While Ronan wrestled with the moral cost of using the Black Dawn's stolen technology, the one who had first delivered that knowledge—Airalai—faced her own trials far across the empire, deep within the enemy's den.

The elevator dropped for what felt like minutes before it stopped with a soft chime. Airalai stepped out into the sterile chill one of the Black Dawn's secret subterranean laboratories.

The halls here were silent, pulsing faintly with blue-white light from the runes embedded in the alloyed walls. She had walked these corridors before, but never as someone fallen. Once she was a ranked operative. Now she was a failure they let live out of practicality.

That suited her just fine.

Her skin was pale, her frame thinner, the faint pulse of the Deathleech Worm visible beneath her ribs if she shifted wrong. The parasite gnawed constantly—a dull ache that never slept—but its draining made the lie believable.

The official account of what happened back then was that she had been captured while infiltrating Dark Moon College, caught sniffing too close to their prized student—Kain.

The Knight who came to retrieve her had died in the attempt to rescue her. She had barely escaped in the ensuing chaos of his arrival, limping home with her life and little else.

The story fit perfectly with the clues their hidden operatives in Dark Moon City had gathered to fact check her story. Naturally with much of those 'clues' being planted by Kain.

Upon hearing her story, some of those in the Black Dawn she'd directly served for years pitied her just enough to keep her alive.

The pity didn't last long.

By the end of the first week she was stripped of rank and reassigned to Series A — the graveyard of the organization's old ambitions. No glory there, no promotion path, no credit to be earned. Only paperwork, stabilizer calibrations, and the endless monitoring of subjects too broken to even scream anymore.

To everyone else, it was a dead end.

To her, it was the perfect hiding place since the most influential members of the organization wouldn't be breathing down her neck.

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Series A's laboratory wing smelled of blood and disinfectant. Behind the glass, subjects lay restrained in capsule chambers, faint motes of energy pulsing between their bodies and the runic lattices below them. The researchers around her moved like priests at a ritual—cold, efficient, convinced of their purpose. Yet beneath that rigid precision, Airalai noticed the cracks: eyes dulled by monotony, movements mechanical rather than zealous. Her supervisor, a man once infamous for his ambition, now sat half-slumped at his terminal, gaze distant, punished to oversee this forgotten lab after a failed mission. He barely noticed her presence.

Airalai adjusted her coat, nodding to a colleague as she passed. Once, she might have bristled at being ignored. Now, she preferred it. An absentminded superior meant freedom—silence enough for her to move unseen.

The research logs told the full story behind this depressed atmosphere: Series A, originally dubbed the 'Karnathian mimicry program' after the gift-centred cultivation style of that kingdom, had plateaued.

The technique for implanting harvested Gifts into compatible subjects had reached a ten-percent success rate. And no further improvements, not even by a fraction of a percent, seemed feasible after exhausting all options.

For the Black Dawn, that meant it was abandoned and now being used to just try and pump out more gift-wielders internally. And, unfortunately, it could only be used internally and was not profitable, since most of their wealthy sponsors were fearful of death and unwilling to take a procedure with a 90% chance of killing or crippling them.

Future breakthroughs seemed impossible, and with that, the ambitious ones who thrived on progress and merit had no reason to stay. There was no room for advancement, no new data to chase, no prestige to gain. Those who remained were the ones content to carry out their duties like soulless clerks in a cubicle—efficient, mechanical, and quietly resigned—or were forced to be here as a 'punishment'.

"Series A is obsolete," one senior researcher had told her bluntly. "Nothing you do or achieve here will reach the ears of the higher-ups. You can live out the rest of your shame here without causing more damage."

He meant it as cruelty. She took it as good news.

Life in Series A was mechanical. The days blurred together, broken only by the screams of failed subjects.

Her role was nominally to "stabilize" transfer sequences. In practice, her life-draining gift made her uniquely suited to absorb excess vitality from unstable subjects, preventing premature collapse during the grafting process.

And surprisingly, despite everyone here being convinced that Series A was a dead end, her gift helped to increase the success rate to 15%. A small increase, but a notable one.

