The air in the Heavy Weapons Lab was cold, but it felt like a furnace to Instructor Vako.He stood at the front of the room, his black uniform damp with sweat. His eyes were bloodshot, two red marbles spinning in a face of pale stone. He didn't look at the students. He didn't look at the chalkboards. He looked at the shadows in the corners, as if he expected a Syndicate assassin to step out at any moment."The Mark-V," Vako whispered. His voice was a dry rattle. "A masterpiece of engineering. It doesn't just shoot. It thinks. It feels the heat of the world, and it hunts."He lifted the launcher from its velvet-lined box. It was a heavy, ugly thing made of matte-black carbon fiber. It looked like a long, square-jawed beast.Silas Kapito stood in the middle of the class. He was still Kian in the eyes of everyone else—thin, messy hair, a dirty uniform. But his posture had changed. He no longer hunched his shoulders. He stood with a terrifying stillness. His new, iron-grey skeleton felt

The dust of Sector 7 hung in the air like a thick, grey curtain. It was a place of broken things—broken walls, broken machines, and today, Instructor Vako hoped, a broken boy.Silas Kapito stood in the middle of the "Kill Zone." He was a small figure against the massive, ruined backdrop of the training field. The red beacon on his chest blinked with a steady, rhythmic light. Beep. Beep. Beep. To the machines above, he was nothing more than a source of heat. A target.High up in the observation deck, the air was cold and smelled of expensive floor wax. Instructor Vako gripped the Mark-V launcher. His hands were slick with sweat. He could hear the cadets behind him. They were whispering. They were terrified."He’s not moving," Mia whispered, her eyes wide as she looked through the thick glass. "Why isn't he moving?"Vako didn't answer. He didn't care why the boy wasn't moving. He only cared about the red dot on his screen. The "Manual Override" was engaged. The safety protocols were de

The world did not end with a bang for Instructor Vako. It ended with the sound of a thousand needles hitting a metal drum.Inside the observation deck, the air was still. It was the kind of stillness that happens right before a storm breaks. Vako sat behind his mahogany desk. This desk was his pride. It was made of wood from the old world, deep brown and heavy.Inside its locked drawers were his ledgers—the illegal books that showed every credit he had stolen and every debt he owed to the Syndicate. Then, the vibration started.It began in the floor. A low, humming sound. Vako frowned. He looked at the floorboards. The humming grew louder. It turned into a whistle. Then a scream. "What is—" Vako started to say.He never finished the sentence. The pneumatic vent directly under his feet exploded.The magnesium flare that Silas had tossed into the pipe had reached the filter bank under the office. The Mark-V rocket, following the white-hot heat of the flare, did not care about walls o

The night was not dark in the Citadel of Valhalla. It was a fake purple, lit by miles of neon tubes and glowing glass walls. But for Silas Kapito, the light was a lie. He sat in a small, damp crawlspace behind a massive air-conditioning unit in Sector D. The machine hummed like a giant, angry bee, shaking the floor beneath him.Silas did not mind the shaking. He did not mind the noise. He was staring at a stolen datapad. The screen was cracked, and the blue light flickered against his pale face. His eyes, now flecked with the gunmetal-grey of his new skeleton, moved across the digital maps of the Academy.He was looking for a ghost."Every city has a pulse," Silas whispered. His voice was low and gravelly. "Wires, pipes, sensors. They are the nerves. But even the best machine has a blind spot."He had been hacking the Academy’s power grid for hours. He wasn't looking for credits this time. He was looking for an anomaly. He moved his finger over a map of the Central Spire—the massive

The heavy iron door closed behind Silas with a deep, echoing thud.The sound was different here. In the rest of the Academy, every sound was sharp and metallic. It bounced off glass walls and chrome floors. But here, the sound was swallowed. It was as if the room itself was hungry for noise.Silas stood still. He did not move for a long time.The first thing he noticed was the smell. It was not the smell of the Citadel. There was no scent of recycled air or burnt wires. Instead, the air was dry and thick. It smelled of ozone, old dust, and decaying parchment. It was the smell of a "Paper Grave."He reached into the pocket of his torn uniform and pulled out a small chemical light-stick. He cracked it. A soft, green glow filled the room.He was not in a room. He was in a forest made of books.Rows and rows of tall, wooden shelves rose into the darkness above. They were packed with objects that the modern world had forgotten. Physical books. Leather-bound journals. Metal cabinets fill