The warehouse in Karachi was silent now. Smoke still coiled from the edges of steel crates, mingling with the scent of cordite and blood. Rex stood with his back to the carnage, already thinking ahead.

  Outside, the city moaned with its usual chaos — rickshaws, calls to prayer, and the distant thump of nightclub bass echoing through slums. But within these walls, a different kind of power shifted.

  Razael “Raz” Varko moved like a shadow between the fallen. His blade was still wet, but his expression unreadable.

  “Twenty-seven bodies,” Raz finally said, sheathing his weapon. “None made the call. Navarro’s data leak was clean.”

  “It wasn’t a test.” Rex lit a thin cigarette. The match hissed against the wind. “It was bait. Someone wanted us to see this... and walk into it anyway.”

  Raz looked at the crimson smear on the concrete floor where one of their informants had died coughing blood.

  “Who would be that stupid?”

  “Not stupid. Desperate,” Rex said coolly. He took a drag and glanced at a bullet-pocked wall. “And loud.”

  In a sleek glass tower near the Burj Khalifa, Kira “Sable” Valenova adjusted her silk scarf as she walked into a private boardroom. The men inside stood—old-world respect, masking new-world fear.

  “Gentlemen,” she purred. “Let’s discuss your loyalty to ValenCorp. And the consequences of betraying it.”

  On the screen behind her, a leaked image from a bank transfer flickered. Swiss codes. Offshore assets. One man turned pale.

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  “You said this was anonymous,” he croaked.

  “And it was,” Kira smiled. “Until it wasn’t. Don’t worry, I’m not here to ruin you. Just to remind you that we always know.”

  Her voice was velvet wrapped around steel.

  The man nodded quickly. His empire would survive—because Dominion allowed it to.

  Miguel “Shade” Navarro’s voice crackled through the encrypted line.

  “Rex. Got something. Cross-traffic from Interpol bounced off a rogue node in Kiev. Someone’s poking our financial blindspots—again.”

  “Same signature?”

  “Same. But cleaner. This one might be using black-grade AI, scavenged from military.”

  Rex exhaled. “Sabotage model?”

  “Maybe. Or a test run.”

  “Send the trail to Alfred. Get Juno on alert. We’re pulling assets out of Kiev tomorrow.”

  In the heart of Dominion’s secret sanctuary, Alfred flipped through surveillance screens like a pianist playing old hymns. His eyes were calm, but his fingers moved with the speed of muscle memory.

  Students trained in a nearby facility. Orphans turned analysts. Recruits learning more than just coding — they learned obedience, loyalty, and silence.

  He paused on one screen. A boy, maybe twelve, breaking down firewall code faster than expected.

  “Another prodigy,” Alfred murmured.

  He tapped the child’s file: orphaned in the Balkans, excellent memory, borderline genius.

  “Let’s put him on the White Devil shortlist.”

  A desert warzone. Smoke, sand, and the stench of betrayal. Rex knelt beside a bleeding soldier—his eyes full of pain, but his mouth silent.

  “Tell me who sold us out,” Rex growled.

  The man coughed. Blood. Tears.

  “No one did. We were just... left to rot.”

  Rex stood, face steel.

  “Ghosts don’t bleed. But they do remember.”

  He walked away from the ruins, already planning Dominion in the ashes.

  Back in the present, Rex crushed the cigarette under his boot.

  “This is just the beginning,” he told Raz. “Dominion’s been too quiet. And someone wants to know if the king still walks.”

  Raz raised an eyebrow. “And do you?”

  Rex turned, eyes burning with purpose.

  “I never stopped. They just forgot how cold the shadows feel when I pass.”