Kristina was dreaming.

  The kind of dream that would unsettle even an adult.

  She was sitting alone in a locked room, watching as the things around her slowly disappeared.

  The room was filled with pieces of her past. The single flower she had once won at a music competition and cared for carefully – until Vitalik from the boarding school had peed on it. She remembered the awful smell and how the girls in the room had thrown it away while she was in class.

  Her old school desk stood there too, covered in crude drawings and swear words carved into it. In one corner, though, she had once drawn a neat little tree.

  Even her dorm bed was there. She knew every creak of it. If you sat on the lower right corner, the metal frame would always groan as if complaining. Above it hung a poster of Rammstein, the musicians’ faces pale, almost dusted with chalk. Now she watched as the poster slowly turned transparent and dissolved like mist.

  With it, something important melted away. A piece of her.

  Earlier, The Little Prince had vanished from the desk. The turquoise dress from the closet had gone too. Anything that disappeared never returned.

  She couldn’t leave the room. All she could do was watch as the wallpaper peeled away in fragments and then the walls themselves began to fade.

  She was terrified. Kristina understood it clearly – when the walls were gone, she would disappear too.

  This was not just a room.

  It was her soul. Her energy body, collapsing piece by piece.

  The pain of that destruction struck directly at her mind, and in the real world they kept her under anesthesia because of it.

  In the darkness, a void opened. Kristina heard a call.

  A voice beckoned her into the abyss.

  She knew that if she took a single step, she would lose her magic forever.

  Perhaps even her life.

  She wanted to give in.

  But she felt Ruslan’s presence beside her. Her brother was holding her back, as if refusing to let her take that step. She knew both her brothers – Ruslan and Max – would always stand in front of her like a shield. Max was surely searching for a way to save her right now.

  And so she resisted.

  Gathering the last fragments of her fragile soul, she fought.

  When she was ready to break, warmth filled the room.

  It was everywhere – in the walls, in the air, inside her. Warmth that felt familiar and close, as if it had always been there.

  With it, the void began to close. The walls restored themselves. The objects returned to their places.

  The nightmare slowly dissolved.

  Her consciousness returned gradually. When she opened her eyes, a familiar red-haired face hovered far too close and smiled far too widely.

  Ruslan… you’re too close. I can’t breathe, she thought.

  What came out instead was:

  “Ue… eh…”

  Ruslan laughed softly, but his eyes were wet. As always, he hid his fear behind humor.

  Kristina shifted her gaze and saw Max.

  He sat beside her on a chair, dark circles under his eyes, exhaustion carved into his face. Her heart tightened. She had seen him like this before – when he discovered his first programming language and barely slept for weeks.

  Now it was the same.

  She knew he had found a way. As always.

  “Your sister is stable now,” the doctor said.

  “Not fully,” Max replied quietly, not taking his eyes off Kristina.

  “She’ll recover on her own from here. But Vyacheslav Leonidovich insists you undergo testing. Please come with us.”

  Max did not want to leave. He would have stayed there until she smiled the way she used to. But two soldiers gently helped him to his feet. He had poured all his strength into restoring his sister and completely forgotten about himself. If he had spared even a fraction of energy for his own body, he would look different now – but his green ring had been working at full capacity for only one purpose: to pull her back.

  “I’ll walk,” he said softly and followed the doctor, though his legs trembled.

  It wouldn’t take long. Now he could redirect energy to heal himself. He already knew better than anyone that his sister would be fine.

  What he did not know was that their next real conversation would not happen soon.

  Vyacheslav Zhukov sat alone in a dark office, staring intently at his aquarium.

  The fifth goldfish – whom he had labeled “Material Five” – flicked its tail nervously, as if trying to escape his gaze.

  He was attempting to kill it with the power of his mind.

  He had repeated the same ritual hundreds of times: focus, inhale, exhale, disperse foreign magic within himself.

  Every time, the result was the same.

  Silence. Cold. “Better if you had died,” he thought, clenching his fist. “At least then I would know there’s some power in me.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  But the fish was still alive. Like all the others before it, it survived. And every time, that small creature reminded him of his own weakness. A Doctor of Sciences. Head of the Institute of Magical Energy. The man the entire base feared – and he couldn’t awaken even a spark within himself.

  Vyacheslav hated magic. He hated those who possessed it. He hated the creatures of this world even more – orcs, dwarves, elves, beastfolk. To him, they were nothing but raw material. Magical energy flowed through their veins, and that made them valuable. Humans and non-humans alike existed for one purpose: to feed his laboratories.

  But the person he hated most was himself.

  Once, the institute had truly been led by a board of scientists. Those who called the methods of extracting magical energy “inhumane” disappeared from the project soon enough. Earth’s military leadership demanded results, and that was when Zhukov became the head. Even the colonels answered to him, though they despised him. He despised them in return.

  The screams of test subjects meant nothing to him. At most, they sometimes gave him a headache. He had sons in another country, but to them he existed only as money. He hated his ex-wife just as much as the people he tortured in the basements. His world was made of numbers, experiments, and long-term plans.

  And now, a crack had appeared in that world.

  Prokhorov Maxim. The son of the project’s first director. A boy whose magic core had awakened unexpectedly – with a green ring from the start. Not fire, like most. Only five people on the base possessed a green ring, and four of them were in the basements: two under Zhukov’s control and two in the Americans’ section.

  But that wasn’t even the most important part.

  The boy’s energy did not run out. It was as if he were a bottomless source. Perhaps the ring granted him endless power? No one understood the purpose of the patterns carved into it, and the boy refused to explain. But if his element – whatever it was – truly provided that much energy, then Vyacheslav had to find a way to transfer it to other test subjects.

  And most importantly, the boy’s parents had possessed magic. That meant he had likely inherited it.

