Snow fell in disciplined silence over Virelia's upper sector.
Not the chaotic snow of the streets—but refined, filtered, curated. The kind that landed gently on glass railings and melted without leaving dirt behind. Kael Dravien stood at the edge of his penthouse balcony, city spread beneath him like a conquered kingdom.
Neon veins pulsed far below.Obedient. Predictable.Everything was.
Except her.
In his hand rested a single rose—deep crimson, freshly cut. Its stem still carried a faint tremor of life, as if it resisted being removed from its roots.
Kael turned it slowly between his fingers.
"You should be dead," he murmured.
The wind carried his voice away.
Behind him, the penthouse glowed in muted gold and black—steel, glass, controlled luxury. Screens hovered in the air, cycling through surveillance feeds: traffic nodes, data spikes, underground markets.
One feed paused.
DreamWare Corp. Observation Deck.
A woman stood near the glass. Hair tied neatly. Expression calm. Ordinary.
Too ordinary.
Kael's lips curved—not a smile. Recognition.
"So that's where you hide," he said softly.
He dismissed the feed with a flick of his fingers and stepped back inside. The doors sealed automatically, muting the world. Silence settled—thick, intimate.
He moved toward a long obsidian table where an object rested beneath a transparent case.
The Crimson Circuit chip.
He lifted the cover.
The chip was beautiful in a cruel way—etched with microscopic runes of code and circuitry that pulsed faintly, as if alive. At its center was an emblem burned so deeply it could never be erased.
A broken wing.
Kael's thumb brushed over it.
The memory hit without warning.
Snow.Metal.Silver eyes burning with hate and something dangerously close to recognition.
SLAP.
The echo of it still rang in his jaw.
His fingers paused at his lips.
Just once.
Then his hand curled slowly into a fist.
"She tasted like truth," he whispered. "And lies don't leave marks like that."
A low vibration hummed through the room as a concealed panel slid open behind him. One of his guards stepped forward and stopped immediately when he saw Kael's expression.
"Sir," the guard said carefully. "We traced the anomaly you requested."
Kael didn't turn.
"And?"
"It wasn't a system glitch. Someone bent the city's traffic grid. Clean. Elegant. Almost… affectionate."
Kael exhaled softly.
"She has help."
"Yes. A second signature. Not human. Not fully AI either."
Kael's eyes darkened.
"So the twin exists."
The guard hesitated. "Do you want us to—"
"No," Kael cut in sharply.
Silence snapped tight.
He finally turned, gaze cold enough to fracture steel.
"No brute force. No public moves. If you scare her now, she disappears deeper. And I refuse to lose her again."
The word again hung between them.
The guard swallowed. "Again, sir?"
Kael's wrist shifted as he adjusted his sleeve.
The fabric slid back.
Revealing the brand.
A broken wing, burned into his skin—old, deliberate, identical in shape to the emblem on the chip. The flesh around it shimmered faintly, reacting to something unseen.
"She carries the other half," Kael said quietly. "I didn't know it then. But I know it now."
The guard stiffened. "You're saying—"
"I'm saying," Kael interrupted, voice low and precise, "that from the moment she ran… this city began bending toward her."
He replaced the chip carefully, sealing it away.
"The mind is a battlefield," he continued. "And she is standing in the center of it—thinking she's invisible."
He turned back toward the balcony.
Snow drifted past the glass like falling secrets.
"I won't hunt her like prey," Kael said. "I'll let her walk closer on her own."
The guard frowned. "And if she attacks first?"
Kael smiled then.
Dangerous. Certain.
"Then she'll learn," he said, "that I don't break what belongs to me."
Across the city, in DreamWare's quiet corridors, Elaris suddenly shivered.
Her wristband pulsed once.Hard.
"Xyren," she whispered, breath hitching. "He knows."
"I know," Xyren replied calmly. "And he is not afraid."
Kael lifted the rose again.
Slowly—deliberately—he crushed it in his hand.
Thorns bit into skin. Blood welled and dripped onto the obsidian floor, staining it crimson. He didn't react to the pain. Pain was familiar. Controlled.
Necessary.
"Run," he murmured, staring at the city where she hid behind glass and smiles. "Build your walls. Sharpen your knives."
His blood slid between his fingers.
"I'll be waiting."
Outside, Virelia breathed—alive, dangerous, complicit.
And somewhere between circuits and obsession, between destiny and defiance, the broken wings began to pull toward each other.
Whether they wanted to…or not.