LOGINThe blast threw Aria to the ground. Dust and fire filled the air, burning her lungs as she coughed and tried to crawl towards Damian’s voice.“Aria—stay low!”Gunfire cracked through the smoke. Blue energy bolts lit the darkness, slicing through metal and stone. Council soldiers poured in — armored, silent, their visors pulsing with red light.Damian grabbed her arm, hauling her behind an overturned table. “They tracked the signature. Someone must’ve leaked your DNA trace.”“My what?” She rasped.Before he could answer, a plasma shot grazed his shoulder. He hissed in pain, firing back with brutal precision.Adrenaline burned through her veins, but underneath it — something else pulsed. A low, humming vibration, deep in her bones. The sound wasn’t from outside. It was inside her.Her heartbeat quickened. The air around her seemed to thrum, bending with invisible static.Damian noticed first. “Aria… what’s happening to you?”“I— I don’t know,” she gasped.A soldier fired — the beam aime
The safehouse looked nothing like Aria expected.It wasn’t a cabin or a bunker; it was steel and glass, built into the roots of the mountain, humming faintly with power. Every surface gleamed, every wall was lined with weapons and scanners. The air smelled of ozone and pine.Damian keyed in a code on a transparent console, and the heavy doors slid shut behind them. “We’re safe here,” he said, voice low, but his eyes never stopped scanning the room.Aria’s pulse still thundered from the flight through the forest. Her clothes were torn, her hair clung to her damp skin, and her heart wouldn’t stop racing. “Safe,” she repeated softly. “You call this safe when there are still trackers on our scent?”He turned to her then—slowly—and for a moment she forgot how to breathe. His shirt was ripped across the shoulder, blood dried along the collar. A streak of dirt ran down his jaw. He looked dangerous, tired… and devastatingly human.“You shouldn’t have fought them,” she said, stepping closer be
The city had fallen away into darkness.Wind tore at my hair as the hoverbike sliced through the night, leaving streaks of blue vapor in its wake. Below us, the lights of the lower sectors flickered — a dying pulse of civilization. By the time Damian eased the throttle down and guided us beneath a collapsing bridge, my entire body was trembling — not just from cold, but from the adrenaline that hadn’t burned out yet.The bike landed with a low hum on a circular platform. A hatch opened in the concrete, and we sank into shadow.It wasn’t until the metal doors sealed shut above us that I realized I’d been clutching Damian’s jacket so tightly that my knuckles hurt.“Let go,” he murmured, not unkindly.I did — reluctantly.The space we entered wasn’t like anything I’d expected from a man like him. No gilded furniture, no sterile corporate walls. The hideout pulsed faintly with light — invisible glyphs running across smooth black surfaces, computers whispering quietly to themselves. It sme
Wind screamed against Aria’s ears as the hoverbike tore through the night. The forest was a blur of black and silver—branches whipping past, rain slicing through the cold air like glass shards. Damian’s body pressed against her back, the heat of him cutting through the chill. She could barely breathe, clutching the handlebars as lightning cracked above.“Hold on,” Damian shouted over the roar. His voice was low, controlled, a growl that threaded through the chaos. “They’re right behind us!”Aria risked a glance over her shoulder. Two Gamma patrol bikes flashed in the distance, their engines snarling like predators closing in. Every pulse of light revealed their armor, their weapons drawn.Her heart slammed in her chest. They’ll shoot us down. We’ll die before we reach the border.Damian’s hand reached forward, steadying her trembling grip. “Trust me.” His tone wasn’t a plea—it was a command. The kind that made her body react before her mind could catch up.He leaned into the wind, ang
The forest burned silver.Not fire—energy. It rippled through the mist like waves under glass, humming low and deep, a sound that crawled beneath my skin.Damian stood in front of me, every muscle coiled tight, blade glinting in his hand. The masked enforcer didn’t move, but power radiated from him like heat off stone.“Last warning,” the enforcer said. “Surrender the girl.”Girl. Like I was a thing. A prize.Something inside me snapped.Damian shifted, ready to strike, but I could already feel it rising—the strange pulse that had saved us before. It started in my chest this time, a burning throb that spread to my fingertips.The enforcer raised his hand, and the air bent around it. Bolts of condensed light formed—three of them—aimed straight at us.“Aria!” Damian’s voice came sharp. “Don’t—”Too late. The world slowed again.The bolts floated toward us in impossible silence, silver threads tracing their paths. I saw them, understood them—their rhythm, their structure, the way energy
Smoke still curled from the wreckage behind us, a black ribbon twisting into the moonlight. I didn’t remember running—only Damian’s hand clamped around mine and the blur of trees whipping past.My mother’s screams echoed in my skull, though the forest was silent now. The silence hurt worse.“Keep moving,” Damian said. His voice was low, steady—too steady. “They’ll track the flare from miles.”“My mother—” The words broke apart in my throat. “I need to go back.”He didn’t answer. He just pulled me faster, until my lungs burned and my legs shook. Branches clawed my skin; the scent of iron and ash filled my nose.Inside, I was screaming. She’s gone. They took her. You let them.“Let me go!” I tore at his grip. “You can’t just drag me away like—”His eyes cut toward me, glowing the way storms look before lightning hits. “If I let go, they’ll cage you in silver within the hour.”I wanted to hit him. I wanted to believe him. Both hurt too much.We reached a ridge where the ground fell away







