Vedhyra was a city without height flat, circular, and suspended in the sky like a disc of iron crowned in glass. It stretched nearly ten kilometers from edge to center, its outer rings teeming with housing blocks and crowded markets, while the geometric heart rose into the Dominion Palace a fortress of steel and arrogance.
Streets ran open in all directions, and from above, there was no hiding. The sky had always watched Vedhyra. And now, for the first time, Vedhyra was watching back.
In the aftermath of the blackout, the Dominion did not regroup. It retaliated. With surveillance crippled and command chains flickering in the dark, the Palace's response was desperate and brutal.
Plasma cannons roared to life atop the central towers, swiveling toward any movement detected on the city's outer rings. Rebels. Civilians. Anyone caught in the crosshairs. The first barrage landed just past dawn.
A pulse of burning orange tore across the smog choked sky before slamming into a housing complex along the eastern sector.
The explosion lit up the market stalls and makeshift homes in a flash of fire and stone. Shockwaves cracked pavement, and screams split the smoke. By the time the second shot followed, people were already running. By the third, it was chaos.
Shivam was already in motion. He and his team had been deployed to the outer east, coordinating safe passage for incoming rebel units and displaced families. When the cannon fire began, there was no time to strategize. Only to act. He sprinted toward the source of the scream that pierced through the rumble, his boots thundering over fractured concrete. The glow beneath his skin had already begun to rise, flickering like dawn behind his ribs.
Aman reached the collapse site first. He threw himself beneath a half-fallen scaffold, raising his arm just in time for the shimmer of a domed barrier to form around They moved like they belonged here trapped group. Metal and fire ricocheted off the curve of his shield with a thunderous clang. He grits his teeth and pushed upward, forcing space for the civilians to crawl free. "Move!" he barked, his voice steady even as smoke billowed through the breach.
Across the plaza, Aanchal blinked between broken support beams, her body flickering like a phantom as she dodged flaming debris. Her precognition flared glimpses of collapse a second before it came. She scooped a child into her arms and dove beneath a cracked awning, shielding him just as the ceiling above gave way. "Three seconds late and we'd be ash," she muttered, breathless, but alive.
Naina stood at the center of a rooftop, her eyes shining with the silver gleam of Sight. She tracked movement through the haze mapping survivors, spotting choke points, finding the cleanest routes. Her voice rang through the comms, calm and sharp. "Western route is still viable. Shielded on both sides. Evacuation point is behind the old maglift station. Move now."
Dikshant was already there. His clones sprinted past him, identical echoes carrying wounded rebels and civilians alike through the smoke. He hurled one of his charged knives into a falling support column; the blade exploded mid air, redirecting the collapse away from a fleeing group. "Keep going!" he shouted. "I've got you covered." One clone absorbed a falling beam, vanishing in a burst of ash and light.
The fourth blast came screaming across the open boulevard. Its path was unmistakable aimed directly at a crowd of civilians corralled near a ruined vendor line, with nowhere to run. And in the instant before impact, Shivam arrived.
He surged forward, his body a blur of gold and momentum. His aura flared to life pure force, coiled and radiant wrapping around him like the core of a collapsing star. He leapt into the path of the cannon's fury, hands raised, energy roaring from his palms. The blast hit, and the world seemed to pause. Light engulfed him. Heat split the air.
When the smoke cleared, the people were still standing.
Shivam knelt at the center of a scorched crater, his arms lowered, his breathing heavy but controlled. The families behind him were untouched. Children stared in silent awe. Old workers dropped their tools. A young girl stepped forward and whispered, "It's really him…"
Around her, others gathered. Eyes widened. Some gasped. A few fell to their knees not in worship, but in disbelief. The myth wasn't a whisper anymore. He was here. The Spark had stepped out of the shadows and into the fire. And he had caught it with his own hands.
They didn't cheer. Not yet. But they followed.
Not because they were told to. Because they had seen it. The Spark was real. And for the first time in their lives, the Dominion's fire hadn't meant death. It meant resistance.
The air was still vibrating from the last blast when Vidhart's voice crackled through the rebel comm line. "They're not targeting positions anymore. They're firing on movement. Civilian zones. This isn't defense it's a purge."
