“Too many children have suffered. Too many families have been broken. Too many girls have grown up alone. Or not at all. I won’t let them ruin anyone else.” ― K.A. Wiggins (Blind the Eyes)

  * * * *

  The sun hung overhead like a pale, watchful eye—filtered and hazy through the thick smog that had become an almost permanent fixture over Zhane City since the hunters declared martial law.

  Though it was midday, the streets wore a pallor as though in mourning, and the citizens moved through Central Plaza as ghosts might—hunched shoulders, averted gazes, and soft shuffles of shoes on worn concrete.

  People no longer greeted each other with nods or even hushed pleasantries; they merely passed one another like driftwood in a dark tide, each mind trained to survive the day without drawing attention to themselves.

  Drawing attention meant consequences. And in Eldario, consequences were final.

  The hunters were always arrogant and hard handed in the past, but these days, it was like the declaring of martial law is giving them carte blanche to treat any citizen how they like, and there is nothing they can do to protest. Those that does always disappeared a few days later, and no one needs to ask to know what happened to them.

  There have been whispers and rumours for nearly a year now—since the entire madness had begun, about people being dragged away to one of the hunters’ infamous facilities and were never seen again. Even the Gifted were disappearing in droves. And the common citizens in Zhane City knew enough that not all of them were ‘apprehended’ by the hunters.

  Near the fountain at the heart of the plaza, a patrol squad of five hunters stood by the perimeter, dressed in their dark uniforms trimmed with silver and blood-red accents. On their breastplates, the sigil of Nicolosi’s authority gleamed like a threat: an eye shrouded in flames—an emblem that had come to mean one thing in Eldario.

  Submission or death.

  They stood relaxed, laughing amongst themselves, their voices loud in a plaza otherwise cloaked in fearful silence. One of them, a broad-shouldered man with his helmet tucked under his arm, casually struck a match against the concrete bench beside him and lit a cigarette, drawing long, leisurely puffs as if the very air belonged to them. Another polished the barrel of his pulse rifle, more for show than necessity.

  Every passerby gave them a wide berth. Mothers clutched their children tightly. Elderly men bent their heads and walked faster, hands trembling around the handles of their canes. No one made eye contact. No one dared.

  And yet, for all the tension that danced like static in the air, the day proceeded as it always had: bleak, heavy, and full of unspoken dread.

  Until the screen above the plaza, mounted high above the buildings on the far eastern end, flickered.

  It began subtly. A quiet distortion in the news feed. The usual broadcast, a carefully curated loop of state-approved headlines, glitched for less than a heartbeat. The anchorwoman’s mouth moved, but no sound came. Then the screen stuttered again, and this time the entire feed went black.

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  A murmur rippled through the crowd. Heads lifted. First a few, then more.

  “What the hell?” A man muttered, his voice uncertain. “Did they lose signal?”

  “Probably just a system fault.” Another chimed in, though he glanced nervously toward the hunters. “Don’t stare. Just keep moving.”

  But no one moved.

  The black screen held for several long seconds. And then, without warning, a new image emerged. Grainy at first, but stabilising within seconds.

  The scene was instantly recognisable to anyone who had once trusted the world they lived in.

  ESA Headquarters.

  Before its fall.

  It was clearly recorded by a camcorder.

  The footage showed the front gates of the ESA compound as they began to shudder. Metal denting inward. Sparks flying. Then, a detonation—concise and controlled, blew the gates inward, with a rocket launcher taking out the guard outpost. Hunters flooded through the breach, a tidal wave of black and crimson, all of them armed to the teeth.

  A collective gasp rolled through the plaza.

  More citizens stopped. More heads turned.

  Phones buzzed in people’s pockets as they vibrated to life. Screens switched on of their own accord—some on shop windows, others on handhelds. Even the vending machine screens near the bench flickered and began streaming the same footage.

  Across the country, this same thing was happening. From Zalfari to Kald, from the underground neighbourhoods of Kessim to the sky towers of Meridian.

  The truth was no longer in hiding.

  In the footage, the camera switched to an internal hallway feed. The corridors of ESA Headquarters were aflame—agents yelling, and scrambling for weapons. Doors burst open. More hunters flooded in, gunning them down with precision and impunity. Men and women in ESA uniforms, some barely out of training, were executed on sight.

  The crowd began to murmur louder now, the fear in their eyes twisting into something hotter. Something dangerous.

  A mother near the fountain clutched her son closer and turned his eyes away from the screen, but not fast enough. The boy had seen.

  Then came the final hallway.

  The camera cut to an office where Tiara Suzanne Michabelle, the ESA Director, was facing four hunters fearlessly. And standing amongst those hunters was a man most citizens had only ever seen in propaganda footage or the rare state address.

  Albert Nicolosi.

  He was calm. Composed. Unarmed, but surrounded by hunters on either side, with bandages visible around his arms and torso, and using a walking stick.

  The citizens watched with wide eyes as the conversation between Tiara and Nicolosi played out—the last moments of her life, before the ESA director then pressed the barrel of her gun against her temple and took her own life, refusing to give Nicolosi the satisfaction of taking her life.

  And then the video cut out. A still silence followed.

  It lasted less than five seconds.

  “You…” A voice snapped, hoarse with rage. An older man with a cane pointed directly at the nearest hunter. “You bastards. You killed her. You slaughtered all of them!”

  “Calm down!” The hunter with the cigarette said quickly, throwing it to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel. “That’s fake. Do you hear me? That’s not real. That’s—”

  “Fake?!” The old man roared. “You call that fake?! We saw Nicolosi. We saw her bleed!”

  All around the plaza, people were yelling now.

  “You’ve lied to us for months!”

  “You said it was Aegis!”

  “The Gifted weren’t even there!”

  “You murderers!”

  The hunters stepped back into a defensive formation, their hands twitching toward their weapons. But they hesitated.

  Because this wasn’t a lone outburst. This was a crowd. And for the first time in over a year, they were angry.

  Really angry.

  The mask of control the hunters wore—the authority they wrapped around themselves like armour, was cracking.

  “Listen!” One of them shouted, his voice wavering. “This is an Aegis trick! They’re trying to manipulate your minds! They’re terrorists—!”

  “You’re the damn terrorists!” Someone yelled.

  The old man raised his cane and advanced, jabbing it at the hunter’s chest. “You butchered the only people who ever stood between us and the darkness! And you expect us to believe you’re the saviours?!”

  Another citizen threw a rock. It bounced harmlessly off a hunter’s helmet but the message was clear.

  The crowd surged.

  Anger was a living thing now, electric and raw, fed by fear and betrayal. They had been lied to. Manipulated. And for what? A tyrant’s vision of purity? A campaign of slaughter against their neighbours, their friends, and even their children, simply because of a Gift they never chose?

  The tide was turning.

  No one noticed the young man in the oversized black jacket who stood by the alley at the plaza’s edge, his eyes glinting green and gold beneath the shadow of his hood.

  Ethan Simmons watched with quiet satisfaction, his expression unreadable but his heart thrumming with the rhythm of righteous fury.

  In his gloved hand, his burner device hummed softly—the signal had gone through. The coded script had activated every screen in Eldario’s grid. The truth was no longer hidden behind corrupted headlines and redacted reports.

  The curtain had been ripped away.

  He turned on his heel and melted into the crowd, slipping down the alley like a shadow with purpose. He didn’t need to stay to witness what would come next.

  The city would burn soon enough. But this time, it wouldn’t be the Gifted who paid the price.

  Phase One: Cleared.