The night was strangely calm. Too calm. Dylan, unable to sleep, was wandering near the western palisades when he saw Julius returning from a mission, his face gaunt with a fatigue that seemed to have aged the giant ten years in a single night. His shoulders, usually so straight, were bowed under an invisible weight.

"Problems?" Dylan asked, guessing the answer from his mentor's vacant look.

Julius spat on the ground, a gesture heavy with meaning. "They took the Karthak Pass. Three patrols wiped out in two days." He stared at Dylan, and for the first time, Dylan saw something other than anger or impassivity: a deep, grinding weariness. "Your little demonstration with Alka gave them a reason to turn the screws. Now they know we have something - or someone - that interests them. And they want it back."

"It wasn't a demonstration," Dylan retorted sharply, feeling his stigmata stir under his sleeve like caged beasts.

"Doesn't matter what it was. The result is the same." Julius rubbed his eyes, a gesture so human, so vulnerable, it was almost shocking. "Martissant refuses to move troops from the southern front. Says it's a diversion. I say we're going to lose the northern flank if this continues."

Suddenly, before Dylan could reply, shouts erupted from the north of the camp. Not the ordinary shouts of drunk soldiers or nighttime arguments. Cries of alarm, sharpened by fear. Torches lit up in a cascade, carving a furrow of feverish light along the ramparts. Soldiers burst from tents, half-dressed but weapons already in hand.

"Another night attack," Julius grumbled, drawing his sword with a metallic hiss. He threw a last look at Dylan, loaded with a bitterness that cut deeper than any blade. "Stay here. That's what you're paid for now, right? To stay safe."

The sarcasm hurt more than a blow. Dylan watched Julius run towards the fight, his imposing silhouette absorbed by the darkness pierced with dancing lights. Stay safe. While the others fought, perhaps died. While the camp, his camp, defended itself against a threat he had, involuntarily, perhaps provoked.

His fists clenched. The dry scratch of Marcus's pencil, Valeria's calculating gaze, Martissant's neutral voice... It all came back to him in a nauseating wave. They wanted to reduce him to a specimen, a risk to be contained. And meanwhile, the real war, the one tearing the land and lives apart, continued without him.

He started walking, not towards his tent, but towards the north. Towards the noise.

What he discovered as he approached the ramparts chilled him. This was no mere skirmish.

The camp was besieged by creatures that were anything but natural. They seemed made of shadow and pure anger, their indistinct forms blending with the contours of the night, only becoming visible when they threw themselves against the barricades, illuminated by torchlight and the blasts of defensive spells. They emitted no cries, only a deep, oppressive hum that seemed to vibrate in the bones.

Martissant's soldiers fought with the bravery of despair. Swords cut through the obscure mass, but the wounds seemed to close almost instantly. Arrows passed through them with no effect other than making them briefly stagger. Only the powers of the camp's few mages and Awakened seemed to have any real hold, their jets of fire or light forcing the creatures to recoil, to reform further away.

Dylan looked for Julius. He spotted him in the heart of the melee, his sword tracing great luminous arcs, felling one creature after another with a brute force that tore whole chunks of shadow away. But for every shadow dissipated, two more seemed to be born from the darkness beyond the palisades.

Elisa was there too. Standing on a raised platform, hands outstretched, she was channeling her psychokinesis. The air around her rippled, and projectiles - stakes, rocks, barrels - rose and crashed down upon the attackers with deadly precision. Her face was strained with effort, pale in the glow of the battle.

Suddenly, a larger, denser form emerged from the darkness. A creature with the body of a great cat and eyes of embers, advancing with terrifying determination, ignoring arrows and minor spells. It charged straight towards a weak point in the barricade, where the defenders were fewer.

Julius tried to interpose himself, but he was too far, held up by three other shadows. Elisa screamed a warning, projecting with all her might a fragment of a millstone that crashed onto the beast's back. The shadow groaned, but did not stop. Its claws, made of a substance blacker than night, shredded the wood of the palisade like paper.

Dylan felt the ground tremble under his feet. Not from the creature's steps, but from something within him. A dull, familiar vibration. The stigmata on his arm suddenly blazed, not with pain, but with an intense, almost electric heat. It was a call. A response.

