The city was alive.
But it didn't breathe — not the way it used to.
It pulsed. Hummed. Wheezed like an old machine struggling to stay lit. Somewhere between the flicker of neon signs and the static haze of smog, you could almost hear its bones creaking. A living corpse, dressed in chrome and memory.
I walked alone beneath its ribs.
A noodle cart hissed beside the intersection, steam curling through the cold. The vendor, bundled in two coats and a scarf tied wrong, gave me a nod without looking. He didn't need to see my face. I didn't need him to. We both knew the unspoken rhythm of city ghosts.
A little girl sat beside him, swinging her legs in time with some holographic jingle stuck on loop above the street. Her boots were scuffed. Her synth-fox plush had been patched with copper wire.
For a second, I envied them.
Not for their peace. They didn't have any.
But for the simple fact that they didn't feel what I felt — not in their bones. Not all the time.
Pressure.
Static.
A low, keening chord strung between my ribs.
It wasn't a voice, not exactly. Not words.
The Filial soul inside me never spoke like humans did. But I felt it.
A sudden pang behind my sternum — sharp, sudden, almost mournful. Like something waking from a dream it didn't want to leave.
You're slipping again.
Not in words.
In sensation.
Cold. Restless.
Like hands sliding from a ledge.
I didn't respond. I just kept walking.
A mag-tram passed overhead, its undercarriage glowing violet as it rattled the scaffolding above 8th Avenue. I caught my reflection in the mirrored paneling — half-obscured by my hood, eyes faintly pale, like frost behind glass.
I used to look normal.
Used to pass.
Now, the more time passed, the more the resonance bled through — in my skin, in my gait, in the strange stillness that made people cross the street without knowing why.
"Just Manhattan," I whispered aloud. "Breathe through it."
But even the air here had weight.
Times Square widened ahead, its skeleton of screens and rusting steel curved around a static feed of overlapping headlines:
"KYOTO DEBRIEF UNDERWAY — UNEX REPORTS ZERO CASUALTIES"
"ECCLESIA CONDEMNS UNAUTHORIZED FILIAL MERGES"
"VOXNEX GLOBAL POLL: DO YOU TRUST THE SCALEBOUND?"
Below the ticker, news anchors smiled with too-white teeth, debating the same fallout I hadn't stopped seeing since I closed my eyes in Kyoto.
Flash. Fire. The scream of armor shearing off bone. Her face turning away before I could speak—
I blinked.
Forced the memory down.
My pulse spiked. The Filial stirred again — a low vibrato behind my heart, reacting to my slip.
Stabilize.
I closed my eyes.
Exhaled.
Let the pulse hum through my chest, counting until it steadied.
I hadn't seen her since the breach. Since Kyoto.
No name came to mind — I wouldn't let it.
But I'd seen her shadow. In my dreams. In the way my resonance fractured every time I thought about the silence that followed.
She was gone.
Maybe she'd made peace with it.
Maybe I hadn't.
That's when I heard it.
A sharp crack — then voices. Down the block near a storefront checkpoint.
Two UNEX field agents had a woman pinned against a solar kiosk. She was younger than me. Dirty coat, high boots, breathless. She kept saying "I didn't do anything," but that never stopped them.
"Soul signature's off," one agent said, running a scanner over her wrist.
"She's tainted. Look at the pulse drift."
"Could be a sleeper. We need containment."
The word Draconian was whispered like a curse.
She looked around. No one moved. No one spoke up.
I took one step forward — then stopped.
Don't. Not here.
Another pulse from my soul — warning, not command.
The Filial felt it too. The tension. The danger. But beneath that was something else.
A flicker of sorrow.
A memory of blood.
A name that wasn't mine.
Why do I keep doing this?
Because someone had to.
Because I'd seen too many people disappear behind armored drones and never come back.
Because I'd been the weapon once.
I stepped into the edge of the crowd. Quiet. Unseen.
