The sterile white room was a cage of light and cold metal. Laila was strapped to a reclining chair, not with rough ropes, but with padded, clinical restraints. Sensors were attached to her temples, her chest, the inside of her wrists. Across from her, on a monitor, danced a chaotic waveform—the visual representation of the tether, they’d told her. Her magical signature.
Adrian stood beside the monitor, his elegant demeanor replaced by a fervent, scholarly intensity. “Fascinating,” he murmured, adjusting a dial. A low, resonant hum filled the room. “The carrier wave is stable, even under stress. It’s anchored in you, Luna. A pure, passive broadcast. But the feedback loop into him… that’s where the damage is. And the potential.”
A man in a lab coat injected a clear liquid into an IV line c
