The subway platform shakes; lights fizz. A Glass Maiden peels its mirror limbs into the crowd, reflecting panicked faces into thousands. Conduits arrive — swords woke and humming — but the Maiden’s mirrors reflect their weapons and grow sharper. Olga steps into the ripple, palms open, and the crowd quiets as the air around her becomes oddly heavy. Where a weapon would have shattered into a thousand shards with each reflected slash, the air steals the edge. She moves through gaps between tiles, tossing a coil that snags a lamppost; the lamppost arcs and swings, clanging into the Maiden’s joints, binding it. While the others jump in with spectral slashes, Olga climbs the wrecked turnstile and, using only a med-syringe, destabilizes the Maiden’s core. It melts like glass in the sun

A week later, the Lanterns meet in a warehouse turned safehouse in the Lower Spire. It doubles as a supply center for survivors. The place is a maze of stacked crates — a mix of salvage, medical equipment the Lanterns smuggled in, and the usual black market wares. A makeshift infirmary dominates the center; the rest is organized chaos. In a ring of couches around an industrial metal drum that burns as a makeshift firepit, the team members lounge.