  Zhukov felt something close to ecstasy. If magic could truly be inherited, then his theories were correct. It would mark a new stage in research.

  That meant more children. More test subjects. More attempts to breed half-bloods from magically powerful beings. He already knew that the basements held the results of such experiments. If even one proved viable, everything would change.

  The Americans must not learn first. If they did, all his power would crumble to dust.

  The boy would be his key – even if he did not survive the experiments.

  Julia stood beside the cot. She watched Max with such tension that it felt as if she were holding his pain inside herself. In truth, part of his suffering seemed to dissolve into her form. She was no longer just near him. Like an invisible knot, she was tied to him.

  “Don’t resist,” she whispered. “Fighting it only harms your magical body. You feel it yourself. Relax… I once heard you can try meditation. Take a deep breath, imagine the pain is only a sensation, and let it go.”

  Max gave a quiet snort. Julia was worrying too much. More than necessary.

  He did not need to reject the pain. He had long ago learned to live with it as a companion. Pain was training. A reminder that he was still alive. When it felt as if molten lava flowed through his veins, when his hands went numb and seemed burned to ash – that was when he sensed his channels most clearly. He even jokingly called the procedure “fifty shades of pain.”

  Pain did not drive him away. It disciplined him. Every spasm was a signal: the channel had endured and grown stronger, which meant his control had improved.

  The scientists saw this and only increased the pressure. Once they realized his energy never ran out, the laboratory fell into chaos. An endless source. They immediately dragged him into the basement and connected him to an energy extraction device. But it was not the same machine used for the base’s residents. This was a permanent installation. Max remained connected to it constantly, lying on his cot.

  The device stood by the wall and activated each time sensors detected that a certain amount of energy had accumulated in his body. Through a network of cables, the energy was pumped into storage units.

  On the next cot, the same procedure was being performed on the elf girl Max already knew.

  At first, they gave Max a few hours of rest between cycles, and during those breaks he managed to exchange a few words with her. But the exhausted girl could barely handle even short conversations.

  Then his pauses were reduced to thirty minutes, and there was no time left for talking. Each extraction drained him too much. In the end, they stopped even bringing him back to full consciousness. He was kept on IV drips, strapped to the cot with metal restraints.

  But Max was not a passive test subject. He tried everything. He blocked the IV lines by hardening parts of his body. He tried to break the equipment – useless, since his magic worked only on organic matter. He attempted to limit the flow of energy, but the devices responded by increasing the pressure without mercy, almost tearing his channels apart.

  He would have agreed to give up energy voluntarily, but the scientists’ greed turned every cycle into torture.

  Most importantly, he began to notice a strange pattern. The energy flow stopped the moment his soul separated from his body. It was as if the source did not lie in his magic core or channels, but in the soul itself. All it took was a deep breath and the decision to release the pain, and suddenly he was looking at his own body from the side.

  The problem was that the machines kept working. They drained the remaining magic from his body down to the last drop, damaging his channels. Afterward, he had to spend a long time restoring them.

  “The flow stopped again!” a scientist shouted as he rushed into the room.

  “Did he run out of energy?” came a dry voice over the radio – Zhukov, listening personally.

  “No,” the scientist replied. “The flow cut off abruptly, and it looks like brain activity dropped again. Strange… he wasn’t at the limit. Maybe he has a low pain threshold?”

  “Try to bring him back. But I think he’ll wake up on his own,” Zhukov said sharply. His tone suggested he was already calculating losses.

  Max watched his own body convulse beneath the machines. Julia only shrugged, as if to say this was nothing new.

  Then the door opened.

  Professor Riddick entered the room. His appearance was so unexpected that even Max, used to strange surprises, felt a jolt.

  “You’re not allowed in here!” an unpleasant female voice called from behind. A young woman appeared in the doorway. The guard at the entrance did not move – he probably knew the professor well.

  Riddick approached Max’s body. He touched his forehead and studied the readings on the devices with focused attention. Then, as if nothing were unusual, he pulled a chocolate bar from his inner jacket pocket and slipped it into the test subject’s pocket, as though Max could eat it with his hands chained.

  A moment later, several scientists rushed in, Zhukov at their head. He was furious.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” He shot the guard a look as if he had already signed his death sentence, then fixed his gaze on the professor.

  Riddick ignored him completely. He leaned closer to the unconscious Max and spoke quietly.

  “I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. I can’t get you out…” He sighed deeply and left the chamber.

  From where his soul hovered, Max saw Zhukov’s face twist with disgust. The scientist looked at him as if he were trash.

  “Resume extraction as soon as he regains consciousness,” Zhukov ordered.

  “Maybe we should take him to the medical unit?” the young woman who had entered with the professor asked hesitantly.

  Zhukov silenced her with a single look.

  “You know mages don’t die that easily. Especially him. As soon as he wakes up – continue the Procedure.”

  He turned sharply and left. The others followed. Only one young researcher remained by the machines, as if waiting for Max to wake.

  Max did not hurry back into his body. He knew it was dangerous to leave it for too long – it would begin to fade. But returning meant taking the full wave of pain again and giving more energy to the scientists. It didn’t matter. His ring restored his body very quickly now.

  The scientists, it seemed, were ready to do anything for money and their experiments. Max could not influence the Procedure or limit the energy flow, but he quickly noticed that such extreme strain forced his energy channels to develop. It was the same principle he had used in the City of Flesh – accelerated growth through pressure.

  Even if advancing to a new level with a green ring normally required far more than a few years, Max had learned how to wait, though sometimes waiting became painfully boring.

  And then he remembered the old dwarf, Lub.

  In an instant, a familiar door opened before him, leading into the library. It was not the first time Max’s soul had traveled there. Among endless shelves and books, he always found comfort – and answers.