A second later, a pulse surged beneath my feet. Barely visible. Just a flicker of air distortion — like heat rising off pavement.
The agent's scanner glitched. Lights blinked red, then blue, then dead.
"What the—?"
The kiosk shorted. The lock on the woman's wrist slipped free. She staggered back.
I brushed past her without looking.
One graze of my fingertips — a stabilizing ripple. Enough to reset her resonance to human normal.
She didn't thank me. Didn't even notice me.
That was the point.
I kept walking.
And for the first time that morning, the pressure in my chest eased.
Doing something — anything — made it bearable.
It didn't fix the fracture. But it kept me standing.
I climbed.
Fire escapes. Old stairwells. Rung after rung until the skyline opened like a wound above me. The wind at rooftop level wasn't clean, but it was thinner. Easier to breathe.
I reached the ledge.
Took off my hood.
Let the night hit me full in the face.
The city sprawled below — flowing, breathing, alive.
In the distance, I saw lights flashing — irregular, not civilian. A cluster of UNEX patrol drones veering hard toward a block just north of Hell's Kitchen.
Something was happening.
I tapped my wrist emitter.
"Jinhai Rush. Identifier Three-Seven-Seven. Reporting anomaly at gridpoint Zeta-12. Multiple UNEX units in motion. No visual on source."
Static buzzed.
Then a voice: "This is Deepwell command. Acknowledged. Hold position. Maintain concealment. Pending instructions."
I closed my eyes again. Reached inward.
The Filial stirred in response — a slow, rising glow inside my ribcage. Like a furnace waking.
"Stabilize," I whispered.
My eyes, once brown now blue and white, began to glow and flicker . I tap my wrist emitter. My suit unfolded from memory and resonance — plates forming across my skin in black-on-black arcs, each shaped by thought, not thread.
I was ready.
***
The world never really slept anymore. Not since the Blooming, the event nearly fifty years ago that changed the world forever.
From up here—perched on the edge of a hollowed-out high-rise near the East River—I could see the whole skeleton of the Brooklyn Bridge stretching across the water. Its spine was cracked, metal ribs exposed like the broken bones of some ancient beast. They had been trying to mend it for months.
But there were no cranes. No scaffolding. No roaring machines.
Only wings.
Construction workers soared between the broken struts, each one unique—some feathered, some leathery, others veined like glass, we were the Solborn. A woman with fiery red pinions lifted a steel beam like it was made of cardboard. A man with crow-black wings hovered beside her, holding a fusion torch in one hand and sipping coffee with the other.
Below them, more walked on the bridge itself—massive figures with talons instead of boots, hoisting reinforced pillars and snapping them into place with their bare hands. The air was filled with the rhythmic hum of wingbeats and the occasional laughter echoing between towers.
Above, the sky lanes glowed with flowing traffic—suspended roads for flying cars, some autonomous, others piloted by humans and Solborn alike. A flock of teenagers zoomed past in a trail of laughter. One of them carried a girl on his back—a human, judging by the way she clutched his neck and grinned like the wind could carry her worries away.
It was almost beautiful. Almost normal.
But I knew better.
My wrist buzzed — finally.
Deepwell command, late as always.
I tapped the interface, and with a mellow chime, the projection came to life. My master, Orin Thal's face appeared—calm, timeless, his expression as unreadable as always. He looked more like a monk than the most powerful man in the Deepwell Foundation. Robes loose at the collar, a faint glow in his eyes. Not the alien Filial soul energy—something older. Centered.
He skipped any greeting, but not out of coldness. Just urgency.
"There's been a disturbance," he said. "Lower Manhattan. A city block is... unraveling. The Filial bonds that have merged with humans there are failing. We're seeing soul separation. Collapse."
I frowned. That shouldn't have been possible.
He watched me for a moment before continuing. "The United Nations for Extraterrestrial Defense (UNEX) is calling it contamination. The Filial-worshiping celestial church Ecclesia Calie calls it corruption. Both are guessing."
