The world ended in silence, no sound of shattering stone, no cries of battle, no rush of chains just silence. Elias’s eyes flew open. He was standing or floating in a space without walls, without sky, without ground. The darkness here wasn’t absence.It was presence. A thick, pulsing void that breathed like a living beast. His chest heaved, though he couldn’t feel air. His chains hovered around him like vipers, swaying to an unseen rhythm. And in that rhythm, he heard it: a heartbeat.Thum,Thum,Thum. Not his, not human something deeper.The Fractured GatheringShapes emerged in the gloom. Lucian, his sword drawn, stood on what passed for ground, every muscle tense. His eyes darted across the void, colder than ever, his blade humming faintly as though rejecting the darkness.Marrow appeared next, his skeletal grin wider than before, sockets burning with delighted fire. He stretched his bones, tilting his head as if savoring the place. “Ah home sweet home.”And then the Keeper stumbled

The abyss convulsed.A storm of chains fell like meteors, each link the size of towers, their descent splitting the void into quaking fragments. The Warden’s roar filled every crack in the black expanse, a sound less like rage than inevitability, as though the abyss itself demanded Elias submit.Elias stood firm, light-forged chains spiraling around him in radiant arcs. They no longer writhed in rebellion they moved in harmony with his will, each strike precise, sharp, alive.“Come then,” Elias whispered, though his voice was drowned in thunder. “I am no vessel, I am Elias Sebastian.” And his chains leapt.The First ClashThe first impact was cataclysmic. One of the Warden’s colossal chains descended like a falling mountain. Elias’s chains shot upward, catching it mid-fall. The collision birthed a shockwave that rippled across the abyss, hurling shards of bone and fragments of spires outward like shrapnel.Lucian braced himself, blade plunged into the void’s floor to anchor his stance

The storm had been building for days, and tonight, it finally broke. Rain lashed against the city skyline, lightning tearing the night open in jagged flashes.From the top floor of the glass tower that bore Vincent Crowe’s insignia, the city below looked small, insignificant ants scurrying in the downpour. But inside the boardroom, there was nothing insignificant about what was unfolding.Lucas Sebastian stood at the head of the obsidian table, his presence an unyielding wall against the tide of enemies arrayed before him. Around him sat the most powerful men and women in the country bankers, ministers, magnates, generals.All had come dressed in wealth and arrogance, but now their silks and suits seemed like costumes torn apart by truth. Because Lucas had just torn the masks off their faces.A giant screen flickered behind him, displaying files he had ripped from the Consortium’s secret vaults. Bank transfers. Assassination contracts. Proof of rigged elections. Evidence of betrayals

The night did not sleep. Helicopters thundered above the ruins of Crowe Tower, their spotlights sweeping across the collapsed mountain of steel and smoke. Firetrucks still screamed, dousing flames that refused to die. Reporters shoved microphones at trembling survivors, demanding answers.But the only answer that mattered pulsed in Lucas Sebastian’s palm a blinking red light,the detonator.Dragged Back From DeathParamedics carried him on a stretcher toward the triage tents, their faces tight with disbelief. “He should be dead,” one whispered, wiping soot from Lucas’s blood-caked face.Evelyn never left his side, clutching his hand as though her grip alone tethered him to the world. “Stay with me,” she whispered, tears cutting rivers through the ash on her cheeks. “Don’t you dare leave now.”Lucas stirred. His chest heaved like a furnace, every breath shallow and ragged, but his eyes flickered open. And then they all froze because his other hand clenched the detonator. “Stop!” a firef

The Caldwell Power Station groaned like a dying beast. Every light had turned crimson. Alarms howled, echoing through the steel and concrete labyrinth.The relay core pulsed with malignant energy, its secondary device sleek, armored, ticking casting a blood glow across the chamber, GLOBAL DETONATION SEQUENCE INITIATED.The SplitLucas Sebastian slammed his palms against the console, blood smearing across the keys. His eyes blazed as he fought to read the torrent of code cascading down the screen.“This isn’t just a relay anymore,” he barked, chest heaving. “It’s a failsafe bomb wired into the entire grid. If it blows, it’ll trigger everything.”General Vance swore under his breath, barking orders into his comm. “Bravo, secure the perimeter! No one in or out!”But before the words finished, gunfire cracked through the cavernous chamber. Mercenaries, Vincent’s loyalists men who had melted into the city’s shadows after his fall now flooding in like roaches, armed to the teeth.The soldie