The airlock sealed behind them with the finality of a coffin lid.

  Kai stepped into darkness so complete his Humanware flickered, trying to compensate. The air of the Observatory Deck tasted of salt and ozone and something organic that made his hindbrain shiver. The temperature cycled hot to cold in waves that had nothing to do with HVAC systems.

  "Holy shit," Brandon whispered behind him, voicing what everyone felt.

  The lights came up slowly, not fluorescent institutional lighting but bioluminescent strips that pulsed like veins. They revealed the full Aviary, a chamber that shouldn't exist inside a military installation. Cathedral-vast, the ceiling lost in shadow, the walls raw stone threaded with conduits that looked disturbingly organic. In the center, a pillar with multiple giant platforms surrounded by a moat of what looked like liquid mercury.

  A Dragon landed in front of them.

  Kai's breath caught.

  It was massive. Fifty meters from snout to tail-tip, the body serpentine but heavy with muscle, scaled in overlapping plates that shifted colors, matte white to shiny silver. Four legs, each ending in claws that could punch through starship hulls. Wings folded against its flanks, membranes stretched over frameworks that were definitely not bone. The head was all predatory angles, jaw slightly open to reveal teeth that glowed with internal heat.

  And the eyes.

  Gold. Slit-pupiled. Fixed directly on Kai with an intelligence that made every instinct scream run.

  His Humanware threw warnings across his vision:

  > NEURAL SIGNATURE DETECTED

  > CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN

  > THREAT ASSESSMENT: EXTREME

  "Candidates." Thorne's voice came through overhead speakers, steady despite what they were seeing. "Meet Bahamut. First of the Sigfrid-class Dragon bioweapons. He's been waiting for you."

  Bahamut's head tilted fractionally. Studying them. Judging them. The reinforced glass separating the Observatory Deck from the Aviary felt like air.

  Kai felt the weight of that gaze calculating whether they were prey, threat, or something else entirely. He'd felt this before, standing on a Neo Jakarta pier at fourteen, watching a storm roll in off the ocean, knowing he should run but unable to look away from something that powerful and beautiful and alive.

  "Oh, boy." Alexandra breathed, fingers flying across her datapad. "Its neural activity is off the charts."

  "Isn't it beautiful?" Anya whispered, drawn toward the platform's edge without realizing it.

  "It's a weapon," Chase said. But his voice had an edge Kai recognized, the tone pilots got when they saw something they wanted to master. "How do we fly it?"

  "We'll deal with that later." Thorne's voice held grim amusement. "Your task now is to bond with it. Find Resonance. The Dragon has to accept you, and you have to accept what it is. Both sides choose, or the link fails."

  Kai watched Bahamut's eyes track across the group. The Dragon's attention lingered on Chase, then moved to Mikki, who actually growled back. Past Sanyog, whose cybernetic limbs probably registered as interesting. Paused on Anya, who stared with undisguised fascination.

  Then back to Kai.

  Their eyes met, and something shifted in his chest. I see you.

  Except this wasn't a human mind on the other end.

  "There are no correct ways to bond with a Dragon," Thorne continued. "The Aviary will remain open. You can attempt Resonance whenever you're ready. Take hours, days if you need them. But understand…" His voice hardened. "...failure is expected. Some of you will quit. And some of you may die. The Dragons don't accept everyone. And they don't forgive weakness."

  Silence. Just breathing and the weird pulse of those bioluminescent veins.

  Kai couldn't stand still. While the others processed, he moved to the window, tracking the Dragon's every movement. His hand went to the back of his neck. Stillness made him anxious. Always had.

  Back in Neo Jakarta, after his mom died, he'd spent six months on the speedbike circuit. Anything to keep moving, to outrun the quiet that felt like drowning. The Fleet had been the same, constant missions, constant movement, never stopping long enough to think about what he'd lost.

