Lina noticed the silence first.
Not the lack of messages—I was never good at those. She knew.
It was the absence of correction.
Normally, the world around her had a faint resistance to falsehood. Conversations smoothed themselves out. People hesitated before saying things they didn't fully mean. Small lies tripped over nothing and fell apart.
Now—
Everything went through too cleanly.
She sat on the edge of her bed, phone face-down beside her, staring at the wall as a news broadcast murmured in the background.
"…authorities confirm the confrontation involved Blake Rogers—"
She turned it off.
I was gone.
Not missing.
Gone by choice.
And the truth hurt more than any lie ever had.
She pressed her fingers into her sleeve, grounding herself. Her awakening hadn't accelerated—but it had clarified. Truth didn't shout. It didn't warn.
It simply removed excuses.
I had left because staying would have destroyed something I refused to abandon.
Her. My mother.
That realization landed gently.
Then crushed her anyway.
For the first time since her awakening, Lina felt the edge of her power cut inward. Not exposing someone else.
Exposing herself.
"I hate this," she whispered. "Please hurry back Neo."
And the room, honest as ever, did not disagree.
⸻
Justice's country didn't hide its Saints.
That was the flaw.
I noticed it on the second day, walking through a district powered almost entirely by anomaly-aligned infrastructure. Gravity stabilized buildings that should have sagged. Bio-energy fed grids without combustion. Healing-class anomalies staffed emergency centers openly.
Efficient. Humane. Centralized.
Too centralized.
Bio-Marked individuals weren't just governing.
They were load-bearing.
Every system assumed continued compliance.
Every structure trusted alignment over dissent.
Justice had eliminated fear—but replaced it with dependency.
I stopped beneath an elevated transit line and let my perception slip sideways.
What happens if one Saint leaves?
What happens if one disagrees?
The futures didn't collapse.
They stalled.
Localized failures. Cascading inefficiencies. A nation that didn't fall—but slowed, choked, and turned brittle.
Not tyranny.
But fragility disguised as order.
"…You're building a tower with living pillars," I murmured.
And towers always believed they were eternal.
Until one pillar decided to move.
That was when I felt him focus fully on me.
Not surveillance.
Invitation.
⸻
Justice stood at the center of a circular chamber, hands clasped behind his back, listening to reports he already understood.
"Confirmation?" he asked calmly.
"Yes," an aide replied. "Neo Zane Cole has entered the country. No concealment. No false identity."
Justice smiled faintly.
"So he chose to walk through the front door."
"Should we mobilize—"
"No," Justice said. "Absolutely not."
He turned, eyes bright with something dangerously close to relief.
"Prepare a reception," he continued. "No guards. No displays of force. I want him to see exactly what we've built."
The aide hesitated. "And if he rejects it?"
Justice considered that.
Then nodded once.
"Then at least I'll know," he said. "Whether Wisdom still believes order requires permission."
He moved toward the chamber's exit.
"For all his power," Justice added quietly, "Neo Zane Cole has always been ruled by what he refuses to abandon. According to him anyway."
A pause.
"Let's see what he chooses when there's no one left to threaten."
Somewhere else, Lina stared at a ceiling that wouldn't lie to her.
And far away, a Bio-Marked run nation prepared to welcome the one Saint capable of breaking it—
not by force,
but by asking the wrong question at the right time.
⸻
Back at The Axis State, the government was hard at work.
They didn't call it panic.
They called it containment reassessment.
The room was different now—no projections, no confidence models, no speculative arrogance. Just people. Tired ones. Afraid ones.
Director Hale stood at the head of the table, hands braced against polished steel, staring at a city still being repaired on the live feed. Entire districts cordoned off. Seismic readings that made no sense unless you already knew the truth.
"He held back," one analyst said quietly.
No one contradicted him.
Blake Rogers had been hospitalized—not critically injured, but humbled. His report was concise. Almost reverent.
[Neo did not fight me.
He demonstrated that he could.]
That single sentence changed everything.
Elias Harrow exhaled slowly. "We miscalculated leverage."
"No," another official corrected. "We imagined we had any."
They had approached Lina thinking she was an anchor.
A pressure point.
A means.
What they had actually touched was the one line I had never allowed anyone to cross.
And now I was gone.
Not hiding.
Not defecting.
Walking openly into another Saint's territory.
"He's not aligning with Justice," Hale said at last. "If he were, we'd already be obsolete."
"Then what is he doing?" someone asked.
Hale's voice was flat. "Confirming whether the world deserves to be saved from either of us."
No one liked that answer.
Orders were drafted and discarded. Legal frameworks proposed and quietly buried. Every option ended the same way.
If I chose to act—
They had no response.
