The morning light struggled to pierce through the dense Tigerwood canopy... casting long, flickering shadows over the mossy path as Kale walked back alone. Every step he took felt incredibly heavy... as if his boots were made of lead... yet his posture remained entirely upright.
His mind was a storm of calculations and residual emotions... the memory of Fabio's tear-stained face and Leda's final... terrified scream repeating in a relentless loop. He had deleted them all to protect the secrets of his evolution... an act of pure survival that tasted like copper and ash in his mouth.
He had promised to repay their kindness... but in the end... the cold logic of the Genetic Engineer had overridden the fragile fragments of his humanity. The world of Nergal did not permit the luxury of sentimentality... a lesson he had learned in blood twice over.
