(Alai will have her name changed for the remainder of this reading. Alai is now Lyssa.)

The Underglow dissolved into hysteria.

Screams pierced the music; the rhythm fractured into chaos. Bodies surged, collided, fell. The air that moments ago shimmered with warmth and color now split with terror ...

The world did not end in screams.
It ended in silence—and began again in light.

The bodies on the ground twitched once, twice, and then—slowly—rose. The glow within them intensified, colors bleeding through their skin like living constellations. One man, shaking, opened his hands and watched flame ...

The festival had turned inside out in an instant.

Where laughter once filled the air, the screams tore through it like glass shattering —raw, confused, and human. Tempest and Azazel froze for only a heartbeat, their heads snapping toward the first sound. A second scream followed, higher, trembling ...

Chapter six:What a Time to be Alive
The plaza pulsed with life. The singer’s final note lingered in the air like mist, and then the crowd erupted—not in frenzy, but in unity. Music swelled again, brighter this time, with drums that felt like thunder hidden beneath the skin.

Tempest was the first ...

The group stood in a narrow vein of the slums where the lamps hummed softly, shivering against a stagnant night. The faint orange light swayed over their faces — Tempest’s calm composure, Xeia’s jittery excitement, and Mordi’s stoic indifference.

Xeia was still glowing from her own idea.
“You two ...

The firelight flickered across Tempest’s face as her dance slowed.

The air that had been alive with rhythm and movement began to settle—wind untangling from her hair, fire returning to its natural sway. The night inhaled deeply, and in that breath, Azazel felt it.

Something subtle.
A tremor—not of ...

Chapter V -Shores of Asphalt

The island they reached was unlike any they had known.
The sand was gone — buried beneath a black, unyielding crust. The air vibrated with a constant hum, a deep mechanical pulse that made even silence feel artificial. Everywhere they turned, the ground hissed, the ...

The battlefield breathed like a living thing.
Each sob from Alai struck like a drumbeat — slow, trembling, unbearable. Her cries rose and fell, and with each one the world seemed to pulse with violence.

Azazel’s jaw clenched. Kangal’s eyes burned. Even the air felt enslaved to that rhythm — grief ...

The child’s scream tore through the air, shaking the last threads of stillness apart.
Weapons rose again. Boots scraped stone. The sound of steel meeting steel echoed through the ruins like thunder rolling across a graveyard.

Kangal’s jaw clenched. His body trembled — not with fear, but with a ...

At first, the only sound was the child’s sobbing.

It came unevenly — short, breaking hiccups that punctured the silence between Azazel and Kangal like the slow toll of a bell. Each cry rippled across the battlefield, stripping away the armor of fury that had clung to every soldier’s heart.

The ...