The grand clock tower of the Cyprian stronghold chimed twice, the heavy, muffled tolls echoing faintly through the thick stone walls of the subterranean royal wing.
Devin lay awake in his massive, velvet-draped bed. He stared up at the dark canopy, listening to the agonizingly shallow, rattling rhythm of his own breathing. Sleep was a luxury this five-year-old vessel rarely afforded him. When he closed his eyes, his feverish mind didn't conjure dreams; it aggressively replayed the night Trangdar fell.
He remembered the screaming. He remembered the heavy iron chains dragging his mother, Queen Eleanor, across the blood-soaked courtyard.
But as the years of his thousand-day sleep had settled, a cold, tactical question had begun to gnaw at Devin's resurrected consciousness. Why?
Count Sapien was a megalomaniac, yes. Cypris was an expanding, warmongering empire. But the sheer, overwhelming scale of the biological force Sapien had unleashed on Trangdar specifically hadn't been a standard military conquest. It was a targeted, surgical strike. Sapien hadn't just wanted land. He had wanted the Queen.
Devin needed to know exactly why his family had a target painted on their backs. And to do that, he needed to get into Count Sapien's private archives.
Devin pushed the heavy silk blankets aside. The freezing air of the bedchamber instantly bit through his thin cotton nightshirt. He shivered violently, his tiny, pale legs swinging over the edge of the mattress.
Immediately, the shadow in the corner of the room shifted.
Dawson stepped forward, materializing from the darkness with completely silent, terrifying grace. The super-human guard stopped precisely two feet from the bed. His dead, oxidized steel eyes scanned the empty room, assessing the sudden movement for threats before locking onto the sickly prince.
"You are awake, Kross," Dawson stated softly. It wasn't a question. It was a biological observation. "Your respiration is elevated. Do you require the apothecary?"
"No," Devin whispered, his childish voice rough with sleep. He looked up at the boy who was engineered to be a remorseless killer, but who now looked at him with a quiet, undeniable devotion. "I require a walk, Dawson."
Dawson tilted his head a fraction of an inch. "The corridors are freezing. You lack the thermal insulation to survive a prolonged patrol. Protocol dictates you remain in bed."
"Protocol is for the guards," Devin said softly, engaging a tiny fraction of the Holy Gene's magnetic pull. He offered the super-human a weak, trusting smile. "I need to see my father's study, Dawson. I need you to take me there."
Dawson stared at him. The Cyprian programming warred briefly with the hijacked loyalty in his chest. The programming lost.
Without another word, Dawson reached out. He carefully lifted Devin from the mattress, cradling the frail, five-year-old prince against his chest. Dawson's body ran unnaturally hot—a byproduct of the volatile venom coursing through his veins. To Devin, the super-human felt like a living furnace, completely banishing the chill of the room.
Dawson moved toward the heavy iron doors. He didn't even turn the handle. He simply engaged his augmented grip, quietly snapping the internal deadbolt with a sickening crunch of metal, and pulled the door open.
They slipped out into the dimly lit, cavernous hallways of the royal wing.
Dawson was a ghost. Despite carrying Kross, his heavy boots made absolutely no sound on the polished stone. He possessed an innate, venom-enhanced spatial awareness, easily predicting and bypassing the two heavily armed patrols marching through the adjacent corridors.
Within ten minutes, they reached the heavy oak doors of Count Sapien's private study.
"Locked," Dawson whispered, his gray eyes scanning the complex, runic tumbler set into the wood. "Four internal steel pins. I can break it, but the structural fracture will be evident in the morning."
"We can't leave a trace," Devin murmured, resting his heavy head against Dawson's shoulder.
Devin engaged his Holy Gene aptitude. He focused his mind entirely on the mechanical structure of the lock, visualizing the complex internal components. It wasn't magic; it was an innate, hyper-accelerated understanding of mechanical leverage, maybe something he picked up from Zain and his time spent about the mechanics department at the UEI.
"Place your hand over the brass plate, Dawson," Devin instructed quietly. "Apply pressure to the bottom left quadrant. When you hear the first click, strike the top right corner with the heel of your palm."
Dawson didn't question the tactical command. He placed his hand on the brass. He applied the precise, venom-laced pressure Devin requested.
Click.
Dawson struck the top corner.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The complex internal pins instantly misaligned, sliding smoothly out of their heavily guarded housings. The heavy oak door swung silently inward.
"Clear," Dawson whispered, stepping into the massive, dark study and gently setting Devin down onto the plush carpet.
The study was a sprawling monument to Sapien's megalomania. The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Massive, intricate maps of the Northern Kingdoms were spread across wide mahogany tables, littered with carved wooden pieces denoting troop movements.
Devin's frail legs trembled as he stood on his own. He ignored the maps of current military campaigns. He needed the past.