He leaned forward slightly. His voice lowered.
"I don't believe this is illness, Jinhai. Not in any way the body understands it. This feels… off-pattern. Like something deeper is being disturbed."
I didn't speak. He didn't expect me to.
"The Church wants to purge it. UNEX wants to seal it. But both are using hammers to fix broken glass."
His gaze sharpened.
"Go. See it with your own eyes. Help them, if that's what's needed. But don't assume they know what they're dealing with. I need your judgment, not theirs."
Then, warmer:
"And Jinhai… listen carefully. Sometimes the silence speaks louder than the noise."
The projection faded.
I closed the holo, and for a moment I just breathed—watching the world as it glided around me.
My armor adjusted slightly, molding tighter across my shoulders. Matte black from collar to boot, threaded with silent filaments of light. Diamond-shaped orbs pulsed on my arms and legs, quiet but alive. The one at my chest glowed brightest—cross-shaped, slow and steady, like a heartbeat.
Two black scapulars hung between my legs—lightweight, ceremonial, and unnecessary. But I wore them anyway. A reminder of who I served. Of what I was made to protect.
My wings unfurled behind me with a hushed ripple of energy. Feathers white as moonlight, haloed in a faint, shifting blue. They glowed when I focused. When I breathed with intention.
People down there looked up when they saw me. I knew the look.
Awe. Curiosity. Sometimes fear.
But mostly… recognition.
Because I wasn't just another Solborn. Not to them. Not to Deepwell.
I was born before the treaties. Before the world agreed to coexist with the sky.
Before anyone knew what I was.
I stepped to the edge of the rooftop, boots grinding softly against scorched concrete. The wind tugged at the loose strands of white hair that forever refused to stay slicked back. I exhaled slowly, centering myself. In the fading twilight, I lingered a moment, watching the sun slip behind the old bridge—a final breath of beauty before the storm. It reminded me why I fought.
Then—I spread my wings.
They unfurled with a whisper of frictionless air, white as frost, each feather laced with threads of energy humming at the edge of vision. A pale blue glow gathered around them, pulsating quietly. The light grew brighter… hotter… until flame replaced form. My wings burned—blue fire wreathed in silence, devouring no oxygen, emitting no smoke. They weren't just appendages. They were memory. Inheritance. Bond.
I leaned forward—and fell.
No flap. No thrust. Just motion.
The wind parted around me like reverence.
Above the city, suspended between history and heaven, a holographic interface shimmered to life across my forearm. Golden grids spun into focus, mapping Manhattan's sprawl in clean layers. Red blotches throbbed on the lower east side. A glitch? No. The anomaly had grown again. I swiped left; new readings populated the air, tracking soul frequency destabilization across five blocks.
I narrowed my eyes. "Too fast," I muttered.
As I banked westward, the southern skyline drew into view—and with it, the impossible.
There, off the shore, piercing the clouds like the hand of a god, stood the Helix Basilica—Ecclesia Callei's celestial fortress. It spiraled into the sky in golden coils, its light like amber fire in the mist. Larger than any Earth-born structure, the Basilica was part temple, part control tower, part message to the stars.
I hated it.
Fifteen years ago, I thought, that spiral rose from the sea like a weed through stone. Not to worship… but to watch. To judge.
Built to monitor the Mawline Rift—a vast gravitational scar 300 miles southeast of Manhattan where the Ark tore open the Earth's crust—the Basilica served as Ecclesia's sanctum and surveillance tower. They called it a safeguard.
I called it a cage.
I veered away from its golden glow, letting the city fill my vision.
New York. Once steel and soot, now a fractured cathedral of contrasts. Stone towers from centuries past jutted between smooth-filament skyscrapers woven from Filial alloy. Holograms danced on broken facades. Solar sails clung to domes that still bore the scars of the last Draconian siege. Some structures hadn't been repaired—intentionally. Memorials, perhaps. Or warnings.
