Devin Trangdar hated the mornings.
Waking up in the opulent, velvet-draped bedchamber of Count Sapien's stronghold was a daily exercise in physical humiliation. In his past life, Devin would wake with the sun, his royal muscles eager for the heavy weight of a broadsword and the crisp air of the Trangdar training yards. In Zain Ricky's body, he would wake with a sudden, venom-fueled alertness, ready to shatter stone.
But as five-year-old Kross Sapien, waking up was a desperate battle just to draw breath.
Devin pushed himself up against the massive silk pillows, his tiny, frail chest heaving. A violent, rattling cough tore from his throat, leaving a sharp, metallic taste of blood on his tongue. His arms trembled under the minimal effort of pulling the heavy blankets aside. He was a prisoner locked inside a glass cage, fragile enough to be shattered by a stiff breeze.
The heavy iron doors of the bedchamber groaned open.
Devin wiped his mouth with the back of his pale, translucent hand and forced his posture to straighten. He had to play the part of the devoted, adoring son.
Count Sapien strode into the room, draped in his signature pitch-black velvet. The dictator of Cypris brought the chill of the stone corridors with him, but the moment his dark eyes landed on the boy in the bed, the cruel lines of his face softened into genuine warmth.
"Good morning, Kross," Sapien said, his deep voice dropping to a gentle murmur. He walked over and poured a glass of warm water from a crystal pitcher on the nightstand, handing it to the boy. "The apothecaries tell me your fever remained dormant through the night. A promising sign."
"Thank you, Father," Devin replied.
The voice that left his lips was high, weak, and perfectly innocent. It sickened him to speak the word 'Father' to the man who had violated and ordered the slaughter of Queen Eleanor, but Devin's survival depended entirely on his absolute mastery of this deception.
"I have brought someone to meet you," Sapien announced, taking the empty glass from Devin's tiny hands. He turned toward the open doorway. "Enter."
A boy walked into the room.
He was exactly Kross's age—no older than five cycles. But the similarities ended the absolute second he crossed the threshold.
The child didn't walk with the clumsy, unbalanced gait of a toddler. He moved with a terrifying, fluid precision that completely lacked hesitation. He wore a fitted, dark gray tunic, his small posture rigidly straight, his arms held comfortably at his sides. He had pale blonde hair cut close to the scalp and eyes the color of dull, oxidized steel.
Devin stared at the boy, a cold knot of apprehension tightening in his stomach.
There was absolutely no childish innocence in those gray eyes. There was no curiosity. There was only an empty, calculating void. Devin immediately recognized the dark, predatory hum radiating from the child. It was the exact same biological signature he had felt coursing through Zain Ricky's veins.
"Kross, this is Dawson," Count Sapien introduced, placing a heavy, affectionate hand on Devin's fragile shoulder. "He is your new shadow. He will eat when you eat, he will sleep at the foot of your bed, and he will ensure that absolutely nothing in this world ever brings you harm."
Devin looked from Dawson to the Count, carefully adopting a look of mild, childish wonder. "Is he like the palace guards, Father?"
Sapien let out a low, amused chuckle. He looked down at Dawson with the clinical, unyielding pride of a master craftsman admiring a flawless weapon.
"He is far beyond a simple guard, my boy," Sapien explained, his tone swelling with dark arrogance. "Do you remember the stories I told you of the sleepers? The prototypes we sent North to infiltrate the United Educational Institute?"
Devin's breath hitched perfectly in time with a small cough, hiding the sharp spike of terror the memory provoked. He nodded slowly. "The ones who failed?"
"Yes," Sapien sneered, a flash of genuine anger crossing his features at the thought of his ruined network. "They failed because they were flawed. They were injected with the venom after they were born. The mutation was forced upon an already established human nervous system. It created volatility. It created emotion. It created weakness."
Sapien stepped away from the bed, pacing slowly around Dawson. The five-year-old guard didn't even track the Count's movement. He remained perfectly still, his dead eyes fixed securely on the wall behind Devin's bed.
"But Dawson is different," Sapien continued, gesturing to the boy. "He is not a sleeper agent. He is a super-human. The very first of his kind to survive the gestation process."
Gestation. The word hit Devin like a physical blow. The absolute, staggering cruelty of the Cyprian regime suddenly snapped into agonizing focus. They hadn't just experimented on children. They had experimented on the unborn.
Devin leveraged his innate Holy Gene aptitude, projecting a silent, overwhelming aura of eager curiosity toward the Count, silently demanding the rest of the story. Sapien, entirely eager to boast of his scientific triumphs to his beloved son, eagerly took the bait.
"Five cycles ago," Sapien began, his eyes gleaming with dark nostalgia, "my lead researcher realized the fundamental flaw in our designs. We needed a blank canvas. We needed the venom to weave itself directly into the DNA as the child grew in the womb. So, we went to the lower rings of the city."