Shivam stood beneath the scorched scaffold, scanning the skyline. Cannon turrets shimmered against the pale sky above the palace spires, adjusting with the whine of precision hydraulics. There was no pattern. No strategy. Just raw suppression. The Dominion had decided that if they couldn't see clearly, they'd burn everything in the fog.
Across the district, rebel units were rerouting survivors through shadowed corridors and under market tunnels, hastily laying down shields, redirecting supplies, and dragging the injured into safe zones. The civilians weren't running anymore. They were following. Watching. Whispering. The silence had broken.
Naina regrouped with Shivam and Aman at the base of a half collapsed tower; her voice low. "I mapped a dozen streets ahead. Five are rigged with blast trip lines. The Dominion's turning the outer city into a trap. It's not about stopping us. It's about stalling long enough to isolate the palace."
"They're drawing a circle," Aman said, wiping ash from his brow. "Cut the edges. Hold the middle. Let the rest rot."
"Then we break the ring," Shivam replied.
They moved again, fast and quiet, cutting across smoke filled alleys and torn rail lines toward the southern sector. That's where Aanchal and Dikshant had gone, following a fragment of intercepted transmission about a downed relay node. The rumor was thin, but something had flickered a pattern of signals echoing like static across rebel bands. It wasn't orders. It was language. Civilian chatter. Something local.
When Shivam's team arrived at the edge of the district, they found Aanchal crouched behind a toppled cargo hauler, sword drawn but still. Her eyes were distant, scanning the future in short flashes.
"Movement?" Shivam asked.
"Only fear," she said. "No soldiers here. Just people hiding in the ruins."
Dikshant stepped out from behind the wreckage. His clothes were covered in dust, one clone still pacing a nearby rooftop. "There's a kid. Probably nine. Hiding with what's left of a family. Said he saw something fall from the sky last night. Said it looked like lightning, but it walked."
A beat passed between them, heavy but quiet. They didn't say it aloud. They didn't need to. The people were talking. The whispers were no longer coded rebel transmissions or encrypted memes passed through resistance networks. The city itself had started to speak.
They moved into the ruins. A market square once lined with bright awnings and scaffolded balconies had been reduced to a skeleton of beams and broken tiles. Between the rubble, they found more families. Dirty, tired, wide eyed. They didn't flee. They didn't shout. They just watched.
One boy stepped forward. His hand trembled as he pointed at Aanchal. "I saw you," he whispered. "You blinked through the wall."
Aanchal didn't smile. She only knelt to his level and nodded once. "And I'm going to blink through the next wall too."
In the distance, the final turret on the western ridge fired again, but it sounded smaller this time further away. Vidhart's voice returned over comms. "Western plaza is clear. We're redirecting troops to reinforce Sector Twelve. Robin and Rathod are holding Mayapuri's air ring. The civilians are walking with us now."
Shivam glanced skyward as a trail of smoke twisted into the clouds. "They're moving toward the palace whether we lead them or not."
Naina adjusted the weight of her bow across her back. "Then we better be there when they arrive." Aanchal's gaze turned east. "I found something behind the relay. It's not a tower it's a control post. Lightly guarded, but it's still live."
Dikshant tossed a small Dominion signal knife into Shivam's hand. "Someone was here before us. Recently. Tracks are fresh. Same gear as we saw on that day near Samaypur mine."
Shivam turned the knife over in his hand. Its etching glinted faintly in the light. He knew that design. So did Aanchal.
"I think we're not the only ones hunting the palace," she said. Shivam met her eyes, then turned toward the alley's end. "Let's find out who got here first."
The alleyways near the old water management tier had long been abandoned, their lower vaults reclaimed by rust and moss, lost beneath Vedhyra's daily motion. But in one such tunnel, beneath a broken grate marked in faded Dominion script, flickering lights danced against the damp stone. Silent figures moved through the shadows, each one draped in gray civilian wraps, but their eyes alert, sharp, cold betrayed their training.
At the heart of them stood Lavin.
