"You asked what I want?" Lencar repeated, his tone shifting. He began pacing slowly, deliberately around the kneeling boy, his black cloak dragging slightly on the wet stone. He moved like a predator circling a wounded lion, but there was a strange, teaching cadence to his steps.
"I wanted to fix a broken machine," Lencar said softly, stopping behind Mars for a moment before continuing his circle. "That was my primary objective tonight. But more than that... I wanted to tell you a truth. A truth that your beloved masters, those scholars you are so loyal to, have worked very, very hard to hide from you in the dark."
Lencar completed his circle and stopped directly in front of Mars. He didn't keep his distance this time. He stepped in close, invading the boy's personal space, leaning down slightly so his wooden mask was only inches from Mars's face. He could smell the ozone, the sweat, and the faint metallic tang of blood on the boy.
"There is a rune woven directly into the grey matter of your brain, Mars," Lencar said.
He dropped all the dry sarcasm, all the theatrical villainy. His voice became deadly serious, a low, urgent whisper that carried the absolute weight of a grim diagnosis.
"It's not a spell. It's a parasite. A magical lobotomy," Lencar elaborated, making sure every single word landed like a hammer blow. "It's embedded deeply into your hippocampus and your amygdala. It actively intercepts your neural pathways. Every time you try to feel something real, every time you try to remember something they don't want you to know, that rune actively suppresses your memories and violently short-circuits your emotions."
Mars's pale eyes went incredibly wide. The stoic, unbreakable soldier's facade he had just painstakingly erected cracked entirely down the middle.
"What... what are you talking about?" Mars breathed, the flat monotone replaced by a hesitant, stammering whisper. "A rune... in my brain? That's impossible. How could that be possible?"
"How?" Lencar scoffed, a harsh, bitter sound that held no humor. He stood up straight, looking down at the boy with a mixture of pity and anger. "Don't play naive with me, kid. You survived the Diamond Kingdom's magical experimentation labs. You know exactly what those white-coated scholars are capable of. You've seen the bodies they carry out of the testing rooms. They didn't just train you to swing a crystal sword; they programmed you. You are a biological weapon, and weapons aren't allowed to have a conscience."
Mars shook his head back and forth, a desperate, frantic physical denial. The rusted chains rattled loudly against his crystal armor as he moved.
"No," Mars choked out, his eyes darting wildly. "No. I am a soldier of the Diamond Kingdom. My loyalty is to the Kingdom. I chose this path to protect my home!"
"I know," Lencar said softly, his voice losing its harsh edge, becoming almost gentle. It was the tone of a doctor delivering terminal news. "I know that's what you believe. I know that's what the voice in your head tells you every single day. But it's a lie."
Lencar knelt down, bringing himself eye-level with the bound General.
"I cracked the seal while you were unconscious," Lencar confessed, watching Mars's face closely for the reaction. "I didn't shatter it completely—that would have turned your brain to soup—but I made a crack. I had to, Mars. I had to do it to stop you from dying a meaningless, agonizing death. Your body was literally burning itself alive because your mind was fighting the magic."
Lencar leaned in closer. "You should be feeling the effects right now. The pressure valve is open. You should be feeling new memories leaking through. Or rather... old ones, finally surfacing from the dark where Morris buried them. Flashes of the cold stone laboratory. The fear. The screaming. Flashes of... her."
Mars went entirely, terrifyingly still.
It was as if someone had hit a pause button on his very existence. He stopped breathing. The rattling of the chains ceased.
The memory of the single, heavy tear he had shed just minutes ago hit his conscious mind like a physical, concussive blow to the chest. The phantom, lingering warmth of a girl's bright smile flickered violently in the darkest, most heavily guarded corners of his mind. It was a ghost returning from the grave to haunt him, a memory so pure and painful that it threatened to tear him apart from the inside out.
He didn't speak. He couldn't. He remained dead silent, staring through Lencar rather than at him. His jaw clenched so tightly, with such unbelievable force, that Lencar could actually hear his molars grinding together, a sickening, gritty sound in the quiet morning air.
Lencar didn't offer comfort. He couldn't let the boy retreat back into denial. He had to tear off the entire bandage now, while the wound was exposed.
"I didn't just mess with your head," Lencar continued relentlessly, his voice an unyielding force, refusing to let the boy look away or disassociate. "I also performed a little surgery on your soul."
Mars's eyes snapped back into focus, locking onto Lencar's mask, a silent plea for him to stop talking visible in his pale irises.
But Lencar didn't stop. "Your hybrid magic, Mars. The Crystal and the Fire. The ultimate, unstoppable combination that makes you a General. You know deep down it wasn't natural, don't you? You've always known, on some instinctual level."
Lencar stood up, pacing slowly again, letting the words hang in the air.
"It wasn't a miraculous blessing from the mana," Lencar stated, his tone brutal and clinical. "It was a violent, horrific, artificial graft. Morris didn't teach you fire magic. He stole it. They took another child—a girl who cared about you, a girl who smiled at you in that hellhole—and they murdered her. And then, while her soul was still warm, they stitched her magic directly into your chest with a parasitic rune, just to see if they could make you a slightly sharper weapon."
Mars squeezed his eyes tightly shut. His chest began to heave, his breathing growing incredibly ragged and shallow, bordering on hyperventilation. The rusted chains groaned as his chest expanded against them.
The truth, as horrific and unbelievable as it sounded, resonated with a sickening, undeniable clarity. It aligned perfectly with the agonizing, disjointed fragments of memory that were currently bleeding through the crack in his mental seal. The phantom warmth. The tear. The feeling of absolute, hollow loss. He had always known. He had always known, on some deeply repressed, instinctual, biological level, that he was fundamentally broken. That he was a Frankenstein monster wearing a soldier's uniform.
Lencar watched the boy internally collapse. He watched the realization break the General down into a traumatized, abused teenager. It wasn't a pleasant sight.
But I have already removed the friction, Lencar thought to himself, making sure to keep the thought entirely internal, not saying it out loud.
He took a slow step back, giving the boy a modicum of physical space to process the mental destruction.
I stabilized your magic, kid, Lencar thought, staring at the trembling Diamond mage. You still have the fire. I made sure you kept the tether. But it won't tear your soul apart anymore. I fixed the hardware. Now... you just have to survive the software update.