The city, for a few fragile hours, had breathed a different kind of air. The Obelisk’s projections, the truth etched in light, had forged a collective will, a unified front against the plague. The people of Veridia, from the highest defected official to the lowest street sweeper, had looked upon the same impossible reality and chosen to believe. They had turned their faces from the lies of the past and toward the promise of a cure they could not understand but desperately trusted.It was this unity, this nascent faith, that the remnants of the old power structure could not abide.The blow came not from a battalion, but from a broadcast. The state-controlled news network, its studios now operating from a hidden, mobile transmitter, flickered back to life on every surviving screen in the capital. The face that appeared was not that of a politician, but a man in a white lab coat, his silver hair and grave demeanor the very picture of academic authority. Dr. Alistair Finch, head of the no

The silver aura of the Oath still clung to Amelia, a mantle of resolve in the dim light of the bank headquarters. But in the city beyond, a new kind of plague was spreading, one the Obelisk’s light could not directly sterilize. It was a plague of words, of whispers, of expertly crafted falsehoods designed to poison the well of hope she had fought so hard to dig.The first wave was subtle. Crudely printed pamphlets began appearing, left on doorsteps, stuffed into ration packs, fluttering down from rooftops like toxic leaves. They were not signed, but their origin was unmistakable. The language was the Cult of the Silent Stone’s—apocalyptic, fanatical, and insidiously clever.“DO NOT BE DECEIVED,” they read. “THE ‘GUARDIAN’ IS THE SCOURGE. HER CURES ARE CURSES. THE OBEILSK IS NOT A MONUMENT OF HEALING, BUT AN ALTAR OF SACRIFICE. SHE FEEDS IT WITH YOUR SUFFERING.”They twisted her every act. The shattered cages became “an unleashing of pestilence upon the pure.” The Carve of Fire was “a

The lull of the subway tunnel was a living thing, thick with the smell of damp concrete, rust, and the residual adrenaline of their escape. The distant, muffled roars from the city above were a constant reminder that the chaos was merely paused, not pacified. Amelia sat on an upturned crate, her hands still trembling from the effort of the Chime of Stillness. She had calmed a mob, but the cost was a new, profound exhaustion. She hadn’t just used power; she had touched the collective psyche of the city, and it had left a residue of a thousand screaming fears in her soul.Sophia, ever practical, was cleaning and bandaging the shoulder wound of the soldier who had been shot. The man, a young private named Evans, was pale but stoic. His eyes, however, held a hollow look that had nothing to do with physical pain. He had been shot by a cult sniper while protecting her, and the mob that surged around him had been his own people. The faith that had driven him to defect from the state and foll

The golden resonance of the Carve of Unity still hummed in Amelia’s bones, a beautiful, fleeting memory of collective power. But in the brutal daylight, the city had no interest in harmony. The fragile, hope-filled unity she had forged in the subway tunnel shattered the moment they emerged back into a Veridia tearing itself to pieces.The state was gone. In its place, a hydra of armed factions had risen, each with its own flag, its own grievance, and its own desperate, violent claim on survival.The first hospital they approached, Veridia Central, was no longer a place of healing. It was a fortress under siege. A militia calling itself the "People's Redemption Front," comprised of defected soldiers and armed citizens, had barricaded themselves inside, hoarding the remaining medical supplies. Surrounding them was the "Veridian Shield," a group of former police and security contractors who claimed they were restoring order by any means necessary. The air crackled with gunfire and the ac

Hospital stillness was a coffin, but the Grey Breath's rattle was a ghost that clung. Amelia, Sophia, and now-groggy, dazed Kincaid had escaped the thralls, but the Prophet's prophecy was indelibly marked on them: his vision was not of a graveyard, but of a perfectly ordered, still world. A world without the wild, desperate, beautiful din of life.That noise, though, was soon to return with interest. It began as a rumor, passed along by Ethan's network in gasping urgency. The remnants of the government, now an rump council of generals and leftover bureaucrats holed up in a bunker, had issued Emergency Decree 14.The "Reed Protocols" were therefore banned. The production, sale, or injection of the Rime-leaf extract or of any serum derived from "untested biological sources" (clearly Leo) was rendered a capital offense. Dr. Finch's spurious experiments were cited as justification, framing the ban as a "safeguarding measure to protect the public from untried, harmful substances."The decr