MIDNIGHT DID not arrive softly.
It came like a rupture.
The city inhaled as one living thing and then screamed—fireworks detonating across the skyline, glass towers strobing with color, car alarms shrieking in sympathetic panic. Light flooded the windows in violent pulses, red then white then gold, illuminating the room in fragments like a body caught under interrogation lamps.
Lily stood frozen near the window, her arms wrapped around herself, her breath shallow. The sound should have been celebratory. Instead, it felt like artillery.
“This is it,” Ayden said over the video call, voice sharp and alive, he could here his fingers flying over his keyboard. Chaos suited him. The room hummed with power, screens lighting his face from below like a man orchestrating a storm. “Happy f*****g N
