The world came in fragments.
Dragging. Rough hands on his arms, pulling him through cold, wet stone. Tunnels. Endless tunnels. His boots scraped grooves in the dirt, body limp, unresponsive. Voices murmured around him, low and urgent, words slurring into nonsense. Blackness swallowed him again.
Murmurs. Faint echoes of speech he couldn't grasp. "...hold him..." "...wards strong..." "...don't wake..." Pain throbbed in his skull, sharp and distant at once. He tried to move. Nothing answered. Black again.
Light. Flickering. Torchlight? His eyelids cracked open to slits. Stone walls rushing past. Chains rattling. His wrists burned, ankles heavy. Something around his neck, tight and cold. The air tasted of damp earth and old iron. Whispers now, clearer but still fractured: "...Accord's pet..." "...what he did..." Black.
He surfaced slowly, like climbing from a well filled with tar.
Stone beneath him.
Cold.
Unyielding.
He tried to move. Iron bit into his wrists, ankles, and throat. Runes engraved on the bands glowed faint blue, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The same runes lined the iron bars of the cell, humming with quiet menace.
A stone cell.
Damp walls.
No window.
No light except the runes' cold gleam.
He reached for the heat inside him.
Nothing.
No spark.
No whisper.
Just emptiness. A void where power had been.
His body felt heavy, wrong, like someone had hollowed him out and left only the shell.
He pushed up on shaking arms, chains clinking. The collar shifted, and a wave of nausea rolled through him. The runes weren't just restraints. They were suppressors. Every instinct, every essence, locked away.
He was human again. Weak. Powerless.
The whisper was gone too.
And for the first time, its absence terrified him more than its presence ever had.
Because without it, he was just a man in a cage.
Waiting for whoever had put him there to decide what to do with the shell that remained.
Two guards became his entire world.
They came at random intervals, always together, always the same two. A scarred werewolf with a sneer that never left his face. A fae whose silver eyes glowed with cold contempt.
They never used his name.
"Murderer," the werewolf spat the first time, kicking the iron bars so they rang like a bell. "Thought you were untouchable, didn't you? Look at you now. Nothing but a rabid dog in a cage."
The fae leaned against the wall, arms folded, voice soft and venomous. "How does it feel, hybrid? All that stolen power gone. Just meat and bone again. Weak. Pathetic."
Tobias didn't answer. Couldn't. The collar burned every time he tried to speak with defiance.
Time lost meaning.
Minutes bled into hours into days into weeks. He counted heartbeats when he could stay awake. When he couldn't, the dreams came: burning children, Amira's dead eyes, Seraphine reaching for him as the blade sank home.
Food arrived when they felt like it. A crust of hard bread, a scrap of rotting meat, thrown through the bars to land in the filth on the floor.
"Eat, monster," the werewolf laughed. "Like the animal you are."
Water came in a dented tin cup, murky and tasting of rust and stone. They poured half on the ground first, just to watch him choose between thirst and humiliation.
He drank.
Every swallow tasted like surrender.
The fae would crouch sometimes, close enough that Tobias could smell winter on his breath.
"Coward," he whispered. "You killed innocents and now you cower in silence. The Accord's great weapon, reduced to this."
The werewolf kicked the bars again. "Bet your vampire bitch is crying somewhere. Or laughing. Hard to tell with bloodsuckers."
Tobias closed his eyes.
The heat inside him was gone. The whisper was gone. Even the memory of power felt like a story someone else had told him.
He was empty.
And the guards made sure he never forgot it.
Day after day. Week after week. Possibly month after month. Until the man who had once burned the world began to wonder if the monster had ever been real at all.
Or if the cage had always been waiting.
Tobias sat on stone floor, the compound silent around him, moonlight cutting cold lines across the floor. His hands rested on his knees, clean, steady, but memory refused to let them stay that way.
He had killed for the Accord.
Not once. Not twice. Dozens of times. Hundreds, if he counted the bodies he never saw fall.
The first sanctioned kill: a rogue shifter cell in the lower districts. They had taken hostages. He had gone in with the squad, orders clear: neutralize threats. He remembered the shifter's eyes when the blade went in: surprise, then nothing. The heat inside him had purred, satisfied. The debrief called it clean. He had nodded, signed the report, and pretended the satisfaction wasn't his.
Then the vampire nest in the old rail yards. They were feeding on runaways. The Accord said they had to be ended. He set the charges himself. Watched the fire take them while they screamed. One of them had looked barely older than the children at Haven-7. The heat had purred again. Louder.
Outer City Four. The "cleansing" of suspected Truthbound safehouses. Entire blocks razed. He had walked through the ashes afterward, boots crunching on bone and glass, telling himself it was necessary. That the Accord knew best. That the people inside had chosen rebellion.
Every mission, the same pattern. Orders. Execution. The heat growing stronger, hungrier, more pleased.
