Chapter 09 – The Island

The experiments never stopped. Every day, Kessler dragged me through the same hell—needles digging deep, machines screaming, my body twisting as the skins fought to tear their way out. And every day, Eyan was there.

At first, I hated that he watched. I screamed at the guards to take him away, to keep him from seeing me broken like that. But they didn’t. They never listened. Kessler wanted him there. He wanted Eyan to witness.

One day, the pain was so sharp I thought my bones would split open. I howled until my throat bled. And then—Eyan moved.

He pressed his small hands against his ears as if the sound of my agony was unbearable. His lips trembled. And then he began to whisper. Not words I understood. Not a language I knew. The whispers deepened into a chant, low and steady, filling the sterile chamber with a sound that didn’t belong there. His eyes turned completely black, pools of void, staring at nothing and everything at once. And the pain… lessened.

The needles still dug. My skin still burned. But the tearing, the unbearable explosion building inside me, faded to something I could endure.

When the test ended, Eyan’s eyes returned to normal. He swayed on his feet, exhausted, but smiled at me as if nothing had happened. Kessler had seen it too. He said nothing, only scribbled furiously in his notebook, his grin sharper than ever.

From then on, whenever the torture began, Eyan would cover his ears. The black eyes would return. The chant would spill out like a river. And I could survive one more day. Not because of Kessler. Not because of my strength. Because of him.

A Few Days Passed by that… Until…

One morning, Kessler stormed into the chamber with his usual entourage—guards, machines, the reek of sterile chemicals. He ordered me to shift. The voice was sharp, almost gleeful, like he was expecting something new. But nothing came.

I closed my eyes, reached into the animal skins that had once clawed beneath my flesh… and there was only silence. No bear. No serpent. No wolf. No hunger, no fire, no tearing at my veins. Just silence. I tried again. Again. A hundred times. A thousand. Until blood streamed from my nose, until my voice cracked from screaming. Nothing. My body, once a battlefield of monsters, was just… still.

Kessler didn’t look angry. He didn’t curse or break his instruments. He just grinned. A slow, feral grin that split his face in two.

“Perfect,” he whispered. “Just as it should be.” Then he ordered the chamber to be cleared. No more needles. No more restraints. No more guards pointing weapons at me. For the first time in months, maybe years, I walked free. Not out the front door of the facility—no. They blindfolded me, shackled me, and shoved me into some kind of vehicle. I smelled salt and sea, heard waves hammering against stone. When the blindfold came off, the world had changed.

Eyan stood beside me, clutching my hand. His eyes were wide, but he wasn’t afraid. Somehow, he looked as if he’d known this moment would come. We were on an island.

It was too big to see the edges from where we stood. Jungle stretched in every direction, thick and green, the air heavy with damp heat. Birds screeched above, their wings flashing like blades in the sky. Somewhere in the distance, I heard the rush of a waterfall.

And there, half-hidden in vines and shadows, was a small house. Old, but standing. A roof, four walls, a place that could be called home. Beyond the trees, a mountain rose, sharp and jagged. Clouds curled around its peak like smoke.

The guards left without a word. No orders. No threats. They didn’t even take the shackles—they just fell away, as if I had never worn them.

For a long time, I stood there, holding Eyan’s hand, staring after the retreating boat. “So that’s it,” I muttered. No final test. No grand ending. Kessler didn’t kill me or cage me again. He had simply… left me here. Like a broken tool tossed aside.

At first, I thought it was a pity. But the way he’d grinned haunted me. He hadn’t abandoned me. He’d placed me. Still, when I looked at Eyan, his hair catching the sunlight, his laughter echoing against the trees as he tugged me toward the house, I let myself believe otherwise. Maybe this was it. Maybe Kessler was finished with me, and I was free.

Maybe I could raise Eyan here. Grow old in the shadow of that mountain. Teach him to fish, to run, to live without cages or chains. Maybe this island could be the rest of my life. For the first time, the thought didn’t terrify me. It felt almost… peaceful.

The island was too quiet. No guards, no glass chambers, no needles. Just the rush of the sea, the whisper of trees, and the weight of silence pressing on my ears. For the first few days, I couldn’t believe it. I searched for cameras, for hidden speakers, for Kessler’s mocking voice. Nothing. It was as if he had plucked us from the pit and dropped us in a paradise. Except I knew better.

Eyan ran through the undergrowth barefoot, laughing. His voice echoed like birds. Sometimes I envied him—his innocence, his freedom from the scars carved into me. But even as he laughed, there was something off. He never seemed to tire. He ran faster than any child should, darting through the trees like a shadow with a heartbeat.

One afternoon, after our meager lunch in the shack hidden deep in the jungle, Eyan bolted. No warning, no smile, no words. Just a flash of dark hair and bare feet pounding toward the mountain.

“Eyan!” I roared, stumbling after him. My body still bore the aches of years of experiments, every joint stiff with memory. But I chased him anyway. I had to. The boy didn’t stop. Not when I shouted, not when I begged, not even when I fell to my knees, gasping. He climbed the mountain as though the rocks bent beneath his will, as though gravity had forgotten him. I couldn’t follow. Not yet.

For three days, I tried.
The first day, I clawed halfway up, slipping until my hands were raw.
The second, I nearly made it, but my body betrayed me, trembling, weak, useless.
The third day, I pushed until blood seeped from my palms, until every breath was a knife in my lungs.

And then I reached the summit.

It wasn’t a summit at all—just a narrow ledge, three meters across, jutting out over the endless drop. The green jungle stretched below, the blue sea glimmered far beyond, but none of it mattered. Because there, standing in the center of the ledge, was a machine. Not rust. Not ruin. Clean. Too clean. Functional. Waiting. A simple computer terminal, humming faintly. Its black screen flickered awake as I stepped closer, the words glowing sharp and white:

“Do you want to escape the present?”

No explanation or instructions. Just those seven words. And before I could think, before I could even breathe, a countdown began.

5. 4. 3.

I panicked. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know what would happen if I said yes—or no.

2. 1.

My hand moved on its own. I pressed Yes. And the world went black.