The sound snapped through the moment like a blade. Two figures stepped inside, both draped in stark white cloaks that shimmered faintly under the overhead runes. Their movements were precise, deliberate one tall and lean with gloved hands folded neatly behind his back, the other broader in the shoulders, his posture heavy with purpose. The embroidery on their hems glinted faintly: not decorative, but functional. Markings of rank.

  The moment they crossed the threshold, both girls rose at once almost by instinct. Heels together. Backs straight. Vierna felt her limbs align before her mind caught up, posture drilled into place like a blade returning to its sheath. Respect wasn’t optional in the facility. Not for the white-cloaked ones.

  The taller one she recognized him. Herr Halwen.

  The other man had a broader figure moved with an air of quiet command. His posture was rigid, his gaze sweeping the room with the kind of presence that didn’t need to speak to be obeyed. Vierna couldn’t place why, but something in his expression made her uneasy. There was an insignia at his collar.

  Halwen stepped forward, his voice calm but gentler than usual.

  “The board has decided to continue the experiment,” he said, eyes briefly scanning both girls before settling on Vierna. “But this version will be more forgiving. This runic device, we’ll use it as a means to support your internal mana regeneration. It follows the same principle as yesterday’s procedure but this one is milder. It shouldn’t hurt as much.”

  Vierna’s eyes flicked to Halwen’s, searching for something a certainty, maybe. Reassurance. And it was there, in his voice. Calm. Controlled. Measured, like everything Halwen did.

  She remembered how everyone used to talk to her at the orphanage. With that tone. The soft, strained voice people used when they felt sorry for you but didn’t want to say it aloud. Like she was something fragile. Like effort wouldn’t matter because failure had already been assumed.

  Halwen never used that tone. When she asked what she could do to catch up, he didn’t offer comfort. He handed her a book. That moment stuck with her. Not because it was warm. But because it was honest. Like he believed effort still counted.

  He let her see the moonlight after the experiment. He didn’t have to. He stayed after class too, watching her training. He hadn’t interrupted when Lina approached her, either. He just let her be.

  She trusted him because of that. Or at least tried to. But now this.

  He said the experiment was canceled. He said she wasn’t ready. And yet… here he was. Preparing to do it anyway. Softer, yes, but still doing it.

  So was it a lie? She didn’t know. Maybe Halwen really just wanted to protect her.

  But even if it was meant kindly… it still hurt. Because Halwen had been the first person to treat her like her effort meant something. And now, she couldn’t tell if that was ever real. She just felt… unsure. And that uncertainty settled deep in her ribs. She didn’t know what to believe.

  Vierna’s eyes lingered on the device. She didn’t know what to expect anymore.

  Across the room, Halwen watched her carefully. His gaze flicked briefly to Drecht, voice steady as he spoke. “Senior Supervisor. You may begin.”

  Drecht gave the faintest nod. One hand rose, fingers barely twitching, and the classroom podium slid aside, gliding across the floor with unnatural smoothness. A ripple of mana followed in its wake, controlled and efficient.

  Then, with another precise gesture, a spell circle shimmered into view on the bare floor where the podium was. Lines etched themselves in the air, glowing faintly. From its center, a shape began to rise, a chair, reinforced straps hanging at its arms.

  As the straps unfurled and the chair fully took shape, A feeling crept into Halwen’s chest, slow, deliberate, like a snake threading through bone.

  Halwen knew what the Arkmarschall had meant when he gave no order to move Vierna to the procedure wing.

  He wanted Lina to watch. And more than that, he wanted the setting to matter. This room. This classroom. A place that, for Vierna, might have felt like the beginning of something human. A place where friendship had sparked, however fragile.

  To turn that same space into the site of another experiment. Leopold didn’t see comfort and cruelty as opposites. He saw them as tools, variables to test how the subject reacted when control was taken in the very place where connection had just begun.

  He wanted to see if the bond would hold under pressure. If emotion could anchor resilience instead of unravel it. And perhaps, just perhaps he wanted to push past survival instinct and test what remained. Not how much pain she could take, but how deeply she had internalized the system.

  Halwen had understood that, at least in theory. He’d defended the experiment’s emotional variables himself. Defended how human connection as the rarest most valuable variable in this research.

  But only now did he truly grasp how severe the cost might be.

  Halwen recalled the way Vierna had looked at him when he’d told her the experiment would resume. There was a lingering feeling behind her gaze. A falter in her breath.

