The body was cooling fast beneath the night air, blood soaking into the rooftop gravel. Ethan crouched there, eyes locked on the man’s pale face. One of Damian’s men. No doubt. The scar near the ear, the military haircut, the faint tattoo peeking from the collar—Ethan remembered him clearly from the safehouse.His jaw tightened.Damian had set him up. Sent his own man to put a bullet through his skull.The system’s familiar chime echoed in his mind, a hollow comfort.[Enhanced Reflexes Lv.2: Activated]Reaction speed +30% Accuracy improved in combat scenarios.Ethan flexed his fingers, feeling the slight buzz of heightened awareness rushing through his veins. It didn’t soothe the betrayal burning in his chest.Why? Damian had handed him the file on Councilman Grayson, practically begged him to take the mission. And then he’d turned around and ordered an ambush. Did Damian want him dead—or did he just want to test him?Either way, it meant one thing. Ethan couldn’t trust him. Not anymor

The rain poured relentlessly over the city, streaking neon lights into rivers of color across the streets. Ethan stood on the rooftop of a half-collapsed skyscraper, the storm soaking through his black tactical gear. His eyes were locked on the glowing mission window only he could see.[Mission Update: Eliminate Target – Councilor Victor Dane] [Time Remaining: 23:59:12]Less than a day left.He had chased shadows before, but this—this was different. Dane wasn’t just another corrupt politician with ties to the Syndicate. He was something bigger. Each lead Ethan had followed seemed to circle back to the same name, whispered in fear: The Council.The so-called puppet masters of the city. A hidden order of elites who played the world like a chessboard. Ethan had always believed in enemies he could see, enemies he could put a bullet through. But this? This was a phantom war.Lightning cut across the sky, illuminating the figure who had joined him silently on the rooftop. Cass. She moved li

The world vanished in white.Ethan staggered back, shielding his eyes as the case split open like a ruptured star. The hum became a roar, and then—silence. When his vision cleared, the penthouse was gone.He stood in a void. Endless black stretching in every direction, broken only by the shimmering outline of the case floating before him. Cass was nowhere to be seen. The blood, the fire, the enforcers—all erased.[System Override Engaged]The voice wasn’t the cold monotone he was used to. It was deeper, richer, like a chorus of overlapping whispers.Ethan’s fists clenched. “What the hell are you?”[You have crossed a threshold. The Council has forced an acceleration of your evolution.]The case rotated slowly, opening wider. Inside was no weapon, no pile of cash, no technological artifact. Instead, there was light. And within the light, fragments—data, images, faces, entire histories flashing too fast for the human eye to follow.Memories. But not his own.Ethan reached toward them de

The skyline of the city burned gold beneath the morning sun, but the light could not touch the cold that sat inside Ethan Cross’s chest.He stood before the panoramic glass of the safehouse, a shadow framed by the fractured glow of a world at war. Below him, the streets buzzed with unrest — protests, drones, news vans — all reacting to the chaos the System had unleashed. Ever since the Councilrevealed its hand, the world had been splitting in two: those who worshiped the System, and those who feared it.And Ethan Cross? He planned to own it.Cass entered quietly, her movements sharp but controlled. “The news is everywhere,” she said, dropping a datapad on the table. “Two Council banks collapsed overnight. Their credit lines were siphoned through mirror accounts — yours?”Ethan didn’t turn. “Not mine,” he said. “The System’s doing. It’s clearing the board.”She frowned. “And you’re fine with that?”“I’m more than fine.” He finally faced her, eyes cold, voice steady. “Every empire needs

The ten-day clock hummed in the background like an accusation.Ethan heard it the way some people heard a heartbeat — constant, unignorable. The System had given them routes, rewards, and threats in neat, merciless lines of text. It had also handed him victories that tasted like iron. Now it wanted the thing at the center: the Council’s Central Node, the “Prime Origin” stored inside a place only whispered about in the oldest black-ops files — The Tower Beyond Time.Nobody believed the Tower was literal. Most thought it a mythic moniker for an archive, a distributed vault of the Council’s collective memory. Miles had called it the “temporal ledger” in a rare moment of silence, and his eyes, usually distracted, had gone colder than steel. Cass had cursed and called it a monument to the arrogance of men who believed they could own history.Ethan stood at the head of the long table in the safehouse war room, the screens behind him filled with schematics, satellite feeds, and a single puls