The floor was too clean.

  That was the first thing that truly pissed me off. After weeks spent wading through rotting swamp sludge, after the stench of sewers and rusted metal in the “Dead Loop,” this sterility felt like an insult. Perfect white marble, threaded with thin, barely visible golden veins—not mere decoration, but energy transmission lines. Even dust seemed afraid to settle here without permission.

  I was lying on that floor, feeling like a pile of trash accidentally dragged into an operating room. My right arm—charred and twisted—twitching against the cold stone. There was no pain.

  That was the most terrifying part.

  It felt as if a heavy, dead log had been strapped to my shoulder—something still smoldering on the inside.

  “Don’t try to get up,” Valerius said softly, almost kindly. “Your muscles are closer to overcooked tendons right now. Any sudden movement will cause ruptures that even I would need weeks to heal.”

  I lifted my head, fighting the nausea. The Magister stood three steps away. He didn’t look like an executioner. Tall, composed, with a neatly trimmed beard and eyes the color of Arctic ice. His uniform was so white it hurt to look at under the glow of the magical lamps floating beneath the vaulted ceiling.

  “Efrem…” I rasped. My voice sounded like shattered glass grinding together.

  I glanced sideways. The old man lay a few meters away. He hadn’t been beaten, but he was trapped inside a transparent cube of static force. He looked broken. His lips trembled, and his gaze was locked on Valerius with the primal terror of a man who had just seen his own death reflected back at him.

  “Your companion is safe,” Valerius said, clasping his hands behind his back. “For now. He’s an interesting variable. A former overseer playing at being a savior… admirable, if pointless. But we’re not here because of him.”

  He stepped closer. I caught the scent of expensive soap and something antiseptic.

  “Look at yourself, Iron,” he gestured toward my reflection in the polished marble. “White hair at ten years old. An eye emitting a frequency capable of liquefying an ordinary man’s brain. You understand now that you’re no longer a ‘defect,’ don’t you?”

  I said nothing, studying the fingers of my left hand as they trembled slightly.

  “You are the result Zeno was trying to achieve for thirty years,” Valerius continued, circling me. “He was always a madman. He believed magic could be ‘tamed’ through logical structures—made accessible to… simple tools. He wanted to turn a human into a living computational engine. And judging by your right eye, he almost succeeded.”

  “He didn’t do this,” I forced out. “I chose—”

  “Oh, of course,” the Magister chuckled softly. “You believe your choices are your own. That’s the sweetest lie Zeno ever implanted in your mind. Every action, every ‘engineering impulse’ was programmed into that crystal you carry so carefully in your chest. You’re not a subject, Iron. You’re a carrier. A container for ideas he never had time to implement himself.”

  Something stabbed at the back of my skull. Zeno was silent inside me, but the silence had weight—like he was hiding, afraid Valerius might see him through my eyes.

  “Why am I here?” I pushed myself upright, darkness flashing at the edges of my vision. “If I’m just a tool, why not take me apart right now?”

  Valerius stopped and met my gaze. There was no malice in his eyes. Only cold, analytical interest that sent a chill down my spine.

  “Because dismantling a functioning mechanism is wasteful. We have a problem, Iron. The Order’s system is aging. The swamp sources are drying up. The Obelisks demand more energy every cycle, and our acolyte-batteries burn out faster than we can train them. We need a new principle. Your principle.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He leaned closer.

  “Give me Zeno. Open access to the memory segments he locked away in your subconscious. In return, you’ll receive everything—laboratories, resources, the finest masters. You’ll build your machines. Study the physics of mana openly, not hiding in basements. You’ll become the Architect of a new Order. And the old man…” He nodded toward Efrem. “He gets full amnesty and a quiet farm in the south.”

  I looked at Efrem. He met my eyes and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Don’t believe him.

  “You’ll kill him the moment I agree,” I said.

  “Why would I?” Valerius shrugged. “Death is inefficient. Loyalty is far more valuable. Think, Iron. You’re an engineer. You see how flawed this world is. Magic here is chaos we barely keep on a leash. With your help, we’ll turn chaos into a blueprint. We’ll build a civilization without ‘defects,’ because everything will be calculated.”

