The world tilted.
Not because Kael was struck—but because reality itself hesitated.
The woman's recoil lasted less than a breath, yet in that instant, Kael understood something vital.
She can be disturbed.
"Now!" Rion roared.
Threads erupted like silver lightning, not attacking the woman—but the floor beneath her. The stone cracked, formation lines snapping as the ground collapsed inward. Dust exploded upward, swallowing the hall in choking gray.
Rion seized Kael's collar and threw him.
Kael didn't resist. He twisted midair, landing hard, rolling, ribs screaming as he slid across cold stone and into darkness.
The last thing he saw before the passage sealed was Rion's silhouette—threads forming a spiraling barrier as guards and that thing closed in.
"LIVE," Rion shouted.
Then the passage slammed shut.
Kael tumbled for a long time.
Stone scraped skin. Air screamed past his ears. His thoughts fractured, then reassembled with ruthless efficiency.
Control breathing. Reduce panic. Count.
One.
Two.
Three—
He hit water.
Cold. Shockingly cold.
Kael plunged deep, lungs burning, instincts taking over. He kicked upward, broke the surface, gasping as he dragged himself onto a narrow ledge.
The tunnel behind him was sealed completely.
No light. No sound.
Only dripping water and his own heartbeat.
For the first time since the palace, Kael allowed himself to feel it.
Fear.
Not loud. Not wild.
A quiet, settling realization.
They won't stop.
The Emperor had not acted in anger.
The woman had not acted alone.
This was a system.
Kael forced himself upright. His body trembled—not from injury, but from suppressed adrenaline. He activated mental disruption gently, calming the feedback loops in his mind, forcing clarity.
"Rion is alive," he said quietly.
He didn't know how. He just knew.
Rion would not die easily.
Kael moved forward.
The tunnel ended where no tunnel should.
A door stood embedded in raw stone—wooden, old, covered in rusted talismans and half-erased runes. The symbols didn't belong to any known empire script. Some were inverted. Others were deliberately broken.
Kael touched one.
Pain stabbed his fingers.
He withdrew instantly.
This place rejects categorization, he realized. It exists between rules.
He pushed the door open.
The smell hit him first.
Metal. Herbs. Old blood—faint, dried, long gone.
Inside was a house.
Not a palace annex. Not a dungeon.
A home.
Shelves lined the walls, packed with jars, sealed scrolls, crystal vials, and bone-carved instruments. Formation circles were etched into the floor—not one, but dozens, overlapping and intersecting like a madman's calculations.
Chains hung from the ceiling.
Kael froze.
His instincts screamed again.
This was not a prison.
This was a laboratory.
A voice drifted from deeper within.
"So you survived."
Kael turned.
The woman stepped into the lantern light, her features clearer now—and worse.
Her face was asymmetrical, as if rebuilt. One eye glowed faintly silver. The other was human, sharp with obsession.
"I was wondering," she continued casually, "if your mind would break before your body did."
Kael said nothing.
Silence was a weapon.
She smiled, pleased. "Good. Less screaming."
Before he could move, the floor ignited.
Chains erupted upward, wrapping around his limbs with brutal precision. Kael tried to disrupt the mechanism—but the metal did not respond like thought. It wasn't alive. It wasn't even reactive.
It was final.
He was slammed against a pillar, restraints locking around his chest and wrists.
"Do you know," the woman said conversationally, adjusting a dial on the wall, "how many bodies explode when you mix incompatible genes?"
Kael's eyes burned.
"No," she answered for him. "You don't. Because your kind stops counting at death."
She approached, holding a crystal syringe glowing with layered energies.
"I count everything."
Kael felt it then.
Not fear.
Curiosity.
Not his own.
Something inside him—watching.
The needle pierced his skin.
Agony surged—not physical, but existential. His thoughts fragmented, overlapping with sensations that weren't his. Heat. Cold. Hunger. Rage. Silence.
Kael screamed once.
Then stopped.
Observe, he told himself.
Days blurred.
Weeks.
Time lost meaning.
Some subjects died immediately.
Some screamed until their voices failed.
Some changed.
Kael endured.
His breathing stopped once.
Twice.
When it stopped the third time, the woman sighed.
"A shame," she muttered, turning away. "You almost—"
Kael's eyes snapped open.
The chains shattered.
The woman turned too late.
Kael moved.
No technique.
No skill.
No mercy.
His hand passed through her chest.
She stared down, stunned—not at the wound, but at him.
"You… adapted…"
Kael withdrew his hand.
She fell.
Silence reclaimed the house.
Kael stood alone, chest rising and falling slowly.
He was alive.
And he was no longer entirely human.
Three years passed.
Kael learned the house.
Every room.
Every scroll.
Every weapon.
Skill books. Gene records. Broken experiments. Failures that had once screamed.
He took what was useful.
Then, standing in the central formation circle, Kael extended his hand.
Flame bloomed—not ordinary fire, but a controlled, consuming blaze.
The house burned.
When the fire died, nothing remained.
Kael stepped into the open world again.
His eyes were calm.
His will was sharp.
And somewhere, far beyond the sky—
Something noticed.