Clang. Crash.
The heavy metallic pieces hit the polished stone floor, the sharp, chaotic noise echoing loudly down the sterile corridor of the academic wing.
Devin froze. His venom-laced muscles instinctively tensed for a brutal fight. But there was no sudden attack. Just a sprawling, unorganized mess of brass gears, runic exhaust pipes, and heavy alchemical wrenches scattered across the pristine marble.
"Ow, that hurt," a voice groaned from the floor.
The voice didn't sound familiar to Devin Trangdar. The Prince had never heard that specific, raspy, grease-stained cadence in his entire privileged life. But the absolute second the sound waves hit his eardrums, a violent, entirely involuntary reaction seized his physical vessel.
"Huh. You're actually in school, Zain," the voice said, lacing the observation with a heavy dose of sarcastic disbelief. "Don't just stand there like a useless gargoyle. C'mon, help me up."
Devin looked down at her.
And in that exact fraction of a second, the cold, calculating Cyprian venom coursing through his veins was violently, completely overridden by something else entirely.
His stomach flooded with butterflies. It wasn't a mild, fleeting flutter; it was a heavy, intoxicating, gravity-defying plunge. His chest tightened so severely he momentarily forgot how to breathe. A rush of pure, unadulterated warmth spread rapidly from his core, flushing his cheeks and making his powerful hands tremble.
I know this feeling, Devin thought, his mind reeling violently as he desperately tried to detach his royal consciousness from the intense physical sensation.
This wasn't his emotion. This wasn't Devin's royal infatuation. This was raw, undeniable, biological muscle memory of the heart.
Zain Ricky was irrevocably, profoundly in love with this girl. This love isn't mine.
"Hey. Zain. Help me up," she repeated, snapping her grease-stained fingers loudly to break his trance.
Devin swallowed hard, aggressively forcing his hijacked body to comply. He stretched out both of his hands to aid her ascent. She grabbed his palms. Her grip was surprisingly strong and calloused from heavy labor. He hauled her up to her feet.
As she stood, she was suddenly so close. Devin could smell the sharp, industrial tang of engine oil, cracked ozone, and a faint, unexpectedly sweet hint of citrus beneath the grime. He was completely, helplessly lost in her eyes. They were sharp, fiercely intelligent, and a striking, vibrant shade of amber.
"Karin," Devin said softly.
The word slipped out of his mouth before he could even process it. He didn't even know he knew the name. He had never read it in the heavy leather folder hidden in his rotting room. It was an entirely instinctive utterance, a desperate ghost of Zain's soul aggressively asserting its dominance over his vocal cords.
She paused, brushing a thick streak of black grease off her forehead with the back of her wrist. She squinted at him, her amber eyes narrowing in deep suspicion.
"You're looking at me funny again, Ricky," she said, quickly pulling her hands away from his.
The sudden, jarring absence of her physical touch sent a bizarre, agonizing pang of loss straight through Zain's chest. She quickly knelt back down to the marble, expertly gathering her fallen mechanical components into her arms with practiced, fluid efficiency.
"I heard you were missing," Karin muttered, not looking up. "Thought maybe you finally flunked out of Stark. Good to see you haven't died in a ditch. Now, move. I've got a thermodynamic compression manifold that isn't going to weld itself."
Without waiting for a response, she adjusted her heavy leather tool belt and dashed off, disappearing behind the heavy, reinforced doors of the Mechanics Department—the exact same department Devin had just seen Ferran working in.
Devin stood completely still in the hallway, staring at the empty space she had just occupied.
Wow, Devin thought, his mind spinning. A female mechanic.
Strong, fiercely independent, completely unafraid, and covered head-to-toe in engine grease. Knowing what he knew about the arrogant Princes of the North, any man—especially someone fiercely practical like Ferran—would absolutely love that.
But the sheer revelation hit him harder than the venom-laced punch he had delivered to Aiden Colstar.
He guessed Zain Ricky wasn't as emotionally detached as he had originally, clinically thought. Zain wasn't just a cold, heartless biological weapon meticulously created by Count Sapien. He was a boy who had fallen deeply, hopelessly in love with a classmate.
It suddenly made the horrific, bloody tragedy of the previous night even darker, even more tragic. Maybe Zain just never liked Emerald the way the sweet barista liked him. Emerald was just a convenience. A required cover story. A friendly, unsuspecting face in a lonely sub-human cafe.
But his actual heart? His heart was already fiercely taken by a brilliant mechanic deep in the bowels of the UEI.
Devin was just the parasitic, royal passenger trapped right in the middle of a dead man's messed-up, tragic love triangle.
The heavy psychological weight of it all was suffocating. He needed to get off the academy grounds immediately.
Devin left the sprawling UEI campus and made his way to the Reignn industrial transit district. He took the heavy steam train home, sitting entirely alone in a dimly lit passenger car. He was surrounded by the deafening, rhythmic hiss of pressurized valves and the heavy clatter of iron wheels on steel tracks.
He rested his forehead against the cool, violently vibrating glass of the window, staring out at the darkening, smog-choked sky of the industrial city, lost deep in thought.
The only thing he could say to her was her name. Karin.
What was that? Devin wondered, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. How much of Zain is still alive in here?
Was the original soul truly gone, banished to the void, or was his consciousness simply violently suppressed, silently watching Devin pilot his life into absolute, bloody ruin? If Zain's love could physically manifest and entirely override a Prince's royal will, what else could the dead sleeper agent force him to do?
