City's streets - that was one second. Then, just... nothing. Wind stopped breathing. Lights blinked out like they were never there. The ache once deep in my chest vanished without warning. In

ice under skin. Anger showed up without knocking. Reborn? Maybe. That word changed everything - the murmurs from before began to cut deeper. Talk of the Vale name started making sense in ways I wished they hadn't. Something was buried beneath stacks of legal paperwork. Not talked about, only whispered. They called it the Bloodline Project. Fragments stuck in my mind - executive voices low during late talks. Talk of bloodlines shaped on purpose. Inheritance managed like a lab experiment. Things never written down anywhere real. Back then, I did not pay attention. At first, I thought it was just noise - gossip tossed between competing companies. Truth hit later. That project existed. So did my role in it. Not resurrection, not luck. Reuse. My life wasn't restarted. It got repurposed. Stillness held on, steady as breath, until a shift came. Not sudden, but there - a tremor slipping into the wet space where I floated. It started far off, muffled as if spoken into waves. Closer it crept, sharpening, pushing past membrane and murk. Words arrived next: "She's sleeping." Those sounds locked my thoughts cold. Out of the dim hush came a sound so soft it barely stirred the air, yet heavy with something I'd never forget. Gravel under every syllable. Deep enough to feel in bone. That stillness that wasn't peace but waiting - the kind that leaves marks on your neck hairs. Him again. Before eyes could confirm, bones did. Blood doesn't lie when kin speak through shadow-thickened space, warped by walls and meat alike. Another spoke fast after him - "Fine.". Coldness shaped his words, each one measured, lifeless. Authority sat in that voice - born in labs, not meetings. "An hour more," he said, "the tea will hold her under." Attention sharpened inside my head. Tea? I thought. Then - her. My mother. Elena. His voice came again, blurred by walls but not meaning. Development needed checking, he explained. Neural paths too active now might force changes. Fire lit behind my eyes then. He called her a specimen. Just that. Never daughter. Never newborn. Only test material. Not just sitting around waiting for me to arrive. My presence was already under observation. Watch closely. Handled like a test they had set up long before. A sudden spark ran through my small frame. An old instinct fired deep within my forming nerves. Movement came next. A push followed. Sound built up, desperate to escape. To reach my mother. To tell her who stood near her at that moment. Still, my body would not follow orders. Legs jerked with litt