Morning light slowly spread across the quiet streets of the city, touching the tops of buildings and slipping gently through narrow windows where people were just beginning to wake. The air still carried the softness of dawn, and the world had not yet fully stepped into the rush of the day. In a small apartment on the fourth floor of an aging building lived a man named Adrian Vale, a man whose life until that moment had been simple, predictable, and calm in ways he never questioned.
Morning light slowly spread across the quiet streets of the city, touching the tops of buildings and slipping gently through narrow windows where people were just beginning to wake. The air still carried the softness of dawn, and the world had not yet fully stepped into the rush of the day. In a ...