The black matter parasite squirmed beneath Jaxith Vance’s flesh, burning an agonizing path up his left forearm.Rain began to fall again over the cliffs of Monte Carlo, washing away the blood on the marble ledge. Jaxith didn't flinch. He tightened his fist, his jaw setting into a line of pure, unyielding steel. With a brutal surge of his internal mana, he channeled a localized wave of black kinetic energy straight into his own veins, forcibly freezing the parasite in place before it could reach his chest."Jaxith... look at the feed!" Elena Rostova’s voice cut through the air, tight and laced with lethal urgency.She held out her satellite unit. The screen was a nightmare of pulsing red warnings. Across six major continents, atmospheric scanners were picking up identical dark energy signatures—six massive, thousand-foot Sky-Citadels breaching the upper clouds simultaneously, locking their thermal beams onto New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, and Sydney."The Seven Crown Vaults,"

The digital alarm shrieked like a dying animal as the feed from Aethelgard flickered on the screen.Lyra’s golden, glowing eyes stared out from the glass stasis pod, her chest rising in sharp, unnerving twitches.Jaxith didn't hesitate. He raised his suppressed sidearm and put three heavy rounds straight through the overhead projector, shattering the screen into a cloud of dead sparks."Elena, get the local network lockdown codes," Jaxith barked, his voice cutting through the panic rippling across the ballroom floor.Elena was already moving, her dark dress rustling against the broken marble as she dropped behind the grand piano, her weapon raised.She slammed a fresh magazine into her custom receiver, her eyes tracking Morgana on the high balcony above."You're not leaving this room, Mother Vance!" Elena shouted, her voice echoing off the gilded ceiling.Morgana laughed, a dry, cold sound that held no warmth, turning her back on the chaos as two heavy steel shutters began sliding dow

The obsidian skull atop Lorenzo Carmine’s cane hummed with a sickening, high-pitched resonance that rattled the teeth in Jaxith’s jaw.Elena gasped against his chest, her fingernails digging deep into his leather jacket as the crimson light of her medallion pulsed in violent, irregular spasms.Jaxith’s world narrowed down to the rising heat of her feverish skin and the sheer, arrogant smirk on Lorenzo’s face."You think a wooden cane and a noisy frequency make you a god, Lorenzo?" Jaxith growled, his voice dropping into a register that made the loose glass on the deck plates vibrate."I don't need to be a god, Vance," Lorenzo sneered, motioning for his twenty armed mercenaries to tighten their perimeter. "I just need your core, and I need this girl dead before her family’s legacy can undermine the Sicilian Syndicate."Elena lifted her head with agonizing effort, her dark eyes flashing through the haze of pain, her teeth slick with a drop of crimson blood."Kill... him, Jaxith," Elena