Inside him, Jagger felt helpless.

Not lost in darkness. Not fully. That would have been easier to understand. Easier to endure. He could still see through his own eyes. He could still hear the scrape of shoes against the mat, the measured breathing of the hunters across from him, the low mechanical hum of Sector Zero’s training hall. He was present for all of it, forced to witness every movement and every word, and yet none of the limbs attached to him felt like they belonged to him anymore.

It was like being nailed inside his own skin.

Every twitch of muscle, every flex of clawed fingers, every slow turn of his head happened with perfect clarity, and none of it answered to him. He could feel the tension in his calves, the weight balanced through the balls of his feet, the cold air sliding over the blood on his mouth, but the commands were not his. He was trapped just behind the motion, close enough to touch control and still unable to take it back.

‘What the hell happened?’ he shouted into the violent confines of his own mind. Panic rose hard and fast now that the adrenaline had somewhere to go. ‘How was he able to take control of my body? I couldn’t stop it!’

Ophilia’s response came immediately, cold and cutting and precise enough to slice through the panic before it could fully consume him.

‘He did not take control. The wall impact, the pain, the humiliation, the spike of rage. Your body reached for the nearest thing built to survive that state. You opened the door before you realized you were touching the handle, and the mutt stepped through.’

A beat passed.

Then, with icy offense, she added, ‘I am mildly insulted that he was given a turn before I was, but I will let that insult rest. For now.’

‘Get him out,’ Jagger fired back. The thought was less a demand and more a desperate plea sharpened into one. ‘Get him the hell out of my body.’

Zumthor laughed.

It was deep, ugly, and intimate in all the wrong ways. The sound did not merely echo in his head. It vibrated through his ribs, his teeth, his bones, like something large and savage pacing behind the walls of his skull.

‘Why would you want that?’ Zumthor asked, savoring every word. ‘Can you not feel it, boy? The clarity. The clean purpose. The instinct stripped of weakness. The strength to crush the strong and devour the weak. All this civility you clutch so tightly, all these rules and feelings and little human attachments, it is a cage. I am offering you the key.’

Jagger recoiled from the sheer force of him. ‘I don’t want your key!’

‘Then you deserve the cage.’

‘I don’t want either of you in my head!’ Jagger shot back. ‘The only thing I want is to know where my sister is!’

Zumthor’s contempt came immediately, hot and savage. ‘Pathetic. A leash dressed up as love. They will use that weakness to pull you wherever they want. Break it.’

‘Enough,’ Ophilia snapped, her own patience finally fraying. ‘You sound like a starving cur gnawing its own leg off in a trap.’

‘Better that than pray prettily while someone else tightens the chain.’

‘And yet here you are,’ she said, each syllable edged like a blade. ‘Borrowing a boy’s flesh because your own was carved out of a girl’s body like rot from fruit.’

Zumthor exploded at that.

His rage slammed through Jagger’s head like a hammer strike.

‘I’ll rip you into pieces, saint. You better-‘

‘You will do nothing,’ Ophilia cut in, colder than before. ‘Because, despite all your posturing, you are in the same prison I am. If you tear this vessel apart in your tantrum, you do not earn freedom. You earn needles. Chains. Observation. Dissection. Those humans outside will take him apart layer by layer until there is nothing left but blood and questions, especially that woman. Is that what you want?’

Zumthor went silent.

It lasted less than a second, but that silence was heavier than all his snarling.

Externally, the thing wearing Jagger’s face only smiled wider.

He could smell Chase’s blood. Rich and hot and maddeningly fresh. The rubber mat beneath his fingers felt alive, ready to be split again. The overhead lights were too bright. The world is too sharp. Somewhere inside, Jagger was still pushing. Somewhere deeper, Ophilia was watching and calculating. At the front stood Zumthor, delighted, staring down two level-forty hunters who had finally stopped underestimating him.

Chase took a slow step forward and rolled his neck once, then again. There was no laziness left in him now.

“Well,” he said, flexing his fingers, “this just got a whole lot more fun.”

Jace turned her head toward him, gray eyes hard. “This is not fun.”

“Everything’s fun if you survive it.”

“Try taking it seriously for once.”

Chase snorted. “I am taking it seriously.”

“Then stop smiling.”

“That sounds like a personal problem.”

Their exchange was short, sharp, and effortless. The kind of shorthand only siblings who had fought beside one another could share. Even while they spoke, neither looked away from Jagger.

Then they moved.

Not a charge. Not a reckless rush. A synchronized advance.

Chase angled left. Jace drifted right. Their stances widened. Their spacing expanded. They were shaping the court around him, stretching their control over the floor until every possible route had an answer waiting at the end of it. It was subtle enough that an untrained fighter might have missed it, but to Jagger, trapped and watching, it felt like the room itself was being tightened around his throat.

Jagger’s crimson eyes tracked them both.

He remained crouched.

Perfectly still.

Then he lunged for Chase.

It was the logical choice. The louder one. The bleeding one. The one standing half a step closer and grinning like he still thought he controlled the pace. Chase saw it coming and welcomed it. Jace did not break formation. She trusted him to hold.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep