The parlor looked worse than it had an hour ago.

  Gale stood near the window, arms crossed, watching Ludmilla move through the wreckage of scrolls and ledgers scattered across every surface. Wine bottles served as paperweights. The charged diamond still glowed faintly on the table, casting odd shadows that made the cramped handwriting seem to writhe.

  The air smelled of ink, wax, and exhaustion.

  “So,” Ludmilla said, breaking the silence. “Kibas. A smuggling ring. Charged diamonds. A laboratory at Velissa.” She tapped one finger against a scroll. “What we still don’t know is why.”

  “Why smuggle them at all,” Gale agreed. He moved to the table, scanning the notes they’d already decoded. “If he has a working method for charging diamonds, why not produce them at the lab? Why risk a supply chain through half the kingdom?”

  “Because he can’t make enough on his own.” Ludmilla picked up one of the manifests. “Look at the volume. Hundreds of raw diamonds. Most fail—Ressan’s notes confirm a one-in-fifty success rate. To get even a dozen charged stones, you’d need...”

  “Six hundred attempts,” Gale finished quietly. “At minimum.”

  Ludmilla set the manifest down. “And each attempt requires a mage capable of channeling pure arcane energy into a stable matrix without destroying the stone or themselves.” She paused. “That’s not a one-person operation. That’s an army.”

  “Or a weapon,” Gale said.

  She looked at him sharply.

  “Think about it.” He gestured toward the notes. “A mage’s worth is measured by endurance and power. Run out of energy, and you’re useless. But if you could carry pre-charged diamonds—store your own power in advance, or tap into someone else’s—you could fight longer, cast stronger spells, overwhelm defenses that would normally hold.”

  Ludmilla’s expression darkened. “You could turn an average mage into something far more dangerous.”

  “Exactly.” Gale’s jaw tightened. “And if Kibas has been working on this for years, if he’s successfully charged even a few dozen stones...”

  He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.

  Ludmilla turned back to the scrolls, her movements sharper now. “There has to be more. Something that explains what he’s building toward.” She pressed the diamond to another page, and the wards dissolved like smoke.

  The text appeared, and Gale leaned closer to read.

  “Year 2, Day 41: Specimen viability remains low. Core dissolution occurs within two to three weeks of initial exposure. Mortality rate: 94%. G. insists we continue. Says the survivors will be worth the cost.”

  Gale frowned. “Specimens?”

  Ludmilla was already moving to the next page.

  “Year 4, Day 247: Subjects 12 through 19 expired within forty-eight hours. Cause: arcane hemorrhaging, cognitive collapse. A. suggested reducing exposure duration. K. refused. ‘They need to endure,’ he said. ‘Or they’re useless.’“

  The room seemed colder suddenly.

  “Subjects,” Gale said slowly. “Not specimens. Subjects.”

  Ludmilla’s hand hovered over the next scroll. Her expression had gone very still. “Keep reading.”

  Gale picked up another fragment, one they’d unlocked earlier but not fully examined.

  “Year 7, Day 53: Prolonged exposure during developmental stages results in permanent core destabilization. Subjects who survive past Day 30 exhibit... I can’t write it. I can’t. But K. calls it progress.”

  His stomach turned. “Developmental stages.” He looked up at Ludmilla. “He’s talking about children.”

  Her face had gone white. “No.”

  “Cores still forming,” Gale continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “That’s what makes them viable. He’s experimenting on children because their arcane cores haven’t stabilized yet.”

  Ludmilla stared at the scrolls as if they’d just transformed into something poisonous. Then, moving like someone in a dream, she reached for another page.

  The wards broke.

  “Year 8, Day 158: Subject 36 survived eleven days—longest yet. Showed signs of core adaptation before final collapse. Subject 40 (younger, eight years) introduced today. A. protested. K. overruled her.”

  Gale’s hand flattened against the table, white-knuckled.

