The celestial light burned with an absolute, agonizing purity.
Devin Trangdar lay perfectly still on the unseen floor of the eternal void. The phantom, searing pain of Dunkan's boning knife was still lodged deep beneath his ribcage. He didn't try to stand. He didn't try to fight the oppressive, physical weight of the divine atmosphere pressing him down into the nothingness.
"A barista, murdered by a chef, bleeding out on the floor of a rustic cafe," the voice of God echoed, dripping with exquisite, cosmic mockery.
The entity woven entirely of pure starlight descended. The radiant, burning heat coming off the creator was immense, a silent testament to the absolute insignificance of the mortal soul resting at its feet.
"I gave you a flawless biological weapon," the divine voice vibrated through the marrow of Devin's spectral bones. "I gave you the very monster that haunts the nightmares of your people, and you allowed a common handler to put you down like a rabid dog. You relied far too heavily on the sword, little prince. You tried to punch your way out of a political game."
Devin forced his head up, his eyes burning fiercely against the absolute brightness. "You put me in a defective vessel. A ticking bomb. I mastered it, and they killed me for it."
"You mastered the muscle," God corrected, the light pulsing with a slow, rhythmic throb. "But muscle is cheap. Muscle is entirely expendable. If you wish to tear down an empire, you cannot do it from the perimeter. You must be placed at the very heart of the rot."
The blinding light flared, a terrifying display of infinite power that forced Devin to look away.
"Let us see how you fare in the viper's nest without your fangs, Prince Devin. I am taking your fists away. The board has been reset. The game continues."
The blinding light collapsed in on itself with the devastating force of a dying star.
GASP!
Devin's eyes snapped violently open.
The air that rushed into his lungs didn't bring the familiar, euphoric surge of Cyprian venom. It felt like inhaling shattered glass. His chest seized immediately, and a wet, rattling cough tore violently through his throat, shaking his entire frame.
He didn't bolt upright. He couldn't.
His body was impossibly, terrifyingly heavy. He was pinned to a massive, feather-soft mattress by a suffocating, debilitating weakness that completely defied his royal willpower. He felt like he was drowning in his own fluids.
Devin slowly, agonizingly turned his heavy head.
The room was vast and cast in dark, opulent shadows. Heavy, blood-red velvet drapes completely blocked out the sun. The air was thick and heavy, carrying the sharp, medicinal scent of burning eucalyptus and dark, bitter alchemy.
He lifted his hand. It took a monumental effort of sheer, concentrated will just to raise his arm from the silk sheets.
Devin stared at his fingers in the dim lantern light.
They were tiny. They were incredibly pale, the skin almost translucent, revealing a map of fragile blue veins underneath. They trembled constantly with a chronic, deep-seated frailty.
This wasn't the muscular, weaponized frame of a twenty-year-old sleeper agent. This wasn't a body built for swordplay or martial leverage.
This was the body of a severely ill child.
Panic, cold and sharp, pierced his feverish mind. He forced his heavy head to turn further, scanning the dark, gothic architecture of the opulent bedchamber. Resting on a polished obsidian nightstand was an ornate, brass-rimmed timepiece and a heavy, leather-bound daily ledger left behind by an apothecary.
Devin's sharp, adult mind focused completely on the gold-leafed lettering pressed deeply into the dark leather binding.
Imperial Calendar: 59k 71.
Devin's breath hitched, immediately sending him into another agonizing fit of rattling, wet coughs. He clutched his small, fragile chest, his eyes watering from the physical strain.
59k 71. Three full cycles had passed since Dunkan drove a knife into Zain Ricky's heart. Three entire years.
What had happened to Ferran? Had he survived the academic politics of the UEI? What had happened to Karin? Had Aiden Colstar's Inquisitors completely torn the school apart looking for a ghost? The North had kept turning without him, and Devin had been asleep in the void for a thousand days.
The heavy, iron-wrought doors of the massive bedchamber suddenly groaned.
Deliberate, heavy boots echoed loudly on the cold stone floor, approaching the bed.
Devin forced his small, exhausted body to turn, bracing himself for whatever new handler or assassin God had assigned to torture him. The figure stepping into the dim, warm light of the medicinal lanterns was a man Devin had only ever seen in terrifying nightmares and distant, burning royal portraits.
Count Sapien.
The ruler of Cypris. The monster who had orchestrated the brutal slaughter of the Trangdar royal family. The sadistic architect of the venom experiments that had ruined Zain Ricky's life.
He was a towering, physically imposing figure draped in immaculate, pitch-black velvet. His face was a sharp, aristocratic mask of predatory calculation, framed by dark hair lightly dusted with gray at the temples. He radiated an aura of absolute, terrifying authority.
Devin's soul screamed for blood. He wanted to leap from the massive bed. He wanted to wrap his hands around the dictator's throat and tear it out with his teeth. He wanted to avenge King Arthur and his sister Bridget right here, right now.
But the five-year-old vessel simply let out a weak, pathetic wheeze, completely incapable of even sitting up.
