The skies above the Dominion capital were choked with a thick canopy of storm clouds, their edges glowing faintly with flickers of violet lightning. Towers of polished obsidian rose like blackened spires from a sea of steel and concrete monolithic structures untouched by time, untouched by rebellion. From a distance, the city looked immortal. Imposing. Eternal.
But within its heart, unease had begun to fester.
The Grand War Hall, seated at the highest tier of the Citadel, was bathed in sterile light. Its walls were inlaid with circuitry and runes older than most who occupied the chamber. Holographic panels hovered above marble slabs, scrolling with encrypted data and live surveillance feeds. The air was thick with static and fear.
A cold silence blanketed the room as the High Council assembled in a crescent arc around the War Table an enormous structure of silver veined Blackstone, glowing faintly with Dominion script. Each chair was carved from a single block of matte obsidian, symbols of discipline and dominion etched into their surface. The men and women who sat there had ruled by fear for generations. But now, they stared forward with unfamiliar hesitation.
Navik, Supreme Commander and architect of Dominion rule, stood unmoving at the table's head. Clad in jet black command armor, he was a pillar of stillness but his eyes, always cold, now shimmered with something far more dangerous than rage: calculation.
Without a word, he gestured toward the chamber's center. A thin strip of light traveled down the length of the floor, activating the central dais. The lights dimmed.
A grainy projection emerged flickering blue light, distorted static, the sound of explosions caught in transmission lag. The battle at Samaypur Mine played out in silence.
Shivam's form crackled into view barely more than a silhouette outlined by wild arcs of Noctirum charged energy. His movements were inhuman. Fluid. Devastating. He tore through Dominion machines like paper, dodged plasma fire with a flick of his wrist, and launched entire squads into the air with sonic blasts that fractured steel.
Gasps rippled through the council. Not from awe from fear. The footage cut just before the feed destabilized completely. But it had done its damage.
The room remained silent for a heartbeat longer. Then the whisper came.
"The God Sparked One…" Navik's eyes narrowed. "A title?"
Councilor Varn, one of the elder strategists, cleared his throat nervously. "A myth. Rumors. Whispers. Carried through encrypted rebel channels and intercepted by outposts in Vedhyra, Novar, and even within certain noble controlled zones."
"He's being deified," said another councilor. "Glorified by rebels, yes but also among the underground of our own cities. The slums. The mining sectors. Even our outer patrolmen are asking questions."
Navik's hands clenched behind his back. "Have we verified his identity?"
"Not conclusively," Varn admitted. "But… it is likely Shivam the boy that Mr. Lavin fought on that day."
Navik didn't speak. He turned slowly, walking toward the high window that overlooked the city below. Through the translucent obsidian glass, he could see the world he had built every sector humming with artificial life, every street laced with obedient silence.
That silence was now cracking. "The moment you allow a myth to survive," he said coldly, "you give your enemies permission to hope."
A chime echoed across the hall. The doors to the inner chamber hissed open. Heavy footsteps rang out on the pristine floor.
Lavin entered without ceremony. He was clad not in ceremonial robes but field black armor, worn from use, marked by burn lines and repaired fractures. His expression was unreadable but his presence drew immediate attention.
Navik turned to him. "You've seen the footage?" Lavin nodded once.
Navik's tone dropped to a blade's edge. "Find him. Confirm if it's that boy. And if it is erased him. Not just the body. Erase the symbol. Break the illusion before it ignites something larger."
Lavin studied the projection still flickering behind the council table. The glow reflected in his eyes, giving them an almost spectral gleam. He smirked faintly. "You want me to kill a myth?"
"I want you to remind the world that legends can die."
Another voice, more cautious, spoke from among the nobles. "And the girl? Princess Adhivita. Executing her… might escalate the fire."
Navik turned on the speaker with a look of such seething disdain that the man fell silent immediately.
"She is no longer a daughter of the throne. She is the match that lit the rebellion. Her death will serve as the example final, brutal, and unquestioned. If fear has begun to slip, we will reforge it in her blood." He walked to the center of the chamber.
"In three days," he declared, "the rebellion's last hope dies. And with her so dies the spark." The chamber went silent again.
But outside the Citadel's polished halls, beyond the black walls and watchtowers, the storm clouds rolled heavier. On the streets of Vedhyra and the edges of the dominion fields, miners whispered. Groundmen passed notes in coded clicks. Somewhere, a child drew a glowing figure on a wall and called him the God Sparked One
The Mayapuri bunker pulsed with life not chaotic, but sharp. Focused. War ready.
