The safehouse hums like a metal heart buried underground. Reinforced concrete walls. Old servers humming. Emergency lights flickering in amber pulses. It’s the kind of place you hide from the world — or dismantle it.Adrian locks the steel door behind them.Selene drops the courier’s encrypted case onto the table.It thuds like a coffin.“All right,” she says quietly. “Let’s see what the Imperium didn’t want you to find.”Adrian inserts the biometric key he ripped from the courier’s palm. The case clicks open. Inside: a slim crystalline drive, faintly glowing, Imperium sigils running along its surface like veins.The Imperium never decorates anything.If they etched symbols here… it mattered.Selene connects the drive to the central console. The room fills with cold blue light as corrupted files unload, glitching, reforming, stitching themselves back together like resurrected ghosts.Images appear first.Faces.Rituals.Crowded halls of robed figures beneath banners Adrian has never s

The server vault lights flickered like a dying heartbeat, each pulse carving shadows across Adrian’s face as the final encrypted file unlocked. A cold draft swept through the underground chamber—impossible, since there were no open vents. But the air felt colder anyway, as if the file itself chilled the room.Selene stood beside him, arms crossed tight, watching the progress bar inch across the screen.“What you’re about to see…” she whispered, “…is the one file the Imperium never wanted anyone to open.”The bar hit 100%.The screen shifted.And Adrian’s world cracked.---The Father He Never KnewA pre-recorded trial room appeared—an arena of polished obsidian, lit by blood-red torches. Rows of cloaked figures filled the seats, their faces hidden behind masks etched with three intersecting circles: the sign of the Three Thrones.And there, kneeling in the center, wrists bound in chains, head unbowed…Was a man who looked like Adrian.Sharper jaw. Older eyes. But the resemblance was u

The first warning wasn’t sound.It was silence.A deep, unnatural hush swept across the snow-rimmed valley as if someone had pressed a hand over the world’s mouth. Even the wind died. Even the trees stopped creaking. Adrian halted mid-step, muscles tightening without conscious thought. Selene felt it too—her pupils contracting like a predator sensing a bigger predator.Then the air trembled.A low, vibrating hum rolled across the sky. Not loud—precise. Artificial. Almost… musical.Selene stiffened. “Adrian—cover. Now.”Before he could ask, she dragged him behind the burnt shell of an abandoned ranger outpost. The humming grew clearer, warping into dissonant harmonics—like a choir singing underwater, stretched and twisted into something inhuman.“That’s not music,” Selene whispered. “That’s the Black Choir’s resonance sweep.”Adrian had heard rumors. Ghost Program officers used the name in hushed tones, like invoking a curse. Assassins trained from infancy. Never allowed to speak. Neve

The tunnel breathed like a sleeping beast.Cold air pulsed through the abandoned underground rail system, carrying echoes of distant metal groans and dripping water. Adrian led the way, moving with a predatory stillness. Selene walked beside him, blade drawn. Zara followed closely, still shaken by the Leashmen attack.They’d been moving for hours, crossing between collapsed junctions, crawling beneath rusted scaffolding, climbing over derailed train cars. Every sound felt like a threat.Every shadow felt like a memory trying to claw its way back.They thought they were alone.They weren’t.Not even close.---A Voice That Shouldn’t ExistHalfway through a wide transit chamber, the lights hanging from the ceiling flickered. Adrian froze. Some instinct—deep, primal, older than thought—told him they were no longer being hunted.They had been found.A whisper floated through the darkness. Not metallic. Not synthetic like the Choir soldiers.No—this voice was warm. Soft. Almost motherly.“

The night air tasted metallic.Adrian stood alone beneath the fractured ceiling of the old refinery, breath low and controlled, but everything inside him felt… wrong. The world wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t still. It beat with pulses he could hear beneath the concrete—rhythms of heat, motion, heartbeats in distant bodies.It was like sound had turned into light, and light into instinct.He inhaled.He could smell steel, rust, oil… and fear. Not his. Someone else’s. Maybe everyone else’s.Adrian blinked hard, the afterimages of the battle still flickering behind his eyes. Bodies of Choir soldiers lay twisted on the floor, their helmets cracked, their sonic emitters sparking.He didn’t remember every movement he’d made.Just the outcome.Footsteps crunched behind him. Zara’s.“Adrian?” Her voice trembled.He didn’t turn right away. Because he wasn’t sure what she would see in his face.He wasn’t sure what he would see either.“Are you hurt?” she asked.For a moment, he had to think. Had to ch