The doors sealed with a finality that made the air shudder.
Immediately, Kade sensed that his connection to the ambient Ala had been cut—not suppressed, but completely severed. Whatever Ala remained inside his body was all he had access to. Shocked by this, he glanced at Trent. His father showed no surprise; clearly, he had experienced this before. But the tension in his clenched fists told Kade he was not happy about the situation.
Fighting their way out was no longer an option.
Kade looked ahead into the chamber, but he could see nothing. It was shrouded in a thick fog that felt unnatural. He could sense the presence of Ala within it, but he could not take control of it, as if it were already under someone else's command.
At that moment, an old but resonant voice echoed through the fog.
"Approach."
With that, the fog parted in front of them, creating a path and urging them forward. Kade glanced at Trent. Their shared green eyes glowed faintly in the darkness. "Let's go," Trent finally said, taking the lead. Kade followed closely behind.
Once they stepped into the path created by the fog, the way behind them was again shrouded. Kade felt an unsettling certainty that if he tried to turn back, he would never find his way out. Despite this uneasy thought, he continued following Trent until they reached an inner sanctum.
Inside, there was a round table surrounded by figures. The sanctum was even darker than the entryway, but the figures—eight in total, four on the right and four on the left—were clearly visible. Kade immediately noticed that the figures on the right wore bright white cloaks, while those on the left donned dark black ones. Division, he thought to himself.
He could also feel the immense Ala emanating from these individuals. Ever since Kade had begun to sense Ala in the air and around him, he had recognized that the highest concentration belonged to Trent, followed closely by Ryan. But compared to these eight figures, it was like comparing a lake to an ocean. Kade knew that the beings before him were extremely powerful, and he heightened his vigilance to the maximum.
Trent, standing by his side, was also scanning their surroundings with a grave expression, as if he understood that things were now beyond their control.
A voice finally spoke, different from the first, yet just as ancient. Kade could not pinpoint exactly where it was coming from; it was as if the sanctum itself was speaking.
"Trent Moren."
Upon hearing his name, Trent instinctively stood straight.
"Here before the convening of this council, you stand accused of various infractions against the tenets of enlightenment passed down by the Founders. Do you admit your guilt?"
As the final word was spoken, a crushing pressure settled on Trent, as if daring him to do anything other than admit his guilt. Under this immense weight, Trent nearly knelt. Kade, standing next to him, looked over in surprise. He suddenly felt an enormous amount of Ala gather around Trent, but he could not feel the same crushing sensation. It was meant only for him.
Enduring the pressure, Trent gritted his teeth and spoke.
"Venerable council members, I know my wrongs, and I admit to them. But I beg the council to temper judgment with mercy. I only acted as any father would to protect his son. Can none of the venerable council members relate to this sentiment?"
Though his words were filled with emotion, they were respectful. Kade had never heard his father speak with such deference to anyone, not even his boss at work. It showed him, once again, the terror these council members inspired.
After Trent's words, silence fell in the sanctum, as if they were deliberating on his statement. Kade sensed that the council members were indeed communicating with one another, but through Ala. He could feel a thin thread of Ala connecting all of them, like some kind of mystical group chat. He was slowly discovering the many applications of Ala when it is fully controlled.
Finally, another aged voice rang out, distinct from the others.
"Trent Moren, this council understands your difficulties, but it does not change the fact that you acted with intent to conceal a matter as unprecedented as a Dual Gaze survivor from us. Not only that, but you also conducted your own experiments using the boy's friends. For this, you will be punished."
The word punished echoed in the sanctum like a judge's gavel.
Hearing this, Trent bowed his head and said, "I accept the venerable council's verdict. I only ask that you allow my son to be free to learn and live in Davros City, so that he may understand what it means to be Enlightened."
In response, a different aged voice spoke.
"This council is not so blind as to confuse the innocent with the guilty. The boy is blameless in all of this, and he shall be treated with the same hospitality as all our new brothers and sisters, and more so due to his unique circumstances."
Trent breathed a sigh of relief as the pressure he felt finally lifted.
"Thank you, venerable council."
Through all of this, Kade stood frozen by Trent's side, the words experiments using his friends echoing in his head. Finally, he turned his head and looked at Trent coldly.
"What experiments?"
Trent did not answer. His eyes remained fixed on the hooded figures, his jaw tight, as if he understood that the conversation was not yet over.
"The boy will be escorted to the residential quarter," the first voice said. "He will be given lodgings, sustenance, and access to the archives. He will not, however, be permitted to leave Davros until this council has completed its assessment of his condition."
"And my dad?" Kade asked, his voice sharper than he intended. He did not look at the Council. He kept his eyes on his father.
"Trent Moren will remain here," another voice answered. Once again a different speaker, the words carrying a weight of finality that made Kade's stomach turn. "His punishment will be determined in due course. The nature of his crimes requires further examination."
Kade felt the unspoken threat settle over the chamber like a second fog. He opened his mouth to demand more, but Trent's hand found his shoulder. The grip was firm, warning.
"Go with them, Kade," Trent said quietly. "Do as you're told. Learn what you can."
