Forty-eight hours before Mila stood on that ledge, she was just a "Ghost" in the slums of Sector 4.
Neo-Verona was a city built on tiers. At the top, the Sovereigns lived in glass towers where the air was filtered and the sun actually reached. At the bottom, people like Mila lived in the "Rain-Wash" the literal runoff from the upper city's drainage.
Mila wiped the grease from her forehead, her fingers trembling slightly. She was a "Scrapper," someone who fixed illegal tech in a shop the size of a closet. It was a quiet life. A life meant to stay hidden.
Because Mila had a secret.
Whenever she got angry really, bone-deep angry the lights in the room didn't just flicker. They died. The electronic locks on the doors didn't just malfunction; they turned into dead weight. She was a walking "Black Hole" for energy, and in a city powered by Divine Essence, she was a walking death sentence.
"Hey, Volkov! Where's my rig?"
A man named Boris slammed a heavy hand onto her workbench. He was a low-level enforcer for the Moretti family, a man who thought having a "Level 1 Spark" in his fingertips made him a king.
"It's not ready, Boris," Mila said, her voice flat. She didn't look up. She could feel the itch in her palms. The Void was hungry. Stay down, she told it. Don't show them.
"I pay you to work, not to give me lip," Boris growled. He reached out, his hand glowing with a sickly yellow electricity, aiming to grab her throat to "teach her a lesson."
Mila didn't move. She didn't have to.
The moment Boris's hand entered a three-foot radius around her, the yellow light didn't just go out it was sucked away. Boris gasped, his hand suddenly feeling like lead. He looked at his palm, then at Mila.
"What did you do?" he stammered, the bravado vanishing. "My... my Spark. It's gone. I can't feel it!"
"Get out," Mila whispered. Her heart was hammering. The shop felt colder.
But Boris wasn't the only one who noticed.
In the corner of the shop, a high-end surveillance drone one that definitely didn't belong in Sector 4 hovered silently. Its lens didn't glow red; it glowed a deep, regal Gold.
Thousands of feet above, in a penthouse that cost more than Mila's entire district, Dante Moretti paused. He sat behind a desk of obsidian, his eyes suddenly flashing. For the first time in thirty years, the "Command" flowing through his veins had felt a tremor. A hiccup in the universe.
He leaned forward, watching the grainy footage of a girl with dark, defiant eyes standing over a terrified enforcer.
"Find her," Dante commanded. His voice wasn't loud, but the shadows in the room shivered. "And kill anyone who saw what she just did. She is the anomaly. She is... mine."
He wasn't the only one watching. Across the city, in a club filled with fire and screams, Xavier Thorne felt the same shiver. And in the dark heart of the city's graveyard, Kyan Zale opened his eyes.
The hunt had begun.
Mila took a step back, her back hitting the cold brick wall. "You're one of them. You're a Sovereign."
Kyan didn't answer immediately. He leaned in, but instead of a romantic gesture, he placed his hand on the wall right next to her head, effectively caging her. He didn't look like the sweet boy from the tech-shop anymore. He looked like a predator who had finally stopped pretending to be a pet.
"I've spent six months watching you repair circuit boards, Mila," he murmured, his voice chillingly calm. "I've watched you drink your coffee, watched you walk home in the rain, and watched you hide that beautiful, terrifying power of yours."
He didn't say love. He said watched.
"You're a stalker," Mila breathed, her heart hammering.
"I'm a guardian," Kyan corrected, his eyes dark and empty. "Dante Moretti wants to turn you into a battery for his city. Xavier Thorne wants to see how loud you scream when you break. But me? I just want to keep you exactly where you are. Hidden. Under my shadow."
He leaned closer, his scent cold rain and ozone filling her senses.
"Don't mistake my patience for kindness, Mila. You aren't leaving this alley because I say so. Not because of 'love,' but because you are the only thing in this rotting city that belongs to me."
This builds the "Gritty" atmosphere and shows Mila's struggle.
Mila's lungs burned as she tore through the Black Market of Sector 4. This wasn't the "Neo-Verona" from the travel brochures. This was a maze of rusted shipping containers and illegal neon signs that hummed with a headache-inducing frequency.
She could feel the eyes on her. Not the drones those were gone but something worse. The "Presence."
Kyan was still there. She couldn't see him, but the way the shadows curled around the corners of the alleyways told her he was following. Every time a street gang stepped out of the dark to intercept her, they were gone before she could even reach for her satchel. A muffled scream, a snap of a neck, and then silence.
He was "cleaning" the path for her. It wasn't a favor; it was a display of dominance.
He's showing me I can't survive without him, Mila thought, her jaw tightening. He's making sure I have no one else to turn to.
She stopped in front of a heavy iron door the entrance to the "Undercity." If she could get down there, the dampness and the lead pipes might dampen her signature.
"Open up, Jax!" she hissed, pounding on the door.
The small viewing slot slid open. A pair of terrified eyes looked out. "Mila? You gotta go. Some guy in a suit... he bought the whole street. He said if we help you, he'll burn the air out of our lungs."
Mila froze. Dante had already reached her "friends."
"Jax, please—"
"I can't, Mila. He's a God. We're just... nothing." The slot slammed shut.
Mila stood alone in the rain, the sound of heavy boots echoing from both ends of the street. The "Red Flags" weren't just men; they were an ocean, and she was drowning in the middle of them.