Count Sapien didn't sneer at the display of weakness. He didn't look at the sickly boy with the disgust Cypris famously and violently reserved for the frail and the sub-human.
Instead, the dictator's sharp, cruel face softened entirely. It melted into an expression of profound, chilling tenderness.
"Kross," Count Sapien murmured. His deep, resonant voice carried a terrifying, gentle warmth as he crossed the massive room and sat carefully on the very edge of the mattress. "My beautiful boy. The fever has finally broken."
Kross.
Devin lay perfectly still, his childish heart hammering a frantic, fragile rhythm against his tiny ribs.
Count Sapien reached out. His large, calloused hand—the exact same hand that had signed the execution orders for thousands of innocent Northerners—gently brushed a damp lock of hair from Devin's sweating forehead.
"You fought incredibly well last night," Sapien said softly, his dark eyes shining with genuine, unadulterated pride. "You have her fierce resilience. Every single time the apothecaries tell me your lungs will finally fail, you prove them all wrong. You have your mother's eyes, Kross."
Devin stopped breathing.
The horrific, sickening truth slammed into his mind like a collapsing fortress wall.
Your mother's eyes.
Devin remembered the terrifying night Trangdar fell. He remembered his mother, Queen Eleanor, battered and bleeding, being dragged away in heavy iron chains by towering Cyprian beasts. She hadn't been executed immediately.
Sapien had kept her. He had kept the Queen alive long enough to conduct his ultimate, most sadistic biological experiment. The Count had wanted to fuse the dark, venomous bloodline of Cypris with the miraculous, divine Holy Gene of Trangdar.
Devin was looking directly at his mother's murderer, who was looking back at him with the fierce, loving eyes of a devoted father.
This frail, chronically ill, five-year-old vessel was Devin Trangdar's own half-brother.
A wave of pure, psychological nausea washed over Devin. His soul wanted to violently vomit, to reject the absolute horror of his own existence, but his tiny body could only manage a soft, shuddering breath.
"Drink this," Sapien urged gently.
The Count lifted a small, ornate crystal goblet filled with a dark, foul-smelling alchemical medicine to Devin's lips. Sapien carefully supported the back of Devin's small head with his large palm.
Devin forced the child's mouth open. He swallowed the bitter, burning liquid, knowing he had to play the part to survive.
But as Sapien smiled, setting the empty goblet back onto the obsidian nightstand, Devin felt a strange, resonant hum deep within the marrow of his new, fragile bones.
It wasn't the volatile, aggressive Cyprian venom he had known in Zain Ricky. It wasn't a biological demand for blood and violence.
It was the Holy Gene.
But it wasn't an aptitude for combat, or medicine, or mechanical engineering. It was a deep, psychological gravity.
Devin looked up into Count Sapien's dark eyes, and he felt the invisible tether. He possessed the absolute, undeniable power to sway. It was an overwhelming, natural charisma—the innate, genetic aptitude of a supreme leader.
When Kross Sapien looked at someone, he projected a subconscious, magnetic pull. He made people want to please him. He made them want to follow him blindly. He made them want to lay down their lives just to earn a fraction of his approval.
Devin tested it. He didn't speak. He simply looked at Sapien, projecting a faint, entirely silent desire for warmth.
Count Sapien instantly responded. The dictator reached down, pulling the heavy silk blankets higher up over Devin's small chest, tucking them in with meticulous care.
"Are you cold, little one?" Sapien asked, his voice laced with absolute devotion.
Devin closed his eyes, offering a weak, silent nod.
The revelation was staggering. That was exactly why Count Sapien—a ruthless, genocidal dictator who utterly despised physical frailty and sub-humans—adored this chronically ill abomination.
Sapien recognized the ultimate kingmaker's tool. Kross didn't need to lift a broadsword; he only needed to speak, and massive armies would willingly march into the fire for him. The sick child was the perfect, infallible heir to a dark empire.
"Rest now, Kross," Sapien whispered, carefully resting his hand over Devin's tiny, beating heart. "Gather your strength. One day, this entire world will hang on your every single word. You are my greatest triumph."
Count Sapien stood up, his dark velvet cloak billowing silently behind him, and walked gracefully out of the opulent chamber. The heavy iron doors clicked shut, locking out the noise of the Cyprian stronghold.
Devin lay entirely alone in the dark, the bitter taste of alchemy lingering heavily on his tongue.
His body was fundamentally, biologically broken. He was trapped in the very beating heart of the enemy's nation, surrounded by the elite monsters who had slaughtered his family. He couldn't lift a weapon. He couldn't run. He couldn't even walk across the room without losing his breath.
But as Devin settled deeper into the feather-soft pillows, a cold, terrifying smile crept slowly across the sick child's pale face.
God had thought this was a punishment. God had thought taking away the sleeper agent's muscles and endurance would leave the prince entirely defenseless in the viper's nest.
But Devin didn't need a sword to destroy Count Sapien anymore.
He was the Count's beloved son. He possessed the voice of a god. He would simply smile, take his new father's hand, and gently whisper the exact commands that would burn the dark nation of Cypris to the ground from the inside out.