Dominic's mechanical eyes fixed on Sebastian's face, lenses adjusting with soft clicks. "That child died a very long time ago." His voice was perfectly modulated. "Father saw to that."
"No." Sebastian held his brother's gaze. "He didn't die completely. Not despite everything Father did to him. There's still something left, beneath all that brass and copper."
Something flickered in Dominic's expression, a ghost of emotion quickly regulated back into nonexistence. The knife stopped spinning in his hand, his fingers tightening around the wooden handle his younger self had carved with such care.
For a moment, silence stretched between them, heavy with shared history and divergent paths. Then Dominic's regulation systems reasserted control, his face returning to perfect mechanical neutrality.
"Efficiency happened." He pocketed the knife. "Perfect function without the distraction of primitive responses. You once understood the value of improvement."
Sebastian met his brother's gaze, seeing nothing of the child Dominic had once been. Before their father's most extreme modifications, Dominic had been the gentlest of the three brothers… the one who questioned, who hesitated, who sometimes showed something close to mercy. Nothing remained behind those brass eyes but calculated assessment.
"Father is waiting." Dominic gestured to the attendants. "Bring him."
They marched him from the chamber, through obsidian corridors lined with brass fixtures that pulsed with the citadel'sheartbeat. Each step was agony, his wounds protesting the movement, but Sebastian forced himself to walk steadily. To show no weakness. If there was any chance of escaping again, of warning the settlement, of protecting Sarah, he needed to maintain whatever strength he had left.
Vampire nobles passed them in the corridors, their brass gazes lingering on Sebastian with cold curiosity. News of his capture had clearly spread through the citadel. Some watched with satisfaction, others with calculation, measuring how his fall would affect their own positions in the rigid hierarchy of House de la Sang.
None showed sympathy. Sympathy was inefficient. Wasted energy. One of the first emotions to be regulated out of existence during improvement.
His father's study doors loomed ahead, brass panels etched with the history of House de la Sang, two centuries of "improvements," of progress through mechanical perfection. Sebastian had once viewed those panels with pride. Marched past them, he saw them through new eyes, a record of natural life systematically replaced with artificial precision.
The doors slid open silently, revealing the cavernous space beyond. Lord Cornelius de la Sang stood with his back to the entrance, gazing out a tall window at the citadel's mechanical gardens, where brass flowers never wilted and copper trees never shed their leaves.
"Leave us," his father commanded without turning, his voice perfectly modulated, each syllable precisely weighted for maximum effect.
Dominic and the attendants withdrew, the doors closing behind them with a soft hiss.
For several moments, silence stretched between father and son. Sebastian remained standing where they had left him, hiswrists bound behind his back, his body a landscape of pain and rage he could no longer regulate into submission.
Finally, Cornelius turned. His face was a study in mechanical perfection, ageless, expressionless except for what he chose to display. Brass components lined his jaw, his temples, his throat, all gleaming with polished precision. His eyes, once natural, had been replaced with brass-rimmed optics that glowed faintly in the study's dim light.
"Sebastian," he said, the name emerging without emotion. "My disappointing creation."
Sebastian straightened despite the pain shooting through his side. "Father."
Fear whispered through him. It was far from the regulated caution he'd once felt in his father's presence, but something deeper and more instinctive. The Heart Tree's magic had stripped away layers of artificial control, leaving him vulnerable to emotions he barely recognized. Yet alongside the fear came something else… a clarity he had never experienced before. An understanding of exactly what his father was, and what he himself was becoming.
Cornelius approached slowly, circling Sebastian as he might examine a flawed experiment. "I have reviewed the preliminary assessments of your condition," he said. "The extent of degradation exceeds initial projections. Your components have been fundamentally altered."
He reached out, fingers cold as they traced the brass at Sebastian's throat, brass that no longer behaved as designed, that responded to Sebastian's emotions rather than regulating them.
"Fascinating," Cornelius murmured. "The primitive magic has infiltrated even the sealed systems. Your emotional regulators are completely compromised. Your hunger controls disabled. Your efficiency parameters overridden." He steppedback, studying Sebastian with clinical detachment. "You are returning to a natural state. Becoming... primitive."
"I prefer the term 'alive.'" Sebastian met his father's mechanical gaze.
Cornelius's expression didn't change, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop. "Alive," he repeated, the word dissected as he spoke it. "Such a limited perspective. Life without improvement is merely existence. Primitive, inefficient existence."
He moved to his desk, activating a brass panel that projected images into the air between them, technical schematics of Sebastian's body, highlighting the changes wrought by the Heart Tree's magic.
"The orcs' primitive magic has reversed decades of careful improvement," Cornelius observed. "But the damage can be corrected. I have already designed the necessary components." He gestured, and the projection shifted to show new brass devices, more complex than those Sebastian had carried before. "These will not only restore your regulated state but improve upon previous designs. The primitive contamination will be purged completely."
Cold dread spread through Sebastian, a feeling he could no longer regulate away. His father intended to erase everything the Heart Tree had awakened in him, to bury once again what the orcs' magic had revealed beneath centuries of mechanical control.
"And if I refuse these 'improvements'?" Sebastian asked, his voice steadier than he felt.
Cornelius regarded him with the same expression he might give a machine displaying unexpected error codes. "Refusal is not a parameter I have included in the procedure."
"I am not a machine to be reprogrammed." Anger burned through his fear. "I have changed. The orcs' magic showed mewhat it means to truly live, to feel without regulation, to choose rather than calculate."