Because of his five-year-old height, Devin couldn't reach the upper shelves. He dropped to his knees, ignoring the sharp ache in his joints, and began pulling open the heavy bottom drawers of Sapien's massive desk.
"What are we searching for?" Dawson asked, standing rigidly by the door to keep watch.
"History," Devin replied, his tiny hands quickly sorting through stacks of thick, wax-sealed parchment. "Paper tells you where the knife is going to strike next, Dawson."
Devin pulled a heavy, leather-bound ledger from the bottom drawer. The date stamped onto the spine made his breath hitch.
57k
The exact cycle leading up to the fall of Trangdar.
Devin cracked the ledger open. The pages were filled with Count Sapien's sharp, aggressive handwriting. It wasn't a military log; it was a personal journal, detailing the Count's obsessive, ideological hatred for the 'Anomaly'—the Cyprian term for the Holy Gene.
Devin scanned the paragraphs rapidly.
Sapien wrote extensively about the Subjugation Edict. Decades ago, the North had collectively agreed that the Holy Gene was a threat to natural human advancement. Sub-humans were systematically driven into the slums, branded as laborers, and stripped of all political power. They were treated as cattle, heavily monitored and controlled.
Devin turned the page, his dark eyes widening.
Trangdar is a cancer on the continent, Sapien had written in angry, dark ink. While we properly subjugate the anomalies in Reignn, Cypris and all other Northern Kingdoms, the Trangdar kingdom openly mocks the natural order. They do not just harbor the sub-humans; they are ruled by them. King Arthur sits on a throne, demanding equal trade rights, while his Queen's blood is tainted with the Holy Gene. It is a political and ideological impossibility. If a sub-human kingdom is allowed to thrive, the slums of Cypris will eventually realize they have the power to rise up.
Devin felt a cold, hard knot form in his throat.
It hadn't just been a territorial dispute. Trangdar was a beacon of hope for every oppressed sub-human in the North. Queen Eleanor wasn't just royalty; she was a high-ranking anomaly sitting on a recognized throne. It was a situation that completely defied the global subjugation of their kind.
Count Sapien hadn't attacked Trangdar to steal their gold. He attacked them to completely eradicate the idea that a sub-human could ever be Queen.
"They were terrified of us," Devin whispered into the dark study, a strange mixture of profound pride and crushing sorrow washing over him.
"Who?" Dawson asked softly from the door.
"My... the people in the old kingdom," Devin corrected himself smoothly. He turned another page, his small fingers trembling against the heavy parchment.
The next entry was dated just a rees before the invasion of Trangdar. The military strategy was completely absent. Sapien was writing exclusively about Queen Eleanor.
The spies confirm the rumors, the entry read. Queen Eleanor possesses an exceptionally defined, sharpened iteration of the Holy Gene. It is not a diluted, slum-bred mutation. It is apex-tier. Her biological aptitude for medicine and charisma is unparalleled. If I simply slaughter her with the rest of her family, it would be a monumental waste of the greatest biological catalyst on the continent.
Devin stopped reading. His heart hammered violently against his fragile ribs. A sickening, terrifying dread pooled in his stomach.
I cannot let her burn, Sapien's final sentence on the page read. I must secure the Queen alive. The apex anomaly is the final, missing component required for my ultimate experiment.
Devin stared at the dark ink until the letters began to blur.
Count Sapien had specifically targeted his mother. He had ordered the Cyprian beasts to spare Queen Eleanor amidst the slaughter of her husband and children because she was the perfect, unwilling donor for his twisted genetic ambitions.
Devin slowly closed the heavy ledger. The leather cover felt slick with the invisible blood of his family.
He had found the 'why'. He had unraveled the political and ideological hatred that led to Trangdar's destruction. But the horrific final sentence of the journal opened a much darker, much more terrifying door.
The ultimate experiment.
Devin looked down at his own frail, pale hands. He was Kross Sapien. He was the son of the dictator and the captive Queen.
He didn't just need to know why his mother was taken. He needed to know exactly what Sapien had done to her in the dark, subterranean wards of Cypris to create the chronically ill monster currently occupying Devin's soul.
"Did you find the knife, Kross?" Dawson asked quietly, noticing the profound stillness of the young prince.
"I found the hilt," Devin murmured, slowly pushing himself up from the floor. His small body ached profoundly, the chill of the study seeping directly into his bones. "But we need to find the blade. There is another room we need to visit, Dawson."
Dawson nodded rigidly, his gray eyes unblinking. "Where?"
Devin looked up at the super-human, his amber eyes hardening into a mask of pure, royal vengeance perfectly hidden behind a five-year-old's face.
"The medical gestation wards," Devin said. "We need to find out exactly how I was born."