Chaos did not arrive in Duskfall like a tidal wave. It seeped in like the rain, subtle at first, then all-encompassing.
The first sign was the city's notification network. At 7:00 AM, precisely, every citizen with a registered ID in districts 4 through 9—the sprawling, impoverished lower sectors of the city—received the same, innocuous message on their personal terminals.
[ You have received a citizen dividend from the Duskfall Sterling Trust. Amount: 10,000 Credits. Thank you for your civic participation. ]
Most dismissed it as spam. A cruel, sophisticated phishing scam. Ten thousand credits was more than most of them saw in six months. It was a fantasy.
Then, the first brave soul, a dockworker named Kaito, decided to check his balance at a street-corner ATM. He inserted his card, his face a mask of cynical disbelief. The machine whirred. The number on the screen appeared. He stared. He rubbed his eyes. He checked again.
He let out a yell so loud it startled the pigeons a block away. He held up a freshly dispensed stack of high-denomination bills, his face a portrait of pure, unadulterated shock.
The dam broke.
Within an hour, every ATM in the lower districts had a line stretching around the block. The initial disbelief gave way to a frenzied, euphoric pandemonium. People were cheering, crying, embracing strangers. It was as if every single person had simultaneously won the lottery. Shops that had been struggling for years were suddenly flooded with customers. Debts were paid off. Children were bought new shoes. For one brief, shining moment, the crushing weight of poverty that defined life in Duskfall was lifted.
But the euphoria was the thin, sunlit surface of a very deep, dark ocean.
The city's economy, a fragile ecosystem built on the Pale Hand's control and the populace's desperation, began to hemorrhage. The sudden, massive influx of liquid cash triggered an unprecedented hyperinflationary spiral. The price of bread doubled in an hour. By noon, it had quadrupled. The system, unable to cope with a populace that was suddenly solvent, was grinding to a halt. The stock market terminal in the financial district was a waterfall of plummeting red numbers.
The Pale Hand was in chaos. Their assets were gone. Their slush funds had vanished. Their ability to pay their enforcers, bribe their officials, and fund their operations had been wiped out in a single, inexplicable act of city-wide philanthropy.
The Oracle was, as Ravi had predicted, trapped in a logic loop. It could not identify a motive. Theft for gain was understandable. Destruction for chaos was understandable. But this? A mass redistribution of wealth that destabilized both the giver and the receiver? It was an act of economic altruism so profound it registered as a system error. The machine god was spending trillions of processing cycles trying to solve a riddle with no answer.
For the first time in decades, the all-seeing eye of the Pale Hand was effectively blind.
In a sterile, white room that resembled a high-tech infirmary, Archon Valerius, the Banker, was having a complete mental breakdown. He had been found by his personal guard, clawing at his own face and screaming about "the rain of money."
Standing over him was Archon Liora, the fearsome woman with silver hair. Her face was a mask of cold fury. With them was another of the Five Archons: a gaunt, scholarly man in a lab coat, his eyes hidden behind thick data-goggles. This was Archon Metis, the organization's chief scientist and technologist.
"His mind is shattered," Metis reported, his voice calm and clinical as he reviewed the data on his goggles. "The psychological shock of losing his entire financial empire in under a minute was too much for his psyche to bear. He is useless to us now."
"Two," Liora said, her voice dangerously quiet. "Two Fingers broken in less than a week. Silas by force, Valerius by a ghost in the code." She turned to Metis. "Report on the entity. What have you learned?"
Metis adjusted his goggles. "The digital weapon used against Valerius was… sublime. It wasn't a brute-force attack. It was a philosophical argument posed to the Oracle in a language of pure code. It used the Oracle's own logic against it. The perpetrator understands our system on a fundamental level no outsider should."
"Zero," Liora snarled the name. "This Black Crown."
"Indeed," Metis continued. "And we have a new piece of the puzzle. The Kasai Tower incident. After reviewing the logs from Silas's personal terminal, we discovered a secondary intrusion moments before the main attack. It was subtle, masterful. It originated from a different digital signature than the one used against Valerius."
He brought up a file on a nearby monitor. It was Ayla Kazuki's file.
"The girl," Liora said, her eyes narrowing. "The reporter's sister. The one who escaped with him."
"She is not just a witness," Metis corrected. "She is a skilled hacker. It is highly probable that Zero is not working alone. He is the 'how,' but she is the 'where.' He is the cannon; she is the one who aims it." A rare, predatory smile touched Metis's lips. "And that gives us a vulnerability. A weakness. A human element."
Liora understood immediately. "A god may be untouchable. But the girl who walks with him is not." She turned to a captain of her personal guard. "The city is in chaos. The lower districts are ungovernable. Use this. Announce that the 'citizen dividend' was a malicious attack, a hack that has destabilized the city. Blame the chaos on the source of the hack: Ayla Kazuki. Declare her an enemy of the state. Post a bounty on her head. Ten million credits."
The captain's eyes widened. "Archon, that is more money than exists in the city right now."
"Exactly," Liora said, her voice like ice. "It is an impossible sum. A bounty that will turn every desperate citizen, every hungry thug, every lottery winner whose money is now worthless, into a hunter. We will turn the city he just 'saved' against him. Let's see how this god handles a million prayers for the head of his only friend."
In the water regulation station, Ayla was watching the chaos unfold on her monitors, a knot of unease tightening in her stomach. "Ravi, this is… it's worse than I thought. The system can't handle it. People are starting to riot. They have money, but they can't buy anything."
Ravi stood looking into the rushing water of one of the main conduits, his expression unreadable. "It is a necessary fever," he said. "The sickness must be burned out before the body can heal."
"But people are getting hurt!"
"They were hurting before," Ravi countered, his voice still calm. "They were just dying quietly."
Suddenly, Ayla's terminal blared with a priority alert from the city's emergency broadcast system. A message was being pushed to every screen in Duskfall.
Liora's cold, severe face appeared. She spoke with a chilling authority, her words weaving a narrative of fear and betrayal. She explained the economic collapse, the worthless money, the coming hunger. And then she gave them the cause.
"...this act of economic terrorism was perpetrated by this individual," she announced, and Ayla's own high school photograph flashed onto the screen. "Ayla Kazuki. A known data-terrorist and associate of the entity called 'The Black Crown.' For her capture, dead or alive, the Pale Hand offers a reward of ten million credits."
Ayla felt the blood drain from her face. Her picture. Her name. A bounty that would make her the most hunted person in the history of the city.
She looked at Ravi, her eyes wide with a new, fresh terror. He had been silent throughout the broadcast. He was now looking at her, and for the first time, she saw something shift in the calm void of his eyes.
It was a flicker of cold, sharp, and utterly furious light.
"They made a mistake," Ravi said, his voice dropping to a temperature that could freeze fire. "They assumed you are my weakness." He turned his gaze toward the tunnel leading back to the city above.
"They have just revealed theirs."