Dustfall didn't sleep.
It waited.
The gangs didn't like the rules.
They didn't like fear.
They didn't like a boy who killed kings with shadows.
So they planned.
The uprising started at noon.
Explosions hit the water tanks first.
Crystal pipes shattered.
People screamed.
Men with red scarves poured into the streets, firing into the air.
"DUSTFALL IS OURS!"
"THE KINGS ARE LIES!"
Juvy ran toward the noise.
She raised her hands.
Crystal walls rose around fleeing civilians.
"GET INSIDE! NOW!"
A gang boy tripped in front of her bleeding, shaking, maybe sixteen.
"They'll kill me," he said.
She grabbed him.
"They won't."
She pulled him behind the wall.
Maxruell walked into the open street.
Gunfire tore at his coat.
Bullets disappeared into blackness.
A gang leader stood on a truck with a flamethrower.
"You ain't a god!" he shouted.
"You're just another freak!"
Maxruell lifted his hand.
The man's shadow climbed his body and snapped his neck.
The crowd froze.
"Anyone else?" Maxruell asked.
A sniper fired.
The shadow turned and crushed the rooftop.
The sniper fell.
Dead.
Juvy saw it from across the square.
"MAX, STOP!"
He didn't hear her.
Or didn't care.
Cain's agent chose that moment.
A woman in gray robes stepped into the smoke.
Her face was carved with thin scars that glowed red.
She whispered into the ears of the gangs.
"He will kill your children."
"She will betray you."
Chaos spread like fire.
The gangs charged again.
Maxruell's darkness exploded outward.
Ten men were lifted into the air by their own shadows.
Their screams filled the square.
Juvy ran forward.
"PUT THEM DOWN!"
"They started this!"
"They're kids!"
"They're threats!"
She stepped between him and the hanging bodies.
Crystal formed around her feet like roots.
"You kill them, you become her."
That word hit.
He hesitated.
The shadows trembled.
Then—
A gang boy broke free and stabbed a refugee woman in the back.
She fell screaming.
Maxruell's eyes went black.
The hanging men snapped in half.
Blood rained.
Silence followed.
The uprising ended in twenty minutes.
Thirty dead.
Most of them gangs.
Some of them too young.
The city watched from windows and rooftops.
They didn't cheer.
They bowed.
Juvy knelt beside the stabbed woman.
She healed her with trembling hands.
Then she stood and faced her brother.
"You executed them."
"They would've killed more."
"You don't know that!"
"I didn't want to find out."
She slapped him.
Harder than before.
The city gasped.
"You don't get to decide who lives," she said.
His jaw tightened.
"Then who does?"
She had no answer.
That night, the gangs were gone.
Posters appeared on walls:
THE DUST KING RULES.
OBEY OR DIE.
Juvy tore them down until her hands bled.
Maxruell stood on the roof and watched the city kneel.
The voice whispered.
You chose strength.
Far away, Mother Cain smiled.
"They've tasted separation," she said.
"Now let them bleed for it."