By the time Kirion and Sera began their work with the Arc Echelon, the country was already unraveling.
Food shortages turned marketplaces into battlegrounds. Cities once full of light and music had become zones of ration and ruin. The government, bloated with power and blind to consequence, blamed foreign saboteurs and internal "traitors."
But the people knew better.
They knew corruption when they tasted it in their water, saw it in their schools, and bled it on their streets.
Protests were no longer events.
They were constants—roiling clouds of anger and desperation surging against the fortified walls of power. Tear gas filled the air so often it was mistaken for morning mist.
The regime responded with brute force. Curfews. Suspensions of civil rights. Blackouts. Raids.
They silenced journalists.
Imprisoned teachers.
"Re-educated" students.
In the capital, the Prime Minister's speeches grew shorter, more erratic. His eyes, once full of practiced charm, now brimmed with paranoia. Every public appearance was flanked by new elite guards—unmarked, masked, faceless.
Rumors spread like wildfire: internal purges, assassinations dressed as accidents, an AI surveillance system sweeping every public database.
The people were afraid.
But fear had started to wear thin.
It was in this chaos that Kirion struck.
With surgical precision, he led raids not just to rescue—but to expose. Hidden footage from black-site prisons. Smuggled documents from corrupt ministries. Medical reports from suppressed outbreaks.
Each file decrypted by Sera, each story sent spiraling across the underground net.
Truth became their weapon.
And the people began to rally—not to a flag, but to a face.
Kirion's.
Somehow, somewhere, a photo of him surfaced—unmasked, battle-worn, holding a child's hand and looking past the camera, into something brighter.
It spread like wildfire.
Anonymous graffiti artists began painting his silhouette across cracked concrete walls: The Healer Who Fights.
The regime branded him a terrorist.
The people called him a savior.
Kirion called himself neither.
But he knew the storm was coming.
And this time, it wouldn't pass.
It would cleanse.