A shadow moved below.
I slowed my pace.
Two Solborn teens zipped between buildings, their wings barely mature—flickering like candlelight. One banked too sharply and clipped a rusted lamppost with a loud clang. The boy spun wildly before catching himself, laughter echoing in the morning air.
I smiled faintly.
Still learning. Still crashing. At least they weren't afraid to fly.
For a moment, I hovered—just above the clouds, watching my city. It was bruised but breathing. Beautiful and broken.
The HUD pinged again.
One block pulsed red-hot.
I turned toward it—eyes narrowing, wings flaring silently—and descended.
I descended in a slow spiral, the blue fire of my wings dimming as he neared the rooftops. The wind carried with it the buzz of power generators, the low rumble of news drones, and the crackle of tension. The block below had been cordoned off in a tight perimeter—UNEX barricades projecting hardlight fences, shimmering with flickers of static as civilians pressed too close.
A crowd had gathered. Solborns and humans alike stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the glowing lines, faces turned upward. They had that look—the uneasy curiosity of those who had seen too much in their lifetime, yet knew enough to worry when the unexpected showed up.
A familiar chorus rang out:
"Is that Deepwell?"
"That's a Deepwell suit!"
"Oh god… they don't come unless—"
"No way… That's Jinhai Rush."
I touched down silently, boots hissing as kinetic force dispersed through the landing matrix embedded in my soles. My wings extinguished into wisps of smoke and light, leaving only the shadow-slick plating of the Deepwell Foundation suit behind—smooth armor etched with diamond-shaped orbs that pulsed once, then dimmed.
All at once, the murmuring shifted to panic.
"They sent him?"
"Is it a Draconian breach?"
"Someone check the Rift monitors—!"
"No, no—this is local. Deepwell doesn't move unless it's internal."
Camera lenses pivoted like a hundred eyes snapping into focus. Holo-reporters hovered into range, voice filters engaging with seamless clarity.
"Breaking now—Deepwell Foundation has officially deployed a field operative to the anomaly site in Lower Manhattan. Sources on-site confirm visual ID of Jinhai Rush, high-ranking Deepwell agent and survivor of the second dawn."
"The last time Deepwell sent someone this high-profile into the field, it was during the Coney Island invasion."
"UNEX and Ecclesia forces remain unresponsive to our requests for clarification."
That last line rang truer than expected.
A ripple of movement tore through the ranks of UNEX soldiers near the perimeter checkpoint. Their armor—sleek, urban-issue exo suits painted in neutral greys—parted to reveal a man stomping forward. A captain, by the crimson stripe on his chestplate and the badge flickering at his collar. His eyes locked on Jinhai like a missile.
"Knew it," the captain muttered as he approached. "No comms. No clearance. No chain of command. Just drop out of the sky like a damn omen."
He stopped just outside of Jinhai's personal radius, jaw tight, hands on his hips.
"You want to tell me why Deepwell suddenly cares about a containment op we've had locked down for six hours?"
I tilted my head slightly. "Looks like the panic started before I arrived."
"Don't get clever," the captain snapped. "UNEX has jurisdiction. Ecclesia sanctified the perimeter. If this was a joint op, you're late—and if it's not, you're trespassing."
My gaze remained cool. "There are fluctuations in the anomaly readings your field scans aren't picking up. Filial destabilization isn't just spiritual—it's structural. I'm not here to step on your chain of command, Captain. I'm here because this isn't containment. It's collapse."
The captain's expression didn't change, but something flickered behind his eyes.
He exhaled through his nose, tapped his comm-link, and turned away. "Of course it's collapse," he muttered. "It's always collapse when Deepwell shows up."
Above them, a news anchor's voice echoed from a public holo-feed:
"For those just tuning in, tensions continue to rise as Deepwell agent Jinhai Rush appears on-site. The uneasy alliance between the three major forces—UNEX, Ecclesia Callei, and the Deepwell Foundation—has long been a point of public speculation. Deepwell, often criticized for its isolationism and lack of transparency, rarely intervenes outside Rift-adjacent anomalies."
