Chapter 3: The Razor's Edge

War.   A single syllable—sharp as shattered glass, heavy as ancient stone. Three cruel letters scrawled themselves across holoscreens, bled into broadsheet banners, and coiled their way like venomous serpents into the hushed, trembling breaths of Beaus across the globe. The world had expected peril’s return next year, a distant ghost on the calendar—yet doom arrived early, uninvited and ravenous. For nearly thirty millennia, the continents had danced a careful waltz around open conflict, shielded by layers of diplomacy, faith in ancestral innovation, and an unspoken belief that such devastation had become… impossible, outside of the measurable and calculated cleansing of the Sculptors. But in a span no longer than a long weekend, Komana—the sleeping giant—stirred, cracked, and began to collapse under its own weight.   It began with fire in the sky.   The Starfall, a commercial marvel of modern luxury and aerial grace, burst into an inferno above the tranquil coast of Palt Airon. One moment, she was a silhouette of elegance gliding above the Tho Strait, and the next, she was an angry streak of flame plummeting into black waters, trailing debris like burning confetti in a funeral for the sky itself. Investigators arrived in waves—private firms, media swarms, even the Blackaxel Cartel themselves—all united in a singular, tragic declaration: there were no survivors. Official statements insisted the emergency pods triggered prematurely, malfunctioning as they ejected helpless passengers into the icy strait. Some spun hopeful tales of painless endings, of unconscious descent into death’s embrace. But hope rings hollow when trust has been shattered.   After all—tragedy was not supposed to happen in Beaumont.   Ancient technologies passed down through the Dynastic Epochs, coalitions of divine-engineers and quantum sages, and the protective arms of magi-tech empires were meant to prevent this very kind of horror. But the flames hadn't even dimmed over Tho Strait before chaos found a second foothold.   The Magnorail—a humming artery of light and steel threading through cities like a symphony of invention—was next. An icon of national pride. A marvel of engineering. And in a blink, it became a deathtrap. An unknown terrorist faction breached its controls, sending the entire Pægor system spiraling into paralysis. For the common Beau, the sudden unreliability of their daily lifeline cracked open something primal: fear. Social channels—io.na feeds once filled with recipes, fashion, and Finis countdowns—were now awash in despair.   The whispers began: Blackaxel.   Unbelievable. Unthinkable. The world’s so-called peacekeepers turning on the very citizens they swore to protect? Could they truly have orchestrated such chaos? Even without confirmation, the idea was poison enough. Faith collapsed faster than infrastructure. Public transport came to a screeching halt overnight. Finis—the year’s jubilant end, normally celebrated under radiant auroras and city-wide spellfire—stood on the precipice of cancellation. Cities shuttered their celebrations. Entire countries declared emergencies.   The world was unraveling.   Then came the attack on Alcyon.   The jewel of the southwestern coast, a city suspended in dreams and concrete, kissed by clouds and cradled by the sea. On 35 Dromstrath, the sky wept again—not with rain, but with glass and steel and bone. In mere minutes, three of Alcyon’s titanic spires were cleaved from the heavens, their fractured skeletons collapsing into avalanches of destruction. Elevated walkways twisted like ribboned ruin, bridges severed midair, and entire neighborhoods were entombed beneath the weight of fallen towers. Death counts rose faster than rescue efforts could catch breath: ten thousand… fifteen? No one knew for certain. The streets were not streets anymore. They were tombs.   Yet amid the ruin, a nameless glimmer pushed through the dust. A resistance. Small, unrecognized, courageous.   They drew the attention of a monstrous, unknown weapon—a force capable of felling skyscrapers like saplings—and somehow delayed its wrath long enough for thousands to flee. Their sanctuary, the once-lavish Mizzulu’s Resort, became their tomb as it crumbled behind them. No names. No bodies. Just legend. Yet in their sacrifice, the destruction ceased. And hope, that fragile ember, flickered once more.   The Confederacy clings to those flames now.   In five days, Beaumont has witnessed three catastrophes—each greater than the last, each unraveling threads that had once seemed unbreakable. While Kiqueo remains curiously unscathed, the Coalition and Blackaxel have shifted into highest DEFCON. Armed convoys fill the highways like veins of iron. Drones sweep the skies. Curfews descend like dusk across cities that never used to sleep. Even Pægor, once a monument to freedom and electric vibrancy, now bristles with barricades and patrolling Peaceframes. Celebrations have been silenced. Markets emptied. Government halls now ring not with policy, but with the shuffle of boots and the quiet click of rifles being loaded behind closed doors.   Public transit has ceased across most of the world. Travelers remain stranded. Families split across continents by a broken network. Business towers and shops lie dormant, their entrances sealed like mausoleums. An estimated ninety-five percent of metropolitan commerce has ground to a halt. Even the great automaton-fed industries have gone dark. The only thing louder than the silence is the uncertainty.   No one expects another attack.   But then, no one expected the last three either.   And so the great hum of io.na, the world's digital consciousness, trembles under the weight of questions it cannot answer. Speculation runs unchecked. Doomsday countdowns trend. Rumors of bunkers opening beneath old cities flare and vanish just as quickly—denied, deleted, suppressed. But still, the masses look northward, every data-thread and anxious prayer now drawn toward a single, flickering beacon in the dark: Savior. The largest city in Pægor. The refuge promised in the legends of the Second Dying. Can it withstand the storm? Can it serve, once more, as the bastion of survival in a world suddenly remembering what it means to be mortal?   The clock ticks. The third Great Dying looms. And for the first time in centuries, Beaumont has forgotten how to feel invincible.