**New York City – 3:45 A.M.**
Darkness pressed against Manhattan like a living thing, swallowing its lights and turning the city into a steel graveyard. The blackout had spread across multiple boroughs, plunging skyscrapers, streets, and subways into an eerie void. Only the private networks of Eris Vana's Silent Core Security remained active, their controlled LEDs and camera drones slicing through the gloom with surgical precision, powered by independent generators that hummed like predators in the night. Their surveillance grid cast an unnatural glow, a mockery of the city's lost pulse.