  "I'll go first," Chase said, already moving. "If anyone can bond with this thing…"

  Kai's hand shot out, caught Chase's arm. "Hold up. Let me scout first."

  Chase turned, flash of anger in his eyes. "You trying to steal my Dragon, Clutch?"

  "Trying to keep you breathing, Viper." Kai kept his voice easy, but his grip was solid. Like talking a friend out of a bad decision at a bar, calm but unmovable. "I go in, read the situation, report back. No point going in blind."

  For a moment, Chase looked ready to argue. Then Alexandra's voice cut through: "He's right. We need tactical intelligence. We need a scout."

  Chase's jaw worked. But he stepped back. "Fine. Scout. But Bahamut's mine."

  Kai didn't argue. Just turned back to the Dragon, which had watched the whole exchange with those unsettling golden eyes. Studying them like pieces on a board.

  He left the Observatory deck and entered the Aviary. The shift was immediate, air tasting wrong, temperature alien, mercury moat rippling with movements that had nothing to do with his footsteps. His training kicked in, but it was wrapped in instinct older than any military protocol. Reading the situation the way he'd learned to read the ocean back home—currents, undertows, where the danger waited.

  Bahamut's head lowered slightly, tracking him. Then Kai noticed something.

  “Hold on. There were more Dragons.” Bahamut wasn't alone.

  Above, a smaller Dragon twisted mid-flight, sleeker than Bahamut, colored in red-black-violet patterns that hurt to track. It roared, and the sound wasn't just noise, it was pressure, rattling bones, shaking dust from the ceiling. It shot past overhead, wings creating downdrafts that staggered everyone on the observation deck.

  "What about the red one?" Mikki asked through comms.

  "That's Orochi," Anya announced.

  Kai watched it bank and dive, movements rough and aggressive. "Raw energy. Showing off what it can do. It's testing us."

  "Movement-triggered aggression," Alexandra said. "It's hunting. Challenging us. It wants…"

  "A fight," Mikki finished, moving to the door. Her grin was absolutely unhinged. "Good. So do I."

  "I'm going with you," Brandon said.

  Kai watched them leave the deck and walk into the wild. He'd surfed with guys like Mikki back in Neo Jakarta, the ones who paddled out during storm warnings, grinning like maniacs. Some drowned. Some became legends. All of them were alive in ways that made normal people uncomfortable.

  In the shadows to their left, something moved. Kai caught glimpses, blue scales, eyes like chips of ice. "There's another one at your nine. Blue. Can't get a clear look. Elusive."

  "That should be Taniwha," Anya said.

  "I'll go with it," Sanyog said quietly, his voice carrying a strange glitch.

  No one replied. Kai filed that away, Sanyog's cybernetics and that glitch, something worth tracking later. He made a mental note to check on Ghost once this initial chaos settled.

  Bahamut roared, apparently impatient. The Dragon's head swiveled slowly, tracking each candidate. It looked at Chase for three seconds, cataloging, assessing. Moved to Sanyog walking away, spent less time there.

  "Bahamut's tracking all of us," Kai said quietly into comms. "Categorizing. Like it's deciding who's worth its attention."

  "Dominant predator behavior," Alexandra replied. "Establishing hierarchy before any contact. Identifying alpha individuals."

  Chase shifted his weight forward, and Bahamut's eyes snapped to the movement. The Dragon's head tilted fractionally.

  "It noticed you, Viper," Kai said.

  "Good." Chase's voice held that aggressive edge. "Let it notice."

  "Viper, wait…"

  "You scouted," Chase said. "My turn."

  He walked past Kai, splashing through the mercury moat without hesitation, and climbed onto Bahamut's platform. The Dragon's head swiveled, tracking this new approach.

  Chase stopped five meters from the Dragon's snout and met its eyes directly.

  "I'm Chase Sterling," he announced, voice carrying across the chamber. "If you're looking for the best pilot here…" He took another step forward. "...you're looking at him."

