CHAPTER FIFTY-THREEWhite and Red Lyla's jaw dropped. She actually took a step back from her own desk, as if the words she'd just heard had physical weight."Fragment soldier?" she repeated. "Jim? Jim Chen is a fragment soldier???"Muri did not answer. His silence was answer enough."Explain." Nadia said quietly. Her voice had that edge she used in the field, it was flat, controlled and one degree from violence. "You said you barely knew him. What brought you together?"Lyla pressed her fingers to her temple, pacing now, her voice half-bursting with nervous energy. "We met at a symposium three years ago. He was in geology, deep crust anomalies, tectonic memory, that kind of thing. I was presenting on extinction periodicity and he was in the front row. He asked a question that derailed my entire lecture."She laughed, hollow but fond, like she was remembering a stranger. "He said...he said, 'Doctor Cross, have you ever noticed that extinction events relates with atmospheric still

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR Intruders Muri stood like a statue in the dark with Nadia pressed against his chest, his arms locked around her as if the world were trying to pull her away.The silence surrounding them was thick and heavy. The darkness pressed in from every side, thick enough to taste and heavy enough to feel. Nadia's heart hammered against her ribs, she could not see her own hand in front of her face neither could she hear her own pulse. All she could feel was Muri's body, hard as stone around her, and the slow, steady rise and fall of his breathing.Three minutes was how long it lasted, yet it felt like an hour, like the entire world had fallen into a well with no bottom.Then in a snap, sound returned.But not gently as the increase of a radio volume but with a slam of an unexpected speaker.Sirens screamed from every direction at once, fire alarms blared from a dozen buildings in overlapping, clashing wails, car horns joined the chaos, drivers panicking in the sudden dark. A

Chapter 56 Intruders 3 Lyla's apartment was on the fourth floor of an old walk-up, though she called it her apartment she barely stayed in it as she was always on exploration. The lock was cheap, the door thinner than Nadia would have liked, and the moment Muri pushed it open, the air inside shifted. Five soldiers stood waiting in the dim living room, blue-ringed eyes, armored bodies and guns already raised. They opened fire the instant the door swung wide. Nadia's world became a storm of muzzle flashes and screaming sound. She had time to grab Lyla's arm and drag her sideways, but the hallway was a kill box, there was nowhere to go, but in a flash, Muri was in front of her. Already there, as if he had simply chosen to occupy the space between the bullets and the sisters. He did not duck, did not flinch but simply stood, arms spread slightly, and the rounds that hit him sparked and flattened against his skin like hail on a windshield. He stepped forward and the gunfire stopped.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHTZephyros Neraya descended into the water this time, and the ocean opened for her.Rather than the blinding light of before the nadia experienced, a spiral staircase of icy-blue crystal steps curved downward into the depths, glowing with soft bioluminescent light. The sisters exchanged a look with Lyla practically vibrating with excitement and Nadia tensed but relaxed as she knew with Muri around she was relatively safe. And besides Neraya acknowledged her the last time she came. With this in mind, they all descend down the stairs, on a rather short trip defeating the illusion of how deep it went down.The world beneath the waves was breathtaking as usual. Coral gardens stretched in every direction, alive with color and ancient light, strange but beautiful fishes drifted past, casting prismatic shadows across the seabed. Pillars of weathered stone rose from the white sand, covered in carvings that pulsed with the rhythm of the tide. And in the distance, a literall

Chapter 60 Primordials Muri's punch landed first and hard.There was no warning, no shift in stance, nothing. One moment he was standing in the wreckage of the shattered table, and the next his fist was already moving, lightning wrapping around his knuckles like a second skin. The punch caught Kael'Tharos square on the cheek with a sound like a thunderclap splitting the skies in half..Kael'Tharos was thrown back by the force. He skidded backward across the beach, his feet carving twin trenches through the sand and his suit tore open due to pressure l as he tried to slow himself. He scraped through a small dune, through a cluster of Neraya's carefully grown sea-flowers, and finally stopped when his heel dug deep enough to anchor him. The shockwave from the punch continued past him, flattening a line of reeds and sending a burst of spray across the lagoon.Kael'Tharos touched his cheek, a thin line of golden light leaked from a split in his skin. It was not blood but something old