He woke to screaming.
Not loud. Not pained. Just... dry. Like someone whose throat had already given up.
The light above him flickered. The ceiling was smooth glass—fractured, but clean. The bed beneath him wasn't a bed. It was steel. Cold. Sanitized. Slightly tilted.
His arms were sore. His legs numb. Something clung to his skin like old syrup—medicinal, thick, sterile.
He sat up.
The room was white. Too white.
Too perfect.
Around him: cages. No, cells. Small glass compartments lined in curved rows. Inside them, children.
Some stared forward, unmoving.
Others whimpered into their knees.
A few whispered songs to themselves with voices that didn't match their age.
They were all dressed the same.
Cheap, oversized hospital gowns that doubled as tunics. Most were barefoot. All had overgrown hair—dirty, tangled, covering their eyes. The air reeked of antiseptic, sweat, and something faintly metallic.
He touched his own head. Hair long. Face thinner. Eyes... sunken.
How long had he been here?
He tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
"Don't waste energy," came a voice from beside him.
He flinched.
Someone was there—already in the cell. A figure sitting cross-legged in the far corner. Genderless at a glance. Wrapped in shadows and long limbs.
They didn't even look at him.
"They'll start the tests soon. Might as well rest."
"Who are you?"
The figure chuckled softly. "No one important. Not anymore."
He didn't reply.
Didn't know how.
He lay back down.
And waited.
---
The experiments started that evening.
They strapped him to a table that buzzed with soft hums beneath his spine. Lines etched into the surface began to glow—runic, mechanical, almost like formulas.
He didn't understand them.
He barely had time to try.
Flames.
Searing. Sudden. Blinding.
His skin boiled. His eyes dried in their sockets. His lips cracked.
He screamed.
And then...
It healed.
The table glowed again. His nerves stopped firing. Skin reformed. Pain vanished.
Then the cycle restarted.
Fire. Burn. Heal.
Burn. Heal.
Burn. Heal.
Until the screams turned to choking gasps. Until his body learned how to suffer without making a sound.
He passed out.
Woke up.
Froze.
Suffocated.
Bled.
Healed.
They threw him in a water tank once. Let him drown just shy of brain damage.
Then revived him with glowing lines across the tank's edge.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Some didn't make it.
The ones who did were kept. Like toys that hadn't broken.
---
Days passed. Or maybe weeks.
Time melted in this place.
But one thing remained constant:
That figure in the corner.
The one in his cell.
Always sitting. Always watching.
Sometimes she joked.
Sometimes she quoted strange things like "this reminds me of episode twelve."
Sometimes she sang lullabies he didn't recognize.
And sometimes…
She just stared at the lights.
Once, he caught her tracing her fingers through the air like she was mapping something.
Runes.
Grids.
Equations?
"Are you... drawing?" he asked.
"Nope," she replied with a smile. "I'm imagining the resonance backlash ratio between their healing sequence and the stress loops they run during nerve repair."
He blinked.
She giggled. "Kidding. Kinda."
Another time, he found her mid-whisper, muttering to herself as if she were narrating a novel no one else could hear.
"They're using children under ten," she told him once, "because essence hasn't stabilized in us yet. The body's still malleable. Flexible."
"How do you know that?"
She shrugged. "I listen. I watch. They talk when they think you've broken."
He frowned. "Why tell me?"
"Because you're not broken."
"And you are?"
She grinned again. Wide. Mischievous. But behind it—something darker.
"Not yet."
---
One night, she saved him.
They were dragging him past the hallway—the one with cracked lights and red-tinted tiles—when she reached through the bars and jabbed a spot behind his knee.
His leg collapsed. He dropped, head first, missing a rune trap by inches.
The guard cursed.
Dragged him back.
Later, she said nothing.
Just offered him her stale bread crust.
He stared at her across the dim cell.
She chewed absently, eyes on the ceiling.
Then, as if sensing his gaze:
"Don't thank me. You'd have done the same, right?"
He didn't answer.
Because he wasn't sure he would've.
---
Later that week, they brought in the relic.
She froze.
He saw her face change for the first time.
Not smirking.
Not curious.
Dread.
Not fear.
Dread.
It was a shard, encased in crystal sphere. Pulsing with unnatural rhythms.
Like a miniature star trying to whisper.
She stared at it and whispered:
"Why does it feel like... right before I died?"
Then blinked.
He turned to her.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing," she muttered, forcing a grin.
"It's just... déjà vu. I get those a lot."
---
She healed faster after that.
Bruises vanished overnight.
Her red eyes glowed faintly in the dark.
Her breath steamed even when the room was cold.
She laughed more too.
But it wasn't joy.
It was survival.
A coping mechanism with punchlines no one else got.
He caught her once whispering to herself:
"If this is how villains get made, I hope they at least get theme music."
She chuckled.
Then cried.
Quietly.
While no one was looking.
Except him.
---