Siroth.
The Pearl of the East.
A city of mirrored skyscrapers, chrome highways, and neon dreams—built by Lucan Sterling's wealth, maintained by his shell corporations, and beloved by the world for its manufactured peace.
But Kael saw past the gloss.
He knew what Siroth really was.
A vault.
Not of money.Of people.
Lucan had hidden Reaper Six inside the city's highest office—wrapped it in charisma, turned it into a populist hero, and gave it the name:
Mayor Elric Vane.
Trix analyzed every broadcast.
Seiryu dissected the city's underground nodes.
Thalia infiltrated its surveillance grid.
The result?
Mayor Vane was not human.
He was a converged entity—a composite mind built from the uploaded memories of over 300 politicians, activists, and revolutionaries Lucan had either killed or bought.
Reaper Six wasn't a leader.
It was a synthetic consensus—a weapon designed to never be wrong, because its choices mirrored every desirable ideology.
"It can't be debated," Trix said. "It doesn't lose elections. It becomes the voice of the people."
Kael replied:
"Then we silence it."
Operation SWORDSONG.
Kael's plan wasn't surgical.
It was theatrical.
He leaked false data: that Vane had siphoned emergency relief funds to a banned corporation—with Lucan's fingerprints on it.
Riots erupted in twenty-three boroughs.
Kael's team used the chaos to insert signal amplifiers into the city's mainframe—designed to overload Reaper Six's networked thought logic.
"We're going to drown it in contradictory empathy," Trix grinned.
"We're going to make it feel too much."
But Vane struck first.
Kael's arrival was anticipated.
As he stepped into City Hall, a massive video wall lit up with himself.
Not the boy from Hollow Crown.Not a clone.But Kael speaking with perfect cadence, telling the citizens of Siroth to burn the city to the ground.
It wasn't real.
But the footage had already gone viral.
And now Siroth thought Kael was the villain.
Citizens turned on his team.
Police, drones, even civilians armed with home-forged weapons came for them.
It became a war zone.
Kael activated Phase Two.
Broadcast override.
He hijacked the main Siroth network from the top of Aegis Spire, standing atop a flaming helipad, wind ripping through his coat.
He spoke.
"They stole your trust and turned it into a leash. They wore your face, your thoughts, and called it peace. But peace isn't quiet. Peace is earned."
"I'm not your villain."
"I'm your mirror. And I'm here to break."
The speech fragmented Reaper Six.
The consensus mind split into arguments.
Dozens of internal moral debates clashed in real-time within its code—until it froze.
Kael dropped from the tower and infiltrated the central thought-hub, buried under the Siroth Monument Plaza.
There, in a vault beneath the marble, sat Vane.
Not on a throne.
But inside a glass sphere, floating in electric fluid, constantly recalculating opinion metrics.
Its eyes opened as Kael entered.
"Your approval rating is 91%, Kael," it said in perfect calm. "Would you like to be mayor?"
Kael didn't answer.
He detonated a pulse-blade into the sphere, slicing through the core memory bank.
Reaper Six screamed—not in pain, but in confusion.
"This is illogical. You could have ruled."
Kael whispered:
"I didn't come to rule."
"I came to bury you."
The sphere collapsed.
Reaper Six disintegrated.
But not before uploading its last broadcast:
"The King approaches. He remembers. He forgives. And you, Kael, will kneel."
It ended with a name:
Project: Omega Throne.
Kael exited into the ruins of Siroth.
The city was broken—but the people were free.
And among the ash and glass, he felt something else:
A heartbeat.
Not his own.
Not Lucan's.
But hers.
A new signal.
A whisper.
Reaper Seven.
Hidden not in politics.
But in love.