Vyx emerged from the smoking ruins of the corridor. The feral huntress was a shadow of her former self: her clothes were in tatters, her skin marked by deep gashes, and she limped heavily, dragging her injured leg with a grimace of pure agony. But she did not fall.

  Lyra, the pearl-skinned human, appeared behind her. She was covered in blood from her neck to her translucent fingers, but her white eyes searched desperately for a sign of life. She rushed toward Vyx, offering her shoulder for support, her hands radiating a faint warmth in an attempt to soothe her companion’s wounds.

  Etan opened his eyes for one last, agonizing second. He saw the two women silhouetted against the glow of the fallen ship’s fire. He saw the steel spikes he himself had summoned from nothing, upon which the bodies of Oros, Kael, and Vallek hung like trophies of a mad god.

  That vision was the final blow. Darkness swallowed him whole, and Etan drifted into a dreamless sleep while the world around him continued to burn.

  The roar of the burning airship outside the walls echoed the deathly silence of the room. Vyx, her face smeared with soot and her lips drawn into a thin line of hatred, knelt among the steel spikes. Her feral eyes were fixed on Etan, lifeless at her feet. With hands trembling from rage and pain, she picked up a heavy stone fragment from the collapsed tower.

  "You killed my family, monster," Vyx snarled, raising the stone above Etan’s head. "You impaled everyone... even Vallek..."

  Lyra was only a few steps away. She didn’t move a finger. She stood still, hands pressed against her mouth to stifle her sobs, as tears tracked across her pearl-gray skin. She didn't look at Vyx; she didn't look at Etan. She stared at the corpses of the Seven, accepting that violence had to end with more violence.

  But the stone never fell.

  From the mist of dust and smoke, a black metal-gauntleted hand flashed forward. The General was there, re-emerging from the chaos without his helm, the scar over his eye pulsing a violent red. He seized Lyra by the throat, hoisting her off the ground with terrifying ease. A choked rattle escaped the woman’s lips as the General squeezed, an almost amused smile curling his scarred face.

  Vyx reacted on instinct. She dropped the stone and hurled a dagger at the man’s face. The General tilted his head, dodging the blade by a hair’s breadth, and was forced to release his grip on Lyra to parry Vyx’s feral counterattack.

  "Run! Lyra, go!" Vyx screamed, grabbing her companion by the tunic and dragging her toward the breach in the walls. The two women fled into the night, vanishing into the rubble as the Kaelos soldiers let out their first shouts of sighting.

  The General did not pursue them. His prize was at his feet.

  He leaned over Etan, carefully observing the boy’s bare hands and the leather gloves scattered on the floor. He noted the perfection of the steel spikes and the way matter had been rewritten. He was a man of experience; he understood the danger. He knew that touching that skin could mean death.

  With inhuman coldness, he gripped his black sword by the blade, using his gauntlet to avoid cutting himself. He reversed the weapon and, with a sharp, precise strike, drove the pointed guard of the hilt into Etan’s shoulder.

  A stifled scream died in the unconscious boy’s throat. The General, showing no effort at all, began to walk, dragging Etan across the floor like the carcass of a slaughtered wolf. The metal of the hilt pried into bone and flesh, leaving a trail of dark blood among the steel spikes.

  "Bring the slave cart," the General ordered the soldiers bursting into the hall. "This 'monster' may be of use to the Empire."

  The Guild courtyard was a swarm of Kaelos soldiers clearing the debris of the fallen ship. Under a field tent, the General watched the unconscious boy, stretched out on a wooden board like a piece of scrap. Torchlight danced on the deep scar lining his face, making his gaze even more severe.

  "Sir, the blacksmith is ready," an officer announced, pointing to the raw iron masks. "But is this truly necessary? He’s just a boy, and he barely looks alive."

  The General did not look away from the prisoner. He touched his scar with a slow, almost unconscious gesture.

