The Echoes moved like smoke—silent, swift, impossible to hold. Within an hour I was walking streets I'd never dared step foot in, Selene trailing a step behind me, her silence heavier than any argument.
We entered the Ash Market.
The name fit. The air here reeked of burned metal and chemicals that clung to the back of your throat. Shanties of scrap and neon sprawled in crooked rows, pulsing with dirty light. People lived here like shadows—traders, mercenaries, broken men who had sold their bones for implants that barely worked. The city's Council pretended this place didn't exist, and maybe that's why it felt more alive than anywhere else.
"This is where the city's forgotten come to breathe," Darius said, striding ahead. "And where we find soldiers. Thieves. Anyone with enough anger to burn."
I caught eyes watching us through fractured glass, from alleys where the light didn't reach. Children no older than ten with scavenged rifles. Women with cybernetic limbs built from mismatched parts. A boy with eyes like polished chrome grinned at me as if he knew I didn't belong.
Selene leaned closer, her voice sharp. "You see this? This is what they'll feed you into. A furnace of broken things."
But I couldn't look away. The Ash Market wasn't just broken—it was alive. More alive than the sterile towers of the Council, or the cold emptiness Kael had carved around me.
We passed a vendor's stall where holograms flickered, advertising weapons no one should have been able to buy. Darius paused, picked up a blade whose edge glowed faintly with plasma. He weighed it in his hand, then offered it to me.
"You'll need it," he said simply.
The weight of the weapon settled into my grip, heavier than its size should allow. My reflection shivered across its edge.
That shiver in my spine. The one that meant Kael wasn't gone—not really. Like he was close. Hunting.
I glanced over my shoulder, into the crowd, and for a heartbeat I swore I saw him—tall, calm, eyes fixed on me. But when I blinked, he was gone.
Darius watched me, his expression unreadable. "Good," he murmured. "You feel it. That's the mark he left on you. The scar. Let it sharpen you."
I tightened my grip on the blade, forcing my heartbeat steady. If Kael was hunting me, then I'd hunt him back.
Selene touched my arm, her voice low, almost pleading now. "Lysandra. Don't lose yourself to this. You're more than their weapon."
Maybe I was. Or maybe that's all I had left to be.
The Ash Market roared around me, alive with smoke and neon and blood waiting to be spilled. And in its chaos, I knew one truth—whatever Kael was planning, he wasn't far.
And when he came, I'd be ready.
Night bled into the Ash Market like oil spreading through water. Neon signs flickered, casting fractured colors across faces too tired to care. The Echoes led me through a narrow stairwell, down into a chamber lit only by the soft hum of old servers stacked like forgotten tombstones.
This was their heart—the place they called The Signal.
Screens patched together from salvage glowed with data feeds, Council broadcasts twisted into static, maps of the undercity crawling with red markers. Men and women leaned over keyboards, soldered wires, whispered codes like prayers. Every sound carried weight, like the air itself was listening.
Darius spread his arms. "Welcome, Lysandra. This is where we turn whispers into weapons."
I took it in slowly—the flicker of stolen power, the hunger in their eyes, the rhythm of desperation. This wasn't just rebellion. It was survival sharpened into strategy.
Selene crossed her arms, her gaze fixed on me, daring me to question it.
"What do you want from me?" I asked finally.
Darius stepped closer, his shadow cutting through the blue light. "You've seen places the Council keeps hidden. You've survived Kael. That makes you a message—a living crack in their walls. With you, we can draw him out. And when he comes, we'll take more than just his life. We'll take what he knows."
The thought of Kael—his calm voice, his smile that wasn't a smile—twisted in my chest. Using me as bait wasn't strategy. It was suicide.
Selene shook her head sharply. "No. She's not your trap."
Darius ignored her, his eyes locked on mine. "He won't stop hunting you, Lysandra. It's power. Let him come. Let him think you're still his. And when he reaches, we break him."
The servers hummed louder, as if the walls themselves agreed.
I wanted to scream. To walk away. To tell them I wasn't a weapon to be aimed at Kael or anyone else. But the truth pressed harder: Kael was coming. He'd never stopped. And if I didn't choose how to face him, someone else would.
I looked at the screens again, at the city mapped out in veins of red. At the faces around me who had nothing but fire left to cling to.
For the first time since Kael's betrayal, the fear inside me shifted. Not gone. But tempered.
"If I'm bait," I said slowly, steadying the words before they betrayed me, "then I set the terms. My way. My ground. Or it ends before it begins."
A silence followed. Then Darius smiled—not the warmth of victory, but the satisfaction of a deal struck.
Selene turned away, her jaw tight, as though she'd just watched me step willingly into the same fire she'd spent years surviving.
Somewhere above, the Market roared with life, unaware that in this basement of smoke and static, a war had just been declared.
And in the hollow of my chest, I felt it—Kael's shadow growing closer.
The first blow knocked me to the ground.
Selene hadn't held back. One second her boot swept low, the next my ribs slammed against the concrete floor of the safehouse training room. The ache spread like fire, but her voice cut through it sharper than the pain.
"Get up."
I pushed to my knees, palms stinging, lungs burning. Sweat already trickled down my spine, though the fight had barely begun.
"This isn't about speed," Selene said, circling me like a predator. "It's about intent. Kael will never hesitate. If you do, you're dead."
Her blade flicked outward, the edge stopping a breath from my throat. My pulse roared. For a heartbeat I saw Kael there instead of her—his cold smile, his calm certainty that I was just a commodity to be bartered.
Rage steadied my hands.
I lunged, dagger striking clumsily toward her shoulder. She deflected with ease, twisting my wrist until the weapon clattered against the ground.
"Better," she murmured, stepping back. "But anger makes you predictable."
I snatched up the dagger, panting. "And what does fear make me?"
Selene's expression softened for the first time all night. "Alive. Fear is fine, Lysandra. You just can't let it drive."
Her words sank deep, heavy with the weight of survival. For the next hour she drilled me—slashes, counters, footwork in the confined space of the safehouse. My arms shook, my lungs screamed, but each movement grew sharper, cleaner. I wasn't her equal, not even close, but I was no longer the girl who flinched at shadows.
When she finally called a halt, Selene tossed me a flask of water. "You'll never match Kael's precision. But unpredictability? That can be your weapon."
I drank deeply, chest heaving, and for the first time since the warehouse burned, I felt something close to control.
But far away, beyond the city's sprawl, Kael was moving too.