  Ludmilla’s voice cut through the silence, flat and deadly. “There’s more.”

  She pressed the diamond to another scroll. Her hand was trembling now too.

  “Year 9, Day 64: Subject 48 is different. I’m bonding with her. I know I shouldn’t. But she looks at me the way my own daughter used to, before… Before I came here. Before all of this. She reminds me of what I lost. What I gave up to be part of this.”

  A pause. Then, on the next page:

  “Year 9, Day 171: Subject 48 expired during the night. Core fragmentation, same as the others. I wept when T. told me. I’d hoped she was different. They’re right—we shouldn’t bond with them. It only makes it harder.”

  Gale’s throat burned. He couldn’t look at Ludmilla. Couldn’t look at anything except the neat, clinical handwriting that catalogued horror like inventory.

  Ludmilla turned to the next page. Her hands were shaking visibly now.

  “Year 10, Day 109: Last batch is younger. He’s taking them younger and younger. Subject 65: six months. Subject 66: four months. I asked K. why. He said the younger they are, the more malleable the core. I think—god help me—I think he’d take them from the womb if he could.”

  Silence.

  Gale’s vision blurred. His chest felt too tight, ribs pressing against lungs that wouldn’t expand properly. He pressed his palm harder against the table, as if the pressure could anchor him, keep him from fragmenting the way those children’s cores had fragmented, breaking apart under forces they were never meant to endure.

  Months old. Just months old.

  He couldn’t process it. Wouldn’t process it.

  Behind him, Ludmilla’s breathing had gone ragged. When he finally looked at her, her face was a mask of barely-contained fury—jaw clenched, eyes blazing, every muscle rigid.

  She reached for the next scroll with a hand that shook so badly the diamond nearly slipped from her fingers.

  The wards broke.

  “Year 11, Day 227: I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Subject 67 was just two months old. I couldn’t—G. snatched him from my arms, did what we were ordered to. I can still hear the screams. I threw up. Left the room, the facility, the island. I ran away. I’m a monster. And I can’t do this anymore.”

  The page ended there.

  Ludmilla set the diamond down very carefully. Her hand was shaking so badly now that the stone clinked against the table’s surface.

  “Subject 67,” she said. Her voice was cold and lethal. “He numbered them. Like inventory.”

  Gale couldn’t speak. His throat had closed entirely. All he could see was that single line: two months old, screaming, I can still hear the screams—

  “There’s one more,” Ludmilla said.

  She picked up a different scroll. Her movements were mechanical now, her hands guided by reflex while her thoughts faltered.

  The diamond pressed down. The wards dissolved.

  “Year 11, Day 91: Survivors: Subject 51 (strong, resilient, shows signs of stable adaptation), Subject 54 (younger, unstable but responsive). All others deceased. K. considers this acceptable. ‘Two successes out of sixty-six attempts,’ he said. ‘Better than I’d hoped.’“

  “Sixty-seven in total,” Ludmilla whispered.

  She stared at the page. Then, very slowly, her gaze lifted to another fragment they’d unlocked earlier—this one also mentioning 51 and 54.

  “Subject 51—last confirmed sighting: Velissa facility. Subject 54—presumed lost during uprising.”

  “Fifty-four,” she said again, quieter now.

  Gale’s hand had gone numb against the table. Fifty-four. That number—

  “It’s the same number,” Ludmilla murmured, almost to herself.

  The memory struck him like a blow.

  One week ago. That same room, after the Drift episode. Ludmilla’s voice, exhausted and sharp:

  “Six years ago, a boy washed ashore near the abandoned Chapter. Red hair, mismatched eyes, half-drowned. He kept mumbling one word. Just one. Over and over.”

  “What word?”

  “Fifty-four.”

  Gale’s vision tunneled.

  Ludmilla had told him everything that night. What Daimon was. What he’d always been. A Drift—not episodic, not temporary, but chronic. His arcane core had never stabilized. Would never stabilize. He existed in perpetual negotiation with collapse, held together by Ludmilla’s rituals and sheer stubborn refusal to fragment.