  She had wanted to believe him. But now, he wasn’t sure she still did. And that hit harder than he expected. Because if even that fragile thread of trust began to fray… then maybe Drecht was right.

  Maybe the risk wasn’t the procedure itself, but what it symbolized.

  Not in a sterile room. Not alone.

  But here. With Lina watching.

  In front of someone she had just begun to trust, just barely begun to see as more than a fellow prisoner. To endure this strapped down, silent, a subject once again could strip her of that dignity. Of that bond. Even if the pain was lighter, the shame might not be.

  This wasn’t about how much pain Vierna could endure. It was about what Lina might see. And what Vierna might think she saw. And maybe this is what would break her.

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  He remembered how she hadn’t screamed during the ignition trial. A child who had every reason to. And maybe that strength would carry her through again.

  He could only hope.

  Then Halwen turned to Vierna, his voice calm but firmer now. “Off you go then.”

  Vierna breathed in. The chair looked colder now as if memory had stripped away its mercy. Still, she moved. Slow. Uncertain. She lowered herself into the seat, its cold surface stiff beneath her, too familiar in its indifference.

  She had been told this one would be forgiving. That word had echoed in her mind ever since forgiving as if pain could be measured in mercy. But no one had said how forgiving. Or what price came with that kindness.

  The chair accepted her like an old friend. She braced herself, shoulders tightening by instinct.

  Halwen didn’t approach. Instead, with a faint motion of his hand, the straps at her wrists stirred on their own. They slid snugly into place, tightening with a soft click. Another precise gesture and the clasps at her ankles and shoulders followed, adjusting with quiet precision.

  Vierna exhaled, stealing a glance at Lina.

  Lina hadn’t moved. She sat stiffly, fingers tightening briefly around the waterskin she’d conjured. A small sign. Easily missed.

  Had she been through this before? Vierna wondered. Or had she seen it happen enough times to know how it ended?

  There was a pause in Lina’s posture. Just the faintest shift, like she wanted to rise, to step out. But she didn’t. No one moved when the white-coats were present. You waited. You obeyed. Even if it wasn’t said aloud, it was understood: movement without instruction could be mistaken as something else. And mistakes were intolerable here

  Across the room Vierna suddenly noticed Halwen’s incantation shift in the air, the faint stir of magic waking. Eight runes shimmered into being. Four on the floor forming the corners of an unseen square, and four more suspended in the air directly above them. Their symbols pulsed faintly, harmonizing in silence, threads of pale mana beginning to arc between each pair.

  Drecht stepped forward and entered the center of the formation. The moment his foot crossed the boundary, the runes reacted mana lines snapping into place, connecting like a woven lattice. A faint hum filled the air as a transparent barrier solidified around him and the chair.

  Without pause, Drecht cast another rune smaller, more complex just above his head and Vierna’s. A soft hiss answered it.

  From the conjured symbol, a pale, mist-like vapor began to spill downward, coiling in tendrils that shimmered faintly like oil on water. It smelled faintly antiseptic. Not chemical, not burning clean. Disinfecting.

  From the moment Halwen’s runes began to form, something in her stilled.

  The doubt, the unease, the quiet ache of being seen it all... paused. Not gone. Just held, like breath in the cold.

  Vierna watched as the lines of mana etched themselves into the air, folding in slow, silent rhythm. The spell didn’t erupt like an attack. It unfolded like a ceremony. Like a violin played without hands drawn not from strings, but from the night itself.

  And then the mist came. Weightless. Shimmering. Clean. It descended, soft and deliberate, like a drizzle at night that barely touches your skin but leaves the air changed. The kind of thing you wouldn’t dare interrupt. The kind of thing you’d ruin just by speaking.

  The sterilizing vapor didn’t hiss or sting. It settled. Gentle, patient curling around her like breath on a windowpane. It caught the light like distant lamplight seen through rain. Soft gold diffused through silver, alive and slow. As if the room itself was sighing.

  And the runes each glowing stroke moved as though they’d waited centuries just to arrive at this moment. Beauty not in defiance of function, but born from it.

  This is why, she thought. This is why all of it, the pain, the tests, the things they’ll still do to me would be worth it.

  Because one day, when I can shape this for myself… when it’s mine… I won’t be broken anymore I’ll be the one who wields beauty.

