Maleth pointed at the anvil with a burned finger.

  "Lie down again. Take the crystal with your right hand. And then let go."

  "Let go?"

  "The crystal is a bridge," Maleth explained, approaching the black parallelepiped that pulsed on the table. "It connects your consciousness to that thing inside you. When you touch it, your body will stay here, but your mind won't."

  Alessio stepped forward. "If something goes wrong:"

  "There's nothing you can do," Maleth interrupted. "Your ability won't work again. Whatever happens in there, happens between him and the entity. No one can intervene."

  Rusty let out a low whimper, almost a lament. His three eyes were fixed on Brando, the third one pulsing violet at an accelerated rhythm.

  "Hey," Brando whispered. "I'll be right back, okay?"

  Rusty licked his hand. Once. Twice. Then barked. Don't get yourself killed, asshole. That's what it seemed to say.

  Brando smiled. Then he stood, walked toward the anvil, and lay down.

  Maleth handed him the black crystal.

  "Whenever you're ready," Maleth said.

  Brando closed his eyes.

  Let go.

  He didn't know exactly what that meant. But he knew what it meant to surrender. He'd done it a thousand times at the orphanage: surrendering to sleep after days of insomnia, surrendering to hunger when there was no food, surrendering to pain when the beatings never stopped.

  Maybe it was similar. Maybe he just had to stop resisting. So he stopped resisting, and the world dissolved.

  Brando opened his eyes. He felt rather cold, but something more akin to a cold that belonged to the stars, where no sun existed to provide warmth. It was as if the sun had ceased to exist.

  This is where he died.

  Brando was exactly where Michele had seen... the beast. And there it was.

  It was colossal. Tall as a building, maybe taller. A mass of roots, tentacles, and organic matter that intertwined and separated in an endless cycle of viscous movement. Every second its form shifted slightly, as if it were made of a million smaller creatures crawling over one another.

  And where a head should have been, there was the Eye.

  A single red eye. Enormous. Pulsing.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Each pulsation sent waves of pressure through the void. Brando felt them in his chest, in his skull, in his bones. They weren't sound waves: they were something more ancient, more primitive. Something that spoke directly to the oldest part of the human brain, the part that existed before words, before thoughts.

  The part that knew only one thing: danger.

  Brando's body wanted to run. Every muscle screamed to flee, to bolt, to do anything except stand there, exposed, before... that.

  But there was nowhere to run. The void extended infinitely in every direction. And even if there had been somewhere to go, Brando knew it wouldn't matter. That thing was inside him. He couldn't run from himself.

  And then the rage arrived, like a dam collapsing, like an explosion that could no longer be contained.

  Years. Years of guilt. Years of nightmares. Years of gazes that avoided him, of whispers behind his back, of "murderer" spoken quietly enough that he couldn't respond but loud enough to hear.

  And it hadn't been his fault.

  It had never been his fault.

  It had been that thing's fault.

  "IT WAS YOU!"

  He pointed at the entity with a trembling finger.

  "YOU KILLED HIM! NOT ME! YOU!"

  The Eye pulsed. Once. Twice.

  No response.

  Brando charged.

  It was absurd. It was suicidal. It was like an ant attacking a volcano, like a mouse biting a lion, like a human being trying to punch a god.

  But he didn't give a damn.

  He ran toward the entity with everything he had. He leaped and struck. His hands passed through the entity's matter like water. No impact, no resistance. Brando felt as if he'd struck a creature made of smoke. He landed on the other side and rolled across the ground. He got back up. Charged again.

  His hands sank into nothing. His fists passed through tentacles that didn't truly exist, roots made of something the human mind couldn't comprehend.

  "BASTARD!"

  Again.

  "SON OF A BITCH!"

  Again.

  "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL:"

  His voice broke. Tears streamed down his cheeks: he didn't even know when he'd started crying. His lungs burned. His arms were exhausted despite having hit nothing.

  But he kept going.

  Because what else could he do? Kneel? Beg? Accept that this thing had ruined his life and there was nothing he could do about it?

  No.

  He'd rather die.

  "Interesting."

  A sort of vibration resonated through the air: it was the beast's voice.

  "Usually they're crying by this point," the entity continued. Was the tone amused? Curious? Hard to tell.

  "GO FUCK YOURSELF!"

  Brando charged again. His hands sank, passed through, found nothing.

  "There were 72 before you. 72 Karanti subjects. 31 tried to fight, exactly as you're doing. All of them, devoured within the first thirty seconds."

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  Brando stood motionless. Still breathing hard. Eyes fixed on the pulsing Eye.

  "You're at forty-five seconds," the entity continued. "Keep going. It's... refreshing."