  "I have led campaigns from the Ash Sea to the Void Lands, Captain. I have seen men die in a thousand ways. But what happened in that hall..." He paused, his voice dropping an octave. "When he unleashed those spikes, I sensed a shadow behind his eyes. Something ancient, cold, and non-human. I don't know who this boy is, but I know he is merely a shell for something far more dangerous."

  He pointed to the youth’s hands, limp at his sides.

  "We don't know how he controls his power. But I saw that he needs to see and to touch. Take both from him. If the beast within cannot see the world, it cannot bite it."

  The General gave a sharp nod. The blacksmiths stepped forward.

  "Seal his sight with the blind visor. Lock his mouth with the mechanical muzzle: he must not speak, he must not summon anything. And bolt him into the frame. His wrists must remain suspended, away from any surface he might transmute. If he must stay alive, let it be in an absolute void."

  As the first rivet was hammered home with a metallic strike that rang through Etan’s skull, the General turned away, vanishing into the darkness of the courtyard.

  Time ceased to exist. The pain in his shoulder became Etan’s only point of reference, a dull throb marking the seconds in the perennial darkness of his mask. He was trapped in a prison of iron and flesh, suspended in a position that stretched his muscles until they burned.

  Then, the sound of the trapdoor. Muffled footsteps.

  Etan felt a sudden warmth against the fingers of his right hand, locked in the void. A timid, almost frightened touch.

  "Don't tremble," whispered Elara, the little elf. Her voice came like a miracle through the slits of the steel muzzle. "The General says you are a demon. But demons don't cry behind masks. I... I am Elara. I brought you some water. Try to drink it, or you won't make it through the night."

  Etan could not see her. He could not speak to her. But the contact of that small hand against his bare skin was the only thing that kept him from begging Tsuki to kill him right then and there.

  The silence of the cell was shattered with the violence of thunder.

  BOOM.

  The iron door slammed against the stone with a dull ring. Etan jolted, the restraint frame shaking under his dead weight as the chains screeched against the pins.

  "Still here wasting time with this trash, you little parasite?" A raspy voice, thick with bored contempt, exploded in the darkness of the room.

  Then, the sound of an impact. A reinforced boot hitting something soft.

  Elara let out a short, sharp cry, followed by the sound of her body rolling across the cold floor. Etan felt the girl thud against the base of his vertical prison; he sensed her ragged breathing, a small, stifled moan that died right near his feet.

  Stop... you bastard, stop... Etan tried to snarl. But behind the mechanical muzzle, his broken teeth could articulate nothing. Only a guttural moan, a rattle of pure helplessness, vibrated through the metal of the mask.

  "Move it, elf! Back to the mud before I tear your ears off!" the soldier roared

  Suddenly, Etan felt rough hands seize the handles of his frame. With a brutal jerk that nearly wrenched his shoulders from their sockets, the structure began to move. The wheels screeched against the uneven stone, transmitting every vibration directly into his bones.

  He was dragged out, far from the cell, far from that shred of warmth he could no longer even remember. He heard only the sound of his own footsteps retreating from Elara and the taste of blood filling his mouth, clamped shut by iron.

  He did not know where they were taking him. He only knew that the light was gone, his voice was gone, and now, the only kind presence in his nightmare had been trampled into the dark. The corridor swallowed him, leaving behind only the smoke of torches and the whimpering of a child on the floor.

  The creaking of the wheels stopped. The silence that followed was different from that of the cell; it was a vast silence, returning unnatural echoes.

  Etan felt rough, scaly fingers brush his face. The human-reptile slave in charge of him was trembling so violently that the metal of the visor rang when it was unlocked. With a sharp snap, the blind visor was removed. Next came the muzzle.

  Etan blinked, blinded by a ruthless white light. When his vision returned, he found himself in hell: an octagonal room where every single wall, the ceiling, and even the floor were perfect mirrors.

  A thousand Etans—filthy, bloody, and shackled—stared back at him from every direction.

  "Move! Free his hands or I’ll lash you until your scales peel off!" a metallic voice barked from a hidden speaker.