  She used to say she liked magic just because. That was still true. But now she knew what it could give her, too. The moment settled in her like breath held at the edge of something irreversible.

  Halwen then said calmly, “Begin the infusion.”

  Drecht raised his hand and spoke the incantation. The device in his palm responded at once, unfolding with smooth, mechanical precision. Thin arms extended outward, and from their tips, four long needles emerged. Gleaming, deliberate, unnervingly precise. Not thick enough to be surgical, but long enough to go deep.

  Mana stirred across the floor’s etched runes. The sterilized air grew heavy with pressure. The device floated forward. Its trajectory was slow, exact—until it hovered just behind Vierna’s neck.

  For a breath, nothing moved. Then, one needle pierced the nape of her neck.

  Vierna tensed, a hiss slipping through her teeth. It wasn’t agony, but the sensation was sharp, invasive. Heat and cold, braided beneath her skin. She felt the needles slide through fabric without resistance guided, perhaps, by the enchantment. Two more needles slid into her shoulders, angled with mathematical care. A fourth found its place at the base of her spine. And then the device began to glow.

  Fine runes crept outward from each puncture like living ink, etching across her skin in slow, deliberate paths. They shimmered faintly, crawling over her back with the unhurried confidence of something that had done this many times before.

  She braced. The pain was sharp but not cruel. Like pressing on a healing bruise. Unpleasant. But bearable.

  And then something shifted. It wasn’t like the chair, or the spikes, or the desperate grind of mana being forced into unwilling flesh. This was… different. It burned but not to break. It felt like plunging her hand into snowmelt after holding it to flame. A sting, deep and clean. Not punishment, but transition.

  Her breath hitched then steadied. She saw Lina’s eyes through the mask, unflinching, and fixed on her. She couldn’t read what she saw in Lina’s eye, The pain blurred her vision; even if it was bearable, it still clouded her sense of what Lina saw

  The device gave a final hum, then stilled.

  Its glow faded. One by one, the needles retracted, smooth and clean.

  Some of the runes across Vierna’s skin remained faint, translucent, like ink that hadn’t quite dried.

  Halwen stepped forward, raising a hand. The straps around her wrists and shoulders unlatched in sequence with a soft series of clicks.

  The barrier dissolved. The weight in the room lifted, slightly.

  “It’s done. You’re free to go, Vierna.”

  She rose from the chair, turned to the handlers, and gave them both a respectful bow. When she turned again, she saw it.

  Lina stepping closer and closer. Her eyes scanned Vierna’s face. “Well?”

  Vierna blinked, the soreness still pulsing faintly beneath her skin. “I think I overthought it. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “See? I knew you could handle it. The Tray and Bread Kingdom’s royal scribe doesn’t flinch at some floating rocks and glorified sewing needles.”

  Even while joking, Vierna couldn't stop remembering how Lina's eyes had looked and how she'd tightened her grip on her waterskin. Lina was worried sick, though she tried not to show it. Vierna worried too—about how Lina's gaze might change if she saw her at her most vulnerable. But Lina never gave her that look, not the same pitying, indifferent stare from the orphanage.

  Relief leaked out of Vierna as a small, stupid grin. Her shoulders loosened and the tight knot in her chest eased. She let her fingers uncurl from the waterskin and laughed once, breath high and small, like someone who had been holding her breath too long.

  She let out a slow breath. “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said.

  From across the room, Halwen watched the exchange in silence.

  He hadn’t expected laughter.

  Not after the straps. Not after the needles. But there it was dry, defiant, and entirely theirs. The banter wasn’t much. A joke, a name, a smile. But it lingered in the air longer than any scream might’ve. And in that silence, something settled inside him. Something he hadn’t let himself believe—not fully.

  That maybe the bond he’d fought to preserve… was stronger than he thought.

  Then, without warning, the runic device above them pulsed bright jet red.

  The alarm wailed not a chime, not a siren something closer to pain. A keening, mechanical wail that made the room seem too small.

  Halwen’s head snapped toward Drecht. They exchanged no words,just understanding. Both men moved at once, white cloaks flaring as they sprinted toward the door.

  “You girls—assembly hall. Now!” Drecht barked, already disappearing down the corridor.

  Vierna flinched at the sound, momentarily frozen, until Lina grabbed her hand and pulled.

  “Let’s go!”

  And just like that, the quiet afterplace was gone.