Devin listened, his tiny fists clenching tight beneath the silk sheets as Sapien casually narrated a nightmare.
The Count spoke of a desperate, starving couple—Elias and Marta. They were low-tier Cyprian citizens, drowning in debt to the local syndicates, facing the prospect of being sent to the brutal sulfur mines where the life expectancy was measured in months.
Marta was newly pregnant.
"We offered them a very simple choice," Sapien smiled, adjusting the cuffs of his velvet coat. "Surrender the embryo to the venom trials, and live a life of absolute luxury in the upper rings. Refuse, and burn in the sulfur pits."
"They agreed?" Devin asked, his childish voice trembling with perfectly feigned awe. Internally, the prince was seething. He knew they hadn't agreed. They had been coerced by a monster holding a blade to their throats.
"Of course they did," Sapien scoffed. "Humanity is inherently selfish. Marta was relocated to the sterile subterranean wards. The venom was introduced into her amniotic fluid in the fourth week. The pain was... considerable. We lost nearly fifty other subjects to sudden biological rejection. The mothers simply hemorrhaged as the venom attacked their systems."
Devin felt a wave of profound, suffocating nausea. He looked at Dawson. The boy stood like a carved statue, completely unaffected by the horrific story of his own creation.
"But Marta survived," Sapien said, stopping his pacing to stand beside the young guard. "The venom fused perfectly with the embryonic tissue. Dawson was born without a single drop of natural human empathy. He doesn't feel fear. He doesn't feel pity. He is completely incapable of love or remorse. The chemical triggers that ruined our prototypes have been entirely bred out of him."
Sapien knelt down, looking Dawson directly in the eyes. "He is the finished product, Kross. He is the ultimate shield, built exclusively for you."
"What happened to his parents?" Devin asked softly.
Count Sapien stood back up, a look of profound, chilling boredom crossing his features. "They were compensated, as promised. But once the child was born, they requested to see him. They became hysterical when they realized the boy wouldn't cry, wouldn't nurse, wouldn't even look at them. They became a noisy nuisance. I had them quietly relocated to the sulfur mines."
Devin lowered his gaze to the silk sheets, forcing his breathing to remain steady.
Count Sapien had created a five-year-old terminator. Dawson was an absolute, flawless killing machine trapped in the body of a child, utterly devoid of the messy, human emotions that had ultimately saved Zain Ricky's soul.
"I have state matters to attend to," Sapien announced, leaning down to press a gentle, deeply affectionate kiss to Kross's pale forehead. It took every ounce of Devin's royal discipline not to recoil from the monster's touch. "Dawson will remain here. If you need anything, simply ask him. He obeys only our bloodline."
The heavy iron doors opened and closed, leaving the sickly prince entirely alone with the super-human.
The grand bedchamber descended into a heavy, suffocating silence. Dawson didn't move. He stood at the foot of the massive bed, his hands still resting at his sides, his gray eyes staring blankly at the far wall. He didn't fidget. He didn't blink.
Devin studied the boy.
If Dawson was truly incapable of human emotion, if the venom had completely overwritten his humanity, then Count Sapien had just handed Devin an unbreakable tool. But Devin was a Trangdar. He believed in the soul. He believed that no matter how deep the poison ran, a boy was still a boy.
Devin decided to test his new, terrifying weapon. He decided to test the Holy Gene.
He didn't use physical force. He couldn't. Instead, Devin focused his mind, drawing upon the innate, genetic aptitude that made him a leader of men. He projected a highly concentrated, invisible wave of sheer, magnetic authority mixed with a profound, undeniable empathy.
"Dawson," Devin commanded quietly.
The boy's head snapped toward the bed with terrifying, mechanical speed. The dead, oxidized steel of his eyes locked directly onto Devin's dark irises.
"Look at me," Devin ordered, pouring every ounce of his royal soul into the words, demanding the boy's absolute, undivided focus.
Dawson stared. For ten long seconds, nothing happened. The boy's face remained a rigid mask of Cyprian programming.
But then, ever so slightly, the super-human's jaw twitched.
A microscopic, nearly imperceptible flicker of profound confusion crossed Dawson's dead eyes. The perfect, emotionless programming encountered a biological override it fundamentally didn't understand. The Holy Gene was actively pulling at a soul Count Sapien claimed didn't exist.
Dawson took a single, hesitant step forward toward the bed.
Devin offered a small, terrifyingly cold smile that belonged entirely to a king, not a five-year-old child.
Count Sapien had built the ultimate, emotionless shield. But the dictator had just unknowingly handed the absolute control of that shield directly to his greatest enemy.
"We are going to be very good friends, Dawson," Devin whispered into the quiet room.