Silence was never a good sign.For three days, Adrian, Selene, and Zara had been living in the undercity safehouse—a hollowed-out train tunnel buried beneath the oldest districts. The place smelled of metal dust and oil, lit only by patched-together lamps and the cold glow of Zara’s tablet. Normally, Adrian could feel the pressure of pursuit like heat on his skin. Imperium hunters stalked him with a kind of religious focus. They never stopped. Never hesitated.But now… nothing.Selene paced back and forth, her blades strapped to her thighs, her posture coiled like a spring. “It’s too quiet,” she muttered, echoing Adrian’s thoughts.Zara frowned at her scanner. “No signals. No drones. No footsteps. Nothing pinging at all.” She tapped the screen harder, as if the device were lying.Adrian didn’t rely on devices. He relied on the instinct that lived behind his ribs—the part of him the Imperium designed to feel threats like a change in the air pressure.And right now, the world felt muffl

Silence settles over the marble chamber like a layer of frost.Adrian sits in the center of the circular room—unbound, unchained, but contained all the same. The air is thick with the faint hum of Vaelor frequency dampeners, a soft vibration inside his bones that keeps his instincts weighted and sluggish.Across from him, the three elders of House Vaelor stand in their silver ceremonial masks, reflections rippling across their polished surfaces like trapped ghosts.The central elder lifts a hand.“Adrian,” they begin gently, “you misunderstand. We are not your enemies.”He almost laughs.Almost.Instead, he leans back in the immaculate white chair and answers with a voice devoid of heat.“No,” he says. “You’re worse. You think you’re reasonable.”A faint ripple of displeasure moves through the air, but the elder continues as though speaking to a child throwing a harmless tantrum.“We’ve shown you the truth,” they say. “We’ve shown you the dangers of a destabilized Imperium. We’ve offe

The marble hall was dying.Not collapsing—dying—as if the structure itself understood it had failed its masters. Fire blossomed along the gilded ribs of the ceiling. Alarm sigils burned crimson across the walls, their harmonic wails clashing with the deeper thrum of containment engines spinning up beneath the floor.Adrian stood at the center of it all.Calm.Too calm.Bodies lay scattered around him—Vaelor guards in fractured silver armor, limbs bent at impossible angles, weapons crushed as if by invisible hands. The air shimmered where sonic nets had torn apart, their frequencies screaming into nothing as his instincts tore through them like paper.He didn’t breathe hard.He didn’t rush.He moved—with purpose.Another squad burst through a collapsing archway, gravity-laced rifles snapping into firing position. Adrian’s vision split—not into fear, but into paths. Dozens of them. Branching possibilities blooming and collapsing in the space between heartbeats.Left step. Drop shoulder.

The safehouse smelled like antiseptic and old dust—too clean, too still. Adrian stood by the narrow window, watching the street through cracked blinds as rain traced thin lines down the glass. Every drop felt loud. Every shadow felt intentional.Behind him, Selene lay on a metal table, her breathing shallow, uneven. Zara worked with trembling hands, sealing wounds, injecting coagulants scavenged from half a dozen raids. It wasn’t enough. They all knew it.Adrian felt it most of all.His instincts wouldn’t shut up.Something was coming.“You’re losing her,” Zara whispered, voice tight with fury and fear.Selene’s lips curved faintly. “I was lost a long time ago.”Adrian turned. His face was unreadable now—no rage, no softness. Just focus. That frightened Selene more than any threat the Imperium had ever made.“How long?” he asked quietly.Selene’s eyes flicked to him. Still sharp. Still calculating, even now.“How long what?”“How long have you been running from them.”A weak laugh esc

The world does not slow down for the dead.Adrian doesn’t bury Selene.There is no grave, no marker, no words spoken over her body. The safehouse is already ash by the time the sun rises, and Imperium satellites will be watching the blast radius for signs of ritual or mourning. He learned long ago that grief is a signal. Signals get you killed.So he moves.Purpose replaces pain with a brutal efficiency that feels almost merciful.He strips Selene of anything useful before the fires fully take the structure—an old data sliver embedded in her wrist, a cracked comm bead, a thin metal disk etched with frequencies that shouldn’t exist anymore. Ghost-level fragments. Things she carried not to survive, but to pass on.Zara watches him from a distance, wrapped in smoke and shock, saying nothing. She’s learned that when Adrian goes quiet like this, words bounce off him. His eyes are open, focused, cold—but not empty.Not yet.Hours later, deep underground, Adrian assembles the fragments.He d