Rain slammed the alley like it carried a personal grudge, but Edgar Holman didn’t have time to appreciate how miserable the night had become.“Stay back!” Edgar shouted, stumbling as his shoe slid on wet concrete. “I don’t have anything”“You’ve got a mouth,” the tallest thug barked, swinging a metal pipe over his shoulder. “And you’ve got debts. That’s enough.”“I told you,” Edgar said, breath sharp, “I didn’t break your shipment on purpose!”Another man laughed, harsh and mean. “Doesn’t matter what you meant. You cost us money, you pay us back.”Edgar lifted his arms in a shaky guard. “With what? You’ve seen my bank account, it’s basically a ghost town.”“Oh, we know,” the leader smirked. “That’s why tonight, you’re paying in bruises.”Edgar swallowed hard. “This is insane.”“Life’s insane, kid. Get used to it.”The first punch came too fast. Edgar tried to duck, but pain exploded across his cheek and the world lurched sideways. “Stop, wait ”He didn’t even finish before another blo

Edgar stared at the woman gripping his shoulder. The rain blurred his vision, but her eyes cut through it, steel-gray, unblinking. “Hold on,” he stammered. “You’re telling me, someone wants to kill me?”“Not someone,” Aria said. “Everyone.”“That’s, that’s not reassuring!”“Good. It’s not meant to be.”Edgar tried to pull free again; she tightened her grip. “Let go!”“No,” she said. “If I let go, you’re dead in under sixty seconds.”Edgar blinked rapidly. “From what?!”“Pick one,” Aria replied. “Collectors. Hunters. Syndicate operatives. Anyone tracking awakened spikes.”“I don’t even know what a spike is!”“It’s what happened when your power awakened. It lit up every Awakened monitor in a six-mile radius.”“That sounds, bad.”“It is.”Edgar swallowed hard. “Look, can we slow down? I’m barely processing the whole healed-my-own-bones thing.”“You don’t have time to process. You have to move.”She pulled him into a run, darting through the wet streets with impossible speed, dragging him

Edgar hit the ground hard. Cold metal. Sterile air. Harsh, white light. He blinked rapidly, disoriented, panic already rising. “Where, where am I?!”“Calm down,” Aria’s voice said somewhere to his right. “You’re safe.”Edgar turned, she stood beside him, breathing heavily, clutching her dagger like she’d been holding it the entire trip.Shin stood a little further away, arms crossed, face tight with something between relief and worry. Then Edgar realized something.His ankle was bleeding. Deep gouges from the scout’s claws. “Hey—uh—guys?” Edgar stammered. “I think I’m… leaking.”Aria crouched beside him. “Hold still.”She reached for her belt, then froze. “Shin,” she whispered. “Look at the wound.”Shin approached, fast. Edgar forced himself to look, and immediately regretted it. Black smoke curled from the edges of the wounds, not blood, not steam, shadow.“What, what is that?!” Edgar cried.Aria backed up. “The entity reacted. It protected him.”Shin’s jaw clenched. “Or it took over

Lightning split the sky, illuminating the fractured alley where Edgar stood frozen, caught between Master Shin’s rigid posture and the impossible girl who had stepped out of a rift that shouldn’t exist.Her eyes, sharp, storm-gray, unsettlingly familiar, locked onto his. “I told you,” she said softly, “I’m your sister.”Edgar’s throat tightened. “That’s not… I don’t have a sister.”“You do,” she answered. “You always did. They just didn’t tell you.”Master Shin stepped forward. “Enough. State your purpose, girl.”She turned her gaze to him, measured, calculating, unafraid. “Master Shin… the rumors are true. You really did take him.”“Take is a strong word,” Shin replied. “He came bleeding to me. I simply did not let him die.”“You should have,” she whispered.Edgar flinched. “Excuse me?”Her eyes softened at him for the briefest moment. “I didn’t mean it like that.”Shin’s fingers twitched, barely noticeable unless you’d trained under him long enough to sense danger in micro-movements

Darkness. Thick, endless, suffocating darkness. Edgar Holman drifted through it like a falling ember, weightless, lost, half-conscious.His body felt both real and unreal, like he was dissolving and reforming every second. A whisper echoed somewhere in the black: “found you”His eyes snapped open. And he realized he was lying on cold marble. A pale light flickered above him, blue, trembling like fire trapped in glass. The air tasted metallic. Too still. Too quiet.Edgar pushed himself up, grimacing at the ache reverberating through his bones. “Where… am I?”His voice bounced back in eerie, distorted echoes, as if the space around him didn’t understand sound properly.He stood slowly, taking in his surroundings: A massive circular chamber. Marble pillars. Floating shards of glowing crystal spinning lazily overhead.And on every wall, symbols similar to the brand on Lyra’s arm. Only these were etched deeper, carved in jagged spirals that pulsed with faint black light.A chill crawled up