The night sky above Cosmic State was a restless ocean of neon. Hover-rails buzzed across the heavens, streaking red, cobalt, and emerald through the clouds. From the ninety-ninth floor of Dofflow Tower, the city didn't look like steel and concrete—it looked alive, pulsing with veins of light, breathing in electric rhythm.
Inside the boardroom, silence pressed down like a weight.
The conference table was a monolith of black glass, long enough to swallow twenty men. Its surface glowed faintly with holographic projections: graphs hovering in mid-air, trading indexes flickering like constellations, orbital maps of off-world markets turning slowly in three dimensions. Every light in the room seemed to bend toward one man.
Kindrake Dofflow.
He sat at the head of the table, posture razor-straight, a silhouette of controlled power. His suit was obsidian black, cut so sharp it seemed sculpted. A red silk tie blazed against the monochrome, catching the neon reflection from the glass wall behind him. The glow from his digital timepiece rippled faintly on his wrist, ticking in silent defiance of the universe.
The executives—twelve of them—sat rigid, eyes lowered, shoulders tense. One man's throat bobbed as he swallowed. Another adjusted his tie twice in the span of thirty seconds. Not a single cough, not a single shuffle of paper dared to interrupt.
Kindrake's gaze moved slowly across them. His eyes were not cruel, not kind—just empty, calculating.
"Profits," he began, voice calm, smooth, cutting through the silence like a scalpel, "are up seventeen percent this quarter."
No reaction. Only the faint hum of the holo-displays.
"Yet I see fear," Kindrake continued, tilting his head, the faintest arch of an eyebrow. "Why?"
A woman at the far end flinched. A man in the middle cleared his throat, his voice breaking as he tried to speak. "Because, sir… the competitors—"
"The competitors," Kindrake cut in, his lips curling into a smile so faint it felt more like mockery, "are irrelevant. What matters is that we remain ten steps ahead. As always."
The man dropped his gaze. No one else dared speak.
Kindrake leaned back in his chair, fingers drumming once against the armrest. Each tap echoed in the silence. He adjusted his tie with surgical precision, a small ritual of control. For a brief second, the glass wall reflected his image: sharp jaw, colder-than-steel eyes, a man designed not by chance but by inevitability.
And yet, the reflection held nothing in its gaze.
He rose.
The air seemed to tilt toward him as he stood, as if gravity itself deferred to his presence. He swept his eyes across the room one final time.
"Meeting adjourned."
The executives reacted instantly, chairs scraping softly against the polished floor. Bows, murmured acknowledgements, the shuffle of expensive shoes. They filed out with the reverence of priests leaving a temple. The door hissed shut behind them with a mechanical sigh.
Kindrake was alone.
Only the hum of dormant holograms remained, casting faint light over the empty chairs. He turned to the window, one hand slipping into his pocket, the other tracing along the glass wall as if to feel the pulse of the city beneath.
Cosmic State throbbed with light, with life. Billions of people moved below, cogs in the machine of his empire. Yet as he stared down, his chest was not filled with pride.
It was hollow.
His fingers curled into a fist against the glass.
"I built this world," he whispered, too soft for any ears but his own. "I bent men, markets, and machines to my will. And still…" His jaw tightened. "It feels like nothing."
Behind him, the last hologram blinked into standby. Darkness stretched across the boardroom, save for the restless glow of the city below.
The private elevator released him into silence.
Kindrake stepped out, his polished shoes clicking against the black marble floor of his penthouse—an entire floor carved from glass and steel, suspended above CosmicState like a crown. The walls stretched floor to ceiling, offering a panorama of neon veins and sky-rails below. Yet despite the city's restless pulse, the room felt hollow, as though the air itself had been drained of life.
He moved with deliberate precision, every gesture rehearsed, mechanical. The kind of man who had repeated the same rituals for years until they became reflex. He slid a hand beneath his silk tie, tugged it loose with a practiced flick. His jacket followed, slipping from his shoulders without resistance. He didn't even look as he draped it over the back of a leather chair.
The chair's surface groaned faintly under the weight. Smooth, expensive Italian leather—yet never once warmed by another body.
His sleeves rolled up to his forearms, exposing pale skin and the faint shadows of scars that should have told stories. But no one had ever been close enough to hear them.
The silence of the penthouse pressed in, heavier than any boardroom tension. No voices. No footsteps. Only the low thrum of the city beyond the glass and the occasional drip of rain tapping against the windows.
On a side counter, crystal glimmered faintly in the dim light. He reached for the wine decanter, its cool weight grounding in his palm. Tilting it, he filled a goblet, the liquid catching stray flecks of neon and blooming like blood under water.
