Devin turned the iron lock on his apartment door until it clicked shut. The heavy, exhausted silence of the slum district pressed against the thin wooden walls. He didn't bother undressing. He simply collapsed onto the pristine, alchemically bleached mattress, letting the sheer psychological weight of the day drag him down.
His eyes closed. He expected the absolute, dreamless void. He expected the terrifying, suffocating white light of God.
Instead, he got the smell of citrus and burning ozone.
Devin didn't wake up, but his consciousness shifted. The cold, damp chill of the Reignn slums vanished, replaced by the heavy, humid warmth of a subterranean workshop.
He was no longer lying on a bed. He was standing on a hard concrete floor, a heavy iron wrench gripped loosely in his right hand.
He was trapped inside a memory. Zain Ricky's memory. Devin was a completely paralyzed passenger, locked behind the dark eyes of the sleeper agent, forced to watch and feel everything the Cyprian monster had experienced.
Rain lashed against the high, reinforced glass windows of the UEI Mechanics Department. It was late. The sprawling bays were entirely empty, stripped of the arrogant Stark students and the shouting professors. The only source of light came from a single, low-hanging runic lantern casting a warm, golden pool over a dismantled Frazer cycle.
And beneath the heavy chrome chassis lay Karin.
Devin felt Zain's heart do a violent, terrifying stumble. The heavy, dark Cyprian venom that usually coursed through the body's veins—the chemical designed to induce sociopathy and bloodlust—was entirely dormant. It was as if her mere presence completely neutralized the poison. In its place was a profound, suffocating surge of absolute adoration.
"Hand me the three-quarter gauge," Karin's voice echoed from beneath the machine. It was muffled, accompanied by the sharp clink of metal on metal.
Zain didn't move to grab the gauge. Devin felt the body sigh, a soft, incredibly fond sound.
"You don't need the three-quarter gauge, Karin," Zain said. His raspy voice was entirely stripped of the cold, dead-eyed apathy he used with Dunkan and the professors. It was warm. It was gentle. "You need the runic calibrator. You're forcing the primary bolt."
"Are you the mechanic, Ricky, or am I?" she shot back, a distinct smile audible in her tone.
"I'm the guy watching you try to break a thousand-gold-coin manifold," Zain replied, leaning casually against the metal workbench.
"You're insufferable."
"You like it."
A heavy sigh drifted from beneath the chassis. The metal screeching stopped. A moment later, Karin slid out from under the heavy cycle on a wooden creeper board.
She wore a faded, grease-stained tank top and heavy canvas trousers. Her hands were coated in dark engine oil, and a thick smudge of black grease was painted directly across the bridge of her nose. Her amber eyes looked up at him, bright and fiercely intelligent in the dim lantern light.
Devin felt the breath catch in Zain's throat. The physical intensity of the love this boy felt for her was staggering. It made Devin's own chest physically ache. It was a desperate, clinging kind of love. The love of a drowning man staring at a life raft.
Karin sat up, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist, completely missing the grease smudge. She looked exhausted, the heavy bags under her eyes a testament to the brutal, unforgiving academic pressure of the Stark tier.
"I can't get the aether-flow to stabilize," she muttered, staring at the exposed engine block with profound frustration. "Professor Vane is going to fail me on the practical. I know it. Colstar already finished his cycle yesterday. He looked at mine and actually laughed."
Devin felt Zain's hands ball into tight fists at the mention of Aiden Colstar. The protective instinct was instant and violent.
Zain pushed off the workbench and closed the distance between them. He dropped to his knees right there on the hard, oily concrete, uncaring of his expensive UEI uniform. He moved into her personal space, close enough that Devin could feel the radiant heat coming off her skin.
"Colstar is an arrogant idiot who pays third-year Phrills to do his heavy welding," Zain said quietly.
"It doesn't matter," Karin whispered, dropping her heavy wrench onto the floor.
Her tough, independent mechanic persona cracked just a fraction, revealing the deeply exhausted girl underneath. "The deadline is tomorrow, Zain. If I don't get this engine to turn over, I lose my lab access."
Zain didn't offer empty academic platitudes. He didn't tell her it would magically be okay.
Instead, he reached out.
Devin felt the rough, calloused texture of Zain's thumb as it gently brushed against the bridge of Karin's nose, carefully wiping away the thick streak of black grease. The physical contact was electric. A heavy, undeniable shiver ran down Zain's spine, a reaction so purely human it completely defied the monster Count Sapien had engineered him to be.
