The manager's whole body went stiff first — and then the shaking started.It wasn't the small, barely-there kind of shaking that a person could hide if they tried hard enough. It was the full body kind. The kind that starts from somewhere deep and works its way out through the legs and the hands and even the jaw. His knees looked like they were considering giving up on him entirely, and the color that had been in his face just seconds ago was draining out fast, leaving something pale and tight and very, very afraid behind it.He had been afraid before Madam Veronica walked through that door. But that fear had been manageable. Contained. The kind of fear a man feels when he knows he might have made a small mistake and is hoping nobody looks too closely at it.This was different.This was the kind of fear that comes when you realize the mistake wasn't small at all.The rest of the room had gone completely still. Penelope, Serena, Victoria — none of them moved. None of them spoke. They j

The room went dead silent for a second — and then the shock started moving through it like a wave.Jaws dropped. Eyes went wide. Heads turned toward each other with the kind of looks that didn't need words attached to them because the looks were saying everything that needed to be said. They couldn't believe it. They genuinely couldn't believe what they had just heard come out of Madam Veronica's mouth.This was Jefferson. The Star King of War. Eight stars. A man who could walk into government offices and have doors opened before he even reached them. A man whose name alone carried weight in rooms where weight mattered. And this woman this restaurant owner, civilian, someone who should have been apologizing by now, someone who should have been bowing and scrambling to fix whatever mess she thought she had stepped into — was standing there telling him to shut his wife up or she would kick him out first.The audacity of it sat heavy in the air, thick and uncomfortable, and nobody knew w

The guards moved forward, and that was when Jefferson did it.He released his spiritual aura.It hit the room like a shockwave invisible but undeniable, a pressure that rolled out from him in every direction, heavy and crushing and alive in a way that made the air itself feel wrong. The kind of force that didn't just touch the body but pressed down on the chest, squeezed the lungs, made breathing feel like work. It was power, raw and unfiltered, the kind that belonged to people who had been trained to kill and had done it enough times that the training had become instinct.Around the table, everyone felt it.Penelope gasped and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. Victoria's face went pale. Serena's knees wobbled for just a second before she locked them and forced herself still. Even the manager, who had been standing quietly near the wall this whole time, staggered slightly and put a hand out to catch himself.The two security guards stopped mid-step.They weren't weak m

Jefferson stared at Alex.And then he started laughing.It wasn't a happy laugh. It was the kind of laugh that comes when someone says something so ridiculous that your brain can't process it any other way. He shook his head, still grinning, still looking at Alex like he was the biggest joke in the room."What do you know?" Jefferson said, spreading his arms wide. "Seriously. What the hell do you know about any of this?" His voice was mocking now, dripping with contempt. "Are you trying to tell us that you can sense when a gate is opening? Is that really what you're trying to say right now?" He laughed again, harder this time. "The military has been trying to develop that technology for years. Years. We've got scientists, researchers, people with actual training and actual resources working on it every single day, and they still haven't figured it out. But you —" He pointed at Alex like he was pointing at a stain. "You're telling me you can just feel it? That you know a gate is ope

The crying started almost immediately.Not loud sobs not yet but the kind of quiet, desperate crying that comes when fear finally breaks through whatever walls a person has been using to hold it back. Penelope had her face buried in her hands, shoulders shaking. Victoria was leaning against the wall, tears streaming down her cheeks, her mouth moving but no sound coming out. Even some of the other guests — the ones who had been so confident earlier, so pleased with themselves — were starting to crack, faces crumpling, voices breaking as they whispered the same thing over and over."What are we going to do? What are we supposed to do?""This is too much. This is way too much.""We can't survive this. There's no way. Not with just one eight-star general. Not against a black gate. It's not possible."The fear in the room was thick now, choking, pressing down on everyone like a weight they couldn't lift. And underneath the fear was something uglier, something sharper — anger.All of it a