He no longer wore command colors. The ornate armor, the gleaming insignia all gone. In its place was a matte black coat cinched at the waist, one glove missing, the veins of his gauntlet humming quietly like restrained thunder. His face was clean, unreadable. Every move he made was deliberate. Efficient. Focused.
He stood before a portable Dominion holostage, the image of the capital's outer rim flickering midair. Red and blue markers indicated rebel positions. Yellow clusters marked confirmed civilian gatherings. His gaze moved slowly across the map, then stopped at the latest mark Sector Twelve. Shivam's team had just entered that zone.
"Sir," one of the embedded operatives spoke, her voice crisp through a half mask. "The Spark is real. Confirmed public appearance. He diverted a direct cannon shot. The people saw it."
Lavin didn't look away from the projection. "Of course they did."
Another voice chimed in, quieter. "They're moving toward the palace. Rallying. Even civilians are starting to follow their path."
"They'll walk straight into a slaughter," the first operative said.
Lavin finally turned. "Not yet. Not until we guide them there."
He waved his hand through the holomap, distorting the image. A new projection layered over it an access corridor from the edge of the civilian ring, leading to a maintenance route beneath the palace. It had long since been decommissioned, buried under the city's real time transit updates. But Lavin's data showed something else.
"I've started feeding misinformation into rebel comm lines," he said. "Encrypted, coded like one of Pawan and Sumit's ghost loops. They'll think they've intercepted a hidden Dominion asset Adhivita's location. That corridor will look like a path to her."
He turned back to the group, and for the first time, there was something almost unreadable behind his eyes. Not doubt. Not fear. Something colder.
"This war can't be won in blood," he said. "We tried. We failed. What matters now is belief. And if they believe in him, we have to remind them why they used to believe in us."
The others didn't respond. They knew what he meant. He wasn't preparing a strike. He was preparing a humiliation.
Lavin walked alone to the far end of the chamber, where a half cracked screen flickered with archived footage. Images of the Samaypur mines. Shivam, blurred by motion, glowing, fists raised. Dominion troops falling around him. It looped. Over and over. Lavin watched it without blinking.
He had seen this before. He had lived the aftermath. But now, watching it again, something in him shifted. Not envy. Not rage. Purpose.
"The problem with myths," he murmured to no one, "is they make people forget they're following something that bleeds." He reached out and tapped the frame, freezing the image of Shivam mid strike.
"We bleed him," he said, "in front of them."
Behind him, the Dominion operatives moved into formation, slipping out of the vault like phantoms into the city's lower grid. The trap was set. The lie was planted. And the hunt had begun again.
Dawn rose over Vedhyra like a wound bleeding through the clouds. The sky was still gray, choked with the residue of plasma fire and dust storms, but a sliver of sun had broken the rim, painting the city in a copper hue. And from the wide central yard of the Dominion Palace, the day began not with prayers or silence but with marching.
Rows of soldiers stood in perfect formation, clad in black armor polished to a mirror sheen, visors gleaming like obsidian. Their boots struck the stone in unison, a thunderous beat that echoed through the canyon of outer towers and into the nerves of the capital. Over a thousand strong, they lined the grounds like statues of war, rifles slung, shock pikes upright. These were not foot soldiers. These were elites Dominion's inner guard, awakened from cold slumber for one purpose.
Above them, the balcony gates slid open.
Navik emerged, flanked by two silent command officers. He wore no cape, no crest just armor lacquered in deep silver, the Dominion's red sigil burned across the chest plate like a brand. His steps were measured, each one ringing out across the gathering as if time itself had begun marching beside him.
He stopped at the balcony's edge.
"I see fear," he said, his voice raw, amplified by the speakers rigged into the spires. "And I see fire. The rebels think the city has slipped from our grip. That we cannot see them. That we will fall in the dark."
The soldiers remained still. Not one blinked.
"They call him a god sparked myth. A boy who bends light. They believe he cannot bleed."
Navik's eyes narrowed. "Then let us show them how gods die."
He raised a fist, and the entire plaza vibrated as every soldier snapped their weapons to ready stance. The silence that followed was iron. He stood still for a heartbeat longer, letting the moment burn itself into the morning, before turning sharply and disappearing back into the palace's interior.
The heavy doors slammed shut behind him.