The abomination was dead.
I made sure of that.
W.I.S.D.O.M's voice hummed softly inside the suit as I approached the remains.
[THREAT NEUTRALIZED.]
[RESIDUAL ENERGY DETECTED.]
[RECOMMENDATION: SAMPLE ACQUISITION FOR ANALYSIS.]
"Agreed," I replied.
I knelt beside what was left of the creature—once human, once government ambition given flesh. Its energy signature was still unstable, rippling even in death. I extracted fragments carefully: tissue, crystallized bio-mark residue, a core shard pulsing faintly with stolen divinity.
This wasn't a weapon.
It was a warning.
Whatever they had tried to build… it wasn't finished.
And it never should have existed.
⸻
The drones never left.
From the moment the ground cracked—
From the moment Blake engaged—
From the moment I descended like judgment—
The whole country watched.
News feeds overlapped. Civilian footage. Live commentary dissolving into stunned silence as the flying figure tore through something the government couldn't contain.
"A man in a powered suit—identity unknown—"
"—this energy output exceeds all known Saint thresholds—"
"—the abomination appears to have emerged from deep underground—"
That part stuck.
"—sources confirm the emergence point was only blocks away from government headquarters—"
Suspicion spread faster than fear.
In living rooms across the city, people leaned closer to their screens.
Including my mother.
She watched quietly, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed on the figure hovering in the smoke. She didn't know it was me.
Only that someone had stepped in when the world almost broke.
She smiled, just a little.
"I hope whoever that is…" she murmured, "…returns home safe."
⸻
I didn't sleep.
I returned to the domain and stayed there—running diagnostics, sealing new parameters, locking away what I'd taken. W.I.S.D.O.M remained active, adjusting, learning.
Waiting.
The night stretched on.
Then—
The domain opened again.
I didn't turn.
I didn't need to.
The space recognized her the instant she crossed the threshold. The air shifted—truth aligning, reality settling into a shape it preferred.
Eli's presence followed, cautious, protective.
"Neo," Lina said softly.
The domain hummed—low, steady, alive.
I didn't turn when the gate opened.
I didn't need to.
Her presence aligned with the lattice the moment she crossed the threshold, like a missing constant snapping back into place. Eli followed a half-step behind her, careful, respectful. The domain accepted him as a guest.
Lina didn't wait.
"So that's it?" she said. "You disappear. No word. No warning. After everything we said to each other."
I exhaled slowly.
"I thought it would be better," I said. "You were upset. I didn't want to make it worse."
She laughed once—sharp, brittle. "By leaving?"
I finally turned.
She was trying to look angry. She failed. What I saw instead was worry stretched thin, sleeplessness, fear she hadn't let herself name yet.
"You don't get to decide that for me," she said. "You don't get to vanish and call it protection."
"I wasn't running," I replied. "I was buying time. I was investigating."
"For who?" she asked. "You? Or me?"
That landed.
I didn't answer immediately. The domain pulsed once, softly, as if urging patience.
"I didn't trust myself in that moment," I said at last. "And I won't lie to you to make it easier."
Her expression faltered—not hurt, not angry.
Understanding.
She looked away first. "You're really bad at this," she muttered.
"I know."
Eli cleared his throat gently. "For what it's worth," he said, "he scared half the government into silence tonight. That's… kind of his version of caring."
Lina shot him a look.
Eli raised his hands. "Just saying."
"Please, Neo… I want to decide with you this time," she said, stepping closer. "I don't want to be kept in the dark anymore—especially when I'm involved. I deserve the right to choose for myself."
I let out a quiet sigh, a faint smile tugging at my lips. She was right. She was a Saint. I couldn't shield her from everything forever.
"You're right, Lina," I said, rising to my feet and closing the distance between us. "From now on, we do this together. I'm not used to it—but I'll try."
Then I glanced at Eli. "All of us. Just… be patient with me. I've spent a long time working alone."
Eli cleared his throat. "Wow. Did you hear that?" he said, looking around dramatically. "Neo just agreed to teamwork. I should write down the date—this might be a historic moment."
Lina giggled, for the first time in a while, she felt relaxed again.
⸻
Cleanup began by morning.
Drones sweeping debris. Emergency crews sealing fractures in streets that hadn't existed the day before. Entire blocks cordoned off.
And then the press conferences started.
I watched from a filtered feed, arms crossed, jaw locked.
Director Hale. Elias Harrow. Carefully chosen words. Calibrated expressions.
They called it an incident.
They called the abomination a foreign bio-weapon.
They called the man in the suit a government-aligned responder.
Lies stacked neatly on top of half-truths.
The crowd didn't buy it.
You could hear it—in the questions they refused to ask directly. In the silence between answers. In the way people leaned forward, not reassured, just alert.
So the government pivoted.
They admitted Saints were awakening again.
Not just Justice.
Here.
They said the man in the suit was one of them.
A Saint.
Working with the government.
That part made the crowd exhale.
Relief rippled through fear. If they were aligned, then maybe the world wasn't ending. Maybe control still existed.
They never explained the abomination properly.
They never explained why it came from underground—blocks from their own headquarters.
They never explained the screams on the leaked footage.
I shut the feed off hard.
Alchemy light flared across the walls in response.
"They're using you," Lina said quietly.
"Unfortunately yes— but they don't get to," I replied.
Eli stepped closer. "Neo. Not right now."
"I know," I said. "That's why they're still breathing."
I felt it then—the edge of something sharp and patient settling into place inside me. Not rage. Direction.
"I had plans for them," I said. "They won't like them."
Lina's voice cut through it. "You don't have to do this alone."
I looked at her.