  Forty-five seconds. Brando should have been dead fifteen seconds ago. But he wasn't. Why? The question struck him like a slap. Why was he still alive? Why hadn't that thing already devoured him like the others?

  "I'm not:" Brando started.

  And then the place changed like when you press a TV remote and switch channels. Everything around him filled with people. They were everywhere. Floating in the void like photographs in an infinite album. Men. Women. All young. 72 bodies.

  And then, one by one, they began to die.

  The first was a boy Brando's age. He was screaming something. Suddenly his hands rose to his own face and his fingers dug into his eye sockets. Brando watched, paralyzed, as the boy tore out his own eyes with his bare hands. Blood sprayed in every direction.

  Then a woman in her thirties. She was laughing a mad laugh, her mouth gaping so wide it seemed about to tear. As she laughed, her skin began to crystallize. Starting from the tips of her toes up to her face. The ice, or whatever it was, devoured her from within, and she kept laughing, laughed still as her body became a statue, laughed until her mouth froze mid-scream.

  Dissolution. Another body.

  Dissolution.

  Another body.

  Another body.

  Another body.

  Seventy-two deaths. In accelerated loop. One after another, faster and faster, more and more horrible.

  A man biting his own tongue until he tore it off. A woman clawing at her chest as if trying to rip out something crawling beneath her skin. A boy throwing himself into the void and falling forever, screaming, screaming, screaming.

  Brando couldn't look away. He wanted to, god how he wanted to, but his eyes were glued to those faces, to those deaths, to that horror.

  This is what will happen to me.

  The thought arrived cold, clinical, surprisingly detached.

  If I keep fighting, I end up like them.

  "This is what happens to those who fight," the entity confirmed, as if it had read his thoughts. "Do you want to continue?"

  The images vanished and everything returned to how it was before. Brando was on his knees. He didn't remember falling. His hands trembled. His mouth tasted like bile.

  "B-bastard..."

  The word came out as a croak. There was no strength behind it.

  "Yes," the entity agreed, and there was something almost... amused in its tone. "I am. And you're still here. Forty-five seconds after you should have been devoured."

  The Eye pulsed. Once. Twice.

  "Why?"

  Brando looked up. He didn't immediately understand the question.

  "Why do you keep going?" the entity clarified. "The others were begging by this point, or going insane, or simply shutting down. You get back up. Why?"

  Brando pulled himself to his feet. His legs trembled but held him. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The taste of bile lingered.

  "Because I've never known how to do anything else," he said. "Get back up, I mean."

  Silence.

  "Elaborate."

  "At the Rione..." he began, his voice hoarse, broken, but he continued anyway. "When I was little, there were two kinds of orphans. Those who gave up and those who kept going."

  He swallowed.

  "Those who gave up ended up dead, drugged, or worse. Those who kept going..."

  Pause. A bitter smile.

  "Ended up dead too, usually. But at least they died on their feet."

  The Eye pulsed. Once. Twice.

  "And you prefer to die on your feet rather than live on your knees?"

  Brando lifted his gaze and stared directly at the Eye.

  "No." His voice was steady now. "I prefer to live on my feet. But if the alternative is kneeling before you, then yeah. Dying is just fine."

  The entity didn't respond immediately. The Eye continued to pulse, but the rhythm had changed: slower, almost pensive. Then the vibration returned.

  "Interesting. Very interesting."

  Its presence shifted position, as if drawing closer without physically moving. It was bending space, not moving itself.

  "Then let's talk," it said. "You've earned at least that much."

  Brando remained motionless. On guard. But listening.

  "I have an offer for you, Karanti SG73."

  Karanti. That name again. The one he'd never asked for, never wanted.

  "You continue living your life," the entity began. "Fight, grow, suffer, triumph. Do what humans do. And I observe from within."

  Brando frowned. "Observe?"

  "I don't interfere. I don't control. I simply... watch. Every victory of yours, every defeat, every moment of despair and triumph."

  The Eye pulsed.

  "To me, you're entertainment. A cosmic reality show, if you want to put it that way. Seventy-two failed subjects were... disappointing. Predictable. But you..."

  Something resembling a smile: if an eye could smile: crossed the red surface.

  "You're different. Unpredictable. Interesting."

  "And in exchange?" Brando asked, his voice flat.

  "In exchange, I let you draw on fragments of my power. Small crumbs. Just enough to survive the challenges that are coming: and believe me, they're coming."

  The silence that followed was heavy.

  Brando processed the offer. Observation in exchange for power. Entertainment in exchange for survival.

