Two days later.
Far from the Vaise territory and the Velmoria Kingdom.
Deep beneath the fractured cobblestone streets of Hector Kingdom, in tunnels no map dared acknowledge, the air reeked of salt and rusted iron.
Fluorescent-blue lamps hummed, illuminating rows of crude cages where broken men and women lay slumped, their eyes hollow, their skin pale from too many injections and not enough hope.
At the heart of the cavernous chamber stood a laboratory cobbled together from stolen scraps—glass tubes stitched with copper wires, stone slabs inlaid with glowing glyphs, and jars filled with fluids that whispered when no one listened.
At the center of all this, hunched over a rust-colored workbench, was the man who owned it all.
His head was too large for his body, a smooth dome gleaming under the light, veins pulsing faintly beneath the thin skin. His eyes—bulging and glowing faintly green—twitched as they darted between the charts on his desk and the glass tank looming at his back.
