The ruby doesn’t just glow. It screams.I’m still on one knee, my right arm a dead weight of tingling static. The mirror shows a woman in a torn silk robe, hands clamped over a chest that feels like it’s containing a live wire.The stone is the only thing moving—pulsing with a deep, violent crimson. It’s a bio-rhythmic alarm, an animal frequency that shears straight through my Obsidian Well training.Damian is watching. Fifty feet away, behind the reinforced glass of his office, he’s staring at a screen that tells him exactly how much I’m lying.I don’t look at the pinhole camera embedded in the molding. Instead, I collapse forward. My forehead hits the carpet with a dull thud.I force my lungs to hitch, making the breath ragged, desperate. He needs to see a technical malfunction, not a tactical mutiny."Damian," I rasp, loud enough for the ambient mics to pick up the tremor."The... the locket. It’s burning me."It’s a half-truth. The micro-needle at the base of my skull hums with th
Last Updated : 2026-05-17 Read more