The contrast was a knife-edge.
In the upper-tier districts, the air was perfumed with expensive synthetics and the sky was a canvas of golden R-nex drones. Inside the Sovereign Sanctum, Malice sat in a chair made of reinforced white carbon. He wasn't wearing his cape. He was shirtless, his body a masterpiece of sculpted muscle and glowing white scars.
A technician in a hazmat suit stood trembling before him. "The... the server breach was deeper than we thought, sir. Vance didn't just take the North Sector files. He took the 'Black Ledger.' The list of every 'accidental' civilian casualty since you took the No. 1 spot."
Malice didn't move. He didn't even look at the man. He was staring at a holographic replay of Kai absorbing the solar energy in the foundry.
"Look at him," Malice whispered, a hint of genuine admiration in his voice. "He's not just a Null anymore. He's a sponge. He's learning how to hold the lightning."
"Sir, we should carpet-bomb Sector 9," the technician stammered. "Erase the problem."
Malice stood up, the floor beneath his feet cracking from the sheer density of his presence. "No. That's bad branding. People love a tragedy, but they hate a massacre." He turned, his eyes burning with a calm, terrifying light. "Schedule a 'Memorial Gala' for the fallen server guards. We'll announce that the terrorists have the 'Black Ledger'—but we'll tell the world it's a virus designed to shut down the city's power grid. We make the truth look like a weapon, and the boy holding it looks like a monster."
He smiled, a perfect, pearly-white mask of death. "I want the world to cheer when I finally put him in the ground."
Meanwhile, in the Deep Gut...
The air was thick with the smell of wet concrete and rebellion.
Kai stood on an overturned shipping container in a hidden underground hangar. Before him wasn't an army of knights, but a gathering of "Glitches." These were the kids R-nex had labeled "The Defectives."
There was Cinder, a boy whose skin was permanently charred because his fire Graft burned inward instead of out. There was Echo, a girl who had no voice of her own, only the ability to mimic the last sound she heard—usually the screams of the people R-nex had "retired."
And in the corner, shrouded in the shifting ink of her own power, was Vantablack. Mina stood beside Kai, her white Academy uniform now dyed a dark, tactical grey. She held her light-bow, but the arrows weren't bright gold anymore; they were a sharp, focused silver.
"Look at yourselves!" Kai's voice echoed through the hangar. "They told you that your Grafts were broken. They told you that because you couldn't be sold as a toy or a movie star, you were worthless. They hid you down here so the 'Perfect World' wouldn't have to see its own mistakes!"
He held up the flash drive. The red light of the device blinked like a heartbeat.
"This is the myth of the Hero," Kai roared. "It's built on our blood. Malice thinks he owns the light, but he forgot one thing: Light only exists because the Dark allows it!"
Vantablack stepped forward, the shadows at her feet rising like hungry cobras. She didn't speak, but her presence was a command. Cinder ignited his hands, the flames blue and agonizing. Echo let out a sound—the mechanical roar of an R-nex drone—but distorted it into a war cry.
"We aren't going to the Gala to be heroes," Kai said, his eyes locking with Mina's. "We're going there to be a Correction."
Silver-Tongue leaned against the wall, checking his watch. "The Aegis Gala is in forty-eight hours. The security will be God-tier. Malice will be at his peak. You're all going to die." He took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of amber smoke. "But you'll die as the first honest things this city has seen in a hundred years."
Kai looked at the "Army of Mistakes." They weren't shining. They weren't smiling. They were jagged, broken, and furious.
"Good," Kai whispered. "I've always liked the dark better anyway."
The chapter ends with a split screen: Malice standing in his golden palace, looking at his reflection in a mirror—and Kai standing in the mud of the slums, looking at his reflection in a puddle.
Two kings. Two truths. One world that was about to burn.