"First you erase the truth. Then you burn the witness. Then you build your empire in the ashes."— Anonymous Line from The Crown Manifesto
12:12 AM – Bangalore Central Prison Archives (Restricted Wing)
A guard walked his usual midnight rounds. Routine. Monotony.
Until he noticed the archival gate open.
It shouldn't have been.
No alarms. No forced entry.
Inside, two bodies sat upright in their chairs.
No wounds. No struggle.
Eyes closed.
On the wall behind them, written with ash from a burnt legal file:"False kings fall first."
Kabir's Location – Temporary Shelter, Abandoned Mall Server Room
Kabir stared at the screen in front of him. Multiple feeds. Static. Security data. All glitched.
Whoever was behind these new killings wasn't just skilled — they were surgically intelligent.
The message from the prison wasn't just a threat. It was a pattern.
He typed rapidly into a hidden surveillance protocol he'd coded years ago.
Operation Blackstone: Shadow Recovery Mode.
A red panel blinked:
MATCH FOUND.
The glitch patterns from the two prison victims mirrored that of an old Crown propaganda broadcast buried in the cyber warfare archives.
Zayen – Rooftop above an elite co-working hub, early morning fog
He sat cross-legged, flipping through old newspaper clippings. Articles no one paid attention to anymore.
A suicide.A raid.A fire.
Each event seemed unconnected.
But in the corner of every photo, almost hidden — a Crown symbol.A graffiti tag. A coffee mug. A QR sticker.
All watching.
All waiting.
He pulled out his father's old watch.
Inside the casing: a micro-SD chip.
He'd never been able to access it.
Until now.
The new Sarathi waveforms Kabir decrypted finally gave Zayen a decryption layer.
And what he found?
Video footage.Time-stamped 6 months after Vihaan's supposed death.Location: Inside a Crown facility.
Vihaan Mehra alive.
And speaking.
Crown Facility – Unknown
The man in the black suit placed the micro-SD chip into a cleaner terminal.
"I knew the boy would find it," he said, smiling.
Another voice replied: "Should we scrub him now?"
The Crown leader raised a finger.
"No.Let the city think RED X has returned.Let them hunt a ghost."
He circled Kabir's photo on the surveillance board.
"But make sure the ghost hunter becomes the next myth."
Kabir's Safehouse – 2:00 AM
Kabir poured over data points.
Every crime scene was not only a signature, it was a trigger. Crown was deploying Red X mimic kills at places that reawakened old neural signals.
They weren't just killing.
They were activating something.
He pulled up Project Sarathi's last known version.
Version 4.1 — AI with personality replication.
He froze.
If Crown had access to Zayen's neural data…
They could be recreating him.
Not just impersonating.
Rebuilding.
A Crown Storage Facility
A stasis pod hissed open.
Inside: a teenage boy's body.
Identical to Zayen.
Unblinking.
Alive.
But empty.
"Bring him online," the operator said.