The first thing he felt was pain.

Not a sharp stab, but a deep heaviness, as if every atom in his body had been replaced with lead. Dylan opened his eyes, the world blurry and spinning. He was lying on a cot—definitely not his. The canvas overhead was thicker, the smells different—less sweat and dust, more medicinal herbs and cleaning agent.

The medical tent.

He turned his head with difficulty. Elisa sat on a stool at his bedside, head bowed, eyes closed. She looked like she'd kept vigil far too long. Near the entrance, leaning against a pole, stood Julius, arms crossed. He wasn't asleep. His dark, watchful eyes were fixed on Dylan.

"You pulled a real stunt, kid," the giant said, his low voice slicing the silence.

Elisa jumped, her eyes snapping open. She leaned toward Dylan. "How do you feel?"

"Empty," he managed to whisper, his voice barely a rasp. And it was true. He felt like a hollowed-out shell, a cracked vessel that had once held an ocean and now retained nothing but dampness.

"You drew directly from the source, without the blade ritual," Elisa explained, her brow creased with worry. "It's… unpredictable. You nearly burned yourself out."

"But it worked," Dylan said, closing his eyes, seeing the shadow creature turn back in his mind. The sensation of power—brutal, crushing—flashed through him again, followed by the dizzying collapse of exhaustion.

"Yes, it worked," Julius admitted as he pushed off the pole and stepped closer. His gaze was layered: pride, fear, and a shard of that respect he reserved for forces of nature—wild, volatile, impossible to leash. "You turned their strongest weapon against them. The assault collapsed. We lost five men. We would've lost fifty without you."

Five lives. The number dropped into the well of his fatigue like a stone—both too small and far too large.

"Martissant?" Dylan asked.

Elisa and Julius exchanged a look.

"He's… impressed," Elisa said carefully. "And terrified. You're no longer just a theoretical risk. You're living proof. Proof he can't ignore anymore."

"He wants to see you," Julius added. "As soon as you can stand. The Archivist and the Alchemist are with him. They've spent the night analyzing the residual energy."

A shiver ran through Dylan, unrelated to weakness. The moment of reckoning had arrived—not based on fears or reports, but on an undeniable act.

⸻

It took him another day to gather enough strength to walk to Martissant's tent. Crossing the camp was a strange experience. The looks had changed again. Fear and suspicion remained, but now they were mixed with something new: a timid hope, a curious kind of respect. People watched him the way they watched a bonfire—beautiful and necessary, but best admired from a distance.

Inside the tent, the atmosphere was different from last time. Martissant wasn't seated behind his desk. He stood, studying a large map spread across a table. Marcus and Valeria stood beside him. The obsidian fragment lay on a velvet cushion, pulsing with a faint, steady glow.

"Dylan," Martissant said, turning toward him. His face was grave, but the bureaucratic disdain was gone. Now he looked at Dylan the way a commander looks at a powerful, unpredictable chess piece. "Sit."

Dylan sat, his legs still unsteady.

"Valeria and Marcus's report is unambiguous," the count began. "The energy you manipulated is identical to what drives Alka's creatures. You didn't just repel an attack. You shattered her control and imposed your own."

"Temporarily," Dylan corrected.

"Temporarily is enough to change the outcome of a battle," Martissant countered. He pointed at the map. "While you were unconscious, I received reports. Pilaf's offensive on the southern front was a diversion. Their true target was the north. Your… intervention… broke their assault. Without it, we would likely have lost the camp."

The weight of Martissant's words hit him. He had shifted the course of a battle. Perhaps of the war.

"That doesn't change the underlying issue," Valeria cut in, adjusting her copper-framed glasses. Her gaze was as sharp as ever, but an unmistakable spark of scientific excitement flickered in her eyes. "You're a conduit, Dylan. As we suspected. Connected to the same source as Alka. The difference is that you're learning to draw on it yourself instead of passively receiving her commands."

"Which makes you her top priority target," Marcus added, waving a parchment with ink-stained fingers, "and an invaluable asset for us. If we can figure out how to strengthen your control while minimizing collateral harm to your body…"

"'Collateral harm'?" Dylan repeated coldly.

"Exhaustion, self-inflicted damage, potential corruption of your vital essence," Valeria listed without blinking. "Power has a cost. We must quantify it."

Martissant raised a hand to silence them.

