Weeks had passed since Selene took full control. The city no longer felt like a place where people lived. It pulsed. Black veins ran through every street and building, throbbing with stolen life. The shadow web had matured into something alive, feeding on the population in cycles of engineered ecstasy and terror.
Massive spectacles in the central square kept the masses hooked—public executions where traitors dissolved into writhing constructs, followed by waves of artificial bliss that left survivors begging for more.
Rebellions flared in the outer districts, desperate and quickly crushed. Atlas watched it all from the edges, his body changing faster than he could track.
Selene looked like a girl in her late teens now, but her eyes and voice belonged to something far older. She sat on a throne grown from the web itself, fingers tracing patterns in the air that made the veins around her pulse brighter.
