The room was too quiet.Not the kind of quiet that brought peace. No, this silence was calculated. Engineered.Every inch of the room—every gleaming, sterile surface, every soft hum of unseen machinery—was designed to create an illusion.Order.Control.But Kael didn’t trust it.Didn’t trust the smooth steel walls. Didn’t trust the cold restraints biting into his wrists. Didn’t trust the air he was breathing.Because the silence here wasn’t natural.It wasn’t empty.It was watching. Waiting.And he wasn’t alone.His gaze flicked across the room to the only other occupant—the third brother.The bastard hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t even twitched. He just sat there, legs crossed, hands resting loosely on his lap. Calm. Collected. Unbothered.Not struggling.Not fighting.Just… waiting.Kael’s stomach turned.He didn’t like that.Didn’t like the patience. The composure. The way the third brother’s eyes never wavered, never flickered with uncertainty or fear.Like he already knew ho

The cold metal restraints bit into Kael’s skin, unyielding. Every breath felt heavy, each inhale tainted with the sterile, artificial air of the facility. But the pain of the metal was nothing compared to the weight crushing his chest—the betrayal staring him in the face. His brother. The third one. The one Kael had spent his whole life never knowing existed. And yet, here he stood, calm, composed, choosing the enemy. “I was never lost,” the third brother said, stepping forward. His voice was eerily steady. No anger. No resentment. No flicker of hesitation. Just certainty. “You were.” Kael felt the words land like a strike to his ribs, knocking the air out of him. But it wasn’t the words alone—it was the way he said it. Like it was the truth. Like Kael had spent his entire life blind to the reality standing right in front of him. Before Kael could even process it, Elias snapped. “You bastard!” It was rare to see Elias lose control. He had spent years perfecting his cold, a

Pain.That was the first thing Kael felt. A raw, searing agony that clawed its way through his skull, dragging him out of the abyss of unconsciousness. It wasn’t a dull ache. No, this was sharp, all-consuming, like wildfire tearing through his nerves. His body—restrained. His arms wouldn’t move. His legs were locked in place. His skin burned where metal pressed into it, cold and unyielding.Something was wrong.His breath came in shallow, uneven gasps as he forced his eyes open. A blinding white light slammed into his retinas. Too bright. Too sterile. The air was heavy with the acrid sting of chemicals and something metallic. Blood. His own? Someone else’s? He couldn’t tell.Then, the realization struck like a fist to the gut.A lab.He was back in a lab.His pulse spiked as he fought against the restraints, but the cold bite of steel dug into his skin. Thick leather straps bound his wrists and ankles to a rigid table. Wires coiled around his body like vines, their thin metallic threa

The world was fracturing.Reality splintered around Kael like shards of broken glass, each fragment slicing through the fragile remnants of his mind. He was falling—no, breaking, unraveling from the inside out.His head slammed back against the cold metal slab, his spine arching against the restraints as the machine drilled deeper into his consciousness. The relentless pulse of electricity tunneled into his skull, sending violent tremors through his body. His muscles convulsed, nerves alight with agony, but this wasn’t just pain.It was erasure.The wires snaked around him, embedding themselves into his skin, fusing with his very essence. The currents that surged through him weren’t merely destroying—they were rewriting.Who was he?He gasped, but the sound barely left his lips before another jolt forced his vision to blur, his thoughts to twist into something unfamiliar.Something stolen.The Director loomed above him, his pristine white coat a stark contrast against the darkness of

Pain was nothing new.Kael had been carved from it, molded by it, broken and reforged a thousand times until it was no longer something he felt—just something he was. Pain had seeped into his bones, burned into his skin, written itself into the very fabric of his existence.But this—this was different.This was not just pain.This was destruction.His mind was being unraveled, stripped down to its most fragile, vulnerable core. Memories were being ripped apart and stitched back together in grotesque ways, reshaped into something foreign and unfamiliar. Faces he should have known were blurred, details twisted, moments that had once belonged to him now warped into something monstrous.Who was he?The boy who had escaped?Or the one who had been left behind?Each time he grasped at a truth, it slipped through his fingers like sand.Flashes of a past he didn’t recognize burned behind his eyelids, searing his mind like branding irons.A white room.A chair with straps.The sharp scent of a