The snow had stopped falling by morning. The clouds above Zurich were still thick, holding the sun hostage behind a veil of muted gray. Ethan stood at the window of the Zurich safehouse, watching a city that looked far too peaceful for the war he had just stepped into. The rooftops, dusted white from the night before, shimmered faintly in the pale winter light. His breath fogged the glass in shallow bursts. He pressed his fingers against it—cold, unyielding, like the world he was now navigating.
In the distance, church bells chimed. Three slow tolls. Their echo rolled through the narrow alleys and snow-laced rooftops like a memory. Normalcy draped everything in a way that felt cruel. Here was a city waking up, stretching toward routine and comfort—while his world was collapsing beneath shadows and names he barely understood.
In his hand, he held the Alden coin. Thumb slowly tracing the etched hawk and fractured crown. The metal was worn smooth at the edges, its surface dulled with time and meaning. It didn't feel like a token anymore. It felt like a key—one that opened doors not meant for daylight.
Behind him, Darius moved through the room with the quiet precision of a man used to hunting ghosts and staying just out of reach. His steps made no sound across the hardwood floor. He swept a handheld scanner along the windowsills, beneath the desk, behind light fixtures. Every few minutes, he rotated the SIM card in Ethan's burner phone, as if fending off an invisible noose. An encrypted laptop sat open on the table, its screen flickering through strings of code and surveillance feeds.
Ethan finally broke the silence. "You knew where I'd be."
Darius didn't look up. He was crouched by the wall vent, listening for interference. "Your father planned for contingencies. A network of failsafes. When you accessed the Zurich node, a shadow signal embedded in the drive pinged several locations. One of them came to me."
Ethan turned away from the window, brows drawing tight. "A signal?"
Darius nodded once. "Encrypted. Off-grid. Invisible to Cassian's team. Marcus didn't trust many people. He split his final protocols across three 'ghosts.' I was one of them."
Ethan crossed the room, the coin still in his hand. "And the others?"
Darius paused—long enough for Ethan to feel the weight of the silence. "Names I haven't spoken in years. One's likely dead. The other? Could be anywhere. That's the point. Redundancy."
Ethan leaned against the desk, the surface cool beneath his palms. "So I'm in the middle of a plan even the players don't fully understand."
"That's how Marcus worked," Darius said, rising to his feet. "Compartmentalization was his armor. Even we didn't know the full picture."
The server in the corner gave off a low, persistent hum. The kind of sound that made rooms feel alive, like a dormant beast waiting for its cue.
Ethan tapped the coin against the desk. A soft, rhythmic click. "Cassian didn't mention any of this. No signal. No ghosts. He just handed me the drive and vanished."
"And that," Darius said, "is exactly why you shouldn't trust him."
Ethan frowned. His voice sharpened. "He saved my life. Pulled me out of the first attack."
"And then sent you to Zurich alone," Darius countered. "With no surveillance net. No backup. No failsafes. Just a drive and a prayer."
He stepped closer, shadows dancing faintly beneath his eyes. "He's smart. Strategic. And he's always five moves ahead. That doesn't mean he's on your side."
Ethan held his gaze but said nothing.
Darius returned to the laptop and began overlaying a digital map onto the screen. Red dots bloomed across the European continent like bloodstains. One blinked steadily inside Swiss borders.
"Geneva," Darius said. "A shell firm called Vexalon Equity. On paper, it's clean. In reality—it's one of the oldest money-laundering channels Marcus discovered. It helped fund Project ECHO."
Ethan nodded slowly. "That's where we go next."
But Darius didn't respond immediately. He zoomed in on the dot, then layered another map over it. Movement patterns. Financial spikes. Shifting personnel. "Not yet," he finally said. "We need more. Surveillance. Patterns. Movement."
He tapped a key, and another file appeared. Dozens of scanned documents. Time-stamped transactions. Photographs of people coming and going from nondescript offices. Ethan leaned in. One photo stopped him cold—a suited man stepping out of a building with a logo printed in the background. Sleek. Blue. Familiar.
"LionSphere," Ethan muttered.
"Publicly? A fintech startup," Darius said. "Privately? A backchannel for Ascendant logistics. Shell accounts. Proxy servers. Quiet shipments."
Ethan clicked the file open, eyes scanning faster now. "What does Cassian have to do with them?"
Darius didn't answer with words. Instead, he played a voice file—low fidelity, pulled from the Zurich node. Static buzzed before the message came alive.
"If the heir opens this… then he's already been marked.
They'll come from above, not below.
From allies, not enemies.
And from Cassian."
The voice faded into static. The final hiss dragged just long enough to sting.
Darius turned to him. "You still think he's just your handler?"
Ethan closed the file slowly. "I think I don't know him at all."
For a long moment, they stood in silence. The light through the window had shifted—still cold, but clearer now. The frost had begun to melt along the sill.
Ethan crossed the room again, returning to the window. "What did my father think would happen? That I'd turn into him overnight?"
Darius exhaled through his nose. "He didn't expect you to become him. He hoped you'd become better."
Ethan let out a dark laugh, the sound dry. "Well, so far I've been shot at, lied to, and nearly buried in a Zurich alley. So we're off to a good start."
"You're still breathing," Darius said, tone clipped.
Ethan turned his head. "What happens if we can't trust anyone?"
"Then we start building something that doesn't need trust," Darius said. "Only results."
He stepped toward the steel case on the desk and unlocked it with a smooth turn. The lid creaked open. Inside: burner phones stacked in rows. Black passports in half a dozen aliases. Bundles of unmarked currency. Two small vials, clear liquid glittering inside—injectable nanotech tracers.
"Pick one," Darius said. "New identity. New route. If we hit Geneva, we go dark for seventy-two hours. After that, every agency with ties to the Ascendants will be sniffing the air."
Ethan sifted through the IDs. His own face stared back from a laminated card bearing the name Julian Rowe.
He raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a schoolteacher."
"Exactly," Darius said, lips curling faintly. "No one notices a teacher."
Ethan pocketed the ID. "Let's make some noise in Geneva."
Before they left, Ethan paused by the map again. Dozens of names marked in red. Institutions, individuals—quiet enemies wearing expensive suits and curated smiles. People Marcus Alden had spent his life watching.
He grabbed a pen from the desk and circled one name—LionSphere Ltd.—three times.
"This is where it begins."
Darius stood beside him, hands clasped behind his back.
"No," he said, voice a quiet blade. "This is where it erupts."
And far away, on the 59th floor of a mirrored tower somewhere in Singapore, a phone vibrated once. No ringtone. No alert. Just a brief, calculated pulse.
A man in a tailored suit picked it up, eyes narrowing as he read the single line of text glowing on the screen.
The heir has moved.
The war had begun.