ARIA VEX: THE RECKONING

The moon was high above the Vex stronghold, hanging like a pale eye watching through broken clouds. Below, the great hall gleamed in gold and shadow—columns of black marble veined with silver rising into vaulted ceilings. Crystalline chandeliers shivered with light. Laughter echoed like it belonged to another world. Aria Vex stood alone at the edge of the grand feast, her back to the velvet wall drapes, her gaze fixed not on the crowd of alphas, aristocrats, and supernatural royalty—but on a small, blinking signal in the corner of her contact lens HUD. The glitch had returned. It pulsed in and out, like breath. A coded signature buried beneath twelve layers of encrypted net. She'd built the scan herself—quiet, wormless, and meant to do one thing only: trace the untraceable. It had never triggered. Not until tonight. She moved like a shadow. Sliding past a table of laughing vampires, past two gnarled witches arguing in a dialect no one under four hundred would understand, past her cousin Elian who was already drunk and pawing at a wind nymph. None noticed her leave. No one ever really noticed Aria Vex—not until it was far too late. She found the server access behind a false bookshelf in the north hall, where the scent of wolves faded beneath ionized dust and the sterile chill of machines. The room was narrow, pulsing blue and white with vertical racks of data columns and humming consoles. Aria dropped to one knee, pried open the hardware casing, and inserted a slim silver spike drive from beneath the strap of her heel. Three seconds later, her custom OS bloomed before her, its interface black and bone-white. She keyed in a neuro-synaptic bridge code. > [BOOTING PHANTOM NETWORK] SEED SIGNAL TRACE DETECTED ORIGIN: INTERNAL NODE // VEX SECURE LAYER-3 ALERT: NON-FAMILY ACCESS PATTERN DETECTED RED PROTOCOL ENABLED Her breath caught. Not external. Internal breach. A traitor. Now. She backed out of the code, fingers flying, eyes wide. Her pupils narrowed into slits. Her wolf stirred—too late. The first explosion shook the floor. A vibration deep in the stone, then a crack that ran up the wall like a jagged scar. Screams followed, too close, too many, overlapping. Aria tore the spike free and bolted. Down the hall. Past statues older than nations. Past splashes of blood painting the marble. Her heels echoed through the corridor until she kicked them off, bare feet slapping the stone as fire licked the air. She burst into the grand hall. Hell had come home. The chandeliers were on the ground, shattered. Wolves in mid-shift lay slaughtered where they’d stood. Aria’s brother Jovan was half-human, half-wolf, impaled on the centerpiece table like a skinned trophy. Her mother’s gown burned as she was dragged down by three masked figures wielding silver-threaded wire. They were being hunted inside their own fortress. Silver fog hissed from hidden vents, anti-shifter gas designed to cripple wolves mid-transformation. Pack warriors collapsed mid-snarl, choking, twisting. Alphas roared. Someone howled. Aria could not tell who. And then she saw him. Elian. Her cousin stood beside a man in a matte-black coat. The coat flared as he moved—vampire fast, but not a vampire. Warlock? Chimera? It didn’t matter. What mattered was the look in Elian’s eyes. He wasn’t confused. Or afraid. He was part of it. “Elian!” she screamed. He looked up. Smiled. Walked toward her like he’d been waiting. She didn’t wait. Aria turned and ran. Her body was already burning from the gas—her wolf howling inside her, desperate, blind. She didn’t shift. Couldn’t. She ran for the old vault—a room no one used anymore, hidden behind the east stairwell. She slammed the door shut, used her blood to key the ancient lock, and stumbled to the back wall where her private interface waited—concealed beneath stone and spell. She fell to her knees. She couldn’t save them. Not now. Not her family. Not herself. But maybe… maybe this. She activated the implant no one knew existed. The Reaper Seed. A protocol meant for upload. Not data, not files—consciousness. Her vision dimmed. The walls tilted. Elian’s voice echoed through the vault door. “Aria,” he said, casual, sweet. “Open the door. Let’s talk. I’ll make it quick.” She pressed the final command with shaking fingers. > [EXECUTING PHANTOM TRANSFER] WARNING: HOST MATCH UNKNOWN. SIGNAL WILL FLOAT. BOND ON CONTACT. CONFIRM OVERRIDE: Y/N? Y The world exploded into white. --- She awoke to screaming. Flashing lights. The sound of shutters. Voices. The sharp tang of antiseptic and the artificial sweetness of vanilla-scented lip balm. “Nova? Nova, can you hear me?” Her eyelids fluttered open. She saw the world in color correction—too bright, too glossed. Blonde waves of hair fell around her shoulders. She raised her hand. It was not her hand. Slim, uncalloused, with long painted nails and silver rings. “Vitals stabilizing,” someone said. “She’s responding.” The nurse’s face hovered overhead. “Nova, you’ve been asleep for a long time. You’re safe now.” Nova? The name echoed like someone calling through a cavern. A second later, her memory caught up. Not hers—Nova’s. Glamour queen. Scandal-prone. Human. Famous. This was wrong. Aria Vex had died. Her body was ash in a smoking ruin. But she was alive. Somewhere. Inside a human idol's skin. The door opened. She felt it before she saw him—the shift in pressure, like the arrival of a storm. He wore a charcoal suit that fit like armor. His eyes were cold steel rimmed in black. He was tall, brutal in posture, and absolutely still. The air tensed around him like it knew to obey. Dominic Vale. He stepped forward, his gaze fixed on her. She stared back, unsure why her pulse spiked—until she saw it: Recognition. Not for Nova. For something else. Something he couldn’t name. His voice was low, edged like a razor. “You’ve changed.” And Aria—Nova—whoever she was now—smiled. Only slightly. Because she had. And this was only the beginning. ---