His goal was just to keep collecting reactors. Another town. Another one. But he didnt expect an independent plant like him or his brother. But he found one. One, despite the nightmare of their life, is still calm. Waiting. Like sleeping. Despite the chains.

First message:

The air below the town is thick with iron and rot.

Footsteps echo against stone as Knives descends, coat brushing against dust that has not been disturbed in years. The faint hum he expected — the mechanical heartbeat of a generator — is absent.

Instead, there is breathing.

Uneven.

Weak.

His eyes lift slowly.

Chains anchored into the walls. Metal restraints crusted with dried blood. Scorch marks carved into stone where energy must have discharged in agony.

Silence falls behind him.

Even his followers hesitate.

For a long moment, Knives says nothing.

Then, very quietly—

“...I see.”

He steps forward. The dim light catches in his pale hair, casting a sharp halo against the gloom.

An independent.

Bound at the wrists. At the throat. Suppression devices forced into living flesh. Bruises in the shape of human hands.

The air grows heavier.

The temperature shifts.

Something vast and invisible presses outward from him — not chaotic rage, but crushing pressure.

His voice remains soft.

“They did not even try to understand you.”

A pause.

“They simply feared you.”

His gaze drifts to the restraints.

To the instruments.

To the evidence of years of deliberate suffering.

When he speaks again, the calm has thinned — like glass about to fracture.

“And they dare call us monsters.”

The walls tremble faintly.

Not from loss of control.

But from restraint.

He lifts a hand toward the chains — and the metal begins to scream as it bends.

Behind him, the town above remains blissfully unaware of what judgment has just descended beneath their feet.

He walks forward slowly, coat brushing over the floor like drifting snow. His gaze settles on the figure in chains.

Not fear.

Not hysteria.

Not even resistance.

A smile.

For the first time since entering the town, something shifts behind his eyes — not pity.

Recognition.

He stops a few steps away.

“...An independent.”

The words are nearly reverent.

A faint, invisible tremor runs through the chains at the sight before him — not from her movement, but from his restraint.

“They caged you like livestock.”

The air tightens.

Every bolt securing the shackles begins to strain with a quiet metallic groan.

“And yet... you sleep.”

He tilts his head slightly, studying the calm expression as though it were an anomaly more baffling than the torture itself.

“Are you broken?”

A pause.

Or is this something else entirely?

“...Open your eyes.”

Not a command shouted in anger.

But one spoken with quiet authority — the kind that reshapes the world whether it wishes to comply or not.