The world went dark.
In a single hour, over ninety percent of Rise of Nations' satellite infrastructure flatlined. Screens went blank. HALIX cores stuttered and failed. Millions of civilians—spectators, analysts, sponsors, and control agents—lost access to the game they believed was just a show.
But it wasn't a show anymore.
It was real. It always had been.
---
Kael stood in Astra's base beneath Kyiv, surrounded by failing monitors and sparks of overloaded hardware. The Ghost Rebellion's safehouse shook under the pressure of cascading systems crashing in real time.
> "What the hell just happened?!" he barked.
Astra slammed her fist on a control panel, trying to force a reboot. "Jian hijacked our signal the moment you exposed the network. He used your broadcast as a backdoor. This blackout? It was the final step in his plan."
Kael felt the ground shift beneath him—no longer metaphorically.
The tunnels were unstable.
Above, the city was descending into confusion. With power out, military coordination was collapsing. Units that relied on sponsor feeds and AI command routing were stranded. Supply lines frozen. Strategic maps gone.
The world was falling apart.
And Jian Wu was the only one with a functioning system.
---
Meanwhile — Shanghai Command Hub (Unknown Location)
Jian Wu stood inside a control chamber lit only by red overlays and echoing silence. Behind him, five surviving HALIX cores floated in isolation, their networks consolidated.
He stared at the screen—Kael frozen mid-speech, cut off before his final words.
> "He spoke the truth," Jian said to no one. "And now… the world will need someone to guide it through the silence."
His aide approached. "Every sponsor network has collapsed. Their encryption is gone. You control over 60% of remaining communication nodes. Shall we initiate the Protocol?"
Jian turned slowly. Smiled.
> "Let there be a new order."
---
Velora Drakovich was the first to react.
Her forces, still deep in northern Ukraine, had lost contact with Kael, the Ghosts, and even their own air support.
But she had prepared.
From her personal vault, she withdrew an analog override core—a prototype HALIX, not connected to any network. It was slower. Less efficient. But autonomous.
She watched as others panicked—Commanders shouting into dead comms, factions disintegrating.
And she stood tall.
> "Pull back to fallback position Lambda-Zero. We isolate. We wait."
Her officers looked stunned. "But what about—?"
She cut them off. "Everyone's blind now. But I still have eyes. And soon… we'll decide who gets to see again."
---
Back in Kyiv
Kael steadied himself as Astra managed to force partial local power back online. The Ghosts were regrouping. They'd lost their network. But not their minds.
Not their will.
"Jian thinks this ends with silence," Astra said. "But he's forgotten something."
Kael looked to her.
"Revolutions don't end in silence," she whispered. "They start with it."
Kael turned toward the remaining Ghosts. His voice rang out over the chaos.
> "We've been fighting a scripted war. That script is gone now."
> "Good."
> "No rules. No audience. No sponsors. Only reality."
He grabbed a marker and sketched across a cracked screen—old-world strategy, on paper.
> "Jian thinks he's won. He thinks the blackout means no one can fight back."
Kael looked up, eyes blazing.
> "Then we'll remind him what war without rules really looks like."
---
End of Chapter Seven
Next up: Chapter Eight — "Ashes of the New World"