He had told himself it was duty. That the blood on his hands was justified because the Accord said it was.
But in the quiet, when the compound slept and the fire inside him settled into a patient coil, he could no longer lie.
He had enjoyed it.
Not the killing itself. The power. The certainty. The way the world bent when he decided it would.
The Accord had trained him to be their perfect weapon. And every time he swung, a little more of the boy from Haven-7 died.
He pressed his palms together until the knuckles went white.
How many had died because he never asked why? How many more would die because he finally had?
The heat stirred, soft, almost affectionate.
You did what you were built for.
He closed his eyes.
And wondered if the real crime wasn't the blood he'd spilled.
But the fact that part of him still wanted to spill more.
The door to his cell slammed open with a clang that rattled his teeth.
Tobias jolted awake, barely two hours of sleep dragged from him like meat from bone.
"Get up."
The werewolf guard's voice was flat, bored. No question. No threat. Just expectation.
Tobias rose without a word. What was the point of fighting? His body moved on instinct now, slow, heavy, the runes on the collar and cuffs pulsing cold every time he considered resistance.
The two guards stepped inside like they owned the air he breathed. No caution. No fear. Why would they fear a chained dog?
A hard shove between his shoulder blades sent him stumbling forward. He caught himself on the wall, palms scraping stone.
They laughed.
"Look at the Accord's hybrid," the fae sneered, kicking his heel so he lurched again. "Can't even walk straight anymore."
The werewolf grabbed a fistful of his hair (longer now, matted, falling past his shoulders) and yanked his head back. "Months in the hole and still thinks he's something special."
Tobias said nothing.
He had stopped counting days long ago. Weeks. Months. Time had turned to nothingness.
They shoved him into the corridor. The lights were harsher than he remembered, stabbing into eyes that had grown used to the dark. His hair hung in his face, tangled and filthy. He thought, distantly, I guess it's been months then.
Another push. He walked.
No fight left. No fire. Just the dull acceptance that this was what he deserved.
Punishment.
Atonement.
Or simply the end.
Peace, maybe. When they finally killed him.
They marched him through tunnels he didn't recognize, boots echoing, chains clinking. The air grew colder, thicker with old magic that tasted like rust and endings.
A final shove sent him sprawling into a vast circular chamber.
Runes blazed across the floor in a perfect ring, ancient and hungry. Chains dangled from the ceiling like waiting nooses.
The guards didn't speak.
They dragged him to the center, snapped the new restraints around his wrists, ankles, throat. Iron bit deep. Runes flared white-hot, searing flesh and power alike.
The door slammed behind them.
Alone again.
Tobias hung in the circle, toes barely brushing stone, chains holding him upright.
The runes pulsed.
Waiting.
And for the first time in months, the heat inside him didn't answer at all.
It was gone.
Or waiting too.
He couldn't tell which was worse.
The room remained dark, the only light a faint, sickly glow from the runes etched into the walls and his restraints. Time had lost all meaning, but sleep had been brief, fitful, a mercy that ended too soon.
Footsteps approached.
Tobias didn't bother to look up. He sat slumped against the cold stone, head bowed, chains heavy on his wrists and ankles. The boots stopped in front of him, paused, then circled slowly, deliberately, like a predator sizing up prey.
Around once.
Twice.
Three times.
He waited for the kick, the shove, the mockery.
Instead, a voice.
"You certainly have fallen, Tobias. I don't even know what to say."
Amria's voice.
His head snapped up, straining against the collar
r's weight, eyes burning from the effort. There she stood, framed in the dim rune-light: dark curls tied back, expression hard, no trace of the warmth anymore.
His head dropped back down, too heavy to hold.
She sighed, long and exasperated, no kindness in it, no sympathy. Just cold efficiency.
"Look at you," she said, circling again. "The Accord's prize hybrid. Reduced to this. Pathetic."
He stayed silent.
She stopped in front of him, crouching down to force eye contact. "We know what you are, Tobias. We know the Accord's plans. But we need details. Start talking."
He stared at the floor.
"Vaelor's involvement," she pressed, voice sharpening. "He's the architect of it all, isn't he? The experiments. The hybrids. What does he want with you? A weapon? A symbol for the Accord?"
Silence.
She grabbed his chin, yanking his head up. Her grip was iron. "The hybrid program. How many more like you are there? What are the weaknesses? The controls? We know they've been testing convergence, merging traits. How do they trigger it? How do they stop it?"
Her eyes bored into his, searching for cracks.
He gave her nothing.
She released him with a shove, standing abruptly. "You're wasting time. The Accord's crumbling. Vaelor's little empire is cracking. But we need to know how deep his control goes. What failsafe's did they build into you? How do we turn their weapon against them, what sort of defects are there?"
Tobias closed his eyes.
