POV: Sullivan Prentiss Morteuxe
The scent of brine and cheap port wine was the first thing to pierce the fog of agony.
Sullivan lay in a cramped, sterile clinic room—a stark contrast to the luxurious medical suites of the Morteuxe estate. The location, far from the Sunken Archipelago, was Kaelin's choice: low-profile, high-security, and utterly anonymous.
His left shoulder was a sheath of throbbing, intense pain, the corrosive Contagion burn having eaten through his 30\% Defense barrier and seared the surface tissue.
He was currently confined to a state of complete Zetsu—Nen suppression—as any activation of his King Engine risked contaminating his Aura channels and causing permanent systemic damage.
For the calculating mind, this forced state of helplessness was a unique, refined torture.
He was entirely dependent on Kaelin, who handled the messy realities: changing the dressings, sourcing clean water, and maintaining a constant, silent watch at the window.
This dependency was the true, agonizing cost of their last mission—a price paid not in currency, but in control.
Sullivan stared blankly at the ceiling, reviewing the encounter with Rellis and Torvin—the Contagion Manipulators—over and over, a relentless self-flagellation.
His mind, stripped of the immediate data surge provided by the active King Engine, was forced to process the tactical failure slowly, methodically, echoing the tedious, deliberate analysis he'd performed on the Morteuxe Ledger years ago.
Kaelin sat by the small, frosted window, methodically cleaning the handle of her rapier. The silence was heavy, punctuated only by the rhythmic shick-shick of the cleaning cloth against the cold steel.
She offered no critique, no blame, which was far worse than any shouted accusation. It implied that the failure was so profound it required no discussion—a matter already closed by overwhelming evidence.
"The fatal flaw was not the 5\% Defense allocation," Sullivan finally stated, his voice raspy, a low, mechanical hum in the quiet room.
He articulated the conclusion not as a defense, but as a filing of empirical data. "That was a calculated risk that allowed survival up to the point of impact. The mistake was the Strength index."
Kaelin ceased her work, her crimson eyes lifting to meet his. They held a deep-seated exhaustion, mixed with a frighteningly sharp clarity.
"You leveraged 40\% of your total Aura into Strength," she confirmed, her voice flat, devoid of emotion.
"You treated the Contagion Barrier like a physical wall, when its existence was entirely a matter of concentrated Aura Emission. You abandoned logic for primitive force."
"I abandoned Mind for a flawed perception of Instinct," Sullivan corrected, his jaw tight with shame. He had fallen back on the most basic, brute response when faced with an obstacle that demanded a speed-based, systemic disruption.
"My Reflex and Speed were too low to utilize the opening you gave me after the first failed punch. I had the will to break the barrier, but not the velocity to apply the force efficiently."
He closed his eyes, focusing on the two most volatile, intertwined attributes in his mental schema: Mind and Instinct.
The legacy of his cursed ancestor had painted his Instinct attribute as pure, chaotic rage—a primal destructive urge he must contain.
"I misidentified its core function," Sullivan whispered, a monumental realization dawning.
"The destructive Instinct is not solely rage. It's the raw, untamed speed of the subconscious response. It is the blinding velocity needed to escape, evade, or counter an unexpected, close-quarters threat without pausing for the 10\% allocation needed for conscious Mind processing."
His 5\% allocation to Instinct in the previous fight had been a wasted, fearful resource—a self-imposed speed limit. He had been so obsessed with preventing the Morteuxe ancestral madness that he crippled his ability to react to sudden, lethal variables.
The greatest weakness of my calculation is that my Mind is too slow. I need the blinding, illogical speed of the Instinct to compensate for the time my conscious self spends analyzing.
The Confession and the Oath
The roller coaster of emotion suddenly pitched upward, moving from cold analysis to painful, exposed vulnerability.
"When I was collapsing, pinned by the Contagion," Sullivan began, the question tasting like ash in his mouth, "you had the opening to use my failure as cover for your own escape. Why did you choose to expose yourself to draw their fire? That was not a logical variable in our initial plan."
Kaelin's façade crumbled. She walked to the foot of his bed, her focus no longer on the rapier, but on the man she had just saved.
"Because the King Engine is your life, Sullivan," she whispered, her hands gripping the steel frame of the bed. "And I know the full calculation.
You will always, always sacrifice everything external for the completion of the equation. If I had left, you would have destroyed yourself to break that barrier. You would have hit 70\% Instinct and collapsed the entire temple on your head just to deny them the satisfaction of your capture."
She leaned closer, her voice tight with suppressed panic and absolute certainty. "I need you to understand, Morteuxe: the only illogical variable you cannot factor is me. If you die, my mission collapses. My strategy fails. My purpose collapses. I collapse."
"I apologize, Kaelin," Sullivan said, a genuine admission of emotional failure. "My internal calibration was flawed. I neglected to factor in the weight of interdependency as a primary, stabilizing variable."
"Don't factor it. Accept it," Kaelin demanded, her voice raw. "Your logic is flawless, but your humanity is the only thing that saves you from becoming Cain. You must use your Nen to protect the things you love, not just the logic you possess."
They renewed their professional oath that day, but it was forged in the fire of shared trauma and mutual vulnerability. It was a commitment to the ultimate sacrifice: using the King Engine's cold logic to protect the single, most important illogical variable in his life.