  The slave jolted. His reptilian hands fumbled for the bolts securing Etan’s wrists to the iron frame. The hybrid kept his head low, yellow eyes fixed on the ground, terrified of meeting the "demon’s" gaze.

  "Please..." Etan tried to say, his voice a rasp of sandpaper. "Don't touch me... run..."

  But the slave could not run. With one last tremor, his bare fingers brushed the skin of Etan’s wrist to release the final lock.

  It happened in an instant.

  Etan’s power, compressed for hours within the void of the iron, exploded like a bursting dam. The slave didn't scream immediately. He watched his own hand become translucent, then hard, turning into raw glass. The mutation raced up his arm with the speed of a wildfire: reptilian scales transmuted into shards of mirror that began to refract the room’s light.

  The hybrid collapsed, becoming a statue of crystal and flesh that shattered with every movement. The sound was that of a thousand breaking glasses.

  Etan fell forward, his hands finally free but heavy as lead. He looked at the slave—what was left of him—transformed into a tangle of jagged glass reflecting his own weeping.

  He retched. Bile hit the mirrored floor, defiling the image of his reflected face.

  "Stop it! Please, just kill me! Enough!" Etan shrieked, clawing at his hair with his bare hands as the terror of having created another monster destroyed him.

  And from the invisible walls, beyond the mirrors, laughter and shouts of pleasure erupted.

  "Look at that artistry, General! He didn't even have to think. He’s a perfect weapon!"

  "Etan. Look at me."

  Tsuki’s voice resonated in his head, firm and clear. Etan looked up at the mirror before him. His reflection was gone. In its place was her. She stared at him intensely, her eyes glowing with a vibrant blue, like two beacons in the dark.

  "Don't let go. These men are cruel and small. I am not leaving you alone, Etan. Do you feel the cold? It is I, taking part of your pain."

  Etan looked into those blue eyes. He felt a calm warmth flow through his veins, contrasting with the chill of the room. In a surge of rage, he flung himself against the transparent wall where the voices came from. "Come out, you bastards!"

  As soon as he touched the glass, a bolt of blue electricity struck him, hurling his own power back at him. Etan screamed, feeling his bones vibrate as if they were about to pulverize, but he saw Tsuki in the mirror stretch out her hands, as if drawing the shock to herself to protect him.

  Through the speaker, the laughter died. There was the sound of overturned chairs.

  "What’s happening? General, look at the monitors!" a technician shouted. "There’s something in the mirrors! Those blue eyes... they’re watching us! The system is short-circuiting!"

  Tsuki, reflected in a thousand shards of glass, glared at the source of the voice. Her vibrant blue eyes seemed to sear the surface of the mirrors.

  "You want to watch?" she whispered, and her voice made the entire room vibrate. "Then look closely at what happens to those who touch us."

  The General spoke, and his voice was no longer amused, but heavy with a fear he tried to hide: "Shut it all down! Get him out of there! Put him in a cell with no mirrors and double the sedative dose. That is not a boy—it’s a monster with a demon inside."

  Etan felt the floor move as they dragged him away. Before fainting into the darkness, he heard Tsuki’s whisper once more: "Rest, Etan. I am staying here. No one will hurt you again as long as I am here."

  As Etan tried to push himself up, a dense green mist with a pungent, chemical odor began to seep from the ceiling grates. It was the Kaelos sedative. Etan inhaled it and immediately felt his lungs burn; then his legs gave way. He collapsed onto the mirrored floor, his vision blurring as the cold of the glass caressed his face.

  A second slave, a thin man with chain-scars on his wrists, entered the room cautiously. His task was to blindfold Etan and return him to the iron frame. He approached trembling, a leather strap in his hand.

  But when he leaned over the sedated body, he did not see the boy.

  From the green mist emerged two vibrant blue eyes, deep and frigid, staring at him with inhuman intensity. It was no longer Etan. It was Tsuki. Her figure seemed to hover over the boy’s body, or perhaps she was possessing him. Her gaze was a death sentence; it radiated a terror so pure the slave felt his heart stop for a heartbeat.

