Chapter 9 · The City on Its Knees

The city knelt beneath him.

From the crown of the Black Tower, Eli saw the movement spread in concentric waves. Security drones folded their blades and lowered themselves onto rooftops. Armored sentinels dropped to one knee in the streets, their red optics dimming beneath the command he had forced through the network.

At the windows of the upper districts, velvet curtains trembled as nobles pressed their hands to the glass. Even the great defense cannons mounted along the financial wall had turned inward, their barrels aimed at the tower instead of the city beyond it.

Every weapon waited for him.

Every machine listened.

The realization should have felt like victory.

Instead, the warframe’s heartbeat thundered through Eli’s bones.

BOOM.

The sound was not coming from the tower. It was coming from inside his chest.

Scarlet light pulsed beneath his skin, spilling through the cracks in the black armor wrapped around him. The forbidden frame rose from the tower’s buried vaults like a second body, taller than any human, its shoulders crowned with hooked plates and its spine trailing cables of liquid fire. The armor had no face.