And somewhere deep in the infrastructure logs, unnoticed by everyone except a few terrified technicians, long-term predictive systems began failing.
Not crashing.
Correcting themselves.
⸻
I felt him before I saw him.
Not as pressure.
Not as threat.
As certainty.
The city below was quiet in the wrong way—too orderly, too precise. Every streetlight identical. Every patrol timed. Not fear-driven control. Agreement-driven structure.
A Bio-Marked run experiment.
I stood at the edge of the terrace when he arrived, hands clasped behind his back, coat unmoving despite the wind.
"Neo," he said, warmly.
Not my title.
Not my designation.
My name.
"I was wondering how long it would take before you came in person."
I turned.
He looked… ordinary. Dark hair streaked with silver. Calm eyes. The kind of face people trusted instinctively. That alone made him dangerous.
"You've been very busy," I replied. "I figured I should see what kind of man thinks the world fits in his hands."
He smiled—not offended.
"That depends," he said. "Do you still believe the world should be left to people who can't even perceive it?"
There it was.
The real opening.
Before I could answer, he stepped aside.
"And before we begin properly… I should stop being rude."
He placed a hand over his chest.
"My name is Aurelian Verus," he said. "Saint of Justice."
Not a title.
A confession.
Then he turned slightly.
"And this—"
She stepped forward.
The world broke.
Not outward.
Inward.
My breath caught as time folded in on itself, memories slamming back with no warning—
—white marble halls
—six thrones
—blood on sigils
—hands reaching for me, not to save, but to decide—
And her.
Standing apart from the others.
Crying.
"Neo—!"
My vision doubled.
I staggered half a step, palm bracing against the railing as my past life crashed through me in fragments:
I remembered her kneeling beside me as the others argued.
I remembered her screaming no when the verdict was passed.
I remembered choosing to die anyway—because I had grown bored of my conquest and life.
Because if I stayed, I wouldn't see what the world could become without my influence.
"Saint of Mercy," Aurelian said gently. "Seraphina Grimes."
She froze when our eyes met.
Then her hand flew to her mouth.
"…You're alive."
Her voice trembled—not with fear.
With relief.
With joy.
She crossed the distance between us in three hurried steps, stopping only because she wasn't sure she was allowed to touch me. Cause even if we were close in our past life, she was still afraid of me in some ways.
"I knew it," she whispered. "I knew you wouldn't disappear forever."
I straightened slowly.
{"it would seem the Saint of mercy also regained most of her memories from her past life."} I thought.
"I didn't," I said. "I died."
Her eyes filled instantly.
"I know," she said. "I know you chose it. I tried to stop them. I tried to stop you."
She laughed weakly through tears. "You never listened to me. Then again, you've always scared me."
That part hadn't changed.
Aurelian watched us quietly, hands folded, expression unreadable.
"You see now," he said at last, "why I wanted to speak with you directly."
I turned to him.
"You built a country," I said. "You stabilized it. Protected bio-marked individuals. Gave Saints authority."
"Yes."
"And you intend to do that everywhere."
"Yes."
"Even if it means tearing down governments."
He met my gaze evenly.
"Especially if it means that."
Seraphina flinched.
"Justice," she said softly, "don't push him."
He didn't look at her.
"Why?" I asked. "Why now?"
He gestured to the city below us.
"Because the world is already ruled," he said. "Just not by those strong enough to bear responsibility. Powerless people make decisions for the gifted, fear what they don't understand, and call it balance."
His eyes sharpened.
"I'm done asking permission to exist."
I let out a quiet breath.
"You misunderstand something," I said. "I don't disagree with your diagnosis."
That surprised him.
"But your solution is flawed."
His eyebrow rose slightly. "Explain."
"You think ruling together will fix it," I said. "You think Saints on thrones will prevent abuse."
I stepped closer, the air around us tightening—not hostile, just present.
"I've already seen how that ends."
Seraphina's gaze dropped.
Aurelian's voice hardened just a fraction. "And yet you came."
"Yes," I said. "Because I needed to know whether you've learned from that ending… or whether you're just repeating it with better planning."
Silence stretched.
Then he smiled again—slow, thoughtful.
"That," he said, "is exactly why I haven't moved yet."
I felt it then.
Not a trap.
An invitation.
"You're not here to stop me," he continued. "You're here to decide whether you'll stand beside me… or force me to prove that I can take the world without you."
Seraphina looked at me, pleading without words.
I thought of Lina.
Of my mother.
Of the government crossing lines they could never uncross.
"I don't stand with plans," I said quietly. "I stand with people."
Aurelian nodded.
"Then we're at an impasse."
I met his gaze, unblinking.
"No," I said. "We're at the beginning of a very dangerous conversation."
And for the first time since arriving—
Justice looked genuinely interested.