The curved wall of the maintenance tunnel was Ken Ardent’s new canvas. It was not tin, and his instrument was not a spoon, but a piece of charcoal snatched from a cooling brazier. The medium was crude, the scale epic. Before him stretched a sweeping, complex diagram that looked less like a medical formula and more like the blueprint for a cathedral. Sophia sat cross-legged on the cold ground, her gaze fixed on the emerging masterpiece.The fungal light glowed softly, illuminating the frantic, elegant lines her father was drawing. Elara stood further back, a silent witness to the transfer of a legacy. Ken's hand, still shaking with weakness, moved with undeniable authority. He began with the Scourge itself, drawing the virus as a spiked, malevolent circle. “This is the lock,” he rasped, his voice gaining strength as he fell into the familiar rhythm of instruction.He sketched the binding sites, the protein hooks the virus used to latch onto human cells. “De Vries’s serum is a sledgeham

The hush left by her father’s admission was not empty. It was a forge, and in its heart, a new fire was kindled. It was not the desperate, fugitive flame of survival, nor the brilliant, controlled burn of Ken’s scientific genius. This was something else. It was the Daughter’s Fire, and it burned with a pure, uncompromising fury.Sophia stood, the phantom warmth of her father's hand still on her own. The sleeping form before her was a vessel emptied of its great work, and with it, the final, fragile thread of her childhood snapped. The weight which settled upon her was not a burden but an armor. The blueprint was hers. The future was hers.Out of the clinic, she walked into the main chamber of the cistern, where the rebels were gathered. They turned as one, their faces a mosaic of anxiety, hope, and lingering distrust from the schism. They saw the tear-tracks on her cheeks, but they also saw the new, terrifying stillness in her eyes.Elara moved toward her, concern etched on her face.

The failure of conventional forces demanded an unconventional solution. Inspector De Vries was not a man who tolerated failure. The riots, the sabotage, the plague—they were symptoms of a single, stubborn infection in the body of his city: Sophia Ardent. It was time to deploy the scalpel he had been sharpening in the darkest corners of the state’s bio-labs.He called them the Jagers. Hunters. They weren't soldiers, not in any traditional sense. They were the state's answer to the Ardent legacy—a perversion of Ken's work, twisted towards a single, brutal purpose.Where Ken had sought symbiosis, the state’s scientists had forced dominance. The Jagers were volunteers from the most fanatical loyalist units, their bodies brutally rewritten. Their immune systems were not harmonized with the Scourge; they were fortified into an impenetrable wall, capable of annihilating the pathogen on contact. They were immune, but it was a dead, sterile immunity, devoid of the living, adaptive grace of Sop

The cistern no longer felt like a sanctuary. The fungal light, once a symbol of hidden hope, now seemed to illuminate only the deep fissures running through the rebellion. The failed chase, Ken’s visible decline, and the terrifying efficiency of the Jagers had shattered the fragile unity Sophia’s bold vision had briefly forged.News of the Jager's death spread through the ranks not as a triumph but as a portent: Sophia had killed one of De Vries's unstoppable hunters. Instead of inspiring awe, the act fueled a new, more dangerous kind of speculation:Rik found her at dawn, as she was checking her father's vitals. His face was grim, his earlier respect hardened into a brutal pragmatism.“You can fight them,” he said, with no preamble. “You burned one with your touch. We saw the body. That’s a weapon. A real one.”Sophia didn't look up. "It's a defense. Not a weapon.""A distinction without a difference," Rik said, his voice low and intense. "De Vries sent his best, and you broke it. Im

The cistern was a cathedral of tension. The fungal light cast long, dancing shadows that seemed to writhe with the unspoken fears of the rebels. The three factions—Rik’s militants, Femke’s surrenderists, and Liesel’s loyalists—stood in separate, hostile clusters. The air was thick with the scent of damp, unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of impending violence. Ken’s final message had been a stone dropped into stagnant water, but the ripples were now crashing into each other.Sophia stood before them, alone. She had washed the grime of the tunnels from her face, but nothing could wash away the new, terrible authority etched into her features. She did not look like a frightened girl or an angry general. She looked like a verdict.She didn't wait for silence. Her voice, when it came, was not loud, but it cut through the murmuring like a scalpel.“You have debated my worth,” she began, her gaze sweeping over them, cold and assessing. “You have measured my blood against your fear. You