed, body crumbling like ash.A moment of silence.Then the rest charged.---Wren was at his side instantly, blades flashing, her movement

The bay was quiet. Too quiet.Ethan’s chest heaved with each breath, ragged and shallow. The black veins climbing his skin pulsed faintly, glowing blue at their edges as if the Cipher was still trying to rewrite him from the inside out. His sword lay forgotten at his side, its blade cracked but still smoldering with dying fire.The Leviathan’s corpse floated half-submerged, chains bobbing lifeless in the dark water. Seagulls circled overhead but did not land. Even carrion feared the taste of something that had belonged to gods.Wren pressed her forehead against Ethan’s, her voice low and trembling. “You’re still here. You hear me? You’re still here.”His eyes fluttered open. Blue light swirled in them, flickering in rhythm with the veins. His voice was a rasp. “For how long?”Her grip tightened. “As long as it takes.”---Helena stood several feet away, Fang lowered but not sheathed. The shadows along its edge twitched, as if eager for permission to finish what the Leviathan had start

The silence in the chapel was unbearable.The Architect fragments had fallen to ash, but their presence lingered—an echo of static that made the air hum. Ethan knelt amid the wreckage, smoke rising from his skin, every breath a ragged rasp. The broken sword lay useless beside him, its edge charred black by the fire that had poured through him.Wren stayed pressed against his side, as though her arms could anchor him to flesh and blood. Her heartbeat was fast and frantic against his ear, but steady enough to remind him he was still tethered.Helena broke the silence first.“You’re not just the Signal anymore.” Her voice was calm, too calm, the kind of calm that hid a blade. She leaned against a shattered pew, Fang balanced across her knees, eyes sharp as razors. “You bent them. The fragments. They were supposed to consume you, and instead they knelt.”Ethan didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because the truth was worse than her words. When the Cipher had surged, when their threads had tried to b