The message dissolved, but its echo lingered on every surface.PARALLAX SYNDICATE: PHASE TWO AWAITS.Kael’s heart pounded. The words had not come through the Orchard, nor from Ward. They had written themselves across the infrastructure of Threshold Headquarters, infiltrating code that was supposed to be locked beneath twelve levels of security.Which meant someone, somewhere, had pulled back the curtain.Kestrel cursed under her breath. “This is not possible. The Syndicate was scattered, broken, gutted from the inside. We burned their networks, silenced their voices. They should not exist.”Kael stared at the screen until his vision blurred. “They do. And they are closer than we thought.”Lina stirred on the medical bed. Her breath was shallow, her veins glowing faintly with fractured light. “Phase Two,” she whispered, eyes half-lidded. “That was what Ward always promised them. The second evolution. The… completion.”Ward’s voice slid through the chamber, calm and deliberate. “Do not

Threshold Headquarters trembled as if the building itself had a pulse.Across the central command floor, monitors flickered with cascading lines of fractured code. Faces of officers, engineers, and analysts reflected pale blue light as the systems they relied on began to stutter, fail, and reboot in endless loops. Every mirrored surface—every glass panel, every polished steel wall—throbbed faintly with the afterimage of a reflection that was not always their own.Director Hale stood at the center, rigid, his jaw locked as he scanned the chaos. His voice cut sharp against the din. “Report. Now.”An officer at the communications link station turned, sweat beading on his brow. “Sir—the external grid is destabilizing. The outer surveillance satellites are showing ghost reflections, duplicating the city skyline. Whole districts are flickering in and out of visibility. It’s… like parts of the city are being rewritten in real time.”Hale’s hands tightened behind his back. “Containment?”“Fai

The chamber was gone.Kael blinked hard, trying to clear the white blaze from his eyes. Slowly, the light bled away, and shapes swam back into focus. They were no longer inside the vault—they were standing in a corridor of what looked like Threshold, but warped. The walls bent in mirrored curves, angles too sharp, lines too smooth. The city had bled inward, folding itself into the Syndicate’s reflection.The rupture hadn’t ended. It had multiplied.Kestrel staggered to her feet first, coughing into her sleeve. Her eyes darted around, her mouth tightening. “We’re inside the bleed. This isn’t the city—it’s their version of it.”Lina groaned beside Kael, pushing herself upright. Her face was pale but no longer veined with glass. She clutched her stomach as if steadying herself, but her gaze searched him immediately.“Kael… what happened in there?”He opened his mouth, but his throat tightened. He could still hear Aurex’s voice echoing through him, the chorus threading his bones. You are

Silver swallowed her.The moment Lina leapt through, her body convulsed as if plunging into icy water. Her chest seized, lungs burning, then the world spat her out. She collapsed to her knees.The floor beneath her shimmered — marble laced with black veins, smooth as a mirror. She lifted her head.The corridor was gone.Instead she stood in a chamber she recognized yet shouldn’t have: her childhood home, rebuilt in fractured glass. Every wall reflected her as a child — sitting at a table, kneeling by her mother’s chair, staring through the window at a skyline that no longer existed. Each reflection moved in loops, endlessly repeating the same gestures.Her throat closed.“This isn’t real,” she whispered.Her own voice came back layered, distorted, like a chorus.Across the chamber, Kael staggered forward, his clothes damp with silver light. Relief struck her so hard she almost wept.“Kael!” she cried, rushing toward him.He spun, eyes wide, hand lifting defensively. For a heartbeat, h

The world fractured around them.Kael’s knuckles whitened as he held onto Lina’s wrist, refusing to let her slip into Aurex’s grasp. The silver claw shimmered, cutting into her skin with unnatural strength. Blood smeared across the mirrored floor beneath them, dark against the pale reflection of their bodies.“Kael!” Lina’s voice broke with panic. She twisted, her nails biting into his forearm as though she feared he might let go.“I’ve got you!” he roared, pulling until his muscles screamed. The ground beneath him trembled, spiderweb cracks racing across the glass with every jerk.But Aurex’s voice slithered into the chamber like smoke.You hold her now, but not for long. You can’t rip what belongs to me.Kael bared his teeth. “She doesn’t belong to you!”The claw tightened. Lina’s cry cut through him like a blade. Her legs slipped across the fractured surface, her body halfway inside the mirror, halfway out. Her eyes locked on his, pleading.Kael yanked harder, his shoulder threaten