Her influence in the lab, especially among those who wanted to make achievements using her, managed to increase.

This influence gave her access to every transfer array used in the procedure—and within a week, she began embedding fragments of those diagrams into encrypted guides on how to replicate this procedure.

Guides that got sent to Darius.

And at the same time she kept an eye out for those that could be recruited to her on side as Kain requested. Only this was much harder to achieve than expected.

The Black Dawn's ideology had not softened. If anything, it had calcified into a devout faith as the D-Day predicted for the abyss' arrival approached.

The researchers recited the Black Dawn's doctrine multiple times daily, voices sharp with conviction.

"We are the knives that cut away weakness before the Abyss devours it."

"Mercy is treason when extinction waits."

None of them suspected she no longer believed the words she spoke. When they made their devout declarations, Airalai echoed them only when necessary—mechanically, without a flicker of emotion.

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Over time, Airalai learned the rhythms of the lab. She memorized the patrol routes of security constructs, the times the sentry wards refreshed, the faces of the guards who cared too little to look closely. And finally, she also began to notice others reciting the Dawn's doctrine as lifelessly as herself—tired faces, hesitant hands, people who had joined the Dawn out of fear but weren't exceptionally loyal to it.

She spoke to them quietly, carefully.

Dr. Coren, whose son had been turned by the Abyss, stayed for revenge but often muttered that he feared facing his son in the afterlife with all the blood on his hands.

Diana, an archivist with hollow eyes, once confessed, "I dream about the subjects. I think I remember all of their voices."

Miridia, a young technician who maintained the stabilization equipment during the procedure, once whispered during a power outage, "Sometimes I think we're becoming the thing we're fighting."

Airalai listened, agreed softly, and said nothing more. She didn't need to convert them now—only to plant the thought. Doubt was the seed that sprouted into rebellion later.

Her quiet espionage produced results. Over the next month, Airalai gathered information worth more than her life.

First, from overheard briefings, she confirmed a revision to Series X. The newest goal was to expand human star spaces—allowing beast tamers to hold one additional contract. No scientific achievements were made so far, but she recorded the theoretical basis and sent it to Darius.

Second, she learned of a new initiative dubbed Project Vanguard Seed. This was the Black Dawn's newest obsession: engineering mutant humans with resistance Abyssal corruption. They exposed embryos to purified minerals recovered from contaminated battle zones, believing subtle adaptation would make future generations immune. The mortality rate was horrifying. Of two hundred embryos, fewer than ten survived past gestation. So far none of the children had been born yet, so the feasibility of this method was unknown. But that didn't stop the project's director from prematurely boasting them as "the first generation of future humans."

Finally, she mapped out supply lines and resource convoys servicing the various laboratories.

All of this was sent back to Dark Moon City.

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Late one night, long after the others had left, she sat alone at her station. The hum of machinery filled the room. Her hands trembled as she opened a small, rune-etched crystal—a secure data relay she had smuggled in that allowed her to transmit both auditory and visual data in a secure manner to Darius.

After reiterating all of the information she'd found, Airalai leaned back, exhausted. The Deathleech throbbed harder tonight, its hunger gnawing deep. She unbuttoned her collar and stared down at the faint black veins radiating from her ribs.

She traced the black veins spreading from her chest, her lips curving.

"You're still here," she whispered. "Watching me. I knew you wouldn't leave."

The parasite pulsed violently—pain like fire lancing through her body. Her breath hitched, yet the tremor that followed was closer to a laugh.

"It hurts… but you're only reminding me, aren't you?" she murmured, voice trembling between affection and delirium. "That you're with me. Always watching. Always judging."

The lights flickered. In the glass before her, her reflection blurred—and for a heartbeat, she saw him. Kain's calm eyes, the shadow of his disapproval. Her fingers brushed the empty air as if she could touch him.

"Don't frown," she whispered, smiling too wide. "I'm being good. I'm helping. You said not to let you down, remember?"

The Deathleech pulsed again. She shuddered, a tear sliding down her cheek as she smiled through it.

"See? I'm the one closest to you—the best servant. The one who never disappoints."

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