The amber light of late evening bled through the tall windows of the Governor's Office, washing the chamber in muted gold. Kael sat at his desk, half-buried beneath reports and sealed letters, the weight of Nexus pressing against his shoulders like a living thing. His eyes were rimmed red from sleepless nights, his quill dragging sluggishly across the parchment as though even ink had grown weary.
A soft knock came at the door like a silent request.
Kael blinked, surprised. Only one person in the city ever entered without permission and only one knocked like that.
"Come in," he said, voice gravel low.
The door opened, spilling a ribbon of lavender pheromones into the room. Selene stepped in gracefully, her gown a river of deep wine and gold. Candlelight kissed her hair, framing her face in a halo that could have fooled saints.
Kael's expression softened despite himself. "You look… dangerous," he murmured.
Selene smiled faintly, closing the door behind her. "You always say that when I'm simply dressed."
She crossed the floor, slow, unhurried, her eyes never leaving his. When she reached him, she leaned forward, placing a gentle hand over his ink-stained fingers.
"You've been working since dawn," she said softly. "No rest. You'll end up part of the furniture soon."
"I want to rest too my love but," Kael replied, forcing a tired smile. "The reports don't write themselves."
"Nor does worry fix wounds," Selene murmured. She reached up, brushing her fingers against his jaw, coaxing his head up until he met her gaze. "There's something I need of you, Alpha."
He stilled. "That tone," he said warily. "I know it."
Selene's eyes glimmered with both warmth and purpose. "It's about a girl. Lio and Niamh found her broken, beaten, half-dead. She mumbles about nobles… about someone's game, but she's too afraid to speak clearly."
Kael frowned, straightening in his chair. "Which nobles?"
"That's what I want you to find out," she said, her voice still calm, but threaded with quiet steel. "If what she hinted at is true, someone in your court or their pampered offsprings are playing gods in the slums."
Kael sighed, leaning back. "Selene… the slums are a labyrinth. Rumors are currency there. Every week someone claims a noble's to blame for something. I can't act without evidence."
Selene's expression softened at first, gentle, understanding. Then her hand slid from his cheek to his collar, fingers toying idly with the edge of his uniform, her smile curving like a blade wrapped in silk.
"I didn't say act," she whispered. "I said investigate. Quietly. Discreetly. You're good at that when you choose to be."
"Selene," Kael said with a strained chuckle, trying to find the humor. "You make it sound simple."
"It is simple," she murmured, tilting her head. "Either you'll look into it tonight… or you'll be sleeping alone for the foreseeable future."
Kael froze mid-breath. "You wouldn't."
Her smile didn't falter; it only grew fainter. "Wouldn't I?"
The room went utterly still. The great Governor of Nexus, a man who'd stared down guild lords, slum riots, and assassination plots, found himself defeated not by blade or politics, but by the quiet threat of his wife's silken voice.
At last, he exhaled in surrender. "Fine. I'll send word to the intelligence bureau. We'll trace the crest she mentioned, if it exists. And I'll… ensure certain noble houses are reminded that their titles aren't shields."
Selene leaned in and brushed a kiss against his cheek infintely close to his lips. "That's all I ask, my love."
When she drew back, her smile returned. Warm, serene, deceptive as sunlight on ice. "You've always had such a noble heart, Kael. Sometimes it just needs a little… direction."
He groaned, burying his face in his hands. "One day, you'll drive me to early retirement."
"Impossible," Selene said, sweeping toward the door. "You'd never survive a day of peace."
When she left, the faint click of the door echoed like punctuation to his defeat.
Kael looked at the mountain of papers before him, then muttered, "Gods help me… that woman could start a war with a whisper."
----------------------------------------------------------
The storm began with a whisper.
Not the kind that howled through broken alleys or hissed down the vents, but the kind that moved from one trembling tongue to another. Beneath the glowing towers and polished skybridges of Nexus, down where the light died in oil-slick puddles and smog drowned the air, the underworld stirred in dread.
A girl had escaped, and had been found by the " child alchemist".
That was all it took to fracture the silence.
In the pits beneath Sector Twelve, where children fought for the amusement of masked nobles, every monitor went dark at once. The dealers who handled bets across the holo-net cursed and tore cables from the wall. The ringmasters who had once laughed at blood now shouted orders to burn every record. A dozen warehouses sealed their doors with coded glyphs.
No one wanted their name spoken aloud tonight.
