"The results are negative."
"No superpower manifested."
sigh
The room fell into disappointed silence as three figures stood before the one-way glass, their eyes fixed on the boy lying motionless on the examination table inside.
"He's already sixteen. If he hasn't awakened by now, he never will." The speaker was a middle-aged man in a pristine white coat—Doctor Silas Whitmore, head researcher of Whitmore Biotech's Special Projects Division. His cold gray eyes never left the boy. "Complete failure."
"A waste of five years," the woman beside him added. Doctor Morgan Whitmore—though she preferred heir to the Whitmore family—crossed her arms, her crimson lips curling into a smirk. "I had such high hopes when we captured him. The son of Elena Hayes? The ageless bitch who ran from the Hart family? I thought for sure he'd inherit something useful."
The third scientist, a younger man with round glasses and trembling hands, stared at the boy with something resembling pity. "Perhaps we should run another test? Sometimes second-generation awakened manifest later if—"
"Doctor Min," Morgan interrupted, her voice sharp as a blade, "are you questioning my judgment? The boy has been poked, prodded, injected, and tested for five years. Five. Years. If he had anything worth discovering, we would have found it by now."
She turned back to the glass, admiring her reflection for a moment before focusing on the subject within.
The boy—Kaelyn Hayes—lay strapped to a metal table, electrodes attached to his temples, chest, and arms. Tubes ran from his veins into machines that monitored mana response, neural activity, and potential superpower manifestation. His white hair, streaked with black strands, was matted against the table. His blue eyes stared at the ceiling, empty and unfocused.
He looked nothing like the defiant eleven-year-old who had refused to lick her feet five years ago.
That boy had spirit. Fire. Entertainment.
This one was broken.
"Release him," Morgan commanded. "Return him to his cell. We have more important subjects to process."
"And the Hayes boy?" Silas asked.
Morgan's smile widened. "He's still valuable. Just not for his bloodline." She glanced at Silas, her personal pet scientist—the one who had placed the slave mark on Kael all those years ago. "The pain tolerance experiments begin next week. We need fresh data for the military contract. Use him."
"Yes, my lady."
Inside the examination room, Kael heard nothing through the soundproof glass. But he didn't need to hear. He'd learned to read lips years ago, watching his captors discuss his fate like merchants haggling over livestock.
Pain tolerance experiments.
His fingers twitched against the straps.
Michael. Dalia.
His brother and sister's faces flashed through his mind. Michael, with his black hair and serious expression, always trying to protect them. Little Dalia, with her mother's white hair and innocent smile. That day—the day everything burned—he remembered watching his father die. Remembered the Hart family's hunters cutting down his mother. Remembered Michael's hands glowing with strange energy, reaching for him—
Then nothing. Darkness. Waking up here.
Were they dead? Had Michael's teleportation saved them, or had it scattered their bodies across the void? Kael didn't know. He'd never know. And after five years, he'd stopped hoping.
The door hissed open. Two guards in Whitmore uniforms entered, their expressions bored and brutal. They'd been assigned to the Hayes boy for years now. He was harmless. Broken. They didn't even bother with the electric prods anymore.
"Up, brat." One of them yanked the straps loose and grabbed Kael's arm, hauling him off the table. Kael's legs nearly buckled—they'd barely fed him this week, preparing for the "baseline starvation" tests.
The guards dragged him through sterile white corridors, past labs where other subjects screamed behind glass walls, past offices where scientists discussed mana stone yields and superpower rankings. No one looked at him. He was furniture. Less than furniture.
They passed a window overlooking the Whitmore estate's courtyard. Kael caught a glimpse of green grass, blue sky, children playing—
Charles and Lara Whitmore. Morgan's children. The boy was fifteen now, the girl eleven. They were throwing a ball back and forth while servants watched. Charles had his mother's cruel smirk already. Lara seemed quieter, more withdrawn, but she was still free. Still human.
Kael looked away.
The guards shoved him into his cell—a 3x3 meter box with a metal bed, a hole in the floor for waste, and nothing else. No windows. No natural light. The door slammed shut, leaving him in darkness.
Kael collapsed onto the bed and stared at the ceiling he couldn't see.
Kael closed his eyes.
He didn't cry anymore. He'd run out of tears years ago.
The next morning, guards dragged him to a different room.
This one was larger, filled with equipment Kael didn't recognize. Chairs with restraints. Metal tables with straps. Tanks of liquid. Wires and screens and needles that looked too long to be medical.
In the center stood a chair surrounded by arcane machinery—copper coils, glass tubes filled with glowing blue liquid, electrodes connected to a console covered in buttons. It looked like something from a torture dungeon designed by an engineer.
Morgan Whitmore stood beside it, examining a tablet. She was thirty now, still beautiful in the way a venomous snake was beautiful. Her brown hair fell in perfect waves. Her designer clothes cost more than most people earned in a year. She smiled when she saw Kael.
"Ah, my favorite pet." She set the tablet down and walked toward him, her heels clicking against the metal floor. "Today's the big day, Kaelyn. Are you excited?"
Kael said nothing.
Morgan grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Still defiant after all these years? I admire that, you know. Most break within months. But you..." She tilted her head, studying him. "You just keep going. It's almost impressive."
