The silence after Hareth's death was heavier than the stench of it.
Lucian stared through the glass at what remained—if you could even call it a man anymore. Flesh blackened and curling away from brittle bone, the dust of what had been skin clinging to the floor. It wasn't just death. It was obliteration, methodical and total.
The message was obvious. Breaking their agreement wouldn't simply kill him. It would erase him.
The dark-haired woman watched him, studying every twitch, every breath. She found hesitation—yes—but not the kind she expected. No fear. No panic. Not even disgust.
Instead, there was… silence.
Cold. Measured.
The kind of silence that made her realize Lucian was considering variables she hadn't even placed on the table.
"I want to make something clear," she said, her voice steady but just shy of gentle. "You're an asset to us, not a slave. No absurd orders. No chains beyond reason. We want you to grow—just as you do. The only condition… is that you do it while carrying Shadowfall's name."
Lucian said nothing. He turned his head, gaze sliding past her toward the cracked wasteland beyond the window. A graveyard of a world.
He exhaled slowly. "We have a deal." His eyes shifted back to her. "And this time, I mean it."
Her smile was subtle. Controlled. "Smart decision. I'm Super Agent BK11—"
"I'm not remembering that," Lucian interrupted.
"—but you can call me Ash," she finished, unfazed.
"Well then, Ash," he said, "I presume we're done here. Can I be let out of your trap chair now?"
"Someone will take you to a temporary room," she replied. "Rest. In a few hours, I'll call for you. There's someone important you need to meet."
The restraints released with a faint click. Lucian pushed himself upright—only to have his knees fold under him. The sudden weight of his own body nearly sent him back into the seat. Four years without standing was a debt the muscles demanded in full.
Two men entered, their presence wordless but imposing.
"Take him," Ash ordered.
One of them gestured for Lucian to follow. Lucian gave her one final glance—a silent promise of unfinished business—before turning away.
---
"What's your read?" the agent asked once the door closed behind him.
Ash's gaze lingered on the empty chair. "He doesn't move like a thirteen-year-old."
"That's because he's not. He's seventeen now."
"No," she murmured. "He's seventeen in body. But he didn't live those four years. And yet…" She trailed off, a faint crease forming between her brows. "After what he just saw—there wasn't even a flicker. Not in his eyes, not in his pulse."
The agent nodded grimly. "So which is it? Unfazed… or something worse?"
Her answer was quiet, almost to herself. "Worse. Much worse."
---
The agent led Lucian down a sterile corridor lined with identical grey doors. At one of them, he stopped and placed a palm against the wall scanner. The door slid open with a hiss.
"You'll stay here," he said, and walked away without waiting for a reply.
Lucian stepped inside.
The room was small and clinical. A bed barely big enough to count as one. A desk with a single journal resting on its surface—an almost absurd touch of humanity in an otherwise soulless box.
And a mirror at the far wall.
He moved toward it, the door sealing shut behind him.
The reflection staring back was almost a stranger. His hair had grown wild—black strands tangled and streaked with silver. His eyes were the same steel-grey… but they no longer belonged to a boy. His face had sharpened, matured.
He was taller. Stronger.
His gaze dropped to his hands. At first glance earlier, they had seemed unchanged. But now he saw the truth—the definition in the tendons, the hardened grip of someone who could break bone without trying.
Curious, he peeled off the plain grey shirt.
The mirror showed a body built for killing—lean but cut, with muscle traced in clean, deliberate lines. The faint shadows of abs. The frame of someone who'd been forged, not merely fed.
Lucian let the shirt fall from his fingers.
He crossed to the bed and collapsed onto it, eyes fixed on the unbroken slab of concrete above.
"I remember…" The words left him as a whisper.
Not all of it—not yet—but enough. Enough to no longer be chained to the flawed human he had been.
He remembered the Slumps. The hunger. The fights. The brutality that had shaped him. Beneath it all, there had still been fear, stubbornness, hesitation—human weakness.
But now…
Now, that part of him was gone.
Lucian's lips curved faintly—not in joy, but in recognition.
He was many, many things.
But a mortal human was not one of them.
--