Valerius stood motionless as the silver vial rolled to a stop at his feet. He watched Kora batter herself against the walls, her 160cm frame swaying like a leaf in a storm. To anyone else, it would have been a tragic sight. To him, it was a tactical failure. He didn’t chase her, and he didn’t offer a hand as she collapsed a third time.
"If you wish to die for a crown that never wanted you, Kora, I will not stop you," he said, his voice as sharp and cold as a winter blade. "But you will not do it in my hallway."
He signaled to two silent guards, their faces masked in the black steel of the Dominion. They did not touch her with the "tenderness" Valerius had attempted; they hauled her up by her arms and dragged her back toward her suite. Kora was too weak to fight, her head lolling as her vision fractured into shards of violet and grey.
The doors to her quarters didn’t just close; they sealed with a heavy, pressurized hiss.
"Since you reject the medicine of a monster, you shall have the silence of one," Valerius’s voice echoed through the room’s intercom, stripped of all emotion. "You are confined to these chambers. No books. No light from the harbour. No friend. Only the sound of your own magic eating you from the inside out."
Kora lay on the thick rug, the cold marble of the floor pressing against her cheek. The agony was worse than she had imagined. Without the stabilizer, her magic felt like liquid fire coursing through her veins, looking for an exit that didn't exist. She curled into a ball. She wanted to scream for her mother, for Karlistie, for anyone—but she refused to give Valerius the satisfaction of hearing her beg.
In the control room, Valerius watched the monitors. He saw her shivering on the floor, her body trembling under the weight of the magical recoil. His hand hovered over the release for the medicine, his jaw tight. He hated this—the lack of logic, the waste of a masterpiece. He was a man who calculated every move, but Kora was a variable that refused to be solved.
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"You're a fool, Kora," he whispered to the screen, his eyes burning with a rational, terrifying rage. "But you are my fool. And I will let you burn until you realize that I am the only one who can put out the fire."
As the hours bled into night, the silence of the Dominion became its own form of torture. Kora watched the shadows stretch across the ceiling, her hatred for Valerius Valmont the only thing keeping her conscious. He was waiting for her to break. He was waiting for her to crawl to the door and ask for the vial.
But as the moon rose—not blue, but a haunting, pale white—Kora dragged herself toward the window. She wouldn't beg. She would find a different way to survive, or she would become the first "masterpiece" Valerius Valmont ever failed to keep.
Tears tracked silent paths through the dust on Kora’s face as she mourned the life she had just lost. She hated what she had become—a creature of exposed secrets. For twelve years, she had meticulously built a mask of "nothingness," only to shatter it in a single moment of rage. Now, she was caged in a place far more terrifying than Elysia, and the magic she had fought so hard to hide was the very reason she was here.
Her mind drifted to the human world, to the hard-won trust she had built with Karlistie. It had taken years to learn how to be a friend, and now, that bond felt like a phantom limb. It was only a week until Karlistie’s birthday. Kora had dreamed of being there—to be part of the simple, human activities, to laugh without looking over her shoulder, to feel the sun without the weight of a crown. She curled into herself, pulling her knees to her chest to make her 160cm frame as small and secure as possible. She wept for the girl who lived by the harbor, regretting every spark of magic and every golden light that had betrayed her true self to the monster in the dark.
She remained in that huddled position until the dawn light bled through the mountain peaks. Her mouth was bone-dry, and her body shivered from the biting chill of the Dominion’s stone walls.
Then, the silence of the room was broken by a traitorous sound.
The hollow, rhythmic growl of her stomach echoed against the marble. It was a sharp, human reminder of her mortality. She was starving, her body demanding the sustenance she had been denied since her capture. She wanted food; she craved the simple strength to stand. Yet, as she stared at the heavy, locked doors of her suite, her hatred flared anew. She wanted to survive, but her soul revolted at the thought of surrender. To eat his food was to accept his cage, and Kora Solari wasn't ready to let the "Engineered Alpha" win just because she was hungry.