Karin's breath hitched. She didn't pull away. She leaned slightly into the touch, her amber eyes fluttering shut for a brief second.
"You're not going to fail," Zain murmured, his hand slowly sliding down to cup her cheek. "You're the smartest person in this entire academy. You just need to stop looking at the mechanics and look at the runes."
Karin opened her eyes, looking at him. The frustration melted away, replaced by a soft, vulnerable intensity that completely anchored Zain to the floor.
"Why are you even here at two in the morning, Ricky?" she asked, her voice dropping to a low, intimate whisper. "You're a Venom Researcher. You don't know the first thing about combustion manifolds. You have your own evaluations tomorrow."
"I couldn't sleep," Zain lied smoothly.
Devin felt the heavy, tragic truth burying itself in the back of Zain's mind. He wasn't here because he couldn't sleep. He was here because the Cyprian handlers were pushing him harder. The venom experiments were getting worse. The dark urges were growing louder in his head, and Karin was the only thing in the entire world that made the screaming stop. She was his absolute, undeniable cure.
Karin smiled, a small, knowing expression that reached her eyes. She lifted her grease-stained hand and rested it gently over his hand on her cheek.
"You're lying," she said softly.
"I am."
"You came here just to watch me yell at a piece of metal."
"It's my favorite part of the day."
Karin let out a quiet, genuine laugh. She shifted her weight, moving off the wooden creeper board and onto the concrete directly in front of him. She closed the remaining distance, tangling her fingers into the lapels of his woven jacket.
"Sometimes," Karin whispered, her amber eyes locking onto his with an intense, terrifying sincerity, "I think you're the only real thing in this entire academy, Zain."
The tragic irony of that statement hit Devin like a physical blow to the stomach. Zain Ricky was the fakest thing in the North. He was a walking lie. A ticking biological bomb. And yet, sitting here on the floor of the garage, Devin felt the absolute, undeniable truth: this specific moment, this feeling, was the only real thing Zain Ricky actually possessed.
Zain couldn't formulate a response. The crushing guilt and the overwhelming love warred violently in his throat.
So, he closed the gap.
He leaned in and kissed her.
It wasn't a hesitant, awkward brush of lips. It was deep, desperate, and heavily weighted with a thousand unspoken apologies. Zain's arms wrapped tightly around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest, holding her as if the world was actively ending outside the garage doors.
Karin responded instantly. Her hands slid up from his lapels, wrapping around the back of his neck, her fingers tangling tightly into his dark hair. She kissed him back with the same fierce, unyielding passion she applied to everything in her life.
Devin was forced to feel every agonizing, beautiful second of it. The soft pressure of her lips. The taste of cheap coffee and citrus. The frantic, hammering rhythm of Zain's heart threatening to crack his ribs. It was a moment of pure, blinding humanity completely stolen from a monster.
Zain broke the kiss slowly, resting his forehead against hers. They were both breathing heavily in the quiet, rain-slicked night.
"Promise me something," Karin whispered, her eyes still closed, her hands tracing the line of his jaw.
"Anything."
"Promise me you won't disappear after graduation, Zain. Don't just fade back into whatever quiet life you're planning. Stay with me."
The request was a dagger directly to Zain's heavily guarded heart. He knew exactly what his Cyprian orders were. He knew he wasn't meant to have a future. He was meant to detonate.
Devin felt the heavy, suffocating sorrow rise in the sleeper agent's chest. But Zain swallowed it down, masking the tragedy with a soft, heartbroken smile.
"I promise," Zain whispered into the quiet dark. "I'm not going anywhere."
Devin violently gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He sat up on the pristine mattress in the Reignn slums, his chest heaving, his forehead drenched in a cold sweat. The smell of citrus and ozone was instantly gone, replaced by the sterile, clinical scent of alchemical bleach.
The dream was over. The brutal, unforgiving reality of his existence slammed back down onto his shoulders.
Devin sat alone in the dark, his hands trembling as he stared at the empty wall. He finally understood. He understood why Zain Ricky had abandoned his mission for an entire month. He understood why Zain had secluded himself in a quiet sub-human cafe.
Zain was trying to run away. He was desperately trying to suppress the Cyprian monster inside him so he could keep his promise to the girl in the mechanics bay.
And Devin Trangdar—fueled by his own royal vengeance, blinded by his hatred for Count Sapien—was now wearing the face of a boy who had only ever wanted to be human.
Devin buried his face in his hands, the weight of the stolen heart threatening to crush him completely.