She entered the prison dragging her chains like wet nerves across stone.
The guards didn't follow her in.
They never did.
The girl was Xotikó—technically. Teenage by the metrics Eiríni still pretended to respect. Her body was thin, uneven, stretched wrong in places where growth had been interrupted and redirected. Six heads bloomed from her shoulders like a crown of mistakes. Some were fused at the jaw, some blind, some half-formed. All of them were crying.
Not tears.
Acid.
It slid endlessly from their eyes, hissing as it struck the floor, eating pits into the black stone. The sound was constant—sizzle, drip, scream—a rhythm that never let her forget what she was.
She hated the crying most.
The cell door sealed behind her with a sound like a coffin choosing its occupant.
Inside, the man lay on the ground.
Muscular. Scarred. Too big to look broken, which somehow made it worse. His wrists and ankles were chained into the floor with bindings etched deep into the stone, not to hold him still—but to keep the world safe from what happened if he stood up.
His chest rose and fell slowly.
Alive.
Her central head—the one that still spoke clearly—trembled as she stepped closer, careful not to let the acid touch him. She knelt, chains clinking softly.
"Did they…" her voice cracked, six throats trying to agree, "…did they do this to you too?"
The man didn't open his eyes.
For a moment, she thought he was dead.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't manic. It was dry, exhausted, scraped straight from the bottom of something that used to be human.
"I don't give a fuck anymore," he said. His voice was rough, worn raw by screaming that had run out of purpose. "If Xotikós live or die. If this whole rot of a world burns. Means nothing to me now."
One of her heads whimpered louder, acid pouring faster.
"They made this prison for you," she said, forcing the words through the pain. "They call you… Experiment D3V1L."
That got his attention.
His eyes opened.
They were calm. Too calm. Like a storm that had already decided where it would land.
"So they finally stopped pretending," he muttered. "Good."
She swallowed. "The president still lives."
That word—president—did something the chains couldn't.
Gust went still.
Not frozen. Focused.
"…He's alive?" he asked.
The air in the cell felt thinner.
"Yes," she said quickly, hopeful now. "But others can kill him for you. There are groups. Rebels. Survivors. You don't need to—"
"I'll kill him," Gust said.
There was no rage in it.
Just certainty.
"You should rest," the girl said, desperate. "Please. You've suffered enough. Others can—"
"No," he said gently.
That was the worst part.
He looked at her then. Really looked. At the six heads. The melted stone beneath her tears. The way her body shook under weight no child should carry.
"You rest."
She smiled.
For half a second, all six of her faces smiled, like they remembered what that used to mean.
Gust moved faster than the runes could scream.
The chains snapped—not shattered, yielded—as if they understood resistance was pointless. His hand closed around her central throat. One clean motion. No hesitation.
The acid stopped mid-drip.
The other heads went slack, mouths open in silent relief.
He held her as she died.
Not like a monster.
Like a man who knew exactly what mercy cost.
When her body finally went still, Gust lowered her gently to the floor. The stone beneath her no longer hissed.
He sat there for a long time.
Then he cried.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just tears carving paths through grime and blood.
"No more pain for you now," he whispered.
The prison walls trembled.
Somewhere above, in Eiríni, alarms began to wake.
The revolt had already won.
By the time Gust reached the outer gates, there was nothing left to overthrow.
The hybrids had torn the city open like a carcass left too long in the sun. Towers leaned against each other, cracked and bleeding dust. Streets were carpeted with bodies—Xotikó soldiers, researchers, civilians—some burned, some crushed, some twisted into shapes that suggested the killer had stopped caring halfway through.
Fire still crawled through windows.
Not spreading.Feeding.
The guards of the Superprison were all dead.
Every single one.
Some were ripped apart. Others were untouched, faces frozen in expressions of realization so pure it bordered on worship. Whatever had passed through here didn't fight them. It ended them.
Gust stepped over the threshold and into oraş—the city that had once bragged about being eternal.
Now it smelled like wet iron and rot.
Hybrids prowled openly. No hiding. No coordination. Some hunted. Some screamed at the sky. Some knelt in corners, clawing at their own skin as if something underneath was trying to escape. They had been experiments once.
Now they were consequences with legs.
Xotikós were rare.
When Gust saw one, it was usually already too late.
He told himself he didn't care.
He repeated it like a mantra as he moved deeper into the streets, bare feet crunching glass and bone. He wasn't here to save anyone. Not anymore. The world had taken that part of him and ground it into paste.
Then he heard screaming.
Not the rage kind.
The breaking kind.
Around a collapsed market hall, a female Xotikó was pinned against a wall, her body shaking violently. A hybrid loomed over her—tall, massive, wrong in every proportion. His torso was human-shaped, but elongated, wrapped in layered muscle that slid over itself like coils. His lower half dissolved into a thick serpentine body, scales dark and wet, dragging grooves through the street.
His face was the worst part.
Human eyes.Snake mouth.And scars everywhere—surgical, deliberate, mocking.
"I am 53RP3NT," he hissed, pressing her harder into stone. "And I am free."
Gust slowed.
I don't care, he told himself.
He turned his head away.
That was when it happened.
A memory—uninvited, vicious—cut through him.
Small hands.Warm.Sticky with honey.
"We are good guys, Dada!"A laugh.Pure.Unafraid.
"Luv you, dada."
His daughter's face flashed behind his eyes.
Alive.Unbroken.Before Eiríni.
Gust stopped walking.
Something inside him snapped—not loudly, not dramatically—but with the quiet finality of a rope giving way.
He turned back.
"Move," he said.
53RP3NT paused.
Slowly, the hybrid looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened—not in anger, not in hunger—but in recognition.
"…Who are you," he hissed, "to stop me? Another regular Xotikó?"
Gust stepped closer.
"I'm Gust."
The name hit like a blade.
53RP3NT recoiled, coils tightening beneath him. His massive frame trembled, and then—unbelievably—he collapsed to his knees.
"G-Gust…" he cried, voice cracking, snake mouth twitching helplessly. "The legend… the one tied to his family's death…"
The girl slid down the wall, sobbing silently, forgotten.
"I'm sorry, mi lord," 53RP3NT said, bowing his head so low it scraped stone. "Forgive my bad behaviors. They… they made me this. Your president. His labs. I can't even remember who I was before."
His claws dug into his own chest.
"I try. I try to remember. But all I hear is screaming and numbers."
Gust looked at him.
Really looked.
The hybrid wasn't lying.
That didn't matter.
"Enough," Gust said.
53RP3NT froze.
"Leave," Gust continued. "And don't let me see you again."
The serpent-man hesitated, shaking violently—caught between instinct and fear.
Then he slithered backward, coils scraping, eyes never leaving Gust.
"Yes… yes, mi lord," he whispered.
And he fled.
The street fell silent except for distant fires.
The Xotikó woman slid fully to the ground, arms wrapped around herself, breath coming in broken gasps.
Gust pulled the torn remnants of his prison clothes from his shoulders and draped them over her.
"Hide," he said. "Stay alive."
She looked up at him, eyes swollen, lips trembling.
"Why…?" she whispered.
Gust didn't answer.
He was already walking away.
Forward.
Always forward.
Behind him, oraş continued to die.
And somewhere far above the ruins, men who thought themselves gods were beginning to understand—
The experiment had escaped.