He lifted the glass, his fingers tightening around the stem until his knuckles paled. Swirled it once, slowly, the wine spinning like a vortex that promised no answers. The taste on his tongue was sharp, bitter, metallic. Too perfect to be satisfying.
His shoulders lowered as he moved to the window, a quiet exhale betraying the exhaustion buried beneath his poise. He pressed his free hand against the glass wall, palm flattening against the cold surface. The pane trembled faintly with the rumble of sky-rails far above.
Raindrops streaked the window, turning the neon skyline into fractured rivers of color. He watched them crawl downward like tears he could never shed.
"Profits. Power. Control…" His voice barely disturbed the silence. The words fell flat, echoing back at him as though mocking.
His reflection stared back from the glass: eyes like hollow steel, jaw clenched, posture immaculate but devoid of warmth. He looked like a statue of himself—perfectly preserved, utterly lifeless.
He inhaled slowly, chest rising, then held the breath as if trying to trap the emptiness inside. When he finally exhaled, his grip on the wineglass tightened too much. A delicate crack whispered through the stem, spiderwebbing down the crystal.
Kindrake lowered the glass. The storm outside gave a distant growl, thunder rolling like a promise.
Alone, above a city he ruled, he felt smaller than ever.
The thunder moved closer.
Kindrake stood with one hand on the glass, the other lowering the cracked stem of his wine. The penthouse breathed its practiced quiet—the soft exhale of climate vents, the faraway thrum of sky-rails threading through Cosmic State. His watch pulsed once on his wrist: 11:20 PM.
The first warning was almost polite: a single, clipped chirp from the security grid. Then another. A thin red line traced itself along the base of the window like a vein awakening.
He didn't turn right away. He set the glass down on the counter, aligning it with the edge as if the order of small things could hold back whatever was coming. His shoulders squared. His palm left the window and in the same motion he flicked his wrist; a pale sigil in the air bloomed into a minimal HUD. PERIMETER BREACH — EASTERN PANE — LVL 2. The system waited for his command that never had to be spoken.
"Lockdown," he said, voice steady.
Magnetic bolts thunked home with a satisfying sequence. Lights dropped into a low, surgical blue. Shadows sharpened.
The third chirp became a siren.
A spiderweb of hairline fractures raced across the window, starting from a pinpoint no wider than a needle. Anti-ballistic polymer tried to flower and absorb the shock; something on the other side insisted. The pane quivered, then bulged.
Kindrake moved. Two steps to the wall panel, hand slamming to it, and a dark drawer hissed out, presenting a compact sidearm—a matte-black pistol with a soft cobalt line along the slide. He checked the charge by feel, the way a man checks his pulse. Full.
The glass bowed again, deeper this time, and then the world became sound: a single, deep, concussive pop that didn't belong to gunpowder, followed by the shriek of glass surrendering. The pane burst inward in a glittering storm. Cold air punched the room. Rain and neon tumbled in.
Three shadows rode the blast, armored in matte, faces unreadable behind wet visors. They were already moving, already splitting the angles of his space like mathematicians.
Kindrake fired twice—controlled, center mass. The cobalt line on the pistol spat light without thunder. The first intruder jerked; an armor plate seared and smoked but didn't fail. The second slid right, a ghost folding behind the dining table. The third came straight and low, a knife of a man cutting the distance with a baton humming blue at both ends.
Kindrake shifted his stance and let the baton flash past his ribs. He caught the attacker's wrist, twisted, felt tendons roll under his grip, and drove the heel of his hand into the man's visor. The visor starred. The baton clipped his hip with a bite of electricity, a pain that flared and snapped out, legs threatening to stutter. He rode the shock, turned with it, and launched the man into the edge of the island counter. Bone met stone; breath left a body in a hard whoof.
The second shadow rose from the table and fired. The shot wasn't a beam; it was a needle of white that punched through the leather chair and ate a black, smoking hole in the wall. Kindrake dropped behind the island, the marble's cold edge biting his forearms. Chips of stone pattered his cheek. He slid along the far side, popped up, sent two rounds over the countertop. One found a shoulder seam; the intruder staggered, corrected, kept firing.
The first shadow he'd thrown was back on his feet—good training, clean recovery. He had a short carbine now, materialized from somewhere in the armor's ribs. Kindrake's mind mapped the room in hard lines: seven meters to the bedroom hall, nine to the kitchen's hard corner, thirteen to the elevator—irrelevant. The wind clawed at the curtains, filling the room with the sea-rush of rain. Neon smeared across the floor like blood made of light.
