The street screamed before it broke. Concrete groaned and split, spiderweb cracks racing outward from the epicenter of the blast. The neat symmetry of the Accord’s immaculate city fractured in seconds—glass towers flickering, lights sputtering, air thick with the metallic tang of ruptured wiring. Shayne braced himself against the shuddering pavement, his palms burning as heat pulsed from the fracture beneath his boots. The Seal at his chest blazed in response, a heartbeat of fire beating against his ribs. Beside him, Elysia stumbled but held her ground, her gaze fixed on the jagged rift opening across the boulevard. Her breathing was ragged, hair plastered to her temples with sweat. For years she had enforced the order of this city, the precision of its systems. Now the very ground was turning traitor. And across from them, Commander Havel Grant didn’t flinch. His silhouette cut sharply against the chaos, uniform gleaming in crimson light. Where civilians had already fled

The city burned with light. Screens flickered alive across every Zone—billboards, walls, hand-held lenses—all overridden by the Accord’s feed. Even the silent apartments of Zone Zero thrummed with the broadcast, forcing its way into every corner where eyes might glance and ears might listen. For a moment, the civilians thought they were being shown another government announcement, another hollow promise of safety and stability. But then the image sharpened. It was him. Shayne Marrow. The crowd stilled, then murmured. His face appeared fractured across different angles—grainy rooftop footage, surveillance cams, even an old military photograph stripped of context. A voiceover rolled above it, calm and surgical, as if reading scripture: “The collapse of our systems. The blackout that plunged our cities into fear. The ruptures tearing through our streets. All stem from the actions of one man.” A chorus of gasps swept through a crowded plaza in Zone Four. A woman clutched her child

The first reports trickled in like whispers—furtive, guilty, almost apologetic. But by the end of the night, they had hardened into something louder, sharper. Aboveground, in the grid-lit plazas of District Eleven, a man stood before a glowing kiosk. His hands trembled as he typed the coordinates into the screen. The face of Shayne Marrow flickered across the glass, the Accord’s forged footage running on an endless loop. Fire at his back, ruins collapsing around him, a grimace twisted by selective cuts until he looked less like a savior and more like a destroyer. The man swallowed hard, his reflection fractured in the light. “I have children,” he whispered, though no one asked. “If he did this—if he brought this on us—then…” His thumb pressed down. Report submitted. Across the river, in District Seven, a woman gathered her neighbors into the corner of a dim café. She had once spoken Shayne’s name like a prayer, daring to believe he was the one to unravel the Accord’s chains. But n

The first sign came as a tremor. It rippled through the streets like a shiver, rattling glass in windows, humming through the soles of shoes. Civilians froze mid-stride, some staring upward, others clutching their chests as though the vibration had struck bone rather than stone. Then the sky itself cracked. A seam of light ripped across the heavens, jagged as lightning but holding—burning—as though someone had sliced the atmosphere open. The glow spread in veins, branching wider and wider, until the whole dome of the city looked webbed with fire. It was not the golden fire of day, nor the blood-red of warning sirens. This was white, searing, merciless. People screamed. In one district, a mother yanked her child off the pavement and shoved him into a doorway, shielding his head with trembling arms. In another, street vendors abandoned their stalls, fruit spilling and rolling into gutters as they craned their necks at the glowing cracks overhead. Accord enforcers on patrol stopped

The first rupture came like a scream. A vein of light split the night sky, jagged as if the heavens themselves had cracked under pressure. It carved across the city in violent arcs, branching like fire racing through dry wood. Towers shuddered, streets heaved, and civilians who had only just begun adjusting to the blackout staggered into fresh terror. Children clutched their mothers. Shopfronts, half-lit by trembling backup generators, went dark again as the world above them burned. From every block, voices rose in confusion, prayers, curses—yet none of it drowned out the tearing hum of the Vault awakening. Shayne felt it before he saw it. The Seal on his chest seared like molten iron beneath his skin, as though someone pressed a branding iron straight into his heart. He dropped to one knee, gasping, his hand clawing at the scar that had defined his life since the Accord’s experiments. The mark he never understood—until now. The Seal was resonating. Calling. Elysia caught him be