  She hadn’t known why. She’d suspected someone had made him that way deliberately, but there’d been no proof. No evidence. Just a boy who couldn’t remember his own past and a condition that shouldn’t exist.

  But now…

  Subject 54. Younger, unstable but responsive. Presumed lost during uprising.

  “It’s him,” Gale said. His voice sounded distant, hollow. “Daimon. He’s Subject 54.”

  Ludmilla’s face had gone sheet-white. Her hands were no longer shaking—they’d clenched into fists so tight her knuckles had gone bloodless.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “He was one of them,” she said. “One of the children. Kibas did this to him. Made him into—”

  The door opened.

  Daimon stood in the doorway.

  He looked worse than he had a week ago. Thinner, hollow-eyed, the hollow shadows under his mismatched eyes so deep they looked like bruises. His hair hung limp and damp against his forehead, and his clothes—rumpled shirt, loose trousers—looked like he’d pulled them on without thinking.

  But it was his expression that froze Gale in place.

  Not confused. Not dazed.

  Awake.

  “Kibas,” Daimon said quietly.

  His voice was hoarse, but steady. He stepped into the room, his gaze moving from Gale to Ludmilla to the scrolls scattered across the table.

  “I hadn’t heard that name in six years.”

  Ludmilla’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  The boy’s eyes fixed on the notes. On the numbers. On the word Subject written over and over in Ressan’s desperate handwriting.

  “Kibas,” he repeated. “He’s the one responsible for what I am. The one who made me like this.”

  Silence stretched, fragile and terrible.

  It was Ludmilla who spoke first.

  “How long have you been listening?”

  “Long enough.” Daimon replied. “You said his name. Kibas.” His voice caught slightly on the word.

  Ludmilla’s jaw tightened. “You should be resting.”

  “I was.” Daimon’s gaze moved to the notes again. “Until I heard you reading those. Until I realized you’d found—” He gestured vaguely at the scrolls. “Evidence. Proof that it was real, and not just another piece of… of the mess I can’t put back together.”

  “That what was real?” Gale managed, though he already knew the answer.

  Daimon looked at him directly for the first time. “The lab. Velissa. Everything I couldn’t remember clearly enough to know if I’d imagined it.”

  Ludmilla’s expression had gone very still. “Tell us what you remember.”

  Daimon was silent for a long moment. His gaze drifted to the scrolls, then away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at them directly.

  “Not much,” he admitted. “Some days I remember more than others. Some days it’s just... fragments. Feelings. But the number…” His hand tightened. “I never forget the number. Even when everything else is gone, I know I was 54.”

  He pulled the chair out and sat, slowly, as if his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore. His hands rested on the table, palms down, and Gale noticed the fine tremor running through them.

  “There was a lab,” Daimon said. “On Velissa. Underground, I think. Or maybe just... dark. Everything was dark.” His voice had gone distant, flat. “They took us down there. Over and over. To the source.”

  “The Deep Reaches,” Ludmilla murmured.

  Daimon’s eyes unfocused slightly. “I don’t know what they called it. We just called it the screaming place.” He swallowed. “Because that’s what happened. Every time. They’d take us down, make us stay near it, and we’d start screaming. Couldn’t help it. It felt like—like something was pulling you apart from the inside. Like your bones were trying to crawl out of your skin.”

  Gale’s stomach turned.

  “Most of us died,” Daimon continued, his voice still eerily calm. “Within days. Sometimes hours. I watched them... I watched them just stop. Stop moving, stop breathing. Their eyes would go empty and they’d just…” He made a vague gesture. “Collapse.”

  “But you survived,” Ludmilla said.

