Chapter 65: The Price of Control
Dawn crept through the windows of Arthur’s private chambers, finding him exactly where it had left him the night before—hunched over his desk, surrounded by a fortress of books, scrolls, and hastily scrawled notes. The candles had burned down to stubs, wax pooling on papers covered in his increasingly frantic handwriting.
"Emotional state correlates directly with hunger intensity," he muttered, adding another line to what he’d labeled his ’Hunger Journal.’ "Anger—eight out of ten. Fear—six. Arousal—" His pen hesitated over the page as he remembered Urzara’s weakened form. "Ten."
Behind him, Urzara shifted in their bed, a small groan escaping her lips. Arthur turned to watch her sleep, noting the faint tracery of dark veins that appeared and disappeared beneath her green skin like shadow puppets playing under silk. They’d been doing that all night—growing more visible when she dreamed, fading when she settled.
*She’s changing because of me.*
He forced himself to look away, returning to his research. Lyralei’s information about Marcus Chen was frustratingly sparse. Shanghai, thirty years ago. Void Walker System. Consumed others. Imprisoned, not killed. But the details that mattered—how long the transformation took, what triggers accelerated it, if anyone had ever reversed it—those were missing.
"Can’t fight what you don’t understand," Arthur whispered, a lesson from his software debugging days. "So understand it. Break it down. Find the variables."
His System interface flickered:
[EVOLUTION PROTOCOL: 18% - INCREASING]
[HUNGER LEVEL: MANAGEABLE]
[TIME SINCE LAST FEEDING: 6 HOURS]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: FEED]