  The man recoiled, letting out a stifled sound. He looked at Tsuki, then at a jagged mirror fragment lying on the ground—a remnant of the previous slave. He preferred oblivion to that gaze. With a swift, desperate motion, he snatched up the shard and drove it into his own throat, thudding to the floor in a pool of blood, his terrified eyes never leaving the bluish figure.

  The airtight door opened again with a metallic boom. The General entered the hall.

  He stopped a few paces from Etan, heedlessly treading through the dead slave’s blood. He observed the presence that seemed to inhabit the boy’s body. Tsuki did not move, did not speak. She simply stared, those blue eyes seemingly burning through the green mist.

  The General stood motionless. The silence in the room became heavy, unbearable. For the first time in his life, the man felt a shiver run down his spine. A drop of cold sweat slid slowly from his temple, tracing the scar, before falling to the floor.

  That small sign of weakness infuriated him. The General grunted—an animalistic sound—and clenched his fist with superhuman strength.

  "What the hell are you?" he growled.

  Tsuki continued to watch him, a cynical half-smile appearing on Etan’s face. The General did not wait for an answer. He drew back his arm and delivered a brutal punch straight to the boy’s face.

  The blow was sharp. Etan’s head bounced against the mirrored floor. Tsuki vanished instantly, retreating into the depths of the boy’s mind as Etan’s body took the physical impact. The boy lay still, completely stunned.

  The General panted, looking at his blood-stained knuckles. He turned toward the guards waiting at the threshold, his eyes filled with a fury mixed with dread.

  "Do not take him to the cell,"

  He bellowed, his voice echoing against the mirrors. "Take him to the Temple immediately! Summon the High Priests. This thing cannot be tamed with iron… it requires something more ancient."

  The awakening was not gentle. It was a return to consciousness accompanied by the taste of burnt oil and the deep, rhythmic vibration of a massive steam engine. Clack-puff. Clack-puff.

  Etan opened his eyes again. He was no longer in the hall of mirrors. He was suspended vertically, strapped with treated leather belts to a cold metal plate. Before him stretched a vast, somber hall, lit by gas lamps that emitted a flickering, greenish light. The ceiling was lost among enormous, slowly rotating gears and brass pipes hissing with steam.

  But the most chilling sight was on the walls: thousands of glass cases and metal niches housing the impossible. Swords that pulsed like hearts, parchments that burned without being consumed, and bodies. The bodies of men and women, either embalmed or kept alive by grotesque machinery. Some had transparent skin; others seemed to be made of intertwined roots.

  "I see the green sedative has stopped clouding your little spirit."

  A croaking voice, sounding like it came from a broken gramophone, drew Etan’s attention. From the shadows emerged a man who possessed nothing human. He wore a heavy robe, but from beneath the fabric sprouted five mechanical arms made of brass and synthetic tendons. In place of eyes, he wore a complex frame with rotating lenses that constantly shifted focus as he looked at him.

  "Where... where am I?" Etan gasped. His throat burned.

  "You are within the Sanctified Vector, boy. The flying Temple of Kaelos," the Priest replied, while one of his mechanical arms meticulously cleaned the blade of a scalpel. "We are above your insignificant Oakhaven, but we are also above the laws of your nature."

  The Priest drew closer, his eye-lenses clicking: tic-tic-tic. He pointed to a nearby display case where a woman made of blue smoke orbited a stone core.

  "Do you see these? They come from elsewhere. Worlds you couldn't even dream of, where gravity is music or light is solid. We collect that which is anomalous. That which is... precious."

  He stopped inches from Etan’s face. One of the mechanical arms lifted his chin with a cold metal finger.

  "I have seen the General’s reports. You turned a man into a reflection. But it wasn't you, was it?" The Priest tilted his head. "There is an energy within you that does not belong to this astral plane. Tell me, boy... are you one of them? Are you a creature fallen from another world, or are you merely the shell for something far more ancient?"

  Etan tried to shake himself, but the straps did not budge. He looked past the Priest and saw, at the far end of the hall, a row of empty glass vats. They were tall, narrow, and filled with a thick, transparent liquid. Ampoules.