She paced, frustration building. "Fine. Play the loyal dog. But we both know what they did to you. Turned you into a tool. Don't you want payback? Tell us about the experiments. The labs. The ones like Haven-7 where they harvest kids for parts."
His jaw clenched, but he said nothing.
Amria stopped, leaning close enough that her breath brushed his face. "You're going to break eventually. Might as well make it easy on yourself."
The door slammed behind her as she left.
Another shove, another circle, another barrage of questions that went unanswered.
Time blurred. Days, maybe. Weeks. He didn't know.
Food came even more rarely.
However, something willed him to eat, to drink, to survive.
Because even in the dark, even powerless, the heat's echo whispered one thing.
This wasn't the end.
And when the time came, he would make them regret every word.
The door didn't open this time. It exploded inward.
Amira strode through the wreckage, boots crunching over splinters, flanked by two silent Truthbound enforcers whose eyes glowed with barely leashed magic.
Tobias didn't look up.
She stopped a foot away. Close enough that he smelled smoke on her clothes and cold fury in the air.
"Still playing statue?" Her voice was soft, almost conversational. "Cute."
A flick of her wrist.
The runes on his restraints flared white-hot. Pain lanced through every nerve, sharp enough to arch his spine against the chains. A strangled sound tore from his throat before he could choke it back.
Amira crouched, fingers threading into his hair, yanking his head up until their eyes locked.
"Let's try this again."
She spoke slowly, each word a blade.
"Vaelor's convergence protocols. The kill-switch frequencies. The number of hybrids still in stasis. Where the Accord keeps the failsafe data.
Silence.
The enforcers stepped closer. One pressed a rune-etched rod against his ribs. The other laid a hand on the collar, magic humming like a swarm of hornets under his skin.
Amira stared emotionless.
"Every second you stay quiet, we turn the dial higher."
The rod ignited.
Electricity screamed through muscle and bone. His body convulsed, chains rattling violently, teeth clenched so hard blood filled his mouth.
She leaned in until her lips brushed his ear.
"I watched you kill an entire squad with a flick of your hand," she whispered. "Don't pretend you can't break."
The current cut-off.
He sagged, gasping, sweat and blood dripping from his chin.
Amira straightened, expression ice.
"Again."
The rod flared brighter.
This time he screamed.
When it stopped, his voice was raw, barely human.
She knelt again, fingers gentle now, almost tender, as she wiped blood from his lip with her thumb.
"Tell me what Vaelor plans for you," she said, soft as a lover. "Tell me, and the pain stops. Tell me, and you sleep tonight. Tell me, and maybe, just maybe, I let you keep your tongue."
Tobias lifted his head.
Met her eyes.
The room went still.
"Hard way it is."
She stood.
"Leave him conscious," she told the enforcers. "We're just getting started."
The rod pressed against his spine.
The world turned white.
And somewhere in the fire, the last piece of Tobias that still believed in mercy finally burned away.
Another interrogation.
Different this time.
The door opened quietly.
Amira stepped inside alone, carrying a small wooden tray. Real food: warm bread, a bowl of stew that smelled of herbs and meat, a tin cup of clean water. No enforcers. No weapons. Just her.
She set the tray on the floor in front of him and knelt, close enough that he caught the faint scent of smoke and wildflowers that used to make him smile.
Tobias stared at the food, stomach clenching with hunger he had learned to ignore.
"Eat," she said softly. "Please."
He didn't move at first. Then, slowly, he reached for the bread. Tore off a piece. Chewed. Swallowed. The taste was almost painful in its kindness.
She watched him drink the water in careful sips, eyes never leaving his face.
When the bowl was empty, she inched closer. Her hand rose, hesitant, then settled gently against his cheek. Her thumb brushed the hollow beneath his eye, tender, like she was touching something fragile and precious.
"Tobias," she whispered, voice cracking on his name. "Please. I need you to tell me something. Anything."
He lifted his head, slow, chains clinking. Met her eyes for the first time in months.
"No one here doubts your strength," she said, fingers trembling against his skin. "We've been at this for seven months. Seven. You've proven whatever you needed to prove."
His voice came out rough, cracked from disuse. "Seven months?"
Her face crumpled, real sorrow flooding her eyes. "Yes. Seven months."
She leaned closer, forehead almost touching his.
"I don't want to do this anymore," she breathed. "I never wanted to hurt you. But I don't have a choice. I need the convergence data. The kill-switch info. The location of the other hybrids. It will save lives. My…" She stopped, throat working. "My people. Please."
Her hand cupped his cheek, warm, pleading.
"Anything, Tobias. Give me anything."
He looked at her for a long, long moment.
Then he spoke, voice raw but steady.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I really don't know."
Her face fell.
He couldn't tell if the grief in her eyes was real or another layer of the performance.
But the hand that had been gentle a second ago tightened, just slightly.
And the next breath she took sounded like someone steeling themselves for what came after kindness failed.