"Dad—"
"Go."
The word was not harsh. It was exhausted. Trent's hand dropped from Kade's shoulder, and he did not look at his son again.
The fog stirred behind them. A figure emerged from the grey—a woman in neutral grey robes, her face smooth and unreadable, the same woman that the Council had sent to tell the squad of enforcers to stand down prior to Kade and Trent's arrival. She did not speak. She simply gestured toward the path that had reopened in the fog, her eyes fixed on Kade with the flat patience of someone who had done this many times before.
Kade did not move. He looked at Trent, waiting for his father to turn around, to offer some final assurance, some sign that this was not the last time they would speak.
Trent remained facing the Council, his back rigid, his green eyes locked on the darkness where the hooded figures sat.
"Now," the grey-robed woman said. Her voice was soft, but it carried the same authority as the Council's. "The Council has spoken."
Kade's hands curled into fists. For a moment, he considered refusing. Considered demanding to stay, to hear Trent's sentence, to force the Council to acknowledge him as something more than a variable to be housed and assessed.
But he was not a fool. He was in a chamber where his connection to Ala was severed, surrounded by eight beings who could crush him without effort, separated from his father by a fog that swallowed paths whole. Trying to fight now would accomplish nothing except maybe worsen things for Trent.
He turned and followed the grey-robed woman into the fog.
The transition was disorienting. One moment the fog surrounded him, thick and clinging, the path beneath his feet invisible except for the pressure of stone against his soles. The next, he was standing outside the Council building, the massive doors sealed behind him, the ambient Ala of Davros rushing back into his senses like blood returning to a numbed limb.
He gasped. The sensation was not painful, but it was overwhelming—the city's currents, its heartbeat, its living pulse pressing against his skin after the dead silence of the chamber. He swayed, catching himself against the wall, and felt the stone hum beneath his palm, threaded with crystalline circuitry that pulsed in rhythm with the Ala currents.
The quiet grey-robed lady was gone.
"Yeah, first time in a null-zone can be overwhelming."
Kade looked up. Ryan stood a few paces away, looking at him intently with his arms crossed. In the soft purple light of the Davros sky, he looked different than he had at the gates. Less boisterous. Older. The jorts and Timberlands were the same, but the man wearing them seemed to have aged a decade in the hour since Kade had last seen him. More importantly, Kade could have sworn there had been nobody around a second ago before Ryan just materialized in front of him.
"Do you know what will happen to my dad?" Kade asked.
Ryan took a step closer. "Well, the Council's definitely got some more questions for him. Questions that needed privacy to be asked." He paused, studying Kade's face. "You look like you want to punch someone. Save it. And forget any wise ideas you may be thinking about in that head of yours—the Council's words are final. Easiest way to disappear around here is to disobey them."
"I didn't have any plans of doing something reckless. I'm not dumb," Kade said. But he'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered it.
"Sure." Ryan turned and started walking down the street. "Come on. I've got orders to show you your new home. Unless you'd rather sleep on the Council Hall steps?"
Kade followed. He had no choice, and he knew it. But he also knew that every step he took away from the chamber was information—about the building, the city, the people in it. He noted the turns they made, the intersections they passed, the way the crystalline veins in the walls brightened and dimmed as they moved through different places.
"How big is this place?" Kade asked.
"Big enough." Ryan didn't look back. "The city is most of what you'll see. Residential housing, markets, and the training center, with the Council building at the center."
"Seems just like the outside. I was expecting, I don't know, more flair."
"We are still humans, regardless of what we can do, so you won't find much difference here from normal society." Ryan's voice was steady. "Except, of course, the fact that every single person here is Enlightened."
Kade nodded along.
They emerged from a turn in the street into another wide street with various buildings. The architecture here was the same blend of stone and technology Kade had seen in the avenue—pale rock fused with crystalline panels, light emanating from the stone itself rather than fixtures. But the scale was more intimate. The crystalline veins formed patterns that suggested function rather than decoration.
Ryan stopped at a building that looked like every other on this street except smaller. He pressed his palm against a crystalline panel set into the stone, and the door clicked open.
"Home sweet home," Ryan said, stepping aside.
Kade entered.
On entering, he immediately found himself in a room that was small but functional. A bed against one wall, a desk against another, a window that looked out over the street of Davros. There were two doors leading someplace else, which he assumed to be the bathroom and kitchen. The purple sky was still the way it was when he arrived, but judging by how there had been nobody about on their way here and stalls were closed, he assumed it was somehow night here, though Kade had no sense of how time passed in this place. He'd need to add that to the ever-growing list of things he needed to find out about.
"Basic amenities," Ryan said, leaning against the doorframe. "Food's delivered morning and evening. Water's in the wall—press the blue crystal, cold comes out. Press the red, hot. Don't press both unless you want a mess."
Kade walked to the window. He could see the full scope of the street and, beyond it, the endless purple void where Davros floated.
"How long?" Kade asked, not turning around.
"How long what?"
"How long will they keep him?"
Ryan was silent for a moment.
