She frowned. "It's never done that before."
"Maybe it was waiting for the right resonance."
Her eyes narrowed. "Meaning?"
Merlin met her gaze evenly. "Meaning it knows how to listen."
Regina didn't respond. Not right away. Then, finally, she looked at the cube again. "If that's true, then it just recognized you."
He exhaled slowly, his pulse still racing. "That's… not comforting."
"No," she agreed. "It isn't."
The cube pulsed again, faint, like a breath through glass.
And somewhere deep inside, Merlin could feel it. Watching.
By the time he left the R&D floor, the city above was drenched in sunlight.
But to Merlin, everything felt colder.
He'd walked into that tower as a shareholder. He was leaving it as something else entirely, someone marked by a secret no one else could feel.
He knew what this meant. He'd read enough stories to recognize the pattern: the artifact, the awakening, the shift in fate.
Except this time, he wasn't reading it.
He was standing in it.
