While sunlight glinted off the polished surface of the super train being prepared at Angel’s City’s central station, a very different kind of eting was taking place deep beneath the city’s bustling streets.
In a windowless, concrete bunker, lit by the cold, greenish glow of holographic projectors, five figures sat around a scarred tal table. The air was thick with the sll of ozone, stale coffee, and a faint, sickly-sweet chemical odor. These were not nobles or knights. They wore utilitarian dark clothing, free of any family insignia. On the wall behind them, the only decoration was a stylized, circular symbol: a serpent eating its own tail. This was the mark of Ouroboros, an organization the world’s governnts labeled as fanatics, terrorists, and heretics. Their obsession was not with human power, but with the monsters that lurked beyond the great walls. They believed the future of evolution lay not in human Laws, but in understanding—and even rging with—the monstrous.
The leader of this mission, a woman with sharp features and eyes like chips of flint, tapped the table. A holographic news report flickered to life above it, showing blurred, unofficial footage of golden lightning cracking across a training ground. The image of Nero, though grainy, was clear.
"The confirmation is absolute," she stated, her voice clipped. "Subject Nero Adams, forr Raizen, has manifested a second Primal Law. Lightning, in addition to Fire. This is not a variant. This is a fundantal breach of reality as we understand it."
A man with a shaved head covered in intricate tattoos of monster anatomy leaned forward. "A dual-core system in a human body... The energy potential, the structural stability... It’s unheard of. The Raizen clan’s own Lightning, combined with another force? If we could isolate the chanism, replicate it..." His eyes glead with a scientist’s hungry curiosity.
"Replication is phase two," the leader snapped. "Phase one is acquisition. He is the most valuable biological specin to erge in a century. More valuable than any Alpha-class monster organ."
A third mber, a wiry man who kept cracking his knuckles, spoke up. "The logistics are a nightmare. He’s under the protection of the Leclair heir. He’s traveling with the Samael and Zephyr princesses, The Undine family Ice Queen his girlfriend. The train will be guarded, likely by Leclair family knights and academy security."
"We are aware of the security," the leader said, pulling up a schematic of the mag-lev super train route. "A direct assault on the train itself is suicide. But they are not invulnerable during transit. There is a three-minute window as the train passes through the Skyfall Canyon. The anti-gravity stabilizers are most vulnerable to certain resonant frequencies there. Our... assets... can create a disruption."
She zood in on a section of the canyon.
"We force an ergency stop. Not a derailnt—we need him alive and mostly intact. We create chaos. Our ground teams move in under cover of the confusion. The objective is the subject. Grab him and extract. Do not engage other targets unless absolutely necessary. He is the only priority."
The man with the tattoos frowned. "The princesses, the others... they will fight. They are powerful."
"Let them," the leader said, her voice ice-cold.
"Their power is predictable. Human. His is the anomaly. Our teams are equipped with suppressors tuned to human prana frequencies. They will be slowed. The subject’s dual-core signature is unknown; the suppressors may be less effective on him, which is why we use overwhelming force."
She looked at each of them in turn. "The world’s great families see him as a weapon or a trophy. They want to control him. Ouroboros sees the truth. He is a key. A key to understanding a new form of life, a new form of power. He belongs to the future, not to their dusty old bloodlines."
She closed the hologram with a final slash of her hand. "Prepare the teams. Activate the canyon assets. The train departs in ninety minutes. We snatch our future from under their noses."
The Ouroboros leader’s words still hung in the damp air, a plan set in motion. As her team moved towards the bunker’s hidden exit, the heavy steel door didn’t slide open. Instead, it glowed with a soft, white light before lting inward with a silent hiss, as if touched by a miniature sun.
Standing in the newly created opening, backlit by the sterile hallway lights, was a figure that made the fanatics freeze. He was a young man, tall and lean, with silver hair cut short and sharp, intelligent silver eyes that missed nothing. His features were a mature, hardened reflection of Lux’s—sharper jawline, colder gaze, carrying an air of command Lux hadn’t yet grown into. He wore the distinctive silver-and-white uniform of the Leclair family’s elite internal security force.
Flanking him in the hallway were a dozen knights and mages, their auras emitting a clean, focused pressure. The Law of Light radiated from them, ready to be unleashed.
"Leandros Leclair," the Ouroboros leader spat, recognizing him imdiately. Leandros, the older brother, the heir. A mber of the Academy’s powerful Student Council, and a na feared by underground organizations.
"Your eting is adjourned," Leandros stated, his voice calm and devoid of warmth. He stepped into the bunker, his boots echoing on the concrete. The Leclair forces flowed in behind him, sealing the exit. Glowing runes flared to life on the walls and ceiling—powerful containnt seals. "We’ve been tracking your cell for weeks. We knew you’d make a move once the news about my brother’s friend broke. Predictable."
The Ouroboros mbers didn’t wait for a speech. The tattooed man hurled a glass vial that shattered at Leandros’s feet, releasing a cloud of corrosive, dark green mist designed to eat through armor and flesh. The wiry man blurred into motion, claws extending from his gauntlets, aiming for the nearest mage.
Leandros didn’t flinch. He raised a hand.
"Purge."
A wave of pure, blinding white light exploded from his palm. It didn’t just push the corrosive mist back; it annihilated it, breaking down the toxic molecules into harmless vapor. The light washed over the charging wiry man, not burning him, but revealing his true position—his speed was an illusion created by mutated monster glands. Now visible and slow, he was easily disard by a knight’s swift sword-strike to the wrist.
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