A second anchor added, "UNEX officers on the ground seem unaware of the Foundation's presence prior to the arrival, suggesting a possible breach in protocol… or something bigger than anyone expected."
I walked past the line of soldiers, eyes scanning the flickering readouts from my wrist. The anomaly was near—close enough that the air had begun to vibrate.
The street ahead was cracked, buildings leaning at odd angles, and something deeper… darker… pulsed beneath the asphalt.
Whatever was happening here, it wasn't just soul decay.
It was something new.
Something wrong.
The captain's voice returned a moment later, tight with forced neutrality. "You've been greenlit. Higher-ups say it came from Orin Thal himself. So fine—go play your part."
He didn't wait for a response, already walking away. Probably to report back that Deepwell was stepping into his jurisdiction again.
Jinhai watched him leave, then slowly turned back toward the hot zone.
The UNEX soldiers standing guard didn't meet my eyes. Their faces were hidden behind standard-issue helmets, visors glowing faintly red. Their armor looked pristine—retooled just this year, judging by the humming resonance packs on their spines and the tri-channel capacitors on their arms.
All of it powered by Filial converters—technology lifted from Deepwell archives, repurposed, weaponized.
Leeches, I thought.
There was no reverence in their use of it. No understanding of what it meant to channel the Filial soul energy. Deepwell spent years learning to listen to those wavelengths—harmonize with them. To form bonds, not shackles. The entire purpose of a Filial entity was unity: merging, trust, resonance.
UNEX didn't care.
They didn't want harmony. They wanted horsepower.
To them, a Filial soul is just a high-output battery, I thought bitterly. Another piece of equipment to slot into a weapon system or body mod. It is a gift, not a tool.
And they called it protection.
Deepwell had spent decades studying both Filials and Draconians—not just to fight, but to understand. Every artifact, every anomaly, every battle-scarred ruin was a lesson. Their goal wasn't domination. It was preservation. Humanity didn't need another conqueror. It needed a memory. A conscience.
UNEX was the opposite. All iron and ego. They dressed up control as security and called it righteous.
They build walls and prisons. We build questions and answers.
And here they were—standing on the same battlefield, watching the same sickness spread beneath their feet.
It made my skin crawl.
I exhaled slowly, reaching up to brush my fingers across the diamond-shaped node embedded in my collar.
A low hum answered. The orb pulsed once.
"Let's see what you're hiding," I whispered to the city.
And with that, I stepped deeper into the infected zone.
As I stepped inside, the hairs on the back of my neck rose instinctively. Everything felt off. I sensed it — the energy had turned, sharp and unnatural.
The lights were out. Darkness swallowed everything. The cross-shaped orb at the center of my chest began to glow, casting a narrow beam of light as I moved down the corridor."
I reached the lobby—and froze.
Dozens of Solborns lay scattered across the floor, bodies suspended mid-motion. Each face locked in agony, mouths open, eyes wide, but unmoving. Attempts to touch them were repelled by an invisible forcefield. A faint field extended from each body, warping the space around them, bending light to form ghost-like afterimages—outlines of their limbs and expressions, disjointed in time.
I tapped at the omnitool on my wrist—proprietary Deepwell tech.
Static.
Interference.
I crouched and gathered dust from a cracked tile, then blew it gently into the air.
Instead of drifting naturally, it split into rectangular streaks, pulling downward in clean vertical channels. Not atmospheric. Not spiritual.
A gravitational field.
This wasn't a disease.
I stood. My Eyes closed. I pressed my index and middle finger to my temple.
The orbs on my armor flared to life, glowing brighter and brighter. My body filled with power.
With energy.
We called it Filial Resonance.
Energy pulsed outward in waves — from my core, through my suit, and into the earth itself. I reached into the Resonance, attuning to the subtle vibrations woven beneath the physical world.
