Lotus City rose at the very heart of Nevarion with a grace worthy of its name. The city was a fusion of colossal glass-faced towers reaching toward the sky and structures where aesthetics and engineering were seamlessly intertwined. Some buildings consisted of modest five-story boutique designs, while others were forty-story monuments of technology that pierced the clouds themselves. Massive holographic screens adorning the façades, dazzling neon signs, and ever-changing digital advertisements gave the city the aura of a living, breathing organism.
Below, along wide and flawlessly smooth avenues, pedestrians flowed in harmonious streams toward their destinations, while advanced magnetic vehicles glided silently through the air. Lotus functioned like a perfectly assembled clockwork mechanism—cafés were packed, children laughed in the parks, and despite the age of the Awakened, the people enjoyed the unshakable sense of security provided by Turanya.
At the very center of this order, in the back seat of a luxury SUV heading toward the Imperial Palace—the beating heart of the city—sat a man watching all this splendor with dull, distant eyes. The white laboratory coat he wore was wrinkled, and his short gray hair was tangled as though it had not met a pillow for days. Though he was in his seventies, his face appeared astonishingly smooth and youthful thanks to the high-grade anti-aging serums he used regularly. Yet the ancient fatigue in his gaze ran too deep for even those serums to conceal.
This man was Soren Altarez—the brightest mind Turanya, and perhaps all of Nevarion, had ever produced. Through revolutions he had signed across dozens of scientific disciplines, he had single-handedly multiplied the pace of the world's progress and pushed humanity one step further. Even now, as his exhausted mind stared blankly out the window, it was solving complex formulas in the background, laying the foundations for new projects.
Soren rested his chin in his hand and let out a deep sigh. His voice carried the rough edge of sleeplessness.
"I don't understand, Omar… Why does the Empire still insist on banning flying cars? I perfected them when I was barely ten years old. Their engines are completely safe. Their balance is flawless."
The driver, Omar—a powerfully built, dark-skinned man in an elegant suit—glanced at Soren through the rearview mirror and chuckled softly. His voice was reassuring, yet grounded in reality.
"Sorry, Soren, but the problem isn't the vehicles. No matter how safe the machines are, the people driving them are always a margin of error. Ground-level traffic accidents are already enough of a headache—just imagine the cost of chaos in the sky. The current air traffic control system simply isn't ready for the madness millions of amateur pilots would create."
Soren frowned and protested like a child who felt wronged.
"Oh, nonsense! I could design hundreds of solutions for autonomous flight and safe routing for those cars in a single day!"
At that very moment, a piercing siren tore through Lotus's tranquil silence. A modified luxury sports car screamed past Soren's vehicle at full speed, making the asphalt cry out beneath its tires. The exhilarated shouts of the young people inside echoed all the way into the SUV. Right behind them, eight police vehicles flooded the city with sirens as they launched into a relentless pursuit. Soren blinked in surprise.
Omar kept a steady grip on the wheel and burst into loud laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHA! There it is, Soren—that's exactly what I'm talking about!"
His voice shifted into a tone of mocking seriousness.
"This is living proof of why flying cars should remain a dream for now. If those reckless kids were driving one of your inventions, they'd either have crashed straight into the fortieth floor of a building by now or slammed into the top of the city. Your hundreds of brilliant solutions can't stop human stupidity—they can only delay the disaster."
Faced with that devastating retort, Soren crossed his arms over his chest and sank back into his seat with a sulky expression. Still watching the city outside, he muttered,
"Stop ganging up on me, Omar."
The grin on Omar's face softened into a wise, teasing sarcasm.
"That's your problem, Soren—you're too smart. But when it comes to human nature, especially the temperament of Turanya and Azera's people, you're practically clueless,"
he said, never taking his eyes off the road.
"Our people are wild; adrenaline races through their veins alongside that awakened energy. Some technologies may be safe in theory, but humanity isn't ready for the freedom those technologies bring. Even the Emperor and the princes are secretly bothered by this—they're itching to get behind the wheel themselves. But they have to set an example. And let me remind you—didn't the first flying car you built at age ten explode? You wiped half a kilometer off the map."
Soren shot up in his seat like a spring and shouted in fury:
"THAT WAS DUE TO A TECHNICAL ERROR! MY INVENTIONS ARE PERFECT—PHYSICS JUST CAN'T KEEP UP WITH MY SPEED SOMETIMES!"
Omar stared at him through the rearview mirror with a blank are you serious? look.
"Don't make me open my mouth, Soren," he said, his voice turning a notch more serious.
"Some of the scars your 'perfect' inventions left on my body still ache when the weather changes."
Soren froze for a moment, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. Omar was more than just his driver; he was his closest friend, his confidant, his shadow. An S-rank Awakened, Omar had been personally selected by the two emperors after his past, integrity, and loyalty were examined down to the finest detail. Soren had initially vehemently opposed the idea of having a bodyguard. He himself was an S-rank, a peak-tier mage—on paper, one of the most powerful Awakened in the world. Yet that power had been utterly useless on the darkest night of his life.
Twenty years earlier, enemy nations terrified by Turanya's technological supremacy had commissioned the bloodiest assassination squad in history to eliminate Soren Altarez. At the time, Soren was far from home on a classified field research mission. His arrogance exceeded even his intellect; claiming that "my own security systems could stop an army," he had repeatedly rejected the Empire's offers of protection. But the enemy had made a move designed to shake even his genius: they deployed four S-rank Awakened, rare talents specialized solely in assassination, infiltration, and silent slaughter. The Empire was powerful, but no system was absolute. That night, the assassins breached Soren's so-called "impenetrable" barriers one by one and slipped inside.
That night, his entire family was wiped out… at least, that was what the world believed.
Omar and the imperial guards who arrived just in time managed to pull only one soul alive from that sea of blood: his three-year-old granddaughter, Elenor. Soren's son, his daughter-in-law, his wife, his other two daughters, their husbands, and all of his remaining grandchildren… every single one of them had perished in that horrific raid.
When the news reached them, the two emperors were driven mad with fury. Borders were sealed, and the assassins were hunted down one by one before they could flee the country. By the time Soren returned to the capital, every family member of the assassins—and every individual belonging to the factions that had hired them—had been identified, captured, and dragged before him.
When Soren learned the truth, his world collapsed. His sanity teetered on the edge of complete rupture. He personally slaughtered the families of the assassins before their very eyes, then condemned the assassins themselves to slow, agonizing deaths.
The emperors could do nothing but bow before Soren and beg for forgiveness, admitting that they should have been more vigilant. But Soren never accepted their apologies. Because the fault was not theirs—it was his own arrogance. That night, he clutched the trembling Elenor amid blood-soaked blankets and wept uncontrollably until dawn. Omar, who had protected Elenor during the attack, had barely escaped death himself, his body sustaining irreparable damage. Soren owed Omar more than his life.
With a deep sigh, Soren turned his gaze out the window, toward the glittering streets of Lotus City. His voice was barely above a whisper now.
"They were just minor mishaps, Omar… truly, just minor mishaps."
Omar's eyebrows twitched—not with anger, but with disbelief.
"Because of those minor mishaps of yours, every doctor in the capital's central and private hospitals knows my name by heart. They don't see you as a scientist anymore—they see you as a walking natural disaster!"
Soren pretended not to hear the accusation and smoothly changed the subject.