The lab was quiet, but Kaito could feel it pulsing.
Not the lights. Not the machines.
The fragment.
He held it in his hands again, small, cold, deceptively simple. But the truth wasn't in size—it was in intention. Every layer it had shed under the solvent, every energy signature stripped away, had only revealed the surface. The fragment had survived everything Veyl had designed against it.
And Kaito was going to go deeper.
He placed the fragment on the analyzer again, this time attaching a modified conduit of his own design. The reverse reader hummed as he calibrated it. Slowly, deliberately, he applied energy patterns from his own psionics—not to test it, but to teach it.
The fragment responded.
Not violently. Not passively. It began to align, folding residual traces of energy into a coherent field. A soft shimmer, almost like a pulse of blue light, traced along its surface.
"There," Kaito muttered under his breath. "Now you're readable."
Aria, Mira, and Ryo watched from the side, silent. Even Dex sat back on his haunches, ears perked.
Kaito's fingers traced the lines on the fragment. "This isn't just a tool… it's a recorder. A redirection mechanism. And it's… stabilizing itself."
He took a deep breath, feeling the familiar hum in his chest—the instinct, the memory, the echo of what he had been. The blue fire that once roared within him stirred faintly, a ghost of his former dragon form brushing against the edges of his consciousness.
"If I can read it now…" Kaito whispered, "then I can understand why they think they can control perception. Why they try to manipulate reality itself."
The fragment pulsed again, and Kaito felt the rhythm of it sync almost unnervingly with his heartbeat.
"This… this is why I survived," he said quietly, eyes narrowing. "Why I came back. Not just to fight. Not just to protect. But to see through what they leave behind, to read what they refuse to show."
He held it up in the light. The shimmer now glowed steadily, the previously hidden pathways visible for the first time. Energy patterns he hadn't understood yesterday made sense today.
"Readable. Predictable. Containable," Kaito said. "Not controllable… not for anyone who thinks they know me."
He looked at the fragment one last time.
"Let them leave their clues," he murmured. "Let them leave their tests. I'll see through them all."
Dex nudged his leg softly, reminding him that the world outside the lab still existed.
Kaito exhaled slowly, returning the fragment to its containment field. It wasn't just a piece of Veyl's plan anymore—it was a weapon of understanding.
And for the first time in years, Kaito felt the faintest spark of calm.
Not peace. Not safety.
But clarity.
And for once, since he had been reincarnated, he thought of his long-gone friends.