The city changed overnight.Not slowly.Not with warnings.Not with gradual fear creeping through the cracks.Valeria woke up already broken.Drones roared across the skyline like metal vultures.Black vans rolled through neighborhoods with no sirens, no flashing lights only cold efficiency.Dominion soldiers moved through streets with masks that reflected no emotion.And inside every neighborhood, apartment, school, and market stall, the same nightmare unfolded:Awakened… were disappearing.Not captured.Not arrested.Not warned.TakenSilent. Swift. Precise.As if the city itself were swallowing them.A teenage girl on 5th District collapsed at a bus stop, clutching her head as a resonance pulse tore through her skull. Her Echo flared, uncontrolled she saw white light, a door slamming, gloves grabbing her armsThen a van screeched to a halt beside her.The doors flew open.Three masked Dominion soldiers stepped out.Her friend screamed, “Leave her alone!”But no one listened.Her vi

Night has swallowed the city, but Dominion drones still tear across the sky in frantic grids. Black-Door Phase 1 has thrown everything into chaos curfews, disappearances, screams that vanish into armored vans but Kain doesn’t care about any of that.Not tonight.Tonight is for one person.Orin.The killer wearing discipline like armor. The man whose eyes held no flicker of regret when he hunted Kain through the Dominion HQ halls.The man who murdered his father.Kain follows the Shadow Echo a new instinct pulling him like a compass of darkness. Orin’s trail is cold, sharp, military precise, but Kain’s evolving power slices through the city’s noise like a blade.Every step he takes, his shadow stretches ahead of him, hungry.He finds Orin on the rooftop of a Dominion surveillance tower overlooking Central District. The wind lashes violently, whipping Orin’s long tactical coat around him. He stands with perfect stillness sword on his back, rifle hanging at his side.He’s watching the

Talia didn’t sleep again after waking Kain on the rooftop.She sat quietly against the wall of the old service shed, knees pulled to her chest, watching him from a distance. He pretended to sleep, but she could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his breaths came too carefully, too measured.Something was wrong with him.Something deeper than fear, deeper than exhaustion.And Talia knewin a way that left her chest tightthat this wasn’t the first time she’d seen this kind of change.She had seen it before.In another man.In a man she swore she would protect.A man who died because of her.Kain’s father.Her breath hitched as the memories forced their way back, sharp as broken glass.She’d spent years forcing those memories down. Years convincing herself they were buried deep enough to never claw their way up again.But watching Kain tremble on the rooftop…Watching his shadow move when he didn’t…Watching fear in his eyes that wasn’t fear of the DominionIt all came back.She

Night fell over Vesper City like a warning.Not a gradual dimming, not the warm descent of dusk no, it felt engineered, like the darkness arrived with intention. The air itself felt charged, coated with a metallic tension that prickled against the skin of anyone sensitive enough to notice.Kain felt it first.A vibration deep in his bones… then a whisper behind it.“It begins.”That voice again.The shadow within him—no longer silent, no longer subtle.He stopped walking, breath catching. Talia turned back, her face pale under the flickering streetlights. “Kain? What is it?”He lifted his head slowly.“The city’s changing,” he said. “Something’s coming.”Talia didn’t argue. She felt it too.All around them, the last traces of normalcy teetered. Cars honked impatiently. Pedestrians hurried home with nervous energy. Police drones whirred overhead on frantic new patrol routes.And above the skyline…A strange pulse of red light shimmered from the massive tower that housed the Dominion co

The night swallowed the city whole.Smoke still rose from the Dominion’s Hollow Lab behind them as Kain and Talia sprinted through the ruined industrial district, the sound of distant alarms echoing off crumbling factories. The Hollow Soldiers were loose. The city’s blackout was worsening. And Kain’s shadow still twitched like something alive at his heels.They didn’t stop running until they reached the old shipping yard, where half-buried containers formed a maze of rusted metal corridors.Talia pressed her back to a container, chest heaving.“We can’t stay out here long,” she said. “The Hollow will spread through this district.”Kain didn’t answer.Because the Echo was still ringing in his skull.Not like usual Echoes.This one felt deeper as though it came from a part of him he hadn’t unlocked yet.Flashes: a hand reaching for him a warm light a voice whispering his name a silver-marked eye an explosion of shadows and finally…someone calling him “brother.”The last image hit