"I'll sweet-talk them," he said, stepping toward a set of bell-jars with embedded runes. One jar held what looked like a violet beetle suspended midair by static mana. The creature's wings beat so slowly it might have been swimming through syrup.
<"Caution. Unknown containment protocols.">
"I'm just looking," he whispered.
He knelt, eyes level with the beetle. At each wingbeat, micro-sparks blossomed along its carapace and vanished. The sparks traced fractal paths—too orderly to be random, too organic to be engineered. He pulled a thin stylus from his sleeve, holding it like a pen near the glass. Almost instantly, the sparks changed trajectory, clustering toward the stylus tip as though curious.
"Well, hello there," he murmured. "Do you write code too?"
Thalatha edged closer. "You speak to them?"
"Habit." He straightened. "Sometimes they answer. Sometimes they bite. Occupational hazard."
