Pain was the first thing to greet his consciousness. It wasn't the sharp, biting pain of Zoltan’s blade, but a dull, throbbing, and sickening ache. Ignatius tried to draw a breath, but his lungs felt heavy, as if he were inhaling construction dust and exhaust fumes."Wake up, you piece of trash! Don't play dead with me!"A hard kick landed square in his stomach. Ignatius—or the body he now inhabited—slumped onto the asphalt, which was slick with oily rainwater. He coughed, spitting out a bitter fluid mixed with blood.He opened his eyes slowly. His vision was a blur. Standing over him were three men in shiny synthetic jackets. One of them had a metal left arm that made a rhythmic tit-tit sound every time he clenched his fist."Michael Dorian, you think fainting here makes your debt disappear?" The man with the mechanical arm grabbed Michael’s hair and yanked his head up.Ignatius froze. Michael Dorian? What kind of name is that?He looked at his hands. Thin, pale, and trembling. There

The iron door slammed shut with a thud that left his ears ringing. Michael Dorian lay sprawled on the floor, smelling the stench of urine and damp cement in the isolation cell. His breath was short; every inhalation of oxygen felt like breathing in sawdust."Enjoy your night, Dorian. By tomorrow morning, you won't be a student anymore. You’ll just be a pile of meat on Lucien’s dissection table," the warden spat through the small bars before his laughter faded along with his footsteps.Michael didn't answer. He just stared into the darkness."Hey, kid. Still alive?"The voice came from the next cell. Hoarse, like a throat that hadn't tasted water in ages. Michael regulated his heavy breathing."Who?" Michael murmured."Nobody. Just a dead man they forgot to bury," the voice laughed drily. "Word of advice: don't move much. Your heart sounds terrible—like a rusted water pump about to blow."Michael closed his eyes. He focused deep within his chest. "I know what's broken in this body.""K

The humming of the medical equipment didn't just stop; it died with a choked metallic rasp.Michael stood in the absolute dark, the silence of the corridor pressing against his eardrums like deep water. The Mana Pulse hadn't been a blast of light; it was a vacuum, an invisible scythe that had ripped the digital soul out of every device in a fifty-meter radius. Emergency strobes, biometric locks, even the tactical HUDs of the guards—all rendered into useless scrap in a single heartbeat.A few feet away, Kaelen Reign let out a sound that wasn't quite a scream. It was the grunt of a man who had suddenly become a prisoner inside his own skin. His exoskeleton armor, a multi-million credit marvel of Oakhaven technology, had become a tomb. Without power, the hydraulic joints locked, pinning Kaelen’s limbs in a rigid, frozen stance. His mechanical eye, once a glowing red threat, was now just a dull piece of glass staring at nothing.Michael didn't wait for them to adjust. He didn't have a spe

The holographic feed in Cassian’s office flickered with the image of Lyra’s face. The label "Biological Asset" felt like a cold blade pressing against the back of Michael’s neck. Beside her image was a crest—a golden dragon coiled around a sun.Michael’s new heart gave a violent, painful thrum.It wasn't a medical anomaly. It was a resonance. For a split second, a flash of memory that wasn't his own—a memory of a silver-armored sky turning black—seared through his mind. He didn't know the name of the man who owned that crest in this world, but his soul remembered the scent of the blood on the blade that had carried it."The Draken Estate," Cassian muttered, his mechanical jaw clicking. "You’ve stepped into a giant’s shadow, boy. To the Ivory Tower, you’re a thief. To the Drakens, you’re a fly in the ointment. They don't just want her back; they want to know who helped her run."Michael forced the tremor in his hand to stop. "Why do they want her, Cassian? She’s just a student.""The D

The black OIS sedan cut through the rain-slicked streets of the Upper District like a scalpel through silk. Inside, the cabin was a vacuum of silence, insulated from the neon chaos of Oakhaven by layers of lead and soundproofing. The air smelled of expensive leather and the sharp, clinical scent of a military-grade air purifier.Michael sat in the back seat, his hands resting motionless on his knees. To a casual observer, he looked like a corpse in a suit; his skin was a deathly gray, and the faint purple veins on his neck were still pulsing with the residual heat of the Third Circuit. Across from him sat Major Kincaid, a man who looked like he had been carved out of granite. Kincaid didn't have glowing cybernetics or visible ports—he was a "Natural," a rarity in a world that preferred titanium to bone."You're lucky the OIS needs a ghost, Dorian," Kincaid said, his voice a low, rhythmic growl over the hum of the engine. "If it were up to the Draken family, you’d be a red smear on the