"The suspension is lifted," he said. His gaze locked onto Dylan. "But you won't return to your previous duties. Your new mission is to work with Valeria and Marcus. Learn to control this power. Understand its limits. And most importantly," his eyes hardened, "learn to use it without risking your life every time. We need you on the battlefield, not in a medical tent."

It was a victory. A form of recognition. Yet Dylan felt himself caught in an even tighter vise. Before, he had been a caged specimen. Now he was a weapon being honed. The purpose had changed, not the objectification.

"And Alka?" he asked. "She knows what I did. She'll react."

"Undoubtedly," Martissant replied. "Our scouts report unusual troop movements around the old black structure. She's preparing something. You've won a battle, Dylan. But you may have triggered the final war."

The meeting ended on those words. Dylan stepped out of the tent, mind tangled. He was free, in a sense. But his freedom had the shape of a new cage—a gilded one, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless.

Elisa waited outside. She read his expression and handed him a piece of dry bread.

"So?" she asked.

"I'm reinstated. I'll work with them. Learn to control… that." He lifted his left arm.

"It's an opportunity, Dylan. A chance to understand."

"To understand myself? Or to understand how they can use me?"

She didn't answer right away, chewing her own piece of bread. "Maybe both. The real question is: who's going to pull the strings? Them? Or you?"

He looked at the camp spreading out before them—soldiers training, forges ringing, life carrying on. A war was brewing, and he was now at its center, whether he wanted it or not.

"I don't want to be anyone's tool," he said at last, his voice firmer.

Elisa smiled—a sad, proud smile. "Then don't be. Use them the way they want to use you. Learn everything. Grow stronger. And on the day you're strong enough, you choose your own fate."

It was wise advice. Cynical, but wise. Dylan looked at his hands. They had held a sword, held Maggie's hand, and channeled a dark force. They were no longer the hands of a simple soldier.

Peace was an illusion. War stood at his doorstep—and within him. He had opened a door when he pushed back the shadows, and there was no turning back.

The next step would not be to endure, nor to react. It would be to learn. To claim this power. To survive. And perhaps, someday, to be free.

⸻

That night, Dylan found no sleep.

Not because of pain. Not even exhaustion.

Something else stirred in him—a sway, an oscillation between two poles still searching for an anchor: his will, and whatever now lived in his left arm.

A whisper. A rustle. A waiting.

He slipped out of the tent. The air was cold, but not harsh; a lucid cold, the kind that cuts illusions like a sharpened blade. The camp slept—or pretended to. After a night when shadows had nearly swallowed them, true rest was a luxury.

He walked to the edge of the camp, near the hastily repaired palisade. Under the moon, the wood looked like a fresh scar on a mutilated body.

"Planning to run away?"

Elisa's voice startled him. She sat on a crate, hair tousled, cloak open, looking like a cat who'd decided to keep watch for reasons known only to itself.

"No," he said. "I'm just looking for…"

He searched for the word. It wasn't peace. Nor air.

It was something more intimate. More ravenous.

"Understanding?" she offered.

He nodded.

She tapped the crate beside her. He sat.

For a while, they didn't speak. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was dense, full of a world changing too fast.

"You know," she said at last, "when you… did what you did, I felt something. A split. Like two lines of force long kept parallel suddenly collided."

"It wasn't… me," Dylan murmured. "Or not only."

"It was you," she corrected gently. "But amplified. Directed. As if your own power had finally found its grip."

He looked at his arm. The skin seemed normal. But under the moon, it sometimes emitted a faint dark shimmer—like the breathing of a sleeping beast.

"Are you afraid?" Elisa asked.

"If I say no, I'm lying."

She smiled—a quick, sharp smile, but without mockery. "Good. Fear doesn't stop you from moving forward. It only stops you from charging headfirst into a chasm. And given your track record, you need guardrails."

He let out a soft laugh. "Charming."

She shrugged. "Just realistic. You're not stable, Dylan. Not yet. You're holding a force that can crush you if you let it grow unchecked. But you're not alone."

Those words had an unexpected effect. A warmth. An ache.

"Julius looks at me like I'm a walking explosive," Dylan said.

"He likes you," she replied. "In his gruff way. And he's scared. Not of you. Of what this means. Julius has lost too much. He doesn't want to see you turn into a monster or a ruin."

"And you? What do you want me to become?"

She lowered her eyes briefly, thinking.

Then met his gaze again, steady, unflinching.

"Someone who chooses. Not someone who gets forged."