"Resonance sigils," Kane breathed, recognition hitting him like ice water.
Faint lines pulsed beneath the creature's scales, glowing green-blue like underwater circuitry.
His mind jolted back to that night outside the convenience store, Rina's voice cutting through his memory:
A synthetic binding agent. Not natural spirit magic, Kane. Someone's manufacturing this stuff.
The same binding agent found at his apartment. The same synthetic compound traced to the rogue rat spirits at Hoshino's.
Kane's hypothesis formed with terrifying clarity.
This wasn't a real dragon—it was a manufactured spirit, cobbled together from archived dragon DNA or essence fragments, then animated with the same synthetic binding technology that had nearly killed Rina.
Someone had created a weapon designed specifically to look and move like a dragon, and to fight Cyrus on equal terms.