The Dome was enormous, so impossibly vast that the first thing Kaiden felt when he stepped inside was small. The ceiling stretched high enough to vanish into white haze, runes drifting lazily in the air like constellations trapped mid-orbit. Thick mana-veins crawled along the ground like glowing roots, feeding the Dome's heart with steady pulses of power. The air vibrated, humming with energy too dense for mortal lungs.
He took one step inside. The Dome swallowed the sound.
Kaiden moved forward, expecting his joints to grind and clatter the way they always had. But his new frame flowed. No jagged motion, no scraping metal, no recoil. When he sprinted, it felt effortless—light, fluid, terrifyingly precise. He jumped once, an instinctive test, and his body soared higher than he meant, landing so softly it startled him. His fists didn't jolt. His spine didn't rattle. His entire body felt like sharpened steel shaped into a man. And for the first time since waking, he understood just how different this new frame was.
His Core pulsed inside him, a slow, thrumming thunder.
…pum… pum… pum…
Each beat sent a ripple outward, brushing across the Dome like a sonar wave. And suddenly, without his eyes, without magic, he felt everything. Every rune. Every wall. Every wire. Every heartbeat inside the sealed chamber. The radar sense mapped the world in an instant—a perfect shape formed by echoes returning to him like whispers.
The prisoners came into focus next. Human mages, soldiers, survivors dragged from ruined battlefields and from the ship he and the squad had destroyed. He didn't see their faces. He didn't need to. Their mana signatures flared like beacons against the emptiness, sharp and bright.
Too bright.
One of the echoes hit him wrong—too clean, too pure. Human mana. Holy-seeming. Stable. Structured. It stabbed into his awareness like ice. And with it came a sharp, ugly wave of disgust.
It made no sense. He didn't know why he felt it. But the reaction hit before thought, twisting his stomach, tightening his jaw until the metal ground against itself. His remaining patches of skin prickled as if rejecting the air around him. Human mana felt like the opposite of everything in his body. Too pure. Too untouched. Too similar to the very light that once killed him.
He tasted bile.
He tasted memories.
His Core pulsed harder.
…pum-pum-pum-pum—
His breath sharpened, quick and ragged. The world narrowed to a point. The echo flared again—one of the prisoners channeling a tiny protective spell, barely a spark.
And something broke.
His new instincts surged upward like a tide, drowning every rational thought. His vision blurred into streaks of white. He felt his body move before he even understood he'd decided to. One heartbeat he was standing still; the next he was in front of the human with the too-pure mana.
The man didn't scream. Didn't even inhale.
Kaiden's arm swung once—clean, smooth, impossibly fast.
The body dropped at his feet.
Silence followed.
Not shock. Not horror. Just… silence.
Kaiden blinked down at the corpse, breath shaking. He hadn't chosen that. He hadn't consciously moved. The rage hit again—hot, primal, instinctive—and then receded just as quickly, leaving cold fear in its wake.
"What… was that?" he whispered to himself.
He didn't get an answer.
The Dome door hissed open behind him. Heavy boots echoed across the glowing floor. Zarkus entered with two officers, though neither dared step closer than ten paces. Kaiden straightened automatically. He expected the old fear, the instinctive dread that came with Zarkus's presence.
It didn't come.
Only dull static sat in his chest, the leftover embers of his anger smothering any fear he should have felt.
Zarkus looked at the corpse. Then at Kaiden. His expression was neither angry nor shocked. Only calculating—measuring Kaiden the way an architect studies stress points on a new weapon.
"Good," Zarkus said quietly. "You're beginning to understand how your new body responds. But you are not to strike without command."
He raised a hand, and a pulse of raw authority rippled through the air.
"Still."
The Core froze instantly, turning rigid and silent. Kaiden felt every limb lock into perfect obedience, the rage vanishing like smoke. Zarkus stepped closer, expression unreadable.
"We'll refine this," he murmured. "Control, instinct, reaction. All of it can be shaped. But you…" he tapped two fingers against Kaiden's chest plate, right over the Core, "…you may need a contingency."
A faint smile ghosted across his face—thin, dangerous.
"We still need a Plan B for you."
Kaiden swallowed hard, the sound scraping against his metal jaw. He didn't know what Plan B meant. But the Dome's cold glow flickered across Zarkus's face, and Kaiden understood one thing clearly:
Whatever he had just become, whatever this new frame held inside it—
Zarkus had already decided it wasn't enough.
Not yet.