In my mind's eye, the city block unfolded in layered clarity — buildings, structural voids, heat signatures, soul echoes.
I found them. The victims.
Then—something else.
Far below the building, a hollow space. Two hundred feet down. A gravitational sink, tugging at every thread of Filial energy in the vicinity — draining it.
Feeding on it.
An underground world, hidden in the dark. Alive.
But first—the survivors.
I increased the frequency of the energy pulses — gently, precisely. Then, with a subtle shift, I reversed the downward flow, redirecting it outward. A barrier formed beneath my feet, blocking the anomaly's pull like a dam against a draining tide.
Only then did I turn my attention to the victims.
Their Filial resonance had unraveled — severed from their core frequency. Of course. That was it. The Filial soul energy, once harmonized with the body, had become desynchronized. Unanchored, it hovered just out of reach, leaving the body in stasis — hollow and fading.
Without that resonance, the body would fail. The soul would fracture.
I exhaled slowly and focused.
Like a careful stitchworker threading a torn seam, I began to mend the connection — aligning the threads of Filial and human essence one by one. My hands moved in measured gestures, sending pulses of calming wavelength across the ruptured field. The glow of my chest orb softened. Resonance returned, gentle and warm.
And then — breath.
The effect was immediate.
The victims gasped as the light-warped afterimages snapped back into place, merging with flesh and bone.
Some coughed. Others groaned. Eyes fluttered open, dazed and searching.
One by one, they returned. Confused, but alive.
"Go," I said, my voice steady. "Now. While you still can."
They rose shakily, dazed but moving. A few murmured thanks before fleeing toward the exits.
Outside, the media caught the chaos on live broadcast. Reporters scrambled to confirm that the victims had been "cured."
But Ecclesia Callei priests were already closing in—demanding the victims be quarantined for questioning. Golden-robed enforcers blocked the path, holding firm with practiced resolve.
The crowd turned ugly.
Shouts erupted.
Bottles and scraps of debris flew.
The Ecclesian priests didn't flinch.
They raised their arms in tandem, golden robes billowing with divine authority. Each one glowed with a yellow aura, but the higher-ranking priests stood apart—white halos of radiant light arched behind their backs like glowing rings, framing their heads in sanctified brilliance.
One of the lesser priests unfurled a ceremonial lasso—threaded with radiant cords—and cast it into the crowd. It snapped around a protester's waist.
"Rehabilitation is required," the priest declared.
Gasps.
Silence.
The rest of the crowd fell quiet, shrinking back in fear.
Inside the building, I stepped toward the center of the floor and let his wings blaze back to life—blue flames erupting into shape. I raised my right arm. The flame of my right wing coalesced, twisting inward and wrapping around my forearm like a living helix of plasma.
It became a drill.
An energy-formed, flame-wreathed weapon forged from will and soul.
I found the weakest point in the floor and slammed downward.
Stone cracked. Steel screamed. Dust erupted.
I drilled through what seemed like ten stories, then through concrete, then soil. Then two-hundred feet down, I stopped, nothing was there to drill —I hovered in the void.
An underground cavern yawned before me.
Empty.
Except for the eggs.
Dozens—maybe thousands—of black-scaled, barrel-sized eggs lined the floor in uneven rows. Each one shimmered faintly in the dark, the membranes pulsing in tune with something ancient and hostile.
It was a nest.
And it wasn't abandoned.
Behind me, a hiss.
I turned—and locked eyes with death.
Twin red eyes burned in a plume of black smoke, coalescing into sinew, claws, and wings. The beast emerged slowly into the narrow beam of my armor's light — twenty feet tall, all jagged limbs and leathery wings, its scales were so black they swallowed the light itself.
Its body shimmered between flesh and smoke, wings half-formed, spine jagged. Its black-scaled hide absorbed every trace of light, giving it the illusion of a living void.
It opened its jaws.
And smiled.
—END CHAPTER 1—