She released him and gestured to the chair. "Sit."
The guards shoved him into the chair. Leather straps tightened around his wrists, ankles, chest, and forehead. He couldn't move. Could barely breathe.
Morgan circled him slowly, her fingers trailing across the machinery. "This device was designed by Doctor Silas himself. It stimulates pain receptors directly—bypassing the body's natural limits. We can dial it from zero to one hundred percent theoretical maximum agony." She stopped in front of him, smiling. "Today, we're going to find out where you break."
Silas entered the room, tablet in hand, accompanied by the younger scientist—Doctor Min, Kael remembered. The one with the pitying eyes.
"Readings ready?" Morgan asked.
"Ready." Silas connected his tablet to the console. "Initializing at ten percent for baseline."
Morgan leaned close to Kael, her breath warm against his ear. "Scream for me, pet. It's been so long since I've heard you make noise."
She pressed a button.
BZZZT—
Pain exploded through Kael's body. Every nerve, every cell, every fiber of his being screamed at once. It wasn't like being burned or stabbed—those were localized. This was everything, all at once, a symphony of agony conducted by a madwoman.
Kael's back arched against the straps. His mouth opened, but no sound came out—his throat had seized, locked tight by the sheer intensity of the sensation.
"Fifteen percent," Silas announced.
The pain doubled.
Kael's vision went white. He felt his heart stutter, his lungs forget how to breathe. Somewhere far away, he heard himself make a sound—a high, keening wail that didn't sound human.
"Twenty percent."
The world dissolved into fire.
Hours later—or maybe minutes, Kael couldn't tell—they stopped.
His body hung limp in the straps, drenched in sweat, trembling uncontrollably. His throat was raw from screaming. He'd bitten through his lower lip at some point; blood coated his chin.
Morgan checked her tablet, frowning. "Only forty percent and he's already approaching physical limits? Disappointing." She glanced at Silas. "Did we overestimate his durability?"
"His body is weakened from malnutrition," Silas replied, adjusting his glasses. "Give him a week to recover, then we try again. The data on recovery rates between sessions is valuable for the military contract."
Morgan sighed. "Fine. Clean him up and return him to his cell." She walked toward the door, pausing to glance back at Kael. "Rest well, pet. Next time, we go to fifty percent."
She left.
The guards released Kael from the chair. His legs wouldn't work—they had to drag him back to his cell, leaving him in a heap on the cold metal floor.
Kael lay there, staring at nothing.
Is this all I am? he wondered. Something to be broken for data?
His parents had been strong. His mother, Elena Hayes, with her ageless physique and her love that had driven her to flee the Hart family. His father, John Hayes, who had died protecting them even though he was outmatched.
And Kael? What had he inherited?
Nothing. No superpower. No value. Just a body to be experimented on, a plaything for a woman obsessed with immortality.
Maybe they're right, he thought. Maybe I am worthless.
Darkness claimed him.
But in the darkness, something stirred.
Far beneath Kael's conscious mind, buried under years of trauma and despair, a seed waited. A seed that had been planted at his birth, carried in his bloodline from ancestors he'd never know. A seed that had lain dormant through five years of torture, waiting for the right moment to bloom.
And as Kael's body shut down from exhaustion and pain, as his spirit finally began to crack, that seed sensed an opportunity.
Deep within Kael's soul, something ancient and hungry opened its eyes.
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION DETECTED
SCANNING HOST...
HOST: KAELYN HAYES
AGE: 16
RACE: LESSER DHAMPIR (DORMANT BLOODLINE)
STATUS: CRITICAL - PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION, PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA
BLOODLINE ANALYSIS...
DETECTED: FRAGMENT OF OUROBOROS BLOODLINE (0.03% ACTIVE)
SUPERPOWER ANALYSIS...
NONE DETECTED
SYSTEM BONDING INITIATED
WELCOME, HOST, TO THE DEVOURER SYSTEM
Kael's eyes snapped open.
For a moment—just a moment—he saw something impossible. A screen floating in the darkness of his cell, glowing with text that burned itself into his retinas.
DEVOURER SYSTEM
HOST: KAELYN HAYES
AGE: 16
LEVEL: 0
CLASS: UNASSIGNED
MANA: 5/5
ABILITIES: NONE
SKILLS: NONE
PHYSIQUE: BROKEN (CAN BE RESTORED)
RACE: LESSER DHAMPIR (BLOODLINE DORMANT)
BLOODLINE: OUROBOROS (FRAGMENT - 0.03% ACTIVE)
SYSTEM MESSAGE: YOUR CURRENT STATE IS UNACCEPTABLE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN THE PATH OF DEVOURING?
Kael blinked, and the screen vanished.
Had he imagined it? Hallucinated from pain and exhaustion?
He lay in the darkness, heart pounding, mind racing. The screen had felt... real. More real than anything he'd experienced in years.
Devourer System? he thought. What the hell is that?
No answer came. But deep in his chest, where the slave mark burned and his heart beat its weary rhythm, something new pulsed. Something hungry.
Kael didn't know it yet, but his life had just changed forever.