The klaxon’s shriek still reverberated in Bayu’s ears, a physical blow to his eardrums. The red text on the data-screens pulsed like a frantic heartbeat: Kampung Cipta, 17 minutes. Casualties minimized. His family’s priority. Not training. Real. Death. He had barely begun reading about his mother's 'Kinetic Siphon,' and now an entire settlement lay in the crosshairs.
“Move, boy!” Nenek Ratih’s voice, sharp as a freshly honed blade, cut through the panic. She grabbed his arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and hauled him from the archives. The corridors of the Akademi blurred as she pulled him toward an unfamiliar circular hub. An operations chamber opened before them, dominated by an aerial light-feed suspended in the middle of the room. Dozens of auxiliary panels lined the curved walls, reporting barometric shifts, seismic tremors, orbital vectors, and an orange, jagged boulder plunging toward a grid of wireframe tenements.
Chandra stood at the console, shoulders locked, wearing a pressurized stealth rig that hummed with kinetic tension. Around him, a dozen operatives in slate uniforms tapped touch interfaces in clipped, synchronized rhythms.
“Your father is deploying,” Nenek Ratih stated, never glancing away from the feed. “Observe. This is your first lesson in the cost of hesitation.”
Bayu tried to speak, but bile climbed his throat. Chandra did not spare him a glance; the patriarch merely signaled an operative, and the spatial array magnified to track the falling debris.
“Initiating Graviton Field engagement,” a technician announced. “Chandra and Team Cobalt are inbound.”
On the central monitor, a needle-nosed transport launched from an exterior hangar bay, tracing a silver arc across the dawn thermals. The vessel punched through the lower atmosphere directly toward the falling stone. A hatch vented atmosphere, and Chandra stepped into the void.
He did not fly so much as skip across atmospheric currents, firing directed kinetic charges from his soles and palms. He met the falling boulder head-on. As he closed the gap, a cobalt barrier erupted from his hands. The mass—the size of a tenement block—collided with the barrier, grinding into kinetic friction without a single spark.
A deep rumble vibrated through the chamber’s audio feeds. Chandra braced his legs against nothing, palms locked against the roaring stone. The cobalt barrier flared, and the trajectory began to veer. Cracks splintered the mineral crust as Chandra forced tons of dead weight off-axis.
Bayu gripped the railing, knuckles white against the metal. The lineage demanded this tier of absolute physical mastery, and he could barely deflect a punch without stumbling.
Even Chandra could not absorb the entire impact force. As the core veered clear of Cipta, internal fractures cleaved through the mineral core. The boulder split into scores of burning shards, each trailing black smoke as they plummeted toward the rooftops below.
“Secondary strikes confirmed!” an operative shouted. “Multiple kinetic impacts in the outer district perimeter!”
Across the visual grid, structural markers blinked red and collapsed. Audio monitors broadcast the shrill wail of municipal alarms and crumbling concrete. Civilians scrambled through narrow alleys like scattered ants beneath falling slag.
Chandra re-entered the transport, his aura dying down to a dull glow, though his fingers trembled against his harness. The operations room remained dead silent save for the drone of emergency sirens over the speaker.
Nenek Ratih stepped toward the perimeter screen. “The Sampar clan strikes with reckless speed,” she muttered. “This strike was no accident, Bayu.”
Bayu pulled his eyes from the ruin on the grid. “What do you mean?”
“The main orbital body?” She pointed at a massive rock mapped in deep orbit. “Years ago, the Sampar syndicate orchestrated kinetic blasts disguised as natural collisions. They cracked the core. Nudged its vector, inch by inch, until it locked onto our atmosphere.”
Bayu stared at her, the words slowly sinking in, each one a hammer blow to his perception of reality. “They… they did what? Why?”
Nenek Ratih’s mouth thinned into a razor line. “Jovan Adicandra intends to stage an apocalypse so he can sell the cure. By positioning himself as the solitary savior against an extinction-level crisis he helped manufacture, he will absorb every sovereign council on Earth. House Angkasa is merely the final obstacle standing between him and absolute dominion.”
Bayu’s throat burned. The petty snubs at the wedding dissolved beneath a far uglier truth: Jovan was wagering millions of lives on a calculated PR stunt. The ruined rooftops of Cipta were merely collateral damage on a corporate ledger. Surviving trials was no longer enough; he would dismantle Jovan’s syndicate brick by bloody brick.