He became profoundly, physically weary from overthinking the terrifying, impossible metaphysics of the Soul Swap. The steady, hypnotic rocking of the steam train slowly dragged his exhausted mind down. He decided to have a little shut-eye, just to escape the chaos of the day for a few fleeting minutes.
The darkness was blissfully, perfectly dreamless. No blinding white light. No arrogant God forcing him to his knees. Just empty, quiet rest.
On waking up, the train hissed violently, the heavy iron brakes screaming as it pulled roughly into his station. He had reached his destination just in time.
Devin navigated the winding, shadowed streets of the slum district, the chill of the evening air biting sharply through Zain's thin woven jacket. He finally reached his rotting apartment building, climbed the creaking wooden stairs, and unlocked his door.
He walked inside. The room was still immaculately clean, still smelling sharply of Lotjed's industrial alchemical bleach. He let out a long, heavy sigh of absolute physical exhaustion, unfastened his leather satchel, and sat heavily on the edge of the pristine bed.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Devin squeezed his eyes shut. His jaw clenched so hard his teeth audibly ground together. He was getting increasingly, violently annoyed by the sound of knocks on his door.
Every single time that cheap wood rattled, it brought a massive new disaster. First Emerald, offering a cheerful tour of the city. Then Dunkan, offering a thinly veiled, monstrous death threat. Then Lotjed, discovering his stolen, bloody face.
Who was it this time? Cyprian assassins? The city guard coming to arrest him for murder?
He stood up, the Cyprian venom in his blood instantly flaring hot. He prepared to rip the throat out of whoever was standing on the other side.
He ripped the door open.
There stood a woman. She was older, her simple clothes slightly falling off, her graying hair falling lazily out of a loose tie. But it wasn't her appearance that stopped Devin's venom-fueled rage dead in its tracks; it was the smell.
A potent, unmistakable wave of cheap, fermented fruit and sharp, biting ale washed over him.
It was the smell of heavy booze.
Instantly, Devin's mind was violently yanked back to the halls of Trangdar. It reminded him exactly, painfully of his sister, Bridget. Bridget, who used to sneak out of the stuffy royal banquets just to drink with the castle guards. She would come stumbling back to his quiet chambers late at night smelling exactly like this, laughing loudly and telling him wild stories of the common folk.
The older woman was heavily intoxicated. She swayed slightly on her feet, holding tightly onto the wooden doorframe just to keep her balance. Devin recognized her vaguely. He remembered her because he occasionally greeted her with a polite, mechanical 'good morning' on his way out to Marinakas. He had always simply assumed she was just another fellow tenant struggling through the daily miseries of the Reignn slums.
She didn't ask for Zain. She didn't drunkenly ask for late rent. She just looked completely past him, her glassy, unfocused eyes staring out the small hallway window toward the darkening horizon.
She began speaking. Her words were slightly slurred but carried a strange, melancholic, undeniable poetry.
She talked about the sky. She described how it looked during the late evenings, how the bruised, heavy purple clouds over Reignn looked like cheap spilled wine on a dark canvas. She talked about how the few visible stars fought desperately to shine through the thick industrial smog of the city.
Devin stood there, his venomous anger completely dissolving into the ether. He was confused, entirely off-balance, but profoundly intrigued.
It was such a jarring, deeply human moment in a day filled entirely with monsters, assassins, and handlers. It was exactly the kind of philosophical, drunken rambling Bridget used to do when she was feeling trapped and suffocated by her strict royal duties. For a long second, Devin just listened, letting the precious ghost of his sister live in the slurred voice of a drunken stranger.
Then, the quiet, poetic moment was shattered.
Rapid, frantic footsteps echoed down the hall, and a young man, roughly around Devin's current physical age of twenty, came rushing across the corridor.
"Mom!" he said, his voice a sharp mixture of sheer panic and deep, exhausted embarrassment.
He grabbed her gently by the arm, pulling her carefully away from Devin's doorframe.
"What have I told you about drinking and disturbing the tenants?" he scolded her in a harsh, desperate whisper. "This is exactly why they'll never respect you."
Ah. Devin finally pieced the mundane puzzle together. The landlady. He gathered that Zain Ricky, despite his elite, wealthy Stark status, rented this miserable, rotting room from this troubled, alcoholic woman and her son.
The young man turned to Devin, his face flushed bright red with deep shame.
"Hey, I'm so sorry about her," he apologized rapidly, offering a nervous, placating smile. "I'm Kevin. We stay right across from you."
He tightened his grip on his mother, who was still stubbornly trying to point out a faint constellation through the grimy hallway window.
"Please don't mind my mom," Kevin pleaded, looking at Devin with tired eyes that knew entirely too much responsibility for his age. "She just... she gets exactly like this whenever I'm not around to keep an eye on her. I'm really sorry for the disturbance, Zain."
"It's fine," Devin muttered, his raspy voice softer than he intended.
Kevin quickly gathered her, murmuring continuous apologies under his breath, and they retreated back across the hall, disappearing into their own cramped room. The door clicked shut, leaving Devin standing entirely alone in his doorway.
He leaned heavily against the wooden frame, letting out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
The adrenaline of the UEI, the sheer terror of Dr. Langstrum, the violent, overriding ghost of Zain's love—it all seemed to fade away for a moment. What an unexpected, deeply mundane turn of events he had just witnessed.
In a world governed by cruel Gods, venomous monsters, and bloody royal politics, the most jarring thing Devin Trangdar had experienced all day was the simple, tragic reality of a son trying to protect his broken mother.
Devin stepped back inside and locked the door. For the very first time since his agonizing soul swapping, the world didn't feel like a cosmic torture chamber.
It just felt tragically, beautifully human.