He pivoted, fired. The man with the carbine dropped his muzzle and rolled—disciplined, efficient. Kindrake's next step slid on a film of water. He caught himself on the counter, pivoted off the torque, and in one stride closed to the second attacker. They collided—armor against suit. Kindrake drove his shoulder under the man's center, lifted, and dumped him into the dining table. The holo-strip shattered in a cascade of dead pixels. A gloved hand found Kindrake's throat; he broke the grip with a short chop and slammed the pistol sideways into the man's temple. Lights out.
Movement to his left. The first attacker again—relentless—carbine raised, angled to cut through both man and marble.
"Don't," a new voice said, flat in the comms of their helmets, but loud enough in the room to feel like a presence. It didn't come from any of the three.
Kindrake felt it before he saw it: the smallest hitch in balance in the way the first attacker's stance adjusted. Orders. Someone else in their ear. Someone inside his system.
The elevator dinged.
It shouldn't have dinged. He'd locked it.
The doors slid open anyway.
A fourth figure stepped out, unarmored, rain glittering on a dark coat. No helmet. No rush. He walked with the patience of a man who already knew how the next five minutes would look on paper.
Kindrake's left hand tightened on the counter's edge. His right kept the pistol level on the carbine.
"Stand down," the newcomer said into the room, almost bored. The carbine lowered by a fraction—enough for a window, not enough for a mistake.
"Chief access is keyed to my biometrics," Kindrake said. His own voice sounded alien, too calm for the speed of his pulse. "You opened my doors."
The newcomer smiled without showing teeth. "You gave me the key, sir."
A memory landed with precision: a promotion ceremony on this very floor, a rare handshake, an unrare warning. Loyalty bought at a price always came with receipts.
The man lifted a hand and touched the air. Holo-lines crawled out of nothing, security scripts unfolding like ribbons, every one of them stamped with Kindrake's authorization sigils. "Audit me later, if you like."
The first attacker's carbine rose the rest of the way. Kindrake didn't wait. He fired. The newcomer stepped aside, almost lazy, as if the bullet's trajectory had sent him an invitation ahead of time. The carbine barked. The round slammed the counter an inch from Kindrake's wrist. Stone spat. The second attacker was stirring on the table. The third—visor cracked—was ghosting in from the right, that humming baton ready to write pain again across Kindrake's nerves.
He could feel the fight narrowing, the math going bad. He didn't fear it. He studied it.
Two shots left. Then hands.
He moved. He feinted left, drew the baton man's strike, slid under it, and came up inside the arc, piston-fast, elbow to throat. The man gurgled, flailed; Kindrake stripped the baton and snapped it across the second attacker's wrist as he rose from the table. The baton sang, the wrist failed, the carbine clattered. The first attacker's muzzle was finding him again. Kindrake threw the baton—blue heat lancing across the room. It caught the carbine just enough. The shot went high, chewing a black scar into the ceiling.
The newcomer didn't smile this time. "Enough."
The first attacker planted his feet. The second, one-handed, dragged the carbine up with stubbornness that bordered on faith. The third was on his knees, coughing. Rain pushed into the room in sheets; the penthouse floor had become a mirror of water and city.
Kindrake's watch ticked once more. 11:22 PM.
He lifted the pistol to the newcomer's chest and saw it then—a small detail that should have been nothing: a pin at the lapel, matte and black, the kind of thing that would go unseen on a coat like that. It wasn't one of his. It wasn't anyone's he respected. The last time he'd seen that mark, it had been at a funeral he didn't attend.
"Shadow Council," he said, and the newcomer's eyes flashed, not with surprise but acknowledgment.
"Finally," the man said softly, "something you don't control."
The first attacker fired.
Impact is not a sound at first. It is heat, then pressure, then a roar that arrives late. The round punched Kindrake's chest high and left, a white hole of pain that bloomed and took his breath away. The pistol left his hand. The floor came up faster than it should have. The world lurched and went long and tunnel-thin.
The ceiling's black scar blurred into the smear of rain and neon. He tasted iron. He thought, absurdly, about the wine glass he'd aligned to the counter's edge. About how the smallest orders are the first to fail.
Boots approached, careful on the wet marble. The newcomer's coat hem kissed the floor beside him.
"Don't be dramatic," the man murmured. "It's only an ending."
Kindrake's mouth moved. No sound. His eyes found the window—the jagged mouth where glass had been. Beyond it, Cosmic State pulsed, indifferent.
His watch blinked 11:23 PM. The numbers doubled, swam, and folded into a darkness that came in from the edges, patient and complete. Somewhere in that dark, something colder than night and brighter than the city's veins tugged once at him, the way gravity tugs at a falling star.
He fell toward it.
And the world went out.