It came with a sound that tore the world in two.It was not a bang, but a deep, visceral crump that started in the bones of the square and vibrated up through the soles of their feet. Rik's demolition team, using scavenged state explosives, had placed their charges with the precision of surgeons. The huge, steel-reinforced gates of the palace did not swing open; they disintegrated. One moment they were an impenetrable barrier, the next, a cloud of shredded metal and splintered stone, a gaping, smoking wound in the face of the fortress.The echo of the blast was still ringing in the air when Sophia gave the only command she would need to.“Now.”The March of Shadows turned into a river of fire.They poured through the breach, a torrent of roaring humanity. The torches that had once served as signs of defiance now became weapons in their own right, flung into the grand foyer ahead of them, illuminating the stunned faces of the loyalist guards stationed within.The shock of the explosion

The silence, after the Jägers fell, was heavier than any gunshot. The only sound was the ragged panting of the rebels and the faint, dripping hiss of machinery that had been damaged. Sophia stood amidst the hunters' wreckage, her body still thrumming from the aftershock of violent transformation. Her gaze locked on Inspector De Vries, who hadn't moved from his terminal.He offered no surrender. No final words of defiance. Instead, a slow, bloodless smile stretched his lips. A smile from a man who'd long since won another, far more terrible victory."You have come for the cure," he said, his voice unnervingly calm. "But you have only ever seen its shadow. You fight for a symbol. I have been studying the source."He typed a command into his terminal with a deliberate motion. A section of the dark, metal wall behind him hissed and slid open, revealing a doorway that bled a cold, antiseptic light into the bloody chamber."Behold," De Vries whispered, the eyes glowing with a fanatical ligh

The command center, a place of shattered glass and spilled blood, became a cathedral. The roaring world outside, the final whimpers of the dying state, the crackle of rebel communications—it all faded into a distant, meaningless hum. The only reality was the space between a father and his daughter, and the silence that was rushing in to claim him.Ken's breathing was a fragile thread, each exhalation a little weaker, a little further away. Sophia cradled his head in her lap, her arms a fortress against the cold of the floor. She could feel the fragile architecture of his skull, the bird-like lightness of his body. He already had more memories than man.Elara knelt nearby, her hand to her mouth, her own tears falling silently. Rik and the others had stepped away, ceding them this last, private space at the heart of their victory.Ken's eyes, clouded with pain and the approach of the end, found hers. There was no fear in them. Only a profound, aching love, and a flicker of the brilliant

The world had become a symphony of fire and screaming metal. The underground lab, Ken Ardent’s sanctuary and prison for the last three years, was dying around them. Alarms that had blared for minutes were now silent, their circuits melted. The only sounds were the hungry roar of the flames, the groan of stressed concrete, and the frantic, wet gasps of Inspector De Vries.He was not the clean, calculating officer who had descended into their world an hour ago. The inspector was a thing remade by conflict. One arm hung at a wrong angle, the sleeve of his impeccable grey coat soaked in blood and something darker, a chemical residue from a shattered containment unit. A shard of reinforced glass was embedded in his thigh, but he seemed not to feel it. His eyes, cold chips of Dutch sky, were fixed on Sophia.Sophia Ardent, sixteen years old, stood between the inspector and the sealed bulkhead door. Behind that door, her father and Elara were completing the sequence that would aerosolize the

The world was a blur of roaring wind and searing pain. Ken’s grip on the structural beam was the only anchor in the maelstrom. Below, the massive intake fans screamed, a whirlpool of metal hungry to devour them. Sophia’s blood, a glittering crimson mist, was being siphoned into the palace’s veins, but the cost was the girl herself, her strength fading as her very life was aerosolized into salvation.“I can’t… hold on…” Ken gasped, his broken ribs a white-hot fire in his side.Above them, framed in the torn opening of the duct, a figure appeared. Not a soldier. Not Markus.Inspector De Vries.He was a nightmare resurrected. The electrical burns from the server rack scarred one side of his face, the skin a shiny, grotesque pink. One eye was milky and blind, but the other burned with a feverish, obsessive light. He moved with a lurching, jerky gait, his body a patchwork of his own flesh and crude cybernetic stabilizers hastily grafted onto his limbs. He had clawed his way out of death’s