"Once our ‘technique’ had advanced enough, once our theory was 'finished,' we had no choice but to test it. And Gods help me, we had no other choice than to proceed with human testing immediately. "
His face turned green at this point in the story, mirroring my own reaction. Was the fucking Elder about to confess to torturing humans?
He noticed my horror and hastened to justify himself. "It’s not like we could risk merging animals with our energy. We have no control over animals as it is, let alone having them translate every feeling. Could you imagine a rabid dog with translation?"
Yeah, okay. I was going to need some alcohol. I grabbed the bottle of vodka, took a large sip, and tried to drink away the confession from hell ringing in my ears.
Julian averted his gaze again, as if bracing himself for his own story. “I won’t go into detail, but essentially, our technique involved ‘injecting’ an energy signature we recovered from…well, me.”
“You?” I frowned, lowering the bottle.
He nodded. “We figured out our magic needs to evolve simultaneously with the amygdala—the part of the brain where emotions live—and thus needs to be implanted at birth.”
I hardly noticed the bile rising in the back of my throat. My fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle as Julian went on, oblivious.
“Luckily, we realized by then, we were becoming mad scientists, and the idea of experimenting on babies was too muchfor any of us. So, we decided to pull the plug on the entire project.”
It sounded like he wanted recognition for stopping the torture of babies.Fucking sicko.
“That is, all of us but one.”
He looked straight at me again. “James, you have to understand—I never wanted any of this. None of us did.” Julian's voice cracked, his hands trembling as they raked through his hair. “We’d agreed to shut it down. We’d seen the horror of our actions, and we swore to destroy everything—every scrap of research, every book, every product. We planned to gather it in a hangar and burn it to ash. Together, the six of us.”
He paused, his chest rising and falling as though the memory physically drained him. “But one of us, our Healer, Gordon—he’d lost everyone he loved in the Battle. He couldn’t let go. He was too determined not to see years and years of work erased overnight.”
I leaned forward, the vodka forgotten as tension coiled tight in my gut, but I kept my mouth shut.
“The night we resolved to end it—almost twenty-four years ago—Gordon disappeared.” Julian swallowed hard. “When I finally tracked him down, he’d already abducted three human babies. Two taken straight from their homes, one from a hospital nursery. A newborn. Not even a day old.”
By this point in his story, he had taken on a hysterical tone. I was completely shell-shocked by what he was revealing; I couldn't utter a word. This was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
His face had turned ashen, haunted by the horror of his own confession. “He forced me to do the unthinkable,” he whispered, trembling. “He gave me a choice: obey him or watch him kill those innocent babies.”
“What did he make you do?” I demanded breathlessly.
Julian’s lips parted, but hesitation stalled him. “James, you have to understand how deeply I regret?—”
“What. Did. He. Make. You. Do?” I ground out; each word filled with disgust.
His eyes met mine, raw with guilt. “He made me enforce the True Bond on them.”
I stilled. “You did what?”
“I forced the True Bond on three babies. He demanded I’d pour my translation into them, believing they were young enough to physically withstand the energy invading their bodies.”
My hands started shaking, my mouth desert-dry. “Youmind-rapedthree innocent human babies?”
He flinched as if I’d struck him. “I had no choice,” he murmured, his voice a shadow of itself.
My thoughts were racing, scrambling to connect the dots.
And then—they did.
And I wished to all the gods they never had.
Because the truth that crashed into me wasn't just unbearable—it was unlivable.
A reality I could never accept.
