The city of New Ardent was alive with chaos. Neon lights flickered through columns of smoke, illuminating streets that had once been bustling with hover-bikes, neon markets, and skyscrapers that reached above the clouds. Now, shards of concrete and fire reflected in puddles like broken glass. Somewhere in the distance, a building collapsed with a roar that shook the city to its foundations.Kade Reyes ran. Every step was precise, calculated, measured against the chaotic pulse of the city and the relic thrumming inside him. It was subtle at first, a low hum at the base of his skull, growing sharper with every passing second. Ish’Rael was alive, aware, feeding him threads of possible futures but none were safe.Above him, the sky crack glowed blue and jagged. Massive Vaelith dropships poured out of the rift, their smooth, alien surfaces gleaming with a metallic light that made the neon signs feel cheap and fragile. Beams of energy lanced toward the streets, incinerating hover-bikes mid-

The explosion swallowed the street whole.Light tore through concrete and steel as the Vaelith dropships discharged their synchronized pulse. Cars flipped like toys. Neon signs shattered into rainstorms of glass. The air itself seemed to fold, pressure crashing inward before blasting out again in a thunderous wave.Kade Reyes stood at the epicenter.For a single heartbeat, the world went silent.Then pain arrived.It slammed into him from every direction—burning heat, crushing force, the taste of copper in his mouth. He felt himself lifted off the ground, flung backward through smoke and debris. His body struck something hard, rolled, then skidded across wet asphalt until motion stopped entirely.Darkness pressed in.You are still alive.The relic’s voice cut through the haze, sharper than before.Kade groaned, forcing his eyes open. The street was gone—replaced by a battlefield of fire and ruin. Buildings leaned at impossible angles. A crater smoldered where the hologram of the Vaeli

The first thing Kade Reyes learned after losing the relic was fear. Not the sharp, immediate kind that came with gunfire or alien blades but the quieter one that crept in between breaths. The kind that had no calculations to drown it out, no probability curves to flatten it into certainty. Fear that had no answer. He stood on the roof of the transit hub as dawn bled slowly into the smog-filled sky of New Ardent. The city looked different in daylight—wounded, scarred, but alive. Smoke curled from distant districts. Emergency sirens wailed intermittently, like a city calling out to itself just to prove it could still speak. Kade flexed his fingers. They shook. He clenched them into fists and forced the tremor down. Get it together, he told himself. You chose this. But choosing didn’t make it easier. A Soldier Relearning Gravity “You’re compensating too late.” The voice snapped him out of his thoughts. Captain Elira Voss stood a few paces away, arms crossed, eyes sharp beneat

The gunshot echoed longer than it should have.Not because it was loud but because no one expected it.For a split second, the city of New Ardent froze. Conversations halted mid-sentence. Drones stuttered in the air. Even the distant hum of alien engines seemed to hesitate, as if the universe itself needed a moment to register what had just happened.Kade Reyes lay on the pavement, blood soaking into the cracks beneath him.Mila’s scream cut through everything.The Ground Truth of Mortality“Kade—Kade, stay with me!”Her hands pressed hard against his side, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to deny the reality spreading warm and slick beneath her fingers. The shot had come from above—high-caliber, precise, meant to kill.Kade gasped, vision blurring. Pain radiated outward in violent waves, sharp enough to make his teeth chatter.“No relic,” he whispered hoarsely. “This… hurts more than I remember.”Mila laughed once, broken and furious. “Shut up. You’re not allowed to die right now.

The sky above New Ardent turned metallic gray, the clouds reflecting the unnatural luminescence of the Concord strike platform. It hovered like a predator suspended in still air, its immense bulk blotting out the sun and scattering the city’s shadows into a fractured grid.Below, the streets trembled—not from explosions or alien fire but from anticipation. Every living thing seemed to sense the change, a prelude to a new reality that none had asked for.Kade Reyes stood at the command hub’s central balcony, staring up at the hovering platform. Mila and Elira flanked him, their expressions mirrors of his own—tense, determined, aware that this was a threshold no one could cross lightly.“They’ve isolated us,” Mila said, voice tight. “Communication networks are collapsing. Every district is effectively cut off from each other.”Kade nodded. “They don’t want a united response. They want chaos in pieces.”Elira’s gaze swept the city. “Then we’ll have to create our own unity—one street at a