The world around me stopped being three-dimensional.

  It broke apart into layers, like a blueprint flooded with ink. White spots drifted across my vision, interspersed with cascades of system messages I couldn’t shut down. The crystal in my chest no longer radiated warmth—it vibrated at such a frequency that my teeth began to crumble.

  “— Critical error…” Zeno’s voice degraded into digital grinding. “— Overload of main channels… Purge… Purge… You… idiot…”

  I collapsed to all fours and retched bile. The taste of mana was the worst thing imaginable—it felt like molten lead mixed with electrolyte. The fingers of my right hand wouldn’t straighten; they were locked in a twisted claw, the skin around the nails blackened and split.

  “— Get up…” I felt Efrem tugging at my shoulder.

  The old man looked no better. My “magical sutures” on his shoulder pulsed with a bright, unhealthy glow, reacting to the general overload of the ambient field. He was breathing heavily, his face slick with clammy sweat that reflected the phosphorescent light pouring down from the ventilation shafts above.

  “— Do you hear that?” Efrem shook me, and a hollow echo rang through my skull.

  I listened. At first, it was just noise, like a distant collapse. But the sound was changing—growing denser, heavier. It was the roar of water trapped in a confined space. Valerius hadn’t just opened the sluices—he had redirected the main flow of waste from the Citadel’s cooling circuits straight here.

  This wasn’t just water.

  It was a viscous, chemically active slurry saturated with residual energy, capable of corroding metal and melting human flesh in minutes.

  “— We… need to go higher…” I forced out, trying to focus my vision.

  The skill [The Will to Live] flickered in ragged bursts.

  [Warning: Magical poisoning detected — Stage II.

  System Energy: 92% (Critical Overflow).

  Neural Stability: 14%.]

  Ninety-two percent.

  I was like a steam boiler stuffed with too much coal, the safety valve welded shut. My veins bulged into rigid cords, and my ears rang as if I were standing beneath a massive bell.

  “— Higher where, kid?!” Efrem shouted. The roar of water drowned out everything else. “We’re in a dead end!”

  I looked around. The maintenance chamber was rapidly filling with glowing sludge. It had already reached our ankles, and I felt my boots beginning to smoke. The slurry hissed as it ate into the rusted metal of the pump.

  The psychological pressure was almost physical. Inside my head, Zeno convulsed, desperately trying to seize control—to simply shut down my pain receptors and turn me into a compliant puppet.

  “— Hand over… control…” he rasped. “— I… will calculate… the vector…”

  “No.” I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms. “You calculate probabilities. I need a decision.”

  My gaze snagged on a massive steel reservoir in the corner. An old caisson—an enormous pressure-equalization tank, riveted into the wall with heavy bolts. It had been designed to withstand colossal stress.

  “— There!” I pointed at the tank. “There should be air inside!”

  “— That’s a coffin, Iron! We’ll get welded shut in there!” Efrem backed away from the advancing slurry, now rising to his knees.

  “— If we stay here, we’ll dissolve in five minutes!” I grabbed his good arm and literally dragged him toward the tank.

  Every step was agony. The mana in my veins resisted movement—it wanted me to stop, to become part of the glowing mass. My vision fractured into a grid—I no longer saw walls, only vectors of stress. The tank was a weak point in the system, but for us, it was the only chance.

  We reached the hatch. Rusted. Jammed. I threw my full weight against it.

  “— Help me!” I yelled to Efrem.

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  Together, we wrenched the lever. Metal screeched, and the hatch reluctantly gave way, opening into a black, mazut-scented void. I shoved Efrem inside and dove in after him.

  It was dark and cramped inside the tank. We crouched in sticky sludge—remnants of old lubricant. Outside, a devastating impact shook the chamber. The water flooded it completely.

  The tank shuddered. The metal groaned as the external pressure began to spike. Thin струplets of glowing poison seeped through the seams of the hatch.

  “— We need to seal it,” I said, staring at my hands. “From the inside.”

  “— With what? We don’t have tools!”

  I looked at my right hand. It glowed so brightly it hurt to look at. Emerald light bled through the skin; the fingers twitched with electrical discharges.

  “— I have a tool,” I said, and my voice sounded frighteningly calm.

  I pressed my palm against the rim of the hatch.

  “— What are you doing?!” Zeno shrieked. “This will destroy your nerve endings! You’re burning the interface!”

  “— Shut up and give me the temperature,” I ordered.

  I stopped fighting the energy inside me. I opened the floodgates. Every ounce of mana I had stolen from the pipe—I focused it into a single point: my right palm.

  It wasn’t pain.

  Pain was too small a word.

  It was as if my arm had been shoved into a blast furnace, then my bones were slowly twisted inside out. I screamed, but the sound drowned in the roar of water outside.