  “I don’t know why.” Daimon’s jaw tightened. “I should have died like the others. I wanted to, sometimes. But I kept waking up. Kept going back. And every time, Kibas would write things down in his journals. About how long I lasted, how my core was adapting.” The bitterness in his voice was sharp. “He called it progress.”

  The silence thickened, heavy as ash.

  “There were others who lasted longer,” Daimon continued after a moment. “Not many. But some.” His expression shifted, something softer and more painful crossing his face. “She was one of them.”

  “She?” Ludmilla leaned forward slightly.

  “Subject 51.” Daimon’s voice caught on the number. “I don’t remember her name. If she had one. But she was older than me. Stronger. She’d survived longer.” His hands curled into fists on the table. “She tried to help. When the others were dying, when I couldn’t stop shaking, she’d—she’d hold my hand. Tell me it would be over soon.”

  His eyes were bright with something that might have been tears.

  “She lied. But I needed her to.”

  Gale’s chest ached. The image was too clear: two children in a nightmare, clinging to each other while the world tore them apart.

  “What happened to her?” he asked quietly, though part of him didn’t want to know the answer.

  Daimon shook his head. “I don’t know exactly. Everything after the uprising is broken. Just pieces.” He pressed a hand to his temple, as if trying to hold the fragments together. “I remember fire. Screaming. Not the source this time, but a different kind of screaming. And 51 was there, and she was… She was doing something. Something big. The whole lab was shaking.”

  “She caused the uprising,” Ludmilla said.

  “I think so.” Daimon’s voice was barely audible now. “I think she was trying to destroy it. The lab. The source. Everything. And I remember—I remember her telling me to run. To get out. And then…”

  He stopped. His breathing had gone uneven.

  “Then what?” Gale asked gently.

  “Then nothing.” Daimon’s hand dropped from his temple. “The next thing I remember, I was in the ocean. Drowning. And then I wasn’t drowning anymore. I was on a beach. And there were people, and they were asking me questions, and I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know—I didn’t know anything except the number.”

  He looked at Ludmilla, his expression raw and desperate.

  “You took me,” he said. “You gave me a name. You made me into a person again.” His voice cracked. “But I never told you where I came from. I couldn’t. I didn’t even know if it was real.”

  For a moment, Ludmilla’s mask cracked, just slightly. Her hand moved as if to reach for him, then stopped.

  “It was real,” she said quietly. “All of it.”

  Daimon’s breath shuddered. Then his gaze shifted back to the scrolls. “The notes. You found something about her. About 51.”

  Gale and Ludmilla exchanged a glance.

  “Ressan mentioned her,” Gale said carefully. “Last confirmed sighting at the Velissa facility. He didn’t know what happened to her after the uprising.”

  Daimon went very still. “He didn’t know?”

  “The entry suggests he thought she might have survived,” Ludmilla said, and Gale heard the warning in her voice. “That’s all. A possibility. Nothing more.”

  “She could be alive.” Daimon stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. “If she survived the uprising, if she’s still on Velissa—”

  “Don’t.” Ludmilla’s voice cut like a blade. “Don’t finish that thought.”

  Daimon’s hands clenched. “If she’s there—”

  “She’s not.”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “Yes, I do.” Ludmilla stood as well, her eyes hard. “Whatever happened in that lab six years ago, she didn’t walk away from it. You did. That’s the only reason you’re alive.”

  “Ressan thought—”

  “Ressan was desperate and clinging to hope that didn’t exist,” Ludmilla snapped. “I am not going to let you build fantasies on a dead man’s wishful thinking.”

  Daimon’s jaw set stubbornly. “I can go back. I can open a portal to Velissa. I can find out—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

  “You are not going back to that place,” Ludmilla continued, her voice glacial. “Not after what he did to you. Not while you’re still recovering from a Drift episode that nearly ripped you apart.”

  “I’m fine,” Daimon said, but his voice lacked conviction.

