Kade stood outside his house with a suitcase at his feet, watching his mother cry.
She had been crying a lot ever since Trent told her Kade would be leaving for Dagestan for two to three years to "recover" from what happened to Rex.
It was a weak explanation.
But the Veil made it easy to accept.
She had tried to argue. It hadn't mattered. Once Trent made a decision, there was no changing it.
The fallout from Rex's death had been handled quickly. Authorities were satisfied. Rex's parents were given answers. Kade was never questioned.
How Trent managed that, Kade didn't know.
He wasn't sure he wanted to.
After Tina left town and the noise around the incident faded, life at home returned to something normal. Meals. Work. Routine.
For Kade, though, everything felt slightly detached.
School was worse.
Two empty seats beside him.
The cafeteria table they used to sit at taken over within days.
Without Rex and Tina, he was back to being the kid with green eyes. The strange one. The one people kept a distance from.
So he sat alone.
Walked alone.
Ate alone.
And thought.
He still didn't feel remorse for killing Rex.
That hadn't changed.
What had changed was that he didn't trust that feeling anymore.
Was it really his lack of regret?
Or was the dual gaze altering him in ways he couldn't detect?
That thought unsettled him.
Tina's words in the kitchen replayed often.
She was right.
When she talked about silently begging for help, memories came back. Things he had pushed aside before enlightenment.
He had noticed signs.
Her red eyes.
The way Rex laughed when she looked uncomfortable.
The way she avoided his gaze sometimes.
He hadn't known everything. But he had known enough.
And he ignored it.
Because confronting it would have destroyed their friendship.
And Kade had wanted things to stay the same.
After the dual gaze, those memories felt distant, almost new. Like he was seeing the signs for the first time.
Now he didn't know which version of himself was real.
Did enlightenment suppress those memories?
Or did he suppress them on his own?
Was killing Rex justice?
Or was it guilt disguised as action?
Tina said he wasn't a hero.
She was right.
He had killed Rex.
But before that, he had allowed him.
That was harder to accept.
More than anything, what bothered Kade now was this:
He couldn't fully trust his own mind.
Not his instincts.
Not his emotions.
Not even his memories.
And the way Trent had been watching him lately, studying him, made it worse.
It felt like things were unfolding exactly the way his father expected.
Like Rex's death hadn't been chaos.
Like it had been a test.
Kade didn't know if that was paranoia or insight.
He wasn't sure which scared him more.
His mother stepped forward and hugged him again, still crying.
He hugged her back.
Maybe the training would give him answers.
Or maybe it would show him just how deep this went.
Either way, he was leaving.
***
Trent finally seemed to have had enough of the tears.
"Alright, Theresa," he said evenly. "You'll be able to call him. That's enough. We need to get going."
Reluctantly, she let Kade go.
"Call me when you get there, okay?" she said, wiping her eyes. "Be safe."
Kade gave her a small, helpless smile and nodded.
Trent inclined his head once to his wife and headed for the car. Kade followed. They got in, and a moment later the engine turned over. The car pulled out of the driveway.
Theresa remained on the porch, waving until they disappeared around the corner.
Inside the car, silence settled.
Trent's eyes stayed fixed on the road.
Kade leaned back in his seat, thoughts drifting.
They hadn't even cleared the neighborhood before Trent took a sudden turn.
Kade frowned.
The scenery shifted quickly from suburban streets to something far less maintained. Within minutes, they were pulling into a narrow alley behind what looked like an abandoned factory.
Rust. Broken windows. No people.
The engine shut off.
Kade turned toward his father. "What's going on?"
Trent didn't answer immediately. He stepped out of the car.
"Get out," he said calmly. "We're taking the scenic route from here."
Kade stared at him for a second.
They weren't even a mile from the house.
But he stepped out anyway.
They walked a short distance from the car. The alley was empty. No cameras. No witnesses.
Trent stopped.
"You're going to want to brace yourself," he said casually. "There are only a few ways to reach where we're headed. A car isn't one of them."
Before Kade could ask what he meant, a current of green light spiraled up from beneath his feet, coiling around his legs, his torso, his arms. It wasn't violent, just absolute. Dense. Controlled.
He tried to move.
He couldn't.
The energy tightened slightly, enough to make the point clear.
His feet lifted off the ground.
Kade's pulse spiked. "What the—"
Beside him, Trent rose as well, encased in his own emerald aura. Unlike Kade's, his was seamless, refined to the point that its edges barely disturbed the air.
Trent glanced at him.
"Off we go."
The alley dropped away in an instant.
They shot upward, acceleration slamming into Kade hard enough to steal the air from his lungs. The ground shrank rapidly. Buildings blurred into streaks of grey and green as wind roared past them.
His stomach flipped violently.