At Eli.
At the domain that reflected back the truth I'd been avoiding.
"I'm not," I said. "But I won't move yet."
Justice came back into my thoughts uninvited.
Aurelian.
His calm. His certainty. His waiting.
"For now," I continued, "I disappear. I lay low. I let them think they've contained the narrative."
Eli frowned. "And then?"
"And then," I said softly, "I deal with the Saint of Justice."
The domain dimmed, like a held breath.
Because soon, the fracture wouldn't be subtle anymore.
And when it finally went public—
They wouldn't need to say my name.
Everyone would know.
——
A week passed.
Not quietly—but steadily.
Like the world was holding its breath instead of screaming.
Lina was the first proof that things had changed.
She stood in the alchemy domain now without hesitation, barefoot on sigils that once made her flinch. Her posture was different—lighter. The constant tension she used to carry in her shoulders was gone, replaced by something calm… grounded.
Happy.
Truth no longer lashed out of her like a reflex.
She was learning to listen to it instead.
I watched as she focused, eyes half-lidded, palm hovering over a lattice of floating symbols. The domain responded instantly—layers of false data peeling away, leaving only what was. Not violently. Not painfully.
Clean.
Controlled.
"That one's wrong," she said, pointing to a projection without opening her eyes.
W.I.S.D.O.M adjusted the stream.
[CORRECTION ACCEPTED.]
She smiled.
That smile still caught me off guard.
A week ago, Truth had hurt people by accident.
Now it obeyed her restraint.
She wasn't just awakening.
She was mastering it.
And for the first time since all this started… she looked genuinely relaxed. Like the world finally made sense to her instead of constantly lying.
Eli noticed it too.
He leaned against one of the domain's pillars, arms crossed, watching her with a faint smile that didn't quite hide the exhaustion underneath.
He hadn't gone back.
After the abomination incident—after the lies, the press conferences, the buried truths—he walked away from the Axis government and didn't look back.
No resignation speech.
No dramatic confrontation.
He just… chose.
"I'm done pretending they won't cross lines," he'd told me three days ago. "They already did. And they'll do it again."
So now he stood here instead.
With me.
With Lina.
Fully allied. No conditions. No uniforms. No chains disguised as duty.
For the first time since we were kids, Eli looked… free.
Which left me with the one thing I couldn't ignore anymore.
The sample.
I stood at the central worktable of the domain, a sealed containment field humming softly in the air. Inside it floated fragments taken from the abomination—blackened tissue threaded with unstable energy, still trying to exist despite being dead.
It was wrong.
Not corrupted.
Manufactured.
W.I.S.D.O.M's interface hovered beside it, layers of analysis scrolling faster than any human could follow.
[SAMPLE INTEGRITY STABLE.]
[COMPOSITE SIGNATURE DETECTED.]
[WARNING: STRUCTURE VIOLATES NATURAL SAINT BIO-PATTERNS.]
"Run it again," I said.
[REPROCESSING.]
The results didn't change.
Every Saint frequency was there. Except mine.
Truth.
Justice.
Courage.
Will.
Mercy.
All of them.
Spliced. Forced.
Bound together without harmony—like organs stitched into the wrong body and told to live anyway.
"They tried to build a god," Eli said quietly.
"No," I replied. "They tried to build a weapon."
[CONCLUSION REFINED,] W.I.S.D.O.M added.
[ENTITY WAS NOT DESIGNED TO ENDURE.]
[IT WAS DESIGNED TO BE POINTED.]
My jaw tightened.
They hadn't just crossed a line.
They'd erased it.
Lina stepped closer, her expression sobering as Truth brushed the containment field. She didn't touch it—she didn't need to.
"…It was screaming," she said softly. "The whole time."
I closed my eyes for half a second.
Then opened them.
"A week," I said. "That's all it took for them to prove they can't be trusted."
Eli nodded. "So what now?"
I looked at the sample. At the data. At the future trying very hard to pretend it wasn't already collapsing.
"Now," I said, "we make sure they never get the chance to do this again."
W.I.S.D.O.M pulsed faintly, almost like approval.
[DIRECTIVE ACKNOWLEDGED.]
[SAINT OF WISDOM—LONG-TERM STRATEGY RECOMMENDED.]
I exhaled slowly.
Justice thought I was cooling off.
The government thought I was laying low.
The truth was much simpler.
I was thinking.
And when I was done—
The world was going to change whether it was ready or not.
⸻
Darkshore Union
The air above Darkshore was calm—too calm for a place that housed Saints.
Seraphine stood at the edge of the platform, cloak drawn tight, gaze fixed on the horizon that led toward the Axis State. There was no hesitation in her posture. No doubt. Only resolve.
Behind her, Aurelian watched in silence.
"So," he finally said, voice measured, careful. "You've decided."
She turned, smiling softly—the same gentle smile that had disarmed kings and broken battlefields in another life.
"I have."
Aurelian exhaled. "Neo is… volatile right now. You know that. He's angry, even if he doesn't show it."
"I know," Seraphine replied. "That's why I'm going."
He studied her for a long moment, then nodded once. "I won't stop you. I never could."
A pause. "But be careful. He's not the same Saint you remember."
Her smile didn't fade. "Neither am I."
As she stepped past him, Aurelian added quietly, "For what it's worth… I expect Neo to come here soon. After what happened. This may be unnecessary."
She stopped at the threshold, just for a heartbeat.
"Maybe," she said. "But this isn't about timing."
Then she was gone—already on her way to the Axis State, already committed.
Aurelian remained where he was long after she left, unease settling in his chest.
Mercy has chosen, he thought.
Now the board will move again.