  “You are a wreck.” Ludmilla’s words were brutal, precise. “You look like death, you can barely stand without shaking, and you want to portal yourself into the site of your worst trauma?” She shook her head sharply. “I didn’t spend six years keeping you alive so you could throw yourself back into his hands like a gods-damned fool.”

  “She’s the only reason I survived,” Daimon said, his voice cracking but low. “If there’s even a chance she’s still alive—”

  “There isn’t a chance.” Ludmilla’s fury was building now, cold and lethal. “She’s dead. Accept it and move on.”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Yes, you can.” Ludmilla took a step toward him. “You can stay here, where you’re safe, where I can protect you. You can let this go.”

  “Let it go?” Daimon’s voice cracked. “She was my sister. Not by blood, but she was all I had. I left her there. I left her while she was destroying that place, and I’ve spent six years not even knowing if I imagined her. And now I find out she was real, that she might be alive, and you want me to just forget about her?”

  “I want you to survive,” Ludmilla said, and there was something raw beneath the fury now. “I want you to stay where I can keep you from falling apart.”

  “Then come with me,” Daimon said desperately. “If you’re so worried, come with me. We’ll go together—”

  “I can’t protect you there.” The admission seemed torn from her. “Not in that place. Not against him. If Kibas is still at Velissa—”

  “Then we’ll stop him.” Daimon’s jaw set. “We’ll find 51. We’ll find evidence. We’ll end whatever he’s planning. Isn’t that what this whole investigation has been about?”

  “This isn’t about diamonds anymore, you stupid boy,” Ludmilla snarled. “This is about marching into a torture site and hoping for the best. This is about you portaling yourself straight into the arms of the man who spent fourteen years breaking you.”

  “She saved me!” Daimon’s voice broke completely. “She’s the reason I’m not just another body in that lab. And if she’s alive—if she’s been there all this time, alone, trapped—”

  “Then she’s been dead for six years and you’re chasing ghosts.” Ludmilla’s words were like knives. “Wake up, Daimon. Your sister is gone. The lab is gone. There’s nothing there except ruins and bad memories.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Ludmilla’s eyes blazed. “Because if she’d survived, she would have found a way out. She was strong enough to destroy a facility, strong enough to send you away—she was strong enough to save herself if it was possible. She didn’t. Which means she couldn’t.”

  The logic was brutal, airtight.

  Daimon stared at her, breathing hard. “I have to know. I have to see for myself.”

  “No.” Ludmilla’s voice was flat, final. “You don’t. And you won’t.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Watch me.”

  The air between them crackled with tension. Gale could feel it—pressure building, magic responding to Ludmilla’s fury. Small sparks danced at the edges of her fingers, and the temperature dropped another degree.

  “I’m going,” Daimon said, his voice shaking but determined. “With or without your permission.”

  Ludmilla’s hand clenched, and the sparks flared brighter. “You take one step toward that door, and I will bind you to this room until you come to your senses.”

  They stared at each other—master and apprentice, six years of careful balance suddenly fracturing under pressure.

  “You don’t get to decide this,” Daimon said quietly. “You don’t get to decide what I do with my life. What risks I take. Who I try to save.”

  “I am your master,” Ludmilla said, and her voice was deadly cold. “I decide what’s best for your training, your safety, your survival.”

  “You’re my jailer.” The words came out sharp, brutal. “You gave me a name and a room and rituals to keep me contained. You taught me to survive. But you caged me. You just made the cage comfortable enough that I didn’t notice.”

  Ludmilla went very still.

  The sparks around her fingers died. But something worse replaced them—a sense of pressure, of barely-leashed power that made the air feel thick and dangerous. The shadows in the corners of the room seemed to deepen, and Gale’s instincts screamed at him to move, to get between them, to stop whatever was about to happen.

  “Caged you.” Her voice was soft now, which somehow made it worse. “I saved your life. I gave you six years you wouldn’t have had. I taught you to control what you are so you wouldn’t burn out in some gutter. And you call that a cage?”