"Dad—!"
The city became a patchwork beneath them.
In less than a minute, they were piercing through cloud cover.
Kade squeezed his eyes shut as the initial force carried them higher.
Then, gradually, the motion steadied.
When he opened his eyes again, they were cruising.
The Ala encasing him felt precise, perfectly regulated. There was no wind against his skin now, no turbulence, no jarring shifts in direction. Despite the speed, it felt stable.
Intent woven so tightly into the energy that it behaved like law.
He looked down.
They were high above the city. Buildings reduced to patterns of light. Roads to glowing threads. The world below blurred into streaks of color as they cut through the sky.
He turned toward his father.
Trent floated beside him, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight, expression neutral. He looked as though he were taking a quiet evening walk rather than crossing the sky at impossible speed.
The control required for something like this had to be immense.
Kade could feel the density of the Ala surrounding him. It wasn't raw or explosive. It was refined. Structured.
And Trent made it look effortless.
Who exactly are you? Kade wondered.
Maybe he would finally start getting answers wherever they were going.
He looked back down.
From this height, the city felt distant. Small. The chaos of the past weeks seemed equally far away. The skyline stretched out ahead of them, dark and endless, lights scattered like fallen stars.
It was strangely peaceful.
For the first time in a long while, Kade felt his shoulders loosen. His breathing steadied. The constant tension coiled inside him eased just enough to notice.
A small smile formed on his face before he realized it.
He closed his eyes again, not out of fear this time, but to feel it fully. The suspension. The weightlessness. The quiet.
Beside him, Trent glanced over.
His expression did not change.
But their speed decreased.
Gradually. Subtly.
Just enough.
***
Kade didn't know when he fell asleep.
One moment he was watching the city lights blur beneath them, the next the steady hum of controlled Ala and the unnatural calm wrapped around him like a blanket.
If he had been thinking clearly, he would have questioned the sanity of falling asleep thousands of feet in the air, suspended inside a construct maintained entirely by his father.
Instead, he slept.
And it was the best sleep he had gotten in weeks.
At the end of the day, no matter what he had done or what he had become, he was still a teenager. The last few weeks had been violent, disorienting, relentless. His mind had simply shut down the moment it was given peace.
Beside him, Trent noticed.
He shot Kade an annoyed look when the soft sound of snoring reached him.
Then he let him be.
They continued flying for hours.
When they finally stopped, it was abrupt.
The deceleration snapped Kade awake.
His eyes flew open.
For a split second he saw nothing but sky and empty space beneath him. His stomach dropped and he inhaled sharply, panic rising—
"Calm down," Trent said evenly. "We're here."
Kade blinked, forcing his heart to slow. The green cocoon still held him steady in the air.
He looked around.
They were hovering above a dense stretch of forest. Endless trees. No roads. No buildings. No sign of civilization.
"This is it?" he asked, confused.
Before Trent could respond, Kade felt it.
The air changed.
Not physically. It was in the energy.
The Ala in a specific region of the forest began to churn. It wasn't wild, but it was active. Deliberate. Like something enormous had stirred beneath the surface of reality.
The trees ahead shimmered.
Kade's breath caught.
The forest folded in on itself like a mirage dissolving.
And behind it—
A city.
Not ruins. Not illusion.
A living, functioning city.
Towering structures built from materials he couldn't immediately identify. Spires threaded with light. Walkways suspended in midair. Energy flowing like veins through architecture.
People moved through the sky.
Some were wrapped in red, others blue, gold, violet. Controlled auras that carried them effortlessly between buildings. A woman walked along a suspended platform with grocery bags floating neatly behind her. Two men argued midair, hovering casually above a courtyard.
It wasn't chaotic.
It was structured.
Intentional.
Kade's jaw slowly dropped.
It looked like something out of a dream.
Or a civilization that had evolved beyond the need to pretend.
Before he could fully process it, a figure descended from one of the taller structures.
A middle-aged man with a blond buzz cut and deep blue eyes. A soft blue aura surrounded him, stable and smooth.
He landed a few feet in front of them, still suspended slightly above ground level.
"Trent," he said with an easy familiarity. Then his gaze shifted to Kade. "And this must be Kade."
He gave a small nod.
"Welcome to Davross City. A place where the Enlightened are free to explore and refine their power."
His expression sharpened slightly.
"My name is Malachi."
Trent returned the nod.
Kade was still staring past him at the city.
Malachi noticed.
A faint smile touched his lips.
"Please," he said, turning toward the skyline. "Follow me. Let's get you settled."
He rose smoothly into the air and headed back toward the city.
Trent followed without hesitation.
Kade hovered for a second longer, taking in the impossible sight one last time.
Then the emerald cocoon shifted direction—
—and carried him forward into Davross.