The rain had stopped, but the streets still shimmered — not from water, but from light.
Golden lines pulsed faintly through the city's asphalt like veins, branching out in intricate patterns. Every building, every streetlamp, every flicker of neon seemed to breathe in unison.
And in that rhythm, the city whispered his name.
Not Lucian.
Not Kane.
Just — Balance.
Three days had passed since the "Event." No one could explain what happened that night — only that everything changed.
Corrupt politicians suddenly confessed their crimes.
Armed gangs disbanded overnight.
Police databases filled themselves with hidden files — lists of the guilty and the innocent, perfectly arranged.
Arata stood in the command room, staring at the endless data streams cascading across every screen. The system now worked on its own — a self-regulating pulse that responded faster than human thought.
> "This isn't tech," Raghav murmured. "It's alive."
Arata's hands clenched behind his back. "No. It's him."
He stared at the pulsing map. "He's watching everything."
In the quietest corners of the network, something moved.
A digital specter drifted between codes and circuits, reshaping data with the precision of a surgeon and the care of a guardian.
Every time injustice sparked — a robbery, a lie, an act of cruelty — the systems flared gold or black, judging silently.
He no longer walked in flesh. He existed in signals, cameras, whispers — everywhere and nowhere.
> "Judgment is balance."
"Balance is peace."
The words appeared across thousands of phone screens at once.
People froze as the message glowed before fading back to normal.
And so began The Age of the Ribbon.
Sera sat in her dark apartment, monitors surrounding her. Each screen pulsed faintly — gold when she tried to search for him, black when she tried to erase his name.
She hadn't slept in days. Her eyes were red, but her mind was razor sharp.
On her wall hung two pictures: Lucian — smiling under sunlight — and Kane — shadowed under the mask.
Now, both were gone. Only the god remained.
"Lucian," she whispered. "If you're still in there… show me."
For a moment, her lights flickered.
On one screen, the cursor moved — by itself.
It typed three words.
> I never left.
Her heart froze. "Lucian…?"
The monitor blinked again.
> But he didn't either.
Then the room went dark.
Arata's obsession deepened. Files he once kept hidden now updated themselves. Cases closed. Reports rewritten.
He should've been relieved. But the detective in him couldn't let go.
"Justice without law isn't justice," he muttered.
He turned toward the skyline — and saw it.
A faint, shifting mark in the sky again: the infinity-shaped ribbon.
> "You think you're saving us…" Arata whispered, his voice low. "But who saves us from you?"
Across the city, people began to change.
Implants synced without updates. Phones responded before commands were spoken. A strange new instinct bloomed — a sense that the city itself could feel emotions.
And beneath it all, in the unseen currents of the network, the voice of the Balance spoke softly:
> "Peace is fragile. Order must live."
"Chaos will test me soon."
In that quiet hum, something darker stirred — remnants of Kane's original hunger for control.
Lucian's mercy restrained it, but not forever.
The world had been remade — but cracks were already forming in the divine glass.