  On paper, it didn't sound bad. He could accept. He could take those "crumbs" and use them to become stronger, to save Bianca, to destroy anyone who stood against him. To save Adelaide. But there was something in the way the entity had framed the offer. In the tone, in the implicit dynamic.

  I observe. You entertain me. I grant you crumbs.

  It was the position of a generous master tossing scraps to a beggar. Of a bored god amusing itself with a mouse in a maze. Of a scientist observing an experiment while taking notes.

  And Brando?

  Brando would be the mouse. The experiment. The beggar.

  No.

  "No."

  The word escaped before he could think about it.

  Silence.

  "No?" The entity seemed... surprised. Or something akin to surprise.

  "I understand correctly," Brando said, his voice firmer now, more certain. "You observe me. I amuse you like a monkey in a cage. In exchange, you give me crumbs of your power. Right?"

  "A crude simplification, but:"

  "Then no."

  The void trembled.

  Not visibly: there was nothing visible here. But Brando felt it, like an earthquake beneath the surface of reality. Something in the entity had changed. Not anger. Something stranger. Surprise. Genuine, authentic surprise.

  "Do you understand what refusing means?"

  "Of course." Brando nodded. "I die. Or I become like those others you showed me. Or I keep carrying you inside with no benefit until you consume me from within."

  "And you prefer this?"

  "I prefer anything to being your lapdog."

  Brando took a step forward.

  It was absurd. Ridiculous. He was walking toward a cosmic entity that could annihilate him with a thought. But he didn't stop.

  "I've never been anyone's lapdog," he said. "Not the ones who beat me at the orphanage. Not Esposito. Not Ripa. Not the fucking Eight Houses."

  Another step.

  "And certainly not a mass of tentacles with boredom issues."

  The Eye contracted. Pulsed faster: thump-thump-thump-thump: like an accelerating heart.

  "I could destroy you."

  "Do it."

  "I could drive you insane like the others."

  "Try."

  "I could:"

  "THEN DO IT!"

  Brando's voice exploded through the void. It cracked mid-scream, raw, hoarse, but didn't stop.

  "For seventeen years someone's been telling me what I can or can't do! That I'm too weak, too poor, too wrong to deserve anything!"

  Tears fell. He didn't stop them. Didn't even try.

  "I ate from the garbage! I slept on the floor! I watched a boy die because of me and spent a lifetime believing I was a murderer!"

  Breath. Sob. Another breath.

  "I'm sick of it! And now I find out I didn't kill him: YOU killed him! The thing that's been inside me all along, the thing I never asked for, the thing that made me a monster in everyone's eyes!"

  His voice broke completely. Words came out in pieces, punctuated by sobs.

  "So if you want to destroy me, DO IT! But I won't give you the satisfaction of watching me beg! I won't give you the satisfaction of having another lapdog! I'd rather die here, now, in this goddamn blue void, knowing that at least I didn't bend!"

  Silence.

  A silence so deep it seemed eternal.

  The Eye pulsed. Once. Twice. Three times.

  And then...

  The entity laughed.

  It wasn't a malevolent laugh. It wasn't cruel amusement or cosmic sadism. It was something different: something genuine, spontaneous. Like a child seeing something unexpectedly delightful.

  The laughter vibrated through the void, making the crystallized particles tremble, rippling reality itself.

  "Magnificent," the entity said when the laughter subsided. "Absolutely magnificent."

  "What the hell are you laughing at?"

  "At you. At this situation. At everything."

  The Eye pulsed more slowly, almost pensively. The rhythm had changed: no longer accelerated like during the confrontation, but calm, contemplative.

  "Seventy-two subjects. Seventy-two attempts to create a Vessel. And no one has ever told me no," it said. "Some fought, yes. But fighting isn't refusing. They fought because they hoped to win, or to vent their suffering. You don't hope to win. You simply refuse to lose on my terms."

  Brando didn't respond. He didn't know what to say. Tears still ran down his cheeks, but he'd stopped sobbing.

  "Do you know why the other seventy-two failed?" the entity continued. "Not because they were weak. Some were stronger than you, smarter, better trained. They failed because, deep down, they wanted something from me." It said. "Power. Answers. Salvation. Something. And when you want something, you're already in an inferior position. You're already the supplicant."

  The entity drew closer: not physically, but its presence became denser, more concentrated, as if focusing all its attention on Brando.

  "You don't want anything. Or rather: you want, but not enough to bend. And this..."

  The Eye pulsed, red and immense and strangely... respectful?

  "Karanti SG73, this makes you the first truly interesting candidate in seventy years."

  In that moment, Brando sensed that something had changed, as if the beast's opinion of him had literally exploded. Was it possible that the creature wanted to make him a proposal... as a partner?