They moved the discussion back into the strategy room once Tempest confirmed Xeia and Lyssa were settled with food.

This time, Vergil didn’t stand alone.

Two others joined them.

A broad-shouldered woman with copper-brown skin and tightly braided hair leaned over the metal table, sleeves rolled up ...

The communal hall of Anti felt louder now—not chaotic, but alive.

Azazel sat at one of the long metal tables, a dented tray in front of him. Spiced rice. Roasted root vegetables. A strip of something smoked and salted. Real food. The kind that required time. Intention.

Across from him sat a young ...

The tension did not leave with the battlefield.

It thinned.

That was all.

Tempest stood at the threshold of the strategy room a moment longer than necessary, eyes moving—not nervously, but methodically. Corners. Sight lines. Doors. Who carried weapons and who didn’t. Who watched them, and who ...

The rift spit them out into noise.

Not the roar of battle.

Not screaming.

Just the uneven hum of machinery that had been repaired too many times.

Anti headquarters did not inspire confidence.

The building itself looked like it had once been a municipal storage depot—corrugated metal patched ...

The thunderclap that announced Nine Breaker’s arrival hadn’t finished echoing when something colder answered it.

A soundless pressure swept across the Underglow—not force, not fear exactly, but order. The kind that arrived already expecting obedience.

Lights cut through the smoke from the far end ...

(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 ...