Once a hushed sanctuary, it now thrummed with the steady rhythm of footsteps, weapons checks, and whispered orders. Along the walls, Dominion consoles flickered with rebel interface overlays. Maps blinked with red sigils. Every breath inside the command center carried a weight three days. That was all the time left.
Rathod stood in the center of the planning room, eyes fixed on a projection hovering above the round table. The glow painted her jaw in gold blue light as she scanned the incoming update.
Footsteps approached. Mansi and Suchitra entered briskly, trailing data slates and tangled wire tablets. Their eyes told Rathod enough: they had something.
"Relay from Sumit and Pawan just came through," Mansi said, sliding a small drive into the console. "They've found something we didn't even know existed."
A new image bloomed in the center of the room a massive, tiered tower buried into the Rockside east of Vedhyra. Its base was armored, but its antenna spirals stretched high into the old sky grid, pulsing with faint blue energy.
Rathod narrowed her eyes. "That's not on any Dominion mapping net."
"It's not supposed to be," Suchitra replied. "They decommissioned it publicly after the Reset. But the core reactor's still active. And the encryption running through it matches Dominion relay code. Pawan noticed it by accident while skimming flight paths."
Mansi tapped the screen. "This isn't just a communication node. It's a Dominion command tier relay tower 617. It routes and compresses real time battlefield surveillance from every floating city, garrison outpost, and noble district around the capital."
Suchitra's eyes sharpened. "Which means if we take it out, the Dominion goes blind across their entire surveillance net."
Rathod leaned in. "How long?"
Mansi looked grim. "Forty-eight hours of total blackout. Minimum. No drone control. No vision. No command signal syncing."
It sank in immediately. Two full days of darkness. Enough to move unseen. Enough to strike.
Rathod didn't waste time. "Get Commander Vidhart. Now."
Fifteen minutes later, Vidhart strode into the chamber, dust still clinging to his cloak from drills. One look at the tower projection, and his eyes narrowed with dangerous clarity.
"They've hidden this well," he muttered. "But not well enough."
Mansi brought up the tower's structure in layers outer armor, central relay coil, and most importantly, a narrow trench of Noctirum conductive lines running through its southern base.
"There's a vulnerability in the maintenance conduit," she explained. "We sneak in through the trench, overload the core, and detonate the feedback node. It'll burn out the relay, not the mountain."
Suchitra nodded. "The tower is locked under low tier encryption, which Pawan already cracked. We can enter without triggering perimeter alarms if we do it fast."
Rathod looked between them. "Shivam's team?"
"They're perfect for this," Vidhart said. "With Noctirum resonance and Shivam's aura binding them, they can move as one fast, silent, coordinated."
"But the moment we strike," Suchitra warned, "the Dominion will know something's coming." Vidhart turned to them. "Then we hit everything."
Vidhart moved to the center of the table, activating the larger war map. Rebel held zones lit up in green; contested sectors in red. For the first time, they didn't avoid the red.
"We send out coded orders tonight. Every rebel cell from Vedhyra to the noble districts full mobilization."
Robin Rayudu joined from the far corridor, silent until now. "I've already prepped the runner networks. The moment Tower 617 falls, they'll take the signal as the call to rise."
Rathod studied the map, the storm forming in real time.
"We don't just want a window," she said. "We want a breach. Capital gate access, outer garrison seizure, inner sector scrambling. That blackout isn't just cover it's the beginning."
Vidhart turned grim. "Then we move two hours before the execution. Shivam's team disables the tower. Ground squads begin sieging patrol bases. Once the network's down, we hit the capital wall."
"And Adhivita?" Robin asked.
Suchitra answered this time. "Sumit and Pawan will fly the extraction unit. If Shivam's team clears the relay and cuts the palace gate, we can pull her out before the execution begins." Silence fell brief but full of weight. Rathod finally broke it. "Then let's make sure she's not the one bleeding in the square."
Outside, the wind scraped softly against the cliffs. Somewhere above, the ruined towers of old Aethra blinked like skeletal giants. But below, in Mayapuri's depths, the plan had been written. Not a mission. A warpath. And at its center stood five teenagers with something new in their veins… and everything to lose.