At exactly 0600 hours, the city changed.
Charlie stood near a checkpoint outside one of the larger transit hubs. The security scanners were humming with a strained pitch, their blue glow casting long, sterile shadows against the stonework. Steam hissed from pressure valves. Uniforms moved like synchronized clockwork through the haze of cold morning air. Behind the order, something simmered—a pressure just beneath the surface.
Not fear. Not yet.
But everyone felt it. As if the streets were holding their breath.
—
Deep in the wild, beneath a blackened, lightning-scarred fallen tree, Nikolai curled into the suffocating dark.
The hollow he found wasn't shelter. It was a wound in the world—twisted roots and jagged rock, barely enough space to breathe. But it was shadow. And shadow was now survival.
The sun had not killed him. But the agony had been absolute. His skin, though already healing with unnatural speed, felt paper-thin, remembering the searing kiss of light. Minutes had reduced him from predator back to prey, scrambling for darkness like the weakest vermin. This new vulnerability wasn't just pain—it was a fundamental limit, a chain etched into his transformed flesh.
Worse, the healing demanded fuel. The hunger wasn't the familiar gnaw of starvation; it was a ravenous need tied to the power coursing through him, a void howling for something the wilderness couldn't easily provide. It clawed inside him, primal and unrelenting, making his teeth ache, his thoughts fray. He could feel the raw power simmering beneath his skin, useless while the sun held dominion, draining him even as the hunger grew.
He pressed his trembling hands into the frozen dirt, the cold clarity of the situation cutting through the pain and need.
This cycle... forced to move only at night, hiding by day... it's unsustainable. The thought wasn't despair, but calculation. The sun weakens me, the hunger consumes me. Out here, I'm trading one cage for another. Wanda will find me, or this place will bleed me dry.
He needed more than just shadow. He needed walls, structure, control over his environment. A place where the sun wasn't an immediate death sentence. Where the hunger... might be managed, or sated differently. A plan began to form, forged from this new desperation.
Where? Where offered that?
Then, the memory surfaced, not as nostalgia, but as tactical possibility.
Hope.
The name itself felt like a cruel joke now, but the image was clear: clean walls, intact domes reflecting light they could contain. Order. Crowds. Places to blend, places to hide from the sky. A city where danger wore a uniform, predictable, unlike the feral chaos of the wilds or the absolute tyranny of the sun.
He hadn't understood its value then. As a boy, the safety felt like suffocation.
Now, it looked like the only viable strategy.
Refuge. Stability. A place to understand what he'd become, and how to survive it. A place with thresholds thick enough to block out the sun.
He pressed his forehead against the cold, damp earth.
Hope. The decision settled, hard and necessary. I have to reach Hope.
Not today. He needed the night.
But soon.
—
The Concord Hall blazed with warmth and excess. Golden light cascaded from chandeliers of reclaimed crystal and pre-war alloy, carving lattice patterns across pale, veined stone. Polished floors mirrored the luxury above. Waiters glided through the space in uniforms of snow-white and cobalt, bearing trays of violet wine and steaming skewers of unplaceable meats. The air hummed with power, thick with perfume and whispered bargains. Figures of consequence moved through the light – men in austere grays and rich crimsons, women draped in emerald silks and sharp jewels. The Great Houses were assembled, a constellation forming mid-galaxy—powerful, distinct, calculating.
Then the air stilled.
Wanda entered unannounced.
Midnight silk shimmered like moving ink, threaded with silver that caught every light. Her hair was coiled into a single high twist, set with a single black orchid. She passed beneath the arch alone—but flanked by the Consul's personal guards.
Whispers folded into silence. Conversations died mid-sentence. She was not of the Houses. But she was something else, an anomaly that reshaped the room's gravity.
The Consul himself moved to meet her, dressed in a sharp-cut suit of gunmetal and frost-grey. He extended his arm, a public gesture heavy with implication. She took it, her poise absolute.
It was then, as Wanda stood beside the Consul, that the reactions became clear. Across the room, Lady Selene Vireya—statuesque, violet lace and black leather coiled around steel, her movements speaking of duels survived—watched Wanda with an unnerving stillness. Her lips pressed thin, her gaze hard. It wasn't merely displeasure; it was sharper, colder.
Others reacted too. Lady Thalia Crowhurst, sharp-featured in emerald silk, leaned to an aide and murmured words as tight as wire. Lord Kael Tenebran, silent in crimson and gold, his braided beard a seal of precision, let his eyes narrow—fractionally. The assembled Founders circled near the dais like a storm front gathering beneath crystal light, their smiles holding poison.
Above it all, on a shadowed mezzanine, Ben stood still. Rick, beside him, shifted uneasily as Wanda, below, glanced briefly upward. Just a glance. Enough to make Rick's throat tighten. Ben never moved.
The spiral turned.