The cell was the same.
But it wasn't.
Kael lay flat on the cold floor, breathing in short, sharp pulls. Sweat clung to him like frost, and the air tasted metallic—like burned copper and ozone after a lightning strike.
He flexed his right hand.
The skin from his fingertips to his collarbone had been rewritten—no longer just skin, but skin and something else. Black ink had etched itself in tight, predatory curves: a sequence of glyphs that shimmered faintly when he moved. They weren't symbols he recognized, but they made his bones ache with pressure when he stared at them too long.
He sat up, gingerly, bones sore as if he'd fought a beast in his sleep.
The pouch of relics sat where he'd left it, its contents scattered like a failed ritual. Kael reached for one without thinking—an old silver ring with a cracked sapphire in the center.
The moment his fingers brushed it—
"Too late, too late, she bled out on the altar and no one listened..."
Kael flinched. That hadn't been a whisper.
It had been memory.
He dropped the ring, heart pounding. Its voice faded, but the echo remained in his head—a visual flash of stone stairs soaked with blood, a girl's last scream.
He grabbed another: a copper scope lens.
"I saw the fleet come. I saw the sky burn. We begged for mercy, and the gods erased the planet from their archives..."
Kael gasped and yanked his hand back.
This wasn't Inventory Whisper anymore. This was something deeper. He wasn't just hearing voices—he was hearing what the relics had been through. What they had seen. What had been done to them.
The Core's voice didn't return.
It had fallen silent after the pact. But its presence hadn't faded. It pulsed faintly beneath his ribs, a low, cold hum—like a hibernating machine waiting to reboot.
Kael stood, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Then he caught his reflection in the narrow silver wall plate.
His pupils had changed.
No longer round, but vertical slits. Not all the time—only when the glyphs flared. But when they did, his gaze looked inhuman. Predatory.
Kael stared at himself for a long moment.
And then—
He grinned.