They flew out of the mountain as the sphere disintegrated in her grip, its data dissolving into the salt spray. Kael’s memories—and OmniCorp’s leverage—turned to nothing.

They dropped onto a grated floor. The air was cool, sterile. Red lights pulsed along the corridor like a heartbeat. Missax held up three fingers. Two. One.

“Send a false echo. Make it think it’s seeing itself from six seconds in the future.”

Missax looked at Jian. At Zara. At the silent camera that connected her to the Pupil. Then she looked at the floating sphere.

That’s when the lights came on. And a voice spoke.

But promises, like locks, were made to be broken. It arrived not as a letter, but as a glitch. Missax was reading a book—a physical, paper book, the ultimate off-grid luxury—when her coffee cup flickered. For a second, the ceramic surface displayed a single line of text: “The Lumen Descent. 48 hours. You owe me.”

She wasn’t. And everyone knew it. But for one night, Missax let them believe.

Her blood turned to ice. Only one person could send a message through her isolated systems: Kael, her former hacker and the only person who knew she was still alive. And “you owe me” was a debt she could not refuse.