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Each swallow was deliberate, but it was the gaze—unblinking, sharp, and almost reverent—that made my heart race. Like I was no longer just a fellow prisoner, but something he was beginning to see."

A small victory, but I’d take it. If we were going to survive whatever Hammond had planned, we’d need to start trusting each other. Even if that trust began with something as simple as shared water.

The footsteps stopped outside our door. Keys jangled, the lock beeped, and the door swung open. Two armed guards stood there, stun batons at the ready.

Behind them, I glimpsed Phillips—Hammond’s second-in-command, thin and nervous-looking as ever.

“You. Blue. Get up,” one guard barked, pointing at the Nyxari. The meaning clear despite the language barrier.

The Nyxari’s expression hardened, but he made no move to resist. He knew, as I did, that resistance now would only bring pain.

When he struggled to stand, the guards stepped forward, roughly hauling him to his feet. His tail dragged lifelessly behind him as they forced him through the door.

“What about this one?” the second guard asked, gesturing toward me with his stun baton.

Phillips studied me dispassionately. “Not yet. Hammond wants to finish the current session first. Her turn comes tomorrow.”

As they hauled the Nyxari away, his eyes met mine once more. There was something different there now—not trust, not yet, but perhaps the first spark of recognition.

We were both prisoners here. Both Hammond’s victims.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

The door slammed shut, the lock engaged, and I was alone with my thoughts. Hammond’s cruelty toward the Nyxari was a chilling preview of what awaited me tomorrow.

I needed to be ready. Needed to gather information, conserve my strength, find any advantage.

I sat on the edge of the crude shelf that served as a bed, running my fingers along the silver markings on my arms. They felt strangely resonant, almost musical beneath my skin.

Whatever Hammond had found here, he wasn’t just experimenting randomly. He had a purpose. A goal. And understanding that goal might be the key to our survival.

I closed my eyes and focused on the sensation from my markings, trying to interpret what they were telling me about this place. A low, persistent hum. Energy flowing through ancient conduits.

Systems dormant but not dead. And something else—a faint, discordant note that felt wrong somehow. Out of tune. Damaged.

Hammond was interfering with systems he didn’t understand. Again. And if history was any guide, the consequences would be catastrophic. For all of us.

RAVIK

Pain was a familiar cloak, draped heavy across my senses. The lingering agony from the human’s crude shard experiments pulsed along my lifelines, a discordant rhythm beneath the steady hum of the failing ruins Hammond used as his den.

My capture remained a source of sharp shame—ambushed while fulfilling my clan’s sacred duty. Failure. Dishonor.

I shifted position slightly, my back against the cold stone wall. Each movement sent fresh waves of agony through my damaged lifelines.

The golden patterns beneath my skin, once vibrant with the energy of my ancestors, now flickered erratically, dim in places where the human’s probes had disrupted their natural flow. Four sessions under Hammond’s instruments had left me weakened, my strength leached away like water into sand.

My capture was an unexpected conclusion to what should have been a simple observation mission. For weeks, I had watched the mixed settlement from the ridgelines—studying the Eastern Nyxari who had betrayed our ways by forming bonds with the marked humans.

I had seen the golden lifelines of my own kind intertwining with silver markings during their rituals, witnessed the sharing of knowledge that should have remained protected. From concealed positions, I had listened to Nyxari conversations, heard their justifications for this dangerous alliance, their talk of a human leader called “Hammond” who had broken away, threatening both species.

My mission was nearly complete, my report for the Shadow Canyon Elders almost prepared, when I detected the energy disturbance near the western boundary. I should have returned directly to my clan, but curiosity—always my weakness—led me to investigate.

And so I found myself ambushed, my lifelines disrupted by technology I had never imagined, dragged before the very human the Eastern Nyxari had spoken of with such fear.

During the first days of captivity, he had used a translator stone, demanding information about my clan, about the ruins we protected. I had revealed nothing, but his questions had revealed much—his name, his obsessions, his dangerous ignorance of powers he sought to control.

The air in this makeshift cell carried the stale scent of human occupation—sweat, metal, chemical compounds foreign to Arenix. The stone itself felt wrong, its natural resonance disrupted by the salvaged technology bolted carelessly to its surface.