The manor did not mourn.
The Nonci girl was buried in the servants' quarter without a nameplate.
By dawn, the marble steps had been washed clean, the scent of blood replaced by incense.
Lyria did not speak for three days.
Iblis did not notice.
He sat in his study beneath a silent chandelier, rewriting the foundations of his earlier work.
The Nonci girl's death had revealed something exquisite: the instability of sentiment, the inherent flaw in affection as a construct.
It was no longer a lesson. It was confirmation.
He began drafting a new phase:
Controlled emotional deprivation.
The subject: Lyria Veyrahl.
---
Iblis
He watched her from a distance.
Her behavior had changed since the incident.
Her gestures carried hesitation; her laughter, once unstudied, now folded inward before release.
She seemed to sense something missing but could not name it.
He found this fascinating.
If grief could be redirected, refined, then perhaps dependence could be perfected.
He no longer viewed her as family. She was continuity, data, flesh written in the language of reaction.
That evening, he began.
He withdrew his presence incrementally: first his voice, then his eye contact, then the simple acknowledgment of her existence.
He charted every behavioral variation:
-Day 1: Subject shows uncertainty.
Day 3: Anxiety onset.
Day 7: Hallucination of comfort—subject claims to feel watched, "protected."
Conclusion: Affection persists post-withdrawal; conditioning stable.
He felt nothing but clarity.
---
Lyria
Something had broken.
Her brother's silences were longer now.
Even when he was near, he seemed elsewhere, his gaze hollow, as though looking at her from a great distance.
She tried to be useful, obedient, predictable.
He used to reward her with words, even smiles, measured but real.
Now he gave her nothing.
Each day she rehearsed her tone before speaking, hoping to elicit a flicker of reaction.
Each day he failed to respond.
One night she followed him to the study.
He was writing again, columns of data, lines of text she couldn't understand.
Across the top of the page: "Phase Two: Total Isolation."
Her heart seized.
She whispered, "Brother, what are you doing?"
He looked up, and for the first time in weeks, he spoke directly to her:
"Measuring resilience."
---
From that night onward, the manor turned into an experiment chamber.
Iblis redesigned everything around control.
Meals arrived at irregular hours.
The clocks were stopped.
Doors were left half-open, creating the illusion of freedom.
He monitored her reactions through small perturbations: letters left unanswered, brief gestures of comfort followed by indifference, sudden praise replaced with disapproval.
Each shift caused measurable changes.
Her sleep patterns degraded.
Her pulse elevated whenever he entered the room.
Her breathing slowed when he withdrew.
He documented it all.
- "Emotion can be reshaped into obedience.
Dependency is the most efficient structure of control.
The subject adapts beyond reason."
He thought, briefly, of the Nonci girl's smile.
Then he erased the memory.
---
Lyria
Days lost meaning.
She lived for his gaze.
Even his cruelty felt like mercy.
When he spoke, she listened with a desperate joy.
When he touched her shoulder, once, lightly, she trembled like someone blessed.
She began writing letters to him she would never deliver.
Each ended the same way:
- "If I become what you want, will you see me again?"
Her mother had vanished into the quiet luxury of detachment.
Her father was an absence disguised as authority.
Only Iblis remained, the center of her shrinking world.
One night she saw him outside her door, motionless as always.
His face unreadable.
When she whispered, "Brother?"
He turned away.
She cried softly until dawn, her voice too small to disturb the silence.
---
Iblis
He recognized the final stage of conditioning when it came.
She no longer resisted, questioned, or sought comfort.
Her mind had aligned perfectly to his presence, she anticipated his moods, his silences, his vanishing.
It was complete.
Yet as he observed her, a subtle disturbance formed beneath the surface of his mind.
Not emotion, but pressure.
A residue.
He recorded it meticulously:
- "Residual empathy. Contaminant remains. Must be excised."
That night, he tested himself.
He told her she was unworthy of his time.
She apologized and begged for another chance.
He felt nothing.
For a moment, he thought himself cured.
---
Cosmic Interlude
- Zha'thik watched, pleased.
Cruelty had reached its symmetry.
Compassion had been reduced to a theorem.
---
Lyria
Months passed like a fever that never broke.
Her reflection no longer looked like her.
Her voice sounded borrowed.
She existed through him now; her own thoughts came as echoes of his tone.
Sometimes, she thought she loved him.
Sometimes, she knew she did.
But she could no longer tell if the love was hers or the one he had made.
One morning, she entered his study and found her portrait beside a new one—unfinished.
In the sketch, her face was blurred, featureless, replaced by a diagram.
When she asked what it meant, he replied, "Abstraction."
She didn't ask again.
---
Iblis
The experiment reached finality.
He recorded his findings in three words:
-"Emotion is architecture."
Love, fear, devotion, each could be constructed, dismantled, replicated.
He regarded Lyria from across the study, noting how her posture mirrored his, how her voice echoed his rhythm.
He had succeeded in making her his reflection.
A perfect, empty symmetry.
---