"Shut it all down," hissed a woman draped in a synth-fur coat, pacing across a floor sticky with wine and fear. "Every shipment, every file, every runner, gone before dawn. If she talks—"
"She won't," interrupted a gaunt man hunched over a terminal, his skin bathed in the green flicker of data. "She's a child. Half-dead when she escaped. The streets will finish what we started."
The woman's slap echoed like a gunshot. "You think I'm gambling my neck on luck? That boy—that damned alchemist—found her. The one who walks with the Lady of Nexarion"
The man froze. Even his breathing seemed to falter.
No one in the slums said his name anymore. The "boy" with silver eyes and quiet voice had become a rumor wrapped in warning—a figure who moved like frost and left corpses colder than the stones they fell on. He didn't belong to any guild or faction, yet everyone knew the gangs had begun crossing the street when he passed.
The air inside the den turned heavier, thick with ozone and sweat.
Somewhere above them, neon lights flickered through the cracks in the ceiling, staining the woman's face pink and blue as she whispered, "If he decides to come for us, we're already dead."
.....
.....
Across the district, another world hummed behind false storefronts and rusted cargo doors. The Dream Market—a labyrinth of flickering stalls and smuggled magic—buzzed nervously as word spread from one vendor to the next. Holo-adverts blinked out. Neon script on glass facades dissolved into static.
Men who had once swaggered through those halls now moved like ghosts. The scent of ozone clung to the air as drones swept overhead, scanning for traces of unauthorized data. Even the black-market surgeons who grafted cybernetic limbs onto half-starved fighters were closing shop, packing vials of red crystal into coded crates.
"Governor's eyes are on the slums," one muttered, lighting a cigarette that glowed pale blue. "They'll come tearing through everything."
"Not if we tear it down first," replied another, tapping ash into a puddle that shimmered with reflected light. "Erase the arenas, hide the lists, burn the bodies. Let the ghosts keep their secrets."
A child brushed past them—thin, barefoot, carrying a chipped data core. Her eyes darted between shadows. She didn't speak, but the two men stepped aside, letting her vanish into the maze. She was one of the runners; orphans used to ferry messages no one dared transmit.
Tonight, every runner in the slums was working overtime.
...
In the tunnels deeper still, where the city's foundations bled rust and darkness, the leaders gathered.
Holo-screens lit their faces: a council of silhouettes, each one blurred by static masks. Names didn't matter here—only the power they held. They ran the gambling rings, the flesh trades, the gladiator circuits. The ones who had supplied the nobles with blood and spectacle.
The first voice spoke, distorted through the filter. "One of the girls lived."
A pause, followed by a metallic growl. "Then kill her."
"She's under protection," another replied. "The alchemist's shop. You know whose territory is that."
"Then burn the shop."
Silence. Even the static seemed to hesitate.
Everyone looked at the speaker like an alien.
"Are you stupid ?" Asked the one sitting at the center. A woman's voice, cold as wire. "If we try that, we light ourselves. The boy and the governor will come hunting, and the nobles will abandon us to cover their filth. So we wait. We vanish. Let the city breathe again. Then we rebuild."
The others murmured in reluctant agreement. One by one, holo-screens winked out, leaving only the hum of power cells and the sound of dripping water echoing through the concrete tunnels.
Outside, the slum breathed again—but it wasn't life. It was fear.
----------------------------------------------------------
Above ground, in the narrow alleyways near Jade's shop, things had changed too. The beggars had vanished. The thieves who once watched the windows now crossed to the other side of the street. Even the city rats avoided the drains closest to his door.
Niamh noticed it first—the unnatural quiet.
And from the rooftops, unseen eyes watched the faint flicker of light beneath the alchemist's shutters.
"She's still there," whispered a figure crouched beside a vent. His voice trembled as he peered through magnified lenses. "Alive. The brat's tending her himself."
"Then we wait," said the one beside him. "Orders are to stand down till the storm passes."
"And if it doesn't?"
A thin smile cut through the shadow. "Then we pray the alchemist doesn't look our way."
....
Deep beneath the sprawl, a pulse rippled through the city's network—a coded message spreading like a virus:
> "ALL DEALS CLOSED. ALL PITS SILENT. THE GAMES ARE OVER—FOR NOW."
And for the first time in years, Nexus' underworld fell still.
Not from mercy.
Not from conscience.
But because one escaped breath, one child, and one silent boy had turned their empire of cruelty into glass—
and glass, when touched, remembers how easily it shatters.
....