His breath returned, regular but different. As if the air he now inhaled carried a metallic quality, an aftertaste of ether. Dylan stood up, refusing the help Julius offered. His own hand, when he looked at it, seemed normal. Yet, he perceived a shimmer at its periphery, like heat above a fire. The echo.

"You need rest," declared Valeria, her voice cutting through the camp's post-traumatic silence. "But not a soldier's rest. That of a... student."

She approached, her scrutinizing gaze sweeping over his face, his aura. "The Source-Gate left a mark. A psychic imprint. It's not possession, it's... a resonance. You are tuned to a frequency it emitted. Marcus might be able to map it."

Marcus stepped forward, looking dubious. "Map an extra-dimensional consciousness imprint? My dear, you take me for an abyssal librarian. I can attempt to visualize it. To contain it, perhaps. Not to explain it."

"Do it," ordered Martissant. His gaze never left Dylan. "What you did here, Corporal, was either heroically stupid or revolutionarily lucid. Either way, it changes the game. Alka will no longer seek to capture you alive to convert you. She will seek to annihilate you to erase the symbol of resistance. Your death becomes her strategic priority."

"Comforting," grumbled Julius.

"It's a fact," Martissant corrected. "We must anticipate. She will strike soon. And she will not come with half-measures." He turned to Valeria. "Your networks. Any news?"

Valeria nodded, a dark glint in her eyes. "Converging reports. Disturbances in the telluric lines fifty leagues from here, towards the Grey Mountains. Entire villages falling into an... organic silence. People continue their lives, but like automatons. The will has been drained, siphoned. She is building a reserve. For a large-scale assault."

The stone circle around them seemed to have lost its power. Marcus's runes were paling, their energy consumed by the confrontation. Dylan felt a pang in the pit of his stomach. A hunger. Not for food, but for... what he had pushed away. The flow. That was the echo: a physical nostalgia for a power he had tasted then rejected.

"Dylan?" Maggie's voice, soft and worried. She had approached, having defied the order to stay in the quarters. She looked at him, and in her eyes, he saw not fear, but a sharp pain, as if she perceived the battle still raging inside him.

"I'm fine," he lied.

"No," she said simply. Then, addressing the others: "Leave him. Just for a moment."

Martissant studied the young woman, then Dylan. A rapid calculation passed in his gaze. The symbol also had a heart. A weak point. And an anchor point. He gave a brief nod. "Five minutes. Then, we convene in my tent. Corporal, your presence is indispensable."

They moved away, leaving Dylan alone with Maggie in the defunct stone circle. The night had returned to normal, but it now felt like a disguise.

"You're hungry," she said, not as a question, but as a statement.

He was surprised. "How...?"

"I'm watching you. You look like someone who refused a feast and misses the smell." She took his hand. Her flesh was warm, alive, a brutal contrast to the spectral chill still inhabiting him. "What he offered you... it was tempting, wasn't it?"

Dylan closed his eyes. He could still hear it, that voiceless voice. Peace. The end of the struggle. "Yes. More than anything."

"But you said no. Why?"

He opened his eyes, searching for words in his own chaos. "Because it wasn't peace being offered to me. It was dissolution. Like promising you'll never be thirsty again, on the condition you become water. I... I don't want to stop being me. Even if being me is painful. Even if it's dangerous."

A smile, fragile but genuine, lit up Maggie's face. "Then it's still you. Just... bigger. More torn." She squeezed his hand tighter. "You're fighting a river, Dylan. Don't forget to swim. Sometimes, you have to let the current carry you to find where to push off."

Her words resonated strangely within him. Let the current carry you. Not submit. Observe. Understand. Use. That might be the third option, the real one. Not blunt refusal, nor total submission. Apprenticeship.

The five minutes were up. Elisa appeared at the edge of the circle with a discreet nod. Dylan released Maggie's hand, giving her a look that said thank you.

"I'll be back," he promised.

"I'll be here," she replied. Not "be careful." Just "I'll be here." It was a thousand times stronger.

---

Martissant's tent was a living map. Parchments covered the table, marked with troop movements, scout reports, diagrams of energy lines. Marcus was hunched over a device of copper and crystal, at the center of which floated a speck of dust collected where the Source-Gate had stood. It pulsed with an intermittent blue-black glow.

"The imprint is stable," Marcus murmured. "It reacts to Dylan's presence. Look."

Dylan approached. Upon his entry into the tent, the dust speck animated, its pulse accelerating and syncing with his own heartbeat. An invisible thread connected them.

"It's an anchor," declared Valeria, arms crossed. "It can locate you. And you... you might be able to locate it too. If you learn to interpret this resonance."

"I don't want to locate it. I want it to leave me alone."

"Too late for that," growled Julius, leaning by the entrance. "You're in its sights. And in Alka's. The only question is who will strike first."

Martissant placed both hands on the table. "Strategy. Alka is impulsive, but not stupid. She knows a frontal assault on a fortified camp, with a potential Source-Gate inside, would be costly. She will use corruption. Infiltration. She will try to break the symbol from within."

"The camp?" asked Elisa, suspicious.

"The mind," corrected Valeria, looking at Dylan. "She will try to tempt you. To show you the advantages of the power she holds. To dangle the ease of it. She will exploit your fatigue, your doubts, this... hunger you feel."

A shiver ran through Dylan. She was right. Temptation wasn't a one-time event. It was a war of attrition.

"What do you propose?" he asked, addressing Martissant.

The Count studied him for a long moment. "Two things. First, you will learn. Marcus and Valeria will teach you everything they know about the Source, its Gates, and the mechanisms of will. You must understand the enemy better than it understands itself. Second, we will take the initiative."

Silence greeted that statement.

"The initiative?" repeated Julius. "You want to attack Alka? In her own territory, fueled by the Source? That's suicide."

"I'm not talking about a military attack," said Martissant. "I'm talking about a psychic strike. A counter-temptation." His eyes settled on Dylan. "The Source-Gate said you could be a stable tributary. Let's use that. Instead of resisting passively, appropriate a share of the flow. Not to submit, but to divert it. Starve Alka."

The audacity of the plan left Dylan speechless. To appropriate the Source's power. To play at being a river thief.

"It's terribly dangerous," breathed Marcus. "If you lose control, even for a second, the flow could wash away all identity. Or worse, it could wrench you wide open, making you a new gate, right next to Alka."

"But if it works..." murmured Valeria, and a gleam of fanatical excitement shone in her eyes. "If it works, you could become a regulator. A counter-power. Not a god. A... shepherd."

The weight of expectations crashed down on Dylan, heavier than the Source-Gate's presence. They were no longer asking him just to survive, or even to resist. They were asking him to master. To rival a cosmic force.

He looked at the speck of dust pulsing to his rhythm. The echo. It wasn't just a mark. It was a connection. A thread he might be able to pull.

"How do we begin?" he asked, and his voice was firmer than he would have thought.

A rare, almost savage smile split Valeria's austere face. "We begin," she said, "by looking into the abyss. And by politely asking it to share."

Outside, the night wore on. But the longest night, Dylan felt, was the one beginning within him. He had refused to be a conduit. Now, he would have to learn to be a dam. And perhaps, one day, a gardener, who diverts the waters to grow something other than ruins.

The cage had keys. It was time to learn how to forge the lock.