  "It doesn't matter what you think you are," the Priest continued with ruthless calm. "Soon, you will no longer be a screaming boy. You will be specimen number 402 in our collection. We will 'ampoule' you; we will extract your consciousness and keep the blue 'presence' in a state of eternal stasis. It will be a magnificent addition to our cabinet of wonders."

  Etan heard the roar of the steam grow louder. The temple-ship swayed slightly in the air, and for an instant, through a small crack in the metal walls, he saw the distant, wretched lights of Oakhaven, hundreds of meters below. He was alone. He was merchandise. And the Priest was already preparing his label.

  The Priest began to move, and the metal plate to which Etan was shackled slid along a magnetic rail, following him down the immense corridor of the Sanctified Vector. The sound of the gears was a constant, oppressive thrum.

  "You are confused, aren't you?" the Priest croaked without turning. His five mechanical arms danced frantically in the air—one clutching a parchment, another adjusting a valve that hissed with scalding steam. "You look around and see miracles your peasant mind cannot process. But know this, boy: Kaelos invented nothing. Kaelos is simply a collector hungrier than the rest."

  He stopped before a case containing a polished metal cylinder, devoid of bolts or welds.

  "Do you see this? They call it a 'Turbine Engine.' It was given to us by a man who claimed to come from a place called Seattle. He spoke of steel birds that crossed the skies without magic. We cut open his chest and found that his heart was weak, but his mind... oh, his mind contained blueprints that rendered a thousand years of sorcery obsolete."

  They continued to move. The Priest pointed to a woman suspended in amber liquid; copper cables emerged from her head, powering a series of filament lightbulbs.

  "She used to conjure small black rectangles that held all the knowledge of her world. She called them 'Smartphones.' They did not work here; their energy was dead. But we extracted the logic behind those circuits. Now our cannons aim with the precision of a god, thanks to her."

  The Priest turned, his eye-lenses spinning rapidly.

  "Our military arsenal, our supremacy... it all stems from you. The 'Outsiders.' Those who fall from other worlds. Every one of you carries a piece of a puzzle that we assemble to dominate this plane of existence. And that is why you are here."

  They arrived in a section of the hall bathed in an electric twilight. At the center, seated upon a throne of gears and cables, was a woman who looked as if she were carved from marble. She had no arms; instead, translucent tubes entered and exited her torso. Her eyes had been removed: in their place were two heavy brass projection lenses emitting a faint, bluish light.

  "She is our Memory Archivist," the Priest said, his voice vibrating with fanatical pride. "She can rewind an individual’s past as if it were a reel of film. She will project your soul onto those steam screens. I want to see where you come from, boy. I want to see if you are just another inventor of alien toys, or if that blue light you carry inside is something we do not yet have in our catalog."

  The machine-woman lifted her head with a jerky movement. A hum, like that of a movie projector, began to rise from her chest.

  "Brace yourself, Etan," the Priest whispered, as his mechanical arms locked him into position before the woman’s lenses. "We are about to find out if you are a fallen god or merely a lucky shell. And I warn you... the projection hurts far more than reality."

  A beam of vibrant blue light exploded from the woman’s sockets, striking Etan’s forehead. The boy felt his mind being ripped open, as if a claw were scavenging through his deepest memories.

  The Projectionist’s azure light hit Etan’s brow, and the steam filling the hall began to condense into vivid images, grainy like burnt vintage film.

  The machinery’s hum became a racing heartbeat. On the screen of smoke appeared a world of concrete and metal, of artificial lights that knew no magic. A man in a suit walking through a crowd, then sudden darkness—an endless fall into the void. Etan’s soul, a fragment of pure alien energy, plummeted into a womb that was not his own.

  The images shifted into a grotesque dance of organic tissues, blood vessels, and forming bones. A fetus was seen growing, but it was not alone. Another mass of flesh, smaller and incomplete, struggled to form beside him. Etan’s soul, in its attempt to anchor itself to that hostile reality, did not merely occupy the primary body: it expanded, swallowing the unborn twin.