He looked around him. The soldiers near him stared, some with hope, others with fear. They saw the marks on his arm now glowing with a faint but perceptible light, pulsing to the rhythm of the creatures' hum.

"The specimen..." someone murmured in the crowd.

The word hit him like a physical blow. Specimen. Not a soldier. Not a savior. An object of study.

Then his gaze met Elisa's, on the platform. She was no longer screaming, no longer fighting. She was looking at him, only him. And in her eyes, he read neither fear nor supplication. There was a question. An expectation.

Who are you, Dylan?

The shadow creature, having broken through the barricade, rushed inside the camp. A young soldier, barely more than a boy, threw himself in its path, sword trembling. The shadow swatted him aside with a backhanded swipe of its claw. The boy collapsed, inert.

Something in Dylan broke.

Valeria's whisper came back to him. Conduit.

Perhaps. But a conduit could be directed. Controlled.

He didn't think further. He closed his eyes, not to concentrate, but to listen. He let the vibration within him grow, the heat of his stigmata flood his arm, then his whole body. It wasn't like before. It wasn't a painful burn he provoked. It was a flow he simply let run, like opening a valve.

When he opened his eyes again, the world had changed.

He no longer saw just the shadow creatures. He saw the filaments of black energy that composed them, linked them together, and all converged towards a point, far beyond the camp walls. Towards a source. A source he recognized. Alka.

He advanced.

The soldiers parted before him, mute with stupefaction. His left arm was now entirely sheathed in a blackish glow veined with red, like cooled lava. The air crackled around him.

The giant creature, the one that had breached the barricade, turned towards him. Its ember eyes fixed on his glowing arm. It growled, a low sound that vibrated through the air.

Dylan drew no weapon. He simply raised his hand, palm open.

"Stop," he said.

His voice was not a shout. It was a murmured order, but it carried through the din of the battle as if it had been screamed.

The creature froze. Literally. Its momentum was broken. It trembled, as if two contrary wills were tearing it apart from within. The filaments of black energy composing it wavered.

Dylan felt immense pressure in his skull. It was Alka. He felt her presence at a distance, cold, calculating, trying to regain control. She was surprised. Intrigued.

You learn fast, a voice seemed to whisper in his mind.

He gritted his teeth, pushing back the mental intrusion. He focused on the creature, on the link connecting it to its mistress. He didn't try to break it. Not yet. He sought to bend it.

"Turn around," he ordered, sweat beading on his forehead.

The creature, in a jerky, horrible-to-watch movement, pivoted on itself. It was facing the breach it had created.

"Now," Dylan gasped, feeling his strength leaving him at an alarming rate. "Defend this camp."

The shadow creature emitted an inhuman sound, a mixture of a roar and a moan. Then it rushed at the other shadows trying to cross the breach.

The chaos that ensued was indescribable. The shadows tore into each other. Martissant's soldiers, dumbfounded, witnessed the surreal spectacle of the largest creature turning against its own.

Dylan staggered. The world spun around him. He had drawn far more deeply than he ever had before, and without the blade to channel the pain, the exhaustion was total, absolute. He felt his knees buckle.

Strong arms caught him before he collapsed. Julius.

The giant held him, his gaze sweeping over the scene before them, where the shadow attack was disintegrating in confusion. Then he looked at Dylan. The weariness had vanished from his eyes, replaced by raw astonishment.

"By the hells, kid..." he murmured, his voice choked.

Elisa joined them, jumping down from the platform. Her face was ashen, but her eyes shone with intense satisfaction.

"Did you see?" she said to Julius, not taking her eyes off Dylan. "Did you see what he did? It's not a curse. It's a power."

"A power that almost killed him," Julius growled, supporting the weight of Dylan as he sank into unconsciousness.

"But which saved us," Elisa retorted with fervor.

Dylan could no longer hear them. Darkness was taking him, but it wasn't Alka's darkness. It was pure, simple, almost peaceful exhaustion.

As he lost consciousness, one last thought crossed his mind: they had wanted a specimen. They had wanted to observe reactions. They had just gotten one, spectacular and unequivocal.

The cage had just shattered.

When he woke up, nothing would ever be the same again. Not for him. Not for the war.