The ambient hum of the failing neon sign outside bled through the cracked window of the safehouse, casting jaundiced, intermittent slashes of yellow light across the scarred floorboards. The cramped room smelled heavily of ozone, stale black coffee, and the sharp metallic tang of overheated circuitry.
Cassian Vale sat motionless at the center of the clutter. The rough wooden table before him had become a monument to obsession-- burner phones with cracked screens, sprawling blueprints of Artemis Tower marked in visceral red ink, and scattered surveillance photographs of a woman who had never belonged to him.
Yet.
He shut his eyes, letting darkness take over.
Then… that darkness fractured.
The sharp scent of coffee vanished. The flickering neon died. The safehouse folded inward, swallowed by an encroaching, absolute darkness that consumed every remaining trace of reality.
Then, the futures began.
