The sky peels back.
They drop out of the low cloud like knives—sleek turbines whining, blue-white throats glowing, wings melancholy as sharks. Nexum has had them for a decade and no one in this city has ever seen them at work. They look like regret taught to fly.
“He brought the sky,” Dominic says, spine locked.
“It was always his,” I say, and raise my sword to it. “Not today.”
“Don’t run,” I tell the pack and the bodies and the faces beyond them and the faces behind glass. “Don’t hide. Keep moving. If we stop here we die in someone else’s story.”
The first volley kisses the plaza with heat. The fountains jump out of themselves in slow motion and then remember gravity hard. The drones slice their hummingbird arcs low and the air becomes splinters. Wolves shoot, claws scrape, teeth imp