  “Yes.” Daimon’s voice was steady despite the tears streaming down his face. “Because you never let me choose. You decided what I could learn, what I could risk, where I could go. You kept me safe by keeping me small.”

  “I kept you alive.”

  “But not free.”

  The words hung between them like a death sentence.

  Ludmilla’s expression was terrible to witness—fury and grief and something that looked like betrayal warring across her face. The pressure in the room intensified, and Gale saw her hand tremble, saw the magic coiling around her like a living thing.

  “Get out,” she said quietly.

  Daimon blinked. “What?”

  “Get. Out.” Each word was precise, sharp as broken glass. “If you think I’ve been your jailer, if you think six years of keeping you from tearing yourself apart was a cage, then leave. Open your portal. Walk into that nightmare. See how long you last without me there to catch you when you fall.”

  Her hand shot out—not to strike, but to grip his shoulder, hard enough that Daimon flinched.

  “But know this,” she said, her voice low and lethal. “If you walk through that door, you’re making this choice alone. Don’t expect me to follow you. Don’t expect me to clean up the mess when you break. You want freedom? Take it. But own the consequences.”

  She released him and stepped back, her expression cold as winter stone.

  Daimon stood frozen for a moment, staring at her. Then he turned and walked toward the door.

  “Daimon—” Gale started, but the boy didn’t stop.

  The door opened, Daimon stepped through, and slammed it behind him with enough force to rattle the frame.

  The silence that followed was deafening.

  Ludmilla stood rigid, staring at the closed door. The magical pressure hadn’t dissipated—if anything, it had intensified. Gale could see her hands shaking, see the way she was holding herself together through sheer force of will.

  “Ludmilla—” he began.

  “Don’t.” Her voice was hollow. “Don’t say a word.”

  Gale hesitated. Then turned and followed Daimon.

  He found the boy in the hallway, leaning against the wall, shoulders shaking. Not from sobs, but from rage and grief and determination all tangled together.

  “Dai,” Gale said quietly.

  The boy looked up, eyes red-rimmed. “I’m going. I don’t care what she says. I’m going to Velissa.”

  “I know,” Gale said. “And I’m coming with you.”

  Daimon froze. “What?”

  “You helped me when I needed it most,” Gale said simply. “You opened a portal so I could see Fran, risked your own stability because I was desperate. Now it’s my turn. You want to find your sister—I’ll help you find her.”

  “The portal nearly killed me last time.”

  “I know. And I’ll be there to make sure it doesn’t this time.”

  Daimon’s throat worked. “Why would you do this?”

  Gale thought of Fran. Of the child they’d lost. Of all the things he couldn’t protect.

  “Because you deserve to know,” he said quietly. “And because no one should face that place alone.”

  For a long moment, Daimon just stared at him. Then he nodded once, sharp and determined.

  “Now,” he said. “We go now. Before I lose my nerve.”

  His hand lifted, already tracing patterns in the air, searching for the seam that would tear open and lead them to Velissa.

  But his expression shifted—concentration giving way to confusion.

  “Something’s wrong,” he murmured.

  Gale’s chest tightened. “What?”

  “The seam. It’s not where it should be.” Daimon’s eyes unfocused. “Velissa should be southeast, but I’m feeling—northwest? That doesn’t make sense.”

  His hand moved sharply through the air, and reality tore.

  The portal opened with a sound like silk ripping. Through it, Gale could see dark stone, salt-scented air.

  But the edges flickered. Unstable. And the view beyond didn’t look like Velissa’s red stone at all.

  “Daimon—” Gale started.

  But the boy was already stepping through, his face pale and set.

  Gale followed.

  The portal sealed behind them with a whisper.

  In the parlor, Ludmilla stood alone, surrounded by scrolls and horror and the terrible certainty that she’d just let them walk into something she couldn’t protect them from.

  Her hand clenched into a fist.

  And she did not weep.