The city of Velora was breathing again — but differently this time.
The air carried a strange hum, faint but everywhere, like the heartbeat of something ancient trying to remember its own name. The Vein had awakened. And through Azen, it was spreading.
He didn't sleep anymore — not in the human sense. His dreams had become corridors of light and whispers. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw faces dissolving into rivers of gold, their words bending around his thoughts. He would wake with his veins glowing faintly, his pulse syncing with the city's underground rhythm.
Silver had noticed first.
"You're leaking," she said one night, pointing to his hands as faint trails of light coiled between his fingers.
"It's fine," he lied.
"It's not. The Vein doesn't just give — it takes. And when it takes too much, it doesn't stop."
Kane had been watching from a distance. Always calm. Always calculating. The Game was changing, and he could feel it — the power that once obeyed rules was now bending toward Azen. The others whispered about it. Some called it evolution; others called it the beginning of collapse.
Rex, ever the realist, didn't care for names. "You're becoming the signal," he said. "And signals attract everything — good and bad."
The Game's players were moving again.
Across the city, factions were stirring — the Neon Guild, the Dusk Runners, and the nameless ones who lived beneath the rails. They all felt it: the pulse under their feet, growing stronger each night. The Vein was no longer hidden; it was disseminating, threading itself through technology, sound, and blood.
Azen stood on the rooftop where it all began, watching the horizon pulse with faint light.
It wasn't sunrise — it was the Vein's reflection, crawling across steel and glass like veins under skin.
He whispered, "It's alive."
Silver joined him, wind brushing her silver-tipped hair. "No," she said. "It's awake. And it's choosing."
He turned to her. "Choosing what?"
She hesitated. "Who leads it… or who destroys it."
Below them, the streets of Velora flickered — lamps blinking in strange unison, voices echoing like overlapping signals. Somewhere beneath, something vast shifted.
Azen closed his eyes. For a second, he heard it again — a thousand whispers speaking one truth.
"Dissemination is not expansion. It is infection."
When he opened his eyes, the skyline was trembling — as if the city itself was struggling to contain what was growing inside it.
And Azen finally understood.
The Vein wasn't waiting for him to control it.
It was spreading through him — to reach the rest of the world.