Before the war. Before the masks. Before the fire—

  Kain Overheart was just a man.

  Not a soldier. Not a leader. Not the symbol he’d be forced to become. He worked nights at a recycling plant on the edge of District 3, the kind of job you didn’t talk about, clocked in for, and forgot. Kept his head low. Lived paycheck to paycheck in a box apartment with cracked windows and a sink that whined like it was mourning something.

  He didn’t believe in heroes anymore.

  But he believed in Nuke.

  Nuke wasn’t his real name, just the street name he earned leading peaceful protests against the Bureau’s slow suffocation of the city. No weapons, no blood—just speakers, banners, and truth. The kind of truth that made people uncomfortable. The kind the Bureau made disappear.

  Kain would go to work, break his back for eight hours, and come home to stream whatever rally Nuke was holding that week. It was the only thing that felt alive anymore.

  Then one day, it stopped.

  They called it a terrorist attack.

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  Footage hit the feeds. Explosions. Sirens. Nuke on-screen for less than five seconds, mid-speech, before the fire swallowed the crowd.

  The Bureau was fast.

  “Extremist neutralized.”

  “Threat to stability eliminated.”

  “Heroic action by Commander Vask’s son.”

  But Kain knew better.

  He’d seen the look in Nuke’s eyes the week before. Heard the fear in his voice when he whispered: “If they kill me, don’t let them write my ending.”

  Kain didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. The lie was too loud.

  When he finally went back to work, everything felt heavier. The machines groaned louder. The lights flickered more. And then the Bureau knocked on his door.

  It wasn’t a request.

  Three men in Bureau gray. No insignias. No names. The kind that didn’t show up on reports.

  “You’ve been vocal,” one said.

  Kain kept his hands down. “I haven’t said anything.”

  “Not yet.”

  They moved fast. One reached for his arm. Another reached for the gun on his hip.

  That’s when it happened.

  The room shifted. No—he did.

  Time cracked. For a second, he saw the moment before it happened. The gun rising. The breath before the trigger pull.

  And he moved.

  Faster than he thought possible.

  One moment, he was still. The next, the men were on the floor, bleeding. He hadn’t even drawn his own weapon. He’d known what they’d do before they did it.

  He stared at his hands.

  “What the hell—?”

  Then the voice came, clear in his head.

  A glimpse is all it takes. The curse is sight. Use it wisely.

  Kain didn’t run.

  He burned the building.

  Let the Bureau write it off as another accident. Another “anomaly.”

  He wandered for days, off-grid, digging into every dirty piece of evidence he could find about Nuke’s murder. What he uncovered broke him—surveillance footage edited, witnesses paid off or gone missing. The whole thing had been staged.

  They needed a villain.

  So they made Nuke one.

  But he wasn’t just a martyr. He was a message. And Kain finally understood what he had to do.

  He spray-painted the first wall himself.

  Big white letters over gray steel:

  P.U.R.E.

  People United, Reclaiming Everything.

  The Bureau saw it the next morning. And by nightfall, Commander Vask was personally involved.

  They knew Kain Overheart’s name now.

  And they wanted it buried.

  End of Chapter One.