Chapter 08 – The Child

A Few Days Later…

It happened without warning. The facility trembled, not from machinery, not from Kessler’s cursed experiments, but from something else. A deep, resonant hum pulsed through the walls, vibrating in my bones. I thought, for a second, they had activated another torture cycle. But when I looked up, I saw it. The Sphere.

I hadn’t seen it since the day they dragged me underground. They had locked it away in a chamber far beyond my glass cell, but now… now it glowed. I don’t know how I could see it through walls, but I did like the vision was projected straight into my skull.

The metal shell cracked. Light spilled out, molten and alive, brighter than any sun. It hurt to look at, yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away. A seam opened, wide and trembling. And from within, something small tumbled out. A child.

Not a baby. Not an infant. A child—whole, living, breathing. Its skin was pale like moonlight, its eyes impossibly dark, and its hair shimmered with flecks of silver. The hum stopped. The light vanished. The Sphere was inert again. But the child remained.

I blinked, and suddenly, it was in my chamber. Standing no more than a few feet away, as if walls and security meant nothing.

“Who… who are you?” I croaked, my throat still raw from the Serpent’s grip.

The child tilted its head, expression unreadable. Then it smiled. Not cruelly like Kessler, not mockingly like the guards. A soft, warm smile. For the first time since I was dragged into this hell, I felt something loosen inside me. My chest didn’t ache with fear. My skin didn’t crawl with the memory of needles and restraints. I felt… love.

It was impossible, and yet it was there—burning through my veins stronger than the Bear, sharper than the Wolf. The child reached for my hand. Tiny fingers brushed mine. Cold at first, then warm, as if my own body heat rushed to meet it.

“I’ve been waiting,” the child whispered. Its voice echoed strangely, like two voices layered into one—human and something else. “Don’t leave me, Dad.”

Tears stung my eyes. I didn’t cry in this place. I refused to give Kessler the satisfaction. But now, the dam broke. Hot tears streaked down my filthy cheeks, and I pulled the child close. They were real. Solid. Breathing. Warm. Not a hallucination, not another test.

For days—weeks, maybe—I had thought only of death. Of escape through any means. But holding that child, I forgot death. I forgot the pain, the needles, the glass walls. I forgot Kessler. All I remembered was this tiny being who looked at me not with disgust, not with hunger for power, but with something close to… need.

I clutched the child tighter. “I won’t leave you,” I whispered, voice shaking. “I swear it. Whatever happens, I’ll stay.” From the corner of my blurred vision, I saw Kessler. And for the first time since I met him, his grin was gone.

***

I don’t know how much time has passed. In this place, days and nights dissolve into each other. They drag the lights, keep them dim or blinding, stretch hours into eternities. But now I have a measure of time that’s mine alone. The child. He grows.

It makes no sense. A week? Two weeks? He should still be crawling. Instead, he’s already walking, running short steps across the sterile floor. He laughs when he stumbles and cries when he hits the glass, and I find myself rushing to soothe him. Me. A boy who thought only of death, who counted scars like coins. Now I hush another’s tears. Now I breathe for someone else.

Kessler watches, of course. His eyes gleam whenever the child does something new. The guards mutter behind their masks, too afraid to approach. But strangely, they don’t take him away. They let him stay in my chamber, like he belongs here. Like they want to see what will happen to me.

At first, I thought it was another trap. Another cruelty. But no trap could make me feel this way.

The child—I’ve started calling him Eyan—rests his head against my chest when he’s tired. His heartbeat is quick, fluttery, like a bird. When he sleeps, I watch him. Hours pass, and I don’t move. The experiments, the shifting, the pain—none of it matters when he’s near.

He looks nothing like me, but in my mind, he is mine. Flesh of my flesh. A son I never asked for, yet would bleed for without hesitation.

Sometimes he looks at me with those dark, endless eyes and says things I can’t understand. Words that are too old, too heavy for a child’s tongue.

“The skins are hungry.”
“The future waits.”
“They will come for you.”

When he speaks like that, I shiver. I want to cover his ears, tell him to stop, but I can’t. His voice has weight, like truth spoken raw.

Still… after the words, he smiles again. And when he smiles, the world softens.

I’ve stopped counting ways to die. Every morning, I wake up for him. Every night, I survive another round of Kessler’s experiments because I know Eyan will be waiting, running into my arms as though I’m his only safe place.

Maybe I am.

He calls me Dad. The first time he said it, I broke. My knees hit the floor, and I held him so tight I thought I’d crush him. I didn’t deserve it. Not after everything I’d thought of doing, everything I had already done by existing. But he didn’t care. He just laughed. And for the first time in this cursed place, I laughed too. Not the hollow bark they beat out of me during tests. A real laugh. A sound that came from the marrow of my bones. It startled even me.

The glass walls didn’t matter. The endless cycles of pain didn’t matter. I had something worth more than escape. A reason to stay alive. A reason to fight.