The first light of dawn was a pale promise over Abuja's fractured skyline when Thiana felt the small hand in hers tighten. They had escaped the Sanctuary's inferno and found refuge in an abandoned villa at the edge of the Old Quarter, its walls braced with boarding and its courtyard half-swallowed by wild bougainvillea. Here, at last, they let themselves breathe.
Angelica lay in Thiana's arms on a tattered sofa, wrapped in a soft blanket pressed from Ravien's kit. Thiana watched the heiress's chest rise and fall in perfect rhythm, her black hair fanned across Ravien's spare pillow. Somehow, in the midst of corporate wars and ghost-born rebellions, this child had become the axis on which their world spun.
Then Angelica stirred. Lashes fluttered once—twice—and her eyes snapped open.
They were pitch black.
Not pupils dilated or irises obscured, but pure obsidian orbs that drank the light whole. Thiana gasped, nearly spilling the girl, whose tiny fingers dug into her blouse like anchors.
"Mom?" Angelica's voice was soft, curious—and when it reached Thiana's ears, it registered as something else: an echo full of power.
Thiana's heart thundered. Zade and Ravien leaned in from either side, faces simultaneously horrified and awestruck. Thaziel, seated on the floor nearby, froze mid-tap on his neural deck.
For a long moment, the villa was silent. The wind rattled the shutters. A single bird called from the courtyard.
Then Angelica smiled.
Her grin was too knowing, too ancient for anyone her age. "I'm hungry," she said. "But not for milk."
Thiana swallowed around a lump in her throat. "What… what do you mean?"
Angelica shook her head, rose as if pulled by threads of authority, tiny feet silent on the dusty rug. With each step, the room's fragile calm twisted—shadows stretched, lamps flickered, and the walls seemed to bend in recognition.
"My father once said," the heiress began, voice soft but undeniably firm, "that power is the only true nourishment." She paused, black eyes sweeping the four of them, counting their breaths. "I would like to taste control."
Ravien's hand went to her pistol. Zade's fingers twitched near his holster. Only Thiana kept calm, forced a soft smile. "Angelica, sweetheart, you've been asleep for days. Your body needs rest."
Angelica's head tilted, black eyes alight. "My body is not what needs feeding." She reached toward Thaziel's neural shard on the floor. "My mind is hungry."
Before anyone could react, her palm brushed the shard. A pulse of light shot through the room, and Thaziel tensed. "Don't—" he started, but the heiress's laughter—like crystal on stone—cut him off. The shard leapt into the air and disintegrated, scattering sparks that etched new fractals across the walls.
Angelica's grin widened. The villa's power lines surged, fuses blew in neighboring blocks, and streetlamps winked out across the quarter in a silent blackout. The only light came from the child.
Thiana felt tears prick her eyes. She closed the distance between them and knelt. "Angelica, look at me."
The heiress blinked, the blackness of her eyes contracting to reveal flecks of gold—hers and Zade's. "Yes, Mother. I see you."
In that moment, Thiana realized the truth: Angelica was no longer a passenger in their war. She was its engine. And feeding that engine would demand a toll none of them could yet imagine.
Across the city, beneath shattered glass panels and buzzing holo-ads, HoloZero's command core came back online. In a subterranean bunker, banks of servers hummed as backup power rerouted through emergency conduits. A single console blinked red—"Reinitialization Required." Once the system had detected Thiana's breach of the Sanctuary, every fail-safe, every dormant protocol awakened.
The de facto director, encrusted in a somatic exosuit and wearing half a mask that glinted like obsidian, tapped commands with surgical precision. "Deploy Sentinel Node Alpha," they ordered. "Locate and apprehend the heiress. Neutralize the Lazarus anomaly at all costs."
A squad of Nine-Eyed Drones rotated into readiness, scanning the city's grid for Angelica's unique energy signature. They traced the pulse through downed street lamps and a dying power substation until it zeroed in on the villa. The director's gloved hand hovered above the launch trigger. "Mother and the ghost tend to die along with the child," they mused. Then they pressed it.
Outside, military-grade quad-copters lifted from concealed hangars, bound for the Old Quarter. Each carried a sonic net launcher and a quantum dampening field. The hunt was on.
High above the city, on the crumbling balcony where Thaziel once dueled the Wraith, a lone figure watched through a pair of antique binoculars. The moon's reflection gleamed off a chrome mask, half-carved like a twisted smile. In one gloved hand, this stranger held a sealed dossier stamped with the Cabello crest—and half an empty locket, identical to the one Thiana had long discarded.
The figure exhaled, voice soft enough for only itself to hear. "So the child's awake. Perfect." They slipped the binoculars into a leather holster and pivoted to the city below. "Let the new game begin."
A pale breeze tousled their coat. In the pocket, a tracker blinked—Angelica's signature flaring brighter than ever.
The unknown watcher pressed a hidden button. Across the city, every holoscreen pulsed with a single message:
"THE EMPRESS AWAKENS."
And in the villa's dark parlor, Thiana scooped Angelica into her arms, whispering, "We'll find the hunger's cure together."
But as the echoes of that broadcast bounced from building to building, Thiana understood they might already be too late. Angelica's flame had been lit—and the world would never survive without being scorched.