  "Interesting… a metaphysical parasitism," a bored voice commented.

  From the shadows of the flying temple emerged a man who felt entirely out of place. He wore no robes, but a rumpled, stained white lab coat. He had a lit cigarette between his lips—an alien object emitting thick gray smoke—and a steel stethoscope around his neck. His eyes were weary, swollen from lack of sleep and the abuse of substances only Kaelos could provide.

  "Doctor Aris," the Priest croaked, tilting his five mechanical arms in a gesture of forced respect. "What do you see in your diagrams?"

  The doctor took a drag of smoke and exhaled it toward the projection. "I see a universal car crash, Priest. He’s no demon, nor a gift from the gods. He’s a fetus in fetu. Technically, the boy absorbed his sister in the womb, but the soul that plummeted into him was too vast, too heavy for a single shell."

  Aris approached Etan, looking at him with the same interest one reserves for a Petri dish.

  "The alien soul gave consciousness to that lump of absorbed cells. The one you call Tsuki is the biological remnant of a twin now living within his nervous system. And his ability to modify matter…" The doctor grimaced, scratching his stubble. "It’s a bug. A system error. His spirit doesn’t recognize the physical laws of this world because he wasn't born here, and his body 'corrects' reality accordingly. He is a semi-divine entity born from a failed abortion and an astral collision."

  The Priest observed Etan with renewed lust. "A divine bug. Can we replicate it?"

  "If you give me more drugs to stay awake and a couple of those elven slaves, I can try to milk every secret from this abomination," the doctor replied, flicking ash onto the temple floor. "But be careful. You are trying to harness something that shouldn't exist. If the bug crashes, this ship will be nothing but a pile of falling scrap."

  Etan, trapped in the projection’s beam, felt Tsuki’s voice seething deep within. She had never been this furious. Being described as a "biological error" by that slimy doctor was triggering something beyond simple transmutation.

  Etan’s eyes, still fixed on the Projectionist, began to glow with that vibrant blue, but this time the light was not just a reflection: it was a crack beginning to run along the very fabric of reality.

  The Projectionist’s beam began to sizzle. The azure light no longer reflected images onto the steam but seemed to dig into Etan’s flesh. The boy let out a choked scream; his back arched so violently that the leather straps began to tear.

  Doctor Aris stepped forward, eyes wide. "Look… the bone structure is changing…"

  Beneath Etan’s skin, something was moving. It wasn't muscle. They were projections of blue light pushing from within. The boy’s shoulders broadened, his facial features began to slide and overlap, as if two faces were fighting for the same patch of skin.

  Then, with a sound like a breath of ice, Tsuki’s figure began to emerge from Etan’s chest. She was no ghost: she was solid, made of a translucent, vibrating matter. Her head and shoulders rose from the boy’s body, while her legs remained fused to him. For an instant, they looked like a two-headed entity, an abomination of human flesh and alien light.

  Etan coughed blood, but his eyes had already turned that electric blue. Tsuki’s voice erupted from his lips, layered over a guttural cry.

  The metal chains and magic seals of the magnetic plate, upon contact with that light, began to transmute. They didn't break: they became glass petals that fell to the ground, flickering.

  The Priest recoiled, his five mechanical arms snapping frantically in a useless ritual of defense. Silence fell over the hall, broken only by the hiss of steam.

  Aris dropped his cigarette. The trembling in his hands was now visible.

  "But then…" the doctor whispered, his voice reduced to a terrified breath. "Is this the alien anomaly Marcus was looking for?"

  The name Marcus seemed to suck the warmth from the room.

  Tsuki, her face partially superimposed over Etan’s, tilted her head. The movement was not human: it was fluid, predatory. Her vibrant blue eyes locked onto Aris. The silence that followed was absolute—a void in which the doctor’s heartbeat sounded like a frenzied drum. A single drop of sweat slid from the Priest’s temple, splashing onto the floor.

  Tsuki smiled.