One week later, in the Medical Wing
The antiseptic smell clung to everything—linen, light, and breath. The hum of containment wards was low, constant, like a sleeping dragon's breath. Monitors ran no diagnostics because there were no charts. The girl lying on the bed was not a patient. She was a gamble.
Martin stood at the threshold, one hand resting casually against the doorframe. He watched the quiet bustle within—runes glowing above Diemo's still body, protective wards casting geometric shadows across her pale skin. Tubes fed mana directly into containment glyphs, their ends glowing with a faint violet pulse.
"So, you were the excellent surgeon Bellarine was talking about," he said dryly.
Ludmila didn't turn. She adjusted a floating scalpel with a twitch of her finger. "It's a small world."
Martin's eyes swept over the surgical setup, the sterile toolkits, the alchemical reservoirs. "I didn't realize your research had a medical focus."
"It was the very reason I wanted sponsorship," Ludmila replied evenly, eyes fixed on the softly glowing heart monitor glyph. Diemo lay silent beneath her hands—no tubes in her mouth, but the breathing was mechanical all the same.
"You left House Vercyne."
"I left the illusion of belonging," Ludmila corrected. "They cast me aside when I failed. I'd be dead now if someone hadn't dragged me back—to avoid the paperwork of a corpse."
Martin gave no response, only stepped inside, the door gliding shut behind him.
"How is she?"
Ludmila finally turned to face him. Her face was lined with fatigue and discipline. "That heart isn't just an organ. It pulses like it's thinking. And the tissue it's fusing with—it's evolving with her. Where the hell did you even get this thing?"
Martin gave her the same calm smirk that had driven professors mad. "Just something I picked up while traveling."
She raised an eyebrow.
He didn't elaborate.
"You do realize," Ludmila said quietly, "that if she doesn't adapt to this organ—if even a single override goes wrong—she won't just die. She'll implode."
Martin shrugged. "You think I care about a tool discarded by its own maker? She was engineered to be a weapon, not a person."
"And now?"
Martin's smirk faded. His voice dropped, lower and cooler.
"A puppet with no strings on a working stage," he said, almost reverently. "A truly miraculous event."
Ludmila studied him for a moment. "I think she's trying to be a person. Not a weapon. That might make her harder to control."
Martin paused at the foot of the bed. "Who said I wanted to control her?"
"You don't?" she asked, caught off guard.
He looked her square in the eyes. "Why would I need something I can kill by the dozen?"
Ludmila hesitated. "Then why?"
"Curiosity," he said simply. "I want to see what she does without anyone else pulling the strings. What becomes of something made for war when left with no orders."
A few hours later
Bellarine arrived with a quiet rustle of layered robes and a clipboard that was clearly decorative. She leaned in the doorway for a moment, watching Martin, who hadn't moved from his position beside the bed.
"Is she alive?" she asked.
Martin didn't look up. "Her soul is still intact."
Bellarine stepped forward, pulled a stool to the bedside, and waved an assisting medic away with one gloved hand. She peered at Diemo's chest, where the faint glow of the transplanted heart flickered beneath a translucent layer of spell-laced skin.
"Even just being near it, I could feel the violence radiating from that thing," she muttered. "I'm impressed it didn't reject her on the spot."
"It was designed to adapt," Martin said.
"So… a parasitic organism."
"No," he replied, "just an organ with a function. Like any other. It runs on willpower and Animus instead of blood and oxygen."
Bellarine tilted her head. "You're surprisingly... present through all this."
"It's nothing personal," Martin said. "I'm just fulfilling my end of the deal."
"Right," Bellarine said dryly. "Totally transactional. I'm sure the hours you've spent watching her sleep are purely contractual."
Martin didn't reply. He didn't need to.
The heart pulsed once—visibly—beneath Diemo's skin.
Bellarine straightened, eyes narrowing.
On the bed, Diemo's breathing deepened. The glyphs surrounding her flickered wildly, then settled into sharp geometric focus. Her fingers twitched. Her spine arched. Her toes curled under the sheets.
Then, all at once, her eyes snapped open.
Gold and red. Not like before.
Not like anyone before.
They glowed faintly, backlit by an Animus current that crackled just beneath the sclera.
Martin stood and walked out without a word, just as she began to stir. As he passed the doorframe, her first breath came—a whisper that crackled with Animus, laced with pain and brand-new clarity.
Behind him, Ludmila leaned forward cautiously.
"Who are you?" she asked softly.
Diemo blinked, as though remembering how to blink.
"Diemo Nidas," she said, voice raspy but certain.
Bellarine raised an eyebrow. "And how are you feeling?"
Diemo blinked again, flexed her fingers, then made a soft fist.
"I feel like punching someone."
Ludmila stifled a laugh.
"That's either a good sign or a very bad one," Bellarine muttered.
Diemo sat up, slowly, teeth clenched against the weight of her own unfamiliar strength. A faint pulse of red flickered through her chest as the Heart of Havoc adjusted to the sudden motion. Her muscles looked leaner, more defined, laced with unfamiliar tension.
The girl who had once bled on the dueling floor now looked like something reborn—not healed, but reforged.
From the hallway, Martin's voice drifted back in.
"I expect her to be discharged within two days. Training starts immediately."
Bellarine rolled her eyes. "Of course it does."
Ludmila watched Diemo, whose golden-red eyes followed every motion like a hawk tracking fireflies.
"Welcome back," Ludmila whispered.
"No," Diemo replied, standing shakily. "Not back. Forward."