"I don't know. Council moves at its own speed. Could be days. Could be weeks." He paused. "Could be longer. If they find something they don't like, then it's in the air."
Kade turned from the window. "What experiments?"
Ryan's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "You heard that, huh?"
"My friends. What did he do to them?"
"I don't know the details." Ryan held up a hand before Kade could speak. "I'm not lying. Trent and I haven't been close for years. Whatever he was working on, he kept it to himself. The Council only found out because someone talked. Not me," he added, seeing Kade's look. "I reported the Dual Gaze. The experiments were... additional intelligence."
"Someone ratted him out."
"Someone wanted to survive," Ryan corrected. "Trent's not the only one who made hard choices, kid. Don't canonize him just because he's your father."
Kade stared at him. Ryan met his gaze without flinching, and in the blue-eyed man's face Kade saw something he hadn't expected—weariness. The weariness of someone who had made his own hard choices and was still paying for them.
"Why are you here?" Kade asked. "The Council said you'd show me to my quarters. They didn't say you'd stay."
"They didn't say I'd leave, either." Ryan pushed off the doorframe and walked to the window, standing beside Kade. From this angle, Kade could see the lines around his eyes, the grey threading his beard that hadn't been visible in the brighter light of the avenue. "I'm your escort. Your watcher. Your friendly neighborhood reminder that you're not free here, no matter how comfortable the bed is."
"And if I try to leave?"
Ryan turned his head. His blue eyes caught the purple light from the window, and for a moment they looked almost luminous, like the Ala that had surrounded him at the gates.
"Then I stop you, and not gently." He said it without malice. It was simply a fact, delivered with the same tone he might use to describe the weather. "I'm not the villain here, Kade. I'm just the lock on the door. The people who made the door are the ones you should be angry at."
Kade looked back out the window, his gaze calculating.
"I want to know more about Enlightenment," Kade said. "My dad didn't really tell me much. Too busy using me and my friends as lab rats, I guess."
Ryan blinked. "Yeah, I guess you deserve some information about all this. What do you want to know?"
"Some Enlightened are more powerful than others. I can tell that with you and my dad. But those Council guys? They were on a completely different level. What are the power levels of an Enlightened?"
Ryan was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed, a short, humorless sound. "Someone is very curious." He walked to the desk and sat on its edge, folding his arms. "Fine. You want the lecture? I'll give you the lecture."
He gestured to the bed. "Sit. This will take a while."
Kade sat.
"First of all, there are three stages that an Enlightened goes through, each stage having early, mid, and peak. The Opened stage, which is where you currently are. The Tempered stage, which is where your dad and I are. And lastly, the final stage, Balance, which is where each and every one of the Council is. And I'm sure I don't need to tell you the sort of power they hold." Ryan calmly explained. "The Founders are also said to be in the Balance stage, but their power is in another galaxy compared to the Council. Some say Balance is not the end of the journey. But I'll leave those explanations to your instructor at the training center."
Kade looked a bit disappointed as he was sucking in all the new information like a sponge. Ryan, seeing this, smirked and said, "But I will tell you something cool."
He then raised his hand, and Kade saw Ala rapidly gathering in it. Then something happened, but Kade's senses weren't refined enough to catch it. The Ala changed into something else, and the next second there was an orb of water floating above Ryan's hand.
Kade's mouth dropped.
"On reaching the Tempered stage, you gain access to your soul element," Ryan said, the water floating on his hand taking different shapes. "Every Tempered manifests an element tied to the emotion that was amplified during their Enlightenment. Joy gives you Light. Grief gives you Void. Rage gives you Cinder. Fear gives you Stillness." The water continued to take different shapes faster now. "The element isn't magic. It's Ala filtered through your emotional resonance. You don't create fire. You convert ambient Ala into the frequency of your rage, and the universe responds by heating up."
Kade watched the water. "And Balance?"
Ryan's hand closed, and the water vanished. "Not much is known about what kind of powers the Balance stage holds, but rumors say they can affect the world on a global scale," Ryan said gravely.
Kade's pulse quickened hearing about beings that walked among humans wielding such power. A thought entered his head: Will I ever reach such a godly realm?
Ryan stood. He walked to the door, his hand on the frame, not looking back. "Well, I'll let you get some rest. It's been a long day for you. Don't think about everything you just heard too much. Focus on the present. Most Enlightened don't even make it past the Opened stage. This isn't a game."
Kade, catching himself, nodded. "Yeah, I know."
Ryan stepped into the street. "Food will come when you need it. Don't try to leave before then."
The door clicked shut behind him.
Kade sat on the bed, alone in the purple gloom of Davros, the weight of everything he had learned pressing against his chest like a hand. He thought of Trent, his fate still unknown. He thought of his mom back at home, wondering if she was alright. He thought of Tina and all that had happened between them.
He suddenly yawned. His body was reacting as if it were night, though the purple gloom of Davros had not changed. But he noticed he could feel a shift in the Ala around him, a slowing in the currents. Somehow, he knew it was night. Satisfied with that problem solved, he drifted off, marking the end of his first day in Davros.