  My hand became a welding arc. Blinding white flame erupted from my fingers, melting the steel of the hatch. Slowly, I traced a circle, welding the lid to the body of the tank. Molten metal splashed onto my face, burned through my clothes—but I didn’t stop.

  I saw the world through a thermal overlay.

  Seam temperature: 1800°C.

  External pressure: 5 atmospheres.

  Rate of increase: 0.2 per second.

  My brain functioned like a calculation engine, ignoring the agony of flesh.

  When the circle closed, I collapsed to the bottom of the tank. My right arm was dead. It looked like a charred branch, coated in a crust of congealed blood and fused metal.

  “— Iron…” Efrem stared at me in horror. “You’re… you’re insane.”

  “— We’re… sealed…” I wheezed, choking on a cough.

  Suddenly, the tank lurched. We felt it tear free from the wall. Bolts, eaten away by acidic mana and weakened by pressure, finally failed.

  We began to rise.

  Not smoothly—chaotically. The tank spun in the current like a tin can. We slammed into walls; Efrem groaned in pain; I fought to keep consciousness as each impact dragged me closer to darkness.

  “— Trajectory analysis…” Zeno spoke again, quietly now, subdued. “We are in the main collector shaft. The flow is carrying us upward, toward the External Ring distribution gates. If pressure doesn’t drop, we’ll be crushed against a damper.”

  The air inside the tank grew hot and stale. We were cooking alive in our own energy.

  “— I need… to release pressure…” I whispered.

  I felt along the bottom of the tank. There was a drainage valve. If I opened it at the right moment, we’d turn into a reactive projectile.

  “— Efrem, grab the braces! Tight!”

  I placed my left—still living—hand on the valve. I waited. I listened to the world outside. The hum of water. The scrape of metal. The impacts against tunnel walls.

  There.

  The sound changed.

  The flow accelerated.

  We were entering a vertical shaft.

  “— Now!” I yanked the valve lever and simultaneously injected a short mana pulse into the residual water at the bottom of the tank.

  Instant evaporation.

  Gas expansion.

  The tank convulsed with an internal explosion and shot upward, outrunning the mana current. We were slammed into the floor with such force that I heard my ribs crack.

  Light.

  The darkness of the tank exploded into searing brightness. We punched through some barrier. A thunderous crash, tearing metal—and silence.

  The tank no longer drifted.

  It lay on its side, shuddering heavily. Steam hissed from ruptured seams.

  I lay on the bottom, unable to move even a finger.

  [The Will to Live] burned with a steady, dull gray light.

  [System Energy: 2%.

  Status: Near-comatose state.

  Irreversible structural changes detected in right limb.]

  I survived.

  But at what cost?

  My arm was a black, numb mass of charred flesh. Inside my head was a ringing emptiness—Zeno had either completely burned out or gone into deep reboot.

  “— Alive…” Efrem rasped.

  He was the first to crawl to the hatch. Using some piece of scrap metal, he began prying at my “weld,” which had already cooled and grown brittle. After what felt like an eternity, the lid came loose, and air rushed in.

  It didn’t smell like swamp.

  It smelled like ozone, expensive oil… and stone.

  Efrem climbed out and helped me. I spilled out of the tank onto a perfectly smooth, cold tiled floor.

  We weren’t in a forest.

  And not in a village.

  It was a vast hall filled with strange structures resembling gigantic hourglasses, inside which blue flame pulsed. Silence reigned, broken only by the steady hum of machinery.

  “— Where are we?” I whispered, squinting against the bright light of the magical lamps overhead.

  Efrem looked around, and a depth of horror crossed his face unlike anything I’d seen—even when we faced Kyle.

  “— We’re in the Inner Ring,” he whispered, backing toward the tank. “The very heart of the Citadel’s purification system. Iron… we drifted straight into the enemy’s lair.”

  I tried to stand, but my leg buckled, and I fell again. My gaze landed on the polished floor. In it, I saw my reflection.

  Staring back at me was no longer a boy.

  My hair had turned completely white.

  And one eye—my right—glowed with a steady emerald light, utterly devoid of anything human.

  “— Objective achieved,” a voice suddenly whispered in my head.

  But it wasn’t Zeno.

  It was my own voice—cold, precise.

  “— Subject delivered to integration point.”

  At the far end of the hall, massive doors opened. Heavy, measured footsteps echoed beneath the vaults.

  This wasn’t Kyle.

  This was someone far, far more dangerous.

  “— Welcome home, Sample Number Zero,” a calm, velvety voice said.

  Valerius stood in the doorway, dressed in his immaculate white uniform. There was no weapon in his hands.

  He didn’t need one.

  I looked at my burned arm. Then at him.

  “— I… am not… a sample,” I rasped, feeling the last 2% of energy condense into pure, concentrated rage.