Eren was taken back to a cell.
It was not the original death row block, but a temporary isolation unit prepared for short-term containment.
The walls were bare, showing little evidence of prolonged use.
Overhead, the light remained constant—white, even, almost clinical—flattening any sense of passing time.
He sat on the edge of the bunk, feet planted flat against the floor, spine inclined slightly forward. The posture suggested neither defense nor ease.
It resembled waiting, though without a clear object or expectation.
Only then did he become aware of his breathing.
It had evened out.
There was no lingering tremor in his chest, no delayed rush of shock.
He lowered his gaze to his hands. They rested steadily in his lap, skin unbroken, joints loose, responding without resistance. Nothing ached or burned.
His body behaved as if nothing extraordinary had taken place.
Had his memory been less precise, he might have doubted the corridor entirely—questioned whether the black mist, the screams, the alarms had been anything more than a collective illusion.
But the memory remained intact.
Because the moment his eyes closed, something shifted.
It did not take the form of an image or a sound.
Instead, it registered as a presence—faint, but persistent. Like a single ember suspended at the lowest point of his awareness, unstable yet undeniably real.
He exhaled slowly.
As his attention turned inward, the room seemed to recede. The walls dulled. The ventilation's hum softened. His senses folded back toward his own body, leaving the cell distant, as if separated by a thin, transparent membrane.
For the first time, the awareness held without blurring.
His pulse registered in a steady cadence.
The pressure of blood moving through his veins became distinct.
The slight resistance of air entering and leaving his lungs followed a consistent rhythm.
Perception remained balanced—neither sharpened nor dulled.
---
Then he felt it.
An irregularity.
Someone was present beyond the opposite wall.
There were no footsteps, no shifting shadows, no audible cue the room could offer. He neither heard nor saw anything—yet the certainty took hold all the same.
It was not perception in any conventional sense. No signal carried by sound or light. It was an intuitive awareness of density, of something occupying space where emptiness should have been.
Eren opened his eyes.
The observation window looked unchanged. No figure stood behind the glass. The lighting beyond it remained neutral and steady.
Still, the sensation of being watched persisted.
He rose and took two measured steps forward, movements controlled, weight evenly distributed.
The moment his second foot settled—
The indicator light on the ceiling camera flickered once.
The pulse was low-frequency, brief enough to be easily missed.
Eren stopped.
He did not approach the window. He did not scan the room for concealed devices.
Understanding settled without effort.
He was already under observation.
The assessment had begun.
---
Minutes later, the lock disengaged.
Not with a single sound, but through a sequence of layered mechanical shifts, each confirming that permissions had been partially lifted rather than fully revoked.
Aveline Ward entered.
She carried no visible weapon. Her terminal hung inactive at her side. She stopped just inside the doorway, maintaining a distance that felt calculated rather than cautious.
Her gaze moved through the room first—the lighting, the camera indicator, the airflow vent.
Only after completing the scan did her attention settle on Eren.
"How do you feel now?" she asked.
Her tone remained flat and procedural, carefully neutral.
"Clear," Eren replied.
The word fit.
Perhaps too precisely.
Aveline nodded and activated her terminal. Muted data lines scrolled across the display. Her fingers paused briefly, hovering as if confirming a threshold, before continuing.
"Did you perceive the monitoring earlier?"
Eren hesitated, not from uncertainty, but from calibration.
"Yes."
Her fingers stopped.
There was no visible reaction—only the pause itself.
"What action did you take?"
"None," Eren answered evenly. "I remained seated."
This time, she did not immediately return to the terminal.
Her gaze lifted and held on him for a measured interval. It was not the look directed at a person, but one used to verify whether a system response had remained within acceptable parameters.
"Good," she said at last.
The word was light, but definitive.
Lowering the terminal slightly, she continued. "It indicates you made no attempt to provoke or amplify an anomalous response."
Eren raised his gaze.
"It also indicates adequate self-regulation."
Silence settled again.
The air system continued its steady hum. The camera indicator remained unchanged.
"Effective immediately," Aveline said, "your status classification is provisionally amended."
She did not consult the terminal as she spoke.
"You are no longer processed as an execution subject."
A subtle shift crossed Eren's expression—not relief, not disbelief, but recalculation.
"But," she added, "you are not considered a free individual."
She paused.
Some tension eased from her posture. The corner of her mouth lifted by the smallest degree—insufficient to be mistaken for a smile.
It was neither reassurance nor sympathy.
Only the minimal acknowledgment that followed the completion of an internal evaluation.
"Eren," she said, her voice no longer entirely formulaic, "you are viable."
The word carried no judgment.
It was a recorded outcome.
"Your case will be escalated to Headquarters."
Eren went still.
"Headquarters?"
The word settled with unexpected weight. He did not understand its implications, yet his reaction was immediate.
It did not feel like leniency.
It felt conditional.
Aveline offered no explanation.
She turned and raised a hand toward the door controls.
The seal engaged with a muted thud.
The isolation room closed once more.
But in the final instant before the seam vanished, Eren saw it—
A black dragon sigil flashed briefly along Aveline's fingertip. The lines were sharp and deliberate, cold in their symmetry—less an ornament than an impersonal mark.
---
The isolation unit was fully sealed.
Eren returned to the edge of the bunk and sat. After a moment, he closed his eyes.
Deep within his awareness, the faint light stirred again.
This time, it was clearer than before.
Still fragile.
Still unstable.
But undeniably present.