The laboratory was silent, save for the steady hum of mana reactors. Blue light shimmered against steel walls, shadows stretching long and strange.
A man stood at the center, gray-haired and weary, his hands trembling as he wrote feverishly across a stack of notes filled with equations, runes, and diagrams no one else could read.
"It's complete," he whispered. His eyes burned with both exhaustion and triumph. "The miracle exists."
He snatched the phone, dialing with shaking fingers. "I've done it. The dream… it's real. I've created what we thought was impossible."
On the other end came silence. Then voices. Cold, clinical.
"Can it be weaponized?"
"How stable is the creation?"
"If it's viable, it could change the entire balance of power."
The man froze. His heart clenched. He hadn't created a weapon. He had created a miracle—something beyond war.
His voice hardened. "No. It failed. Everything failed."
The line clicked dead.
For a moment, he stood in silence, sweat dripping from his brow. Then he turned toward the far end of the lab, where a heavy tarp concealed something tall, faintly glowing beneath the cloth. Mana leaked through in soft pulses, like a heartbeat.
He placed his hand over it, whispering to the unseen shape.
"You will not be theirs. You are mine alone."