The fissure howled.Grant steadied himself, the gauntlet’s metal biting into his wrist as he clenched his fist. The crack in the street didn’t close—it widened, bleeding black fire like a wound in reality itself. The air thickened, charged, as though every atom were waiting for a command no one had issued.Elysia flinched back from the advancing heat, instinctively putting herself between Shayne and the eruption. Shayne’s eyes never left the blaze; his jaw tightened, sweat sliding down his temple. He looked ready to fight, but Grant could see the calculation behind the fury. Even Shayne didn’t understand this fire.Good, Grant thought, forcing composure into his stance. Control the unknown, or let it consume them all.But then the unknown moved.The flame didn’t just burn—it formed. Tendrils of living fire lashed upward, twisting into jagged shapes that resembled neither Accord constructs nor Shayne’s Seal. They bent like skeletal wings before collapsing again into formless chaos. Eac

The fissure didn’t close.It stretched wider, tearing through the pavement with a sound like shattering glass, black flame licking up in erratic spirals. The city’s neon canopy flickered, one tower after another cutting to darkness. Sirens failed mid-wail, replaced by a low, thrumming hum that seemed to rise straight from the earth.Shayne pulled himself upright, coughing hard, lungs burning from smoke that wasn’t smoke. His wrists were free. The restraints lay in melted fragments at his side, eaten through by the surge.Elysia was there before he could stumble, her hand gripping his arm, eyes scanning him with a mixture of calculation and something deeper. Relief.“Stay with me,” she said, voice taut.Shayne’s vision wavered. He blinked, forcing the world back into focus. Across the split street, Grant stood firm against the storm, uniform torn but posture unbroken. The flames cast him in silhouette, tall and unyielding, a figure carved from steel and defiance.Grant’s gaze locked on

The blackout began as a flicker. A tremor in the current. The city, so used to the Accord’s pulse thrumming through every circuit, every streetlight, every data stream, barely noticed the first shudder. Then the pulse stopped. Tower blocks dimmed one floor at a time, collapsing into darkness like dominoes. The rail lines screeched as brakes failed, sparks bursting into the air before fading into black. Neon corridors that had once burned with advertisements and slogans of loyalty turned to dead glass. The city exhaled a single, collective breath—and for the first time in decades, there was silence. ⸻ A mother in the tower block pressed her son to her chest. She had been cooking when the lights cut out, the smart-oven freezing mid-cycle. Her boy wriggled against her, whispering in awe, “Mama, look. The stars.” Through the window, the sky stretched vast and unbroken, no longer drowned beneath the Accord’s false constellations. Real stars blinked back. The boy reached toward them, hi

The blackout did not feel like victory. Not yet. Shayne pressed his palms to the reinforced glass of his containment cell, watching the grid outside collapse in waves. Towers that once pulsed with sterile white light now loomed like skeletons against the skyline. Streets below were a tangle of stalled cars and flickering drones, their searchlights cutting through smoke like blind eyes. Somewhere, alarms wailed—but their cadence was broken, jagged, as though even the machines had lost their rhythm. Elysia stood just behind him, her breath unsteady but her posture sharp. She had seen collapse before—in war drills, in manufactured riots staged for the Accord’s propaganda—but this was different. This wasn’t simulation. This was fracture. “Do you hear that?” Shayne asked, voice low. Elysia tilted her head. At first, only static hissed through the cell’s comm vents. Then, beneath the static, came voices. Dozens, then hundreds, bleeding through frequencies that should have been locked.

Shayne’s boots slid across broken asphalt as the fissure ripped wider, spilling fire and shadow in equal measure. He grabbed Elysia’s arm, yanking her back just as a streetlight toppled into the chasm, sparks raining across the street. The entire city block heaved like it was alive, shuddering beneath their feet. “This isn’t us,” Shayne shouted over the roar. “Grant didn’t make this.” Elysia’s eyes flashed in the red light. Sweat streaked down her temple as she adjusted her grip on her weapon. “Then who did?” Above them, Accord drones swarmed in black clouds, their lenses whirring as they recorded every angle. Red targeting grids painted across Shayne’s chest, his throat, his heart. Then—static. The grids glitched, fractured, blinked out. The fissure’s flame surged upward like a wall, disrupting the drones’ signals. The entire swarm broke formation, spiraling wildly as their directives scrambled. Elysia took the chance, pressing herself close to Shayne’s shoulder. “We move. Now.