  His voice was soothing. He was offering exactly what this insane world had denied me—order. Logic. Resources.

  “He’s lying,” Zeno cut in suddenly, his voice crackling like radio interference. “He doesn’t want to build. He wants to scale his power. If he gets the code, he’ll turn all of humanity into the same batteries as the acolytes in the Citadel. Only permanent ones.”

  I felt something stir in my right, “dead” arm. A faint tingling.

  I lowered my gaze. Valerius thought my arm was a burned, useless appendage. But he wasn’t an engineer. He saw damaged flesh—he didn’t see a capacitor.

  All that monstrous energy I’d forced through myself in the conduit hadn’t vanished. Some of it had lodged in the crystalline structures Zeno used to replace my nerves. My arm wasn’t just charred bone.

  It was an overcharged battery—with no off switch. Yet.

  I looked back at Valerius.

  “I need time,” I said, simulating weakness as I lowered my head. “I… I need to think this through. It’s too much.”

  “Reasonable,” the Magister nodded, satisfied. “You have an hour. Here, in silence. Enjoy it. It’s the only hour in your life when your choice truly matters.”

  He turned and walked toward the doors. His footsteps on the marble sounded like a metronome.

  When the heavy doors closed, the hall filled with the low hum of operating machinery.

  “Iron…” Efrem whispered from his cube. “Don’t do it. He’ll hollow you out. I’ve seen what happens to those who agree. They become… empty.”

  “I know,” I said, slowly shifting my gaze to my right arm.

  I focused. It felt like trying to move a phantom limb. I couldn’t feel my fingers—but I felt tension.

  Along the walls stood distribution pylons maintaining the static fields. They hummed at 440 hertz. I knew that frequency.

  It was the Citadel’s breathing rhythm.

  I looked at the nearest pylon. If I could short my arm into its circuit—

  “It’ll kill you,” Zeno whispered. “Your body won’t survive the feedback. You’ll burn.”

  “I already burned,” I replied silently. “Now I melt.”

  I began crawling toward the pylon, millimeter by millimeter. My knees scraped against the marble, leaving bloody, filthy streaks across the immaculate white surface. Every meter cost unimaginable effort. The skill [The Will to Live] flickered yellow: 1% energy. The internal reserve was empty.

  But I had an external drive.

  My right arm.

  I reached the base of the pylon. There was an access panel, protected by a magical seal.

  To Valerius, it was a lock.

  To me, it was a schematic.

  I placed my left hand against the panel, fingers finding the grooves. The seal responded with a faint shock, trying to repel the intruder.

  “Zeno,” I called. “I need a key-code. Not for him. For me. If you want to survive—give me access to this damn machine.”

  The pause stretched into seconds that felt like eternity.

  “…Sector 4-G. Frequency modulation 12.8,” Zeno finally relented.

  I entered the data. The panel clicked softly and slid aside, revealing a web of golden filaments and crystal regulators.

  The heart of the hall’s security system.

  I looked at my right arm. It was horrifying—blackened, cracked, with a sinister green glow leaking through the fissures.

  “Efrem,” I said without turning around. “When the lights go out—run to the tank. There’s an air pocket inside, it’s shielded. Get in and don’t come out until it’s quiet.”

  “And you?” the old man’s voice trembled.

  “I’m going to do what I do best,” I said. “I’m going to cause a system error.”

  I raised my right arm over the exposed circuits.

  The plan was simple. And suicidal.

  I would use the energy trapped in my arm to trigger a cascading resonance in the Citadel’s purification system. If my calculations were right, the voltage spike would generate a wave that disabled every static field within a kilometer.

  This wasn’t an escape.

  It was sabotage.

  “Farewell, tool,” Zeno whispered. For the first time, there was something like respect in his voice.

  I touched the contacts.

  The world vanished in a blinding emerald flash. Consciousness didn’t simply shut down—it shattered into millions of fragments. The last things I heard were the scream of sirens and the sound of marble breaking apart.

  Valerius wanted an Architect?

  He got one.

  And the first project began with demolishing the load-bearing walls.