The undercity was alive.Not in the way the upper city pulsed with human activity, neon lights, and constant chatter,but alive in a different, more dangerous way. The walls themselves seemed to hum with purpose, thick power conduits running like arteries, surveillance arrays blinking in patterns long forgotten, reinforced access panels that could withstand years of neglect. Here, time had been a tool, and secrecy its sculptor.Ethan and Leanna moved slowly, silently, down the last corridor leading to Korrin’s central command chamber. The air was heavy, carrying a faint tang of ozone and old machinery,every footstep echoed too loudly,every breath betrayed them.Victor’s voice was faint in their earpieces, distorted by the multiple relay points.“They know you’re here,” he warned. “No system is completely offline,you’re moving through a predator’s hunting ground.”Ethan nodded, adjusting the strap of his shoulder pack, feeling the weight of every choice he had made since stepping into t

The rain did not fall in sheets. It misted, thin and patient, the kind that seemed designed to linger rather than cleanse. Ethan noticed it because it clung to everything,his sleeves, the rails, the cracked stone of the bridge,without ever becoming enough to justify shelter. The city wore it like a second skin,so did he.Below the bridge, the river carried the undercity’s glow in broken ribbons, neon signs shuddering into colorless fragments, security lamps trembling as if they were unsure of their own purpose. The water moved quietly,everything important seemed to, these days.Ethan rested his hands on the cold metal rail and breathed until his chest remembered how to rise without pain. He had learned to do that after captivity, after tests and rests and phases that were meant to reshape him. After the third test, he had stopped counting,after Leanna’s second abduction, he had stopped pretending he could predict outcomes.Tonight, there would be a choice,he knew it with the kind of c

The rain came without ceremony.No thunder, no warning,just a steady, unrelenting descent that darkened the streets and softened the sharp edges of the city. It soaked banners still hanging from lampposts, slogans half-faded now, their words blurred into something unreadable.Ethan stood beneath the overhang of the eastern watchtower and watched the water fall.He had stopped believing in signs a long time ago, but even he couldn’t ignore the way the rain made everything look unfinished,as though the city itself hadn’t decided what it was going to be yet.Behind him, boots scraped stone.“You’re avoiding them,” Victor said.Ethan didn’t turn. “I’m observing.”Victor snorted softly. “That’s what you called it the last time too. Right before everything caught fire.”That earned a glance. “This isn’t a fire.”“No,” Victor agreed. “It’s worse. Fires burn out.”They stood in silence for a moment, the sound of rain filling the space where arguments used to live. Once, silence between them h

The city did not sleep.Though it pretended to,lamps dimmed, doors shut, voices softened but beneath that surface, something stayed awake. Something old. Something that remembered what power used to look like when it was taken instead of given away.Ethan felt it before dawn.Not fear,not danger.Pressure.He woke with the sense of being watched not by eyes, but by expectation. The kind that pressed in from all sides when people decided you were either about to fail or about to bleed.He dressed without calling for assistance and left his chambers alone.The eastern passageways were quiet at this hour,too quiet. The guards posted there avoided his gaze, straight-backed and rigid in a way that spoke less of respect and more of uncertainty,he couldn’t blame them. Authority that loosened its grip made people nervous. They preferred chains they could see.A messenger found him near the lower archives.“This was delivered during the night,” the boy said, voice trembling slightly. No seal.

Ethan had always believed lines mattered.They were the invisible architecture of civilization,the quiet agreements people made with themselves so they could look in the mirror and not flinch. He had drawn his early,carefully,and with intention.No torture.No executions without trial.No collective punishment.No becoming the thing we overthrew.Those rules had kept him sane when the city burned,they had kept him human when power tried to hollow him out.Now, standing alone in the interrogation wing beneath the council hall, Ethan realized something devastatingLines only work when the world agrees not to shove you across them.The man strapped to the chair was shaking.Not from pain yet but from recognition.“Tell me where she is,” Ethan said quietly.The lights buzzed overhead. One bulb flickered like a dying pulse.The man swallowed. “I don’t….”Ethan leaned forward just enough to cast his shadow over him. “You were on the channel,you helped move her,i know your voice.”Silence st