  Kai watched Bahamut's reaction, reading the subtle shifts. The Dragon's head tilted slightly, pupils contracting.

  Then Bahamut yawned.

  The gesture was unmistakable, jaw opening wide enough to swallow Chase whole, exposing rows of glowing teeth, then snapping shut like a gunshot. Not a threat display. Just boredom.

  "Oh, that's not good," Alexandra muttered.

  Chase's confidence wavered, Kai saw it in the slight tension in his shoulders, but he pushed forward anyway. "You want to see what I can do? Put me in the Cradle. Let me show you…"

  Bahamut turned away.

  The Dragon shifted its massive body, then launched itself back into the air, wings spreading. The downdraft nearly knocked Chase off his feet. For a moment, he just stood there, staring at the Dragon's back, hands clenched into fists.

  Chase stalked back across the moat, radiating wounded pride. As he passed Kai, his expression was pure humiliation masked as fury.

  "Hey, Viper," Kai called after him.

  Chase stopped, turned, expression dangerous.

  "For what it's worth…" Kai kept his voice light. "...getting rejected by a fifty-meter bioweapon in front of your entire squad? That's gonna make one hell of a story someday."

  "Shut up, Clutch."

  "I heard you. Just wanted you to know, rejection doesn't mean you're out. Just means Bahamut wasn't your match." Kai's voice softened. "Find the one that is."

  Chase studied him for a long moment. Then, grudgingly: "Yeah. Maybe."

  He walked away, and Kai couldn't tell if he'd helped or just pissed him off more.

  Probably both.

  Above them, Orochi roared, followed by laughter. Mikki's laughter, wild and delighted.

  Kai looked up to see her sprinting along a wall platform, Orochi diving after her with wings tucked for maximum speed. She ran like she was born for it, fast, fluid, fearless, and at the last second she dropped and rolled.

  Orochi pulled up, hovering, eyes locked on Mikki. Reading her.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "Mikki, what the hell?" Kai called.

  "It wanted to chase," she shouted back, grin impossibly wide. "So I gave it something to chase!"

  Orochi's jaws opened, not in a yawn but in what looked disturbingly like a smile. It roared again. Mikki ran again. The Dragon followed.

  They disappeared into the upper reaches, Mikki's laughter echoing off stone, Orochi's roars punctuating each turn.

  "That's either brilliant or suicidal," Alexandra said through comms.

  "Probably both." Kai watched them disappear. "Mikki's gonna be a legend or a cautionary tale, and honestly I'm not sure which I'm rooting for."

  "You could try neither?"

  "Where's the fun in that?"

  Brandon had returned. He had moved closer to Kai. "This is insane. We're supposed to just throw ourselves at these things and hope they don't kill us?"

  "We're supposed to find the right match," Kai said. He thought about his mom's gardens back on Cygni Prime, how she'd taught him that every plant needed different conditions. Too much water drowned some, saved others. "Different Dragons, different requirements. Bahamut wants something Chase couldn't give it. Orochi wants what Mikki's offering. We figure out what the others want."

  "What about that one?" Brandon pointed at a Dragon on a large pillar, perfectly motionless, black matte scales catching the bioluminescent light. "The black one."

  "Tiamat," Anya announced through comms.

  "Hasn't moved since we got here," Kai observed. "Sleek, minimal. It's scanning."

  "Tactical," Alexandra said, pulling up data. "Designed for precision and strategic coordination. I like this one."

  "Then let's give it something to analyze." Brandon started toward Tiamat's perch.

  Kai felt warning prickle up his spine. "Payback, wait…"

  But Brandon was already climbing the access ladder. The Dragon tracked his approach with eyes that held none of Bahamut's warmth or Orochi's wild energy. Just cold calculation.

  He reached the platform and stopped, clearly trying to figure out how to approach. He didn't have Chase's aggressive confidence or Mikki's manic energy.

  "Hey," Brandon said, voice shaking slightly. "Come here, you beast…!"

  Tiamat moved.

  Not a lunge, a measured, precise strike. One claw extended, not to kill but to test. Checking reaction time, combat instincts, ability to respond.

  Brandon dove backward, hit the platform hard, scrambled for his sidearm.

  "Don't shoot it!" Kai shouted.

  But Brandon's fear had taken over. He pulled the trigger.

  The shot went wide, but Tiamat's eyes flared. The Dragon had been testing. Now it had an answer: this human was hostile.

  Tiamat struck again, faster, and Brandon rolled, came up running, straight toward the platform's edge.

  "Stop!" Alexandra screamed through comms.

  But Brandon wasn't thinking, just running on pure panic, and when his boot hit the edge he tried to correct but overcorrected, arms windmilling…

  He fell.

  Twenty meters to the chamber floor.

  Kai was already moving, sprinting toward where Brandon would land, but he knew he wouldn't make it in time, knew the fall would…

  Bahamut caught him.

  The Dragon came from nowhere, moving with impossible speed, wings spreading, jaws closing around Brandon's torso, holding, not biting, and setting him down on the floor with careful precision.

  Then it returned to its platform like nothing had happened.

  Brandon lay on the floor, gasping.

  Kai reached him, dropped to one knee. "You good?"

  "That thing could've let me die." Brandon's voice was hoarse. "It didn't."

  "Yeah." Kai looked back across the Aviary at Bahamut, now settled back on its platform. Those gold eyes tracked them even from here. "I noticed."

  "Why?"

  Kai studied the Dragon, reading it the way he'd learned to read people, not through words but through action. What you did mattered more than what you said. "Don't know yet. But I'm gonna find out."

  He helped Brandon to his feet, one arm around his shoulders. "Come on. Let's get you back to observation."

  They made it to the Observatory deck in silence. Once inside, Brandon pulled away, moved toward the exit.

  "Payback," Kai called.

  Brandon stopped but didn't turn around.

  "Where you going?"

  "I can't do this." Brandon's voice cracked. "These things are too smart, too dangerous, I'm not…"

  "Hey." Kai crossed the distance in three strides, turned Brandon to face him, both hands on his shoulders. Firm but not aggressive. "Look at me."

  Brandon met his eyes reluctantly.

  "You're scared," Kai said. "That's not weakness. That's being smart. But you don't walk away from the crew because you're scared. You walk away when you're sure it's the wrong fight."

  "It is the wrong fight. For me." Brandon's voice was steadier now, decision made. "I'm solid in a Pegasus. I can fly formation, hit my targets, bring everyone home. But this…" He gestured at the Aviary below. "This isn't flying. This is becoming something else. And I don't want to be something else."

  Kai held his gaze for a long moment, reading him. Not fear talking. Truth.

  "Alright," Kai said finally. He pulled Brandon into a brief, hard hug, the kind you give someone before they ship out, knowing you might not see them again. "You ever need anything, and I mean anything, you call me. We're still crew. Just different assignments."

  "Thanks, Clutch." Brandon's voice was thick. "And Kai? Don't let this place change who you are."

  "Too late for that." Kai managed a crooked smile. "But I'll try to change into something good."

  He watched Brandon walk to the exit. Watched the door close.

  Then he stood there for a moment, feeling the loss like a missing tooth. The crew was smaller now. Five instead of six. The math bothered him more than it should.

  Through the glass, he could see Bahamut on its platform, those gold eyes tracking him even from here.

  One crew member down, Kai thought. Rest of you better make it.

  The stillness was getting to him. He needed to move, to do something besides stand here and watch people fail. His body demanded action, purpose, momentum.

  "Clutch, you're making me nervous," Alexandra said from her terminal.

  "Yeah, well." He didn't stop moving. "Standing around while people throw themselves at Dragons is making me nervous. One of us had to move."

  