Damian said, "Then what changed?"

Kamal’s eyes lowered briefly.

"Olivier became stronger with each passing year." He looked toward the windows as if the answer waited somewhere beyond Wrohan’s polished glass. "And I did not understand why at first."

Arik looked at the man and knew, with the cold certainty of instinct, that whatever came next would be something he would hate hearing.

"Say it, Kamal."

Kamal’s jaw tightened. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

For the first time since the call had begun, he looked almost unwilling.

Then he said, "They kept Goliath alive because they were waiting for the poison to become neutral."

The secure room went very still.

Arik’s fingers curled against the table.

Gabriel’s expression emptied.

Damian did not move at all, which somehow made him more dangerous.

Kamal continued, his voice low and precise. "Goliath was a descendant of a dragon ancestor, and they were planning to use it, but dragon blood does not accept corruption cleanly. The poison burned through him, but it also made what remained unstable. Likely to kill whoever tried to take from him."

Edward’s pen had stopped moving.

Mezos’s face was blank, but the air around him had turned sharp.

"Olivier tried anyway?" Gabriel asked.

"Not at first." Kamal’s mouth twisted faintly. "Alan did. Through intermediaries. Physicians. Temple alchemists. Men who believed sacred language could justify butchery."

Arik’s voice was quiet. "What happened to Alan?"

Kamal looked at him.

"I don’t know. We never found reliable information on his disappearance. Only fragments. Burned records. Missing temple accounts. Physicians who vanished within months of serving him." His gaze hardened. "But later, the poison settled."

The words landed like a door locking.

"What had been active destruction became containment," Kamal continued. "Goliath remained between life and death. His ether channels were burned nearly hollow, but the dragon blood endured."

Damian’s golden eyes narrowed. "Olivier used it."

"Yes."

"How?"

"Small doses at first. Ritual transfusions. Then refined extracts disguised as temple purification rites. The official explanation was that Olivier carried imperial blood through his mother and required stabilization after exposure to residual Nurian ether." Kamal’s voice sharpened. "A lie, of course. He was drinking power stolen from a body they were too afraid to kill."

No one spoke.

Then Gabriel said, very softly, "That is why he grew stronger."

Kamal inclined his head once.

"Each year, he became more stable. More influential. More difficult to challenge. By the time Felix allowed him to stand publicly as crown prince, Olivier was no longer merely a useful decoration. He had become proof, at least to those willing to believe the lie, that the ether had accepted him."

Arik smiled.

It was a terrible expression.

"But it had not."

"No," Kamal said. "It tolerated him because Goliath was still alive to be harvested."

The word changed the room.

Damian rose from his chair with the clean, silent grace of a man whose restraint had just become a weapon.

Gabriel looked up at him once.

Damian came to stand behind him, one hand settling on Gabriel’s shoulder. For a moment, the contact was the only softness left in the room.

Then Gabriel asked, voice cold, "Why did Olivier want me?"

Kamal’s eyes moved to the Empress.

"Olivier wanted you because Goliath had marked you in his plans."

Damian’s hand tightened slightly.

Gabriel did not flinch.

He only looked at Kamal with eyes sharp enough to cut through the projection.

"That much," Gabriel said quietly, "I understand better now."

Kamal went still.

Gabriel leaned back into Damian’s touch, not seeking comfort exactly, but accepting the anchor of it.

"Goliath used the last strand of ether he could command to prepare his return," Gabriel said. "He taught me because I was meant to understand grids, flow, resistance, containment, and transfer. I thought, at the time, that he was teaching me how to survive the rebellion and how to rebuild what the Empire had broken."

His mouth curved faintly.

There was no humor in it.

"He was. But not only that."

Arik’s gaze fixed on him.

Gabriel continued, "He chose the path through Damian and me before either of us understood we were walking it."

The room held its breath around that sentence.

Kamal looked as though something old had shifted under his feet.

Gabriel’s eyes remained cold. "Olivier left behind shards of his soul. When I entered one of Olivier’s shards, we thought it was a failed immortality method. A piece of soul cut away and preserved badly. A cage built from memory, ether, and arrogance."

"It was that," Edward said quietly.

"Yes," Gabriel replied. "But not only that."

Damian’s thumb moved once against Gabriel’s shoulder.

Gabriel looked toward Kamal. "Olivier did not create that shard from himself alone."

Kamal did not speak.

Arik’s hand flattened slowly against the table.

Gabriel’s voice lowered. "Goliath was inside it."

The secure room went silent.

Kamal’s face lost color beneath his composure.

"I don’t mean a rumor," Gabriel continued. "Not a symbolic remnant. Not a trace left by the core. A piece of him. A copy, perhaps. A memory with teeth. But enough to speak. Enough to act. Enough to help me break the shard from the inside."

Damian’s expression had gone very still.

Everyone in that room except Kamal already knew the story.

They knew Gabriel had reached through a living shard and been dragged into Olivier’s false world. They knew he had found Goliath there, not whole, not free, but aware enough to teach, to guide, and to explain that Damian’s mark was not only a claim but a living tether. They knew Gabriel had used that bond to reach Damian across a world Olivier thought he controlled.

"Olivier tried to make himself immortal," Gabriel said. "He built a world around the shard. He filled it with scripts, ghosts, copied memories, and old cages. He thought he could trap me there. He thought he could drag me back into a version of myself he understood."

Gabriel smiled then.

It was a cold, beautiful thing.

"He was wrong."

Kamal’s breath caught faintly.

"Goliath was the flaw," Gabriel continued. "Olivier thought he had absorbed what remained of him. He thought Goliath’s blood could make his body stronger and Goliath’s soul could make his death impossible. But he never understood what he had taken. He had built his immortality around the one man he should never have allowed inside his soul."

Damian’s voice was quiet. "And Goliath killed him from within."

Kamal looked at Arik then.

Arik did not move.

He could not feel what Goliath must have felt. Not fully. Not yet. He had fragments, instincts, and sharp echoes of old rage and older purpose. But he understood enough.

Olivier had not only fed on Goliath’s blood.

He had tried to use his soul as a foundation and failed, because even broken, even copied, even trapped inside a shard shaped by another man’s will, Goliath had still waited with teeth.

"So that is why," Kamal said, his voice rougher than before.

Gabriel’s gaze stayed on him.

"Why what?"

"Why Olivier’s records changed in the later years. Why the temple alchemists disappeared. Why blood rites stopped being enough. Why he grew obsessed with soul preservation and core access." Kamal’s jaw tightened. "He was not only strengthening himself."

"No," Gabriel said. "He was trying to become the master of the core, but ether is choosing its master."

Damian’s eyes burned gold.

For one second, the room was silent.

Then Arik’s mark linked to Liam suddenly flared.

Arik’s head turned before thought caught up with instinct.

The bond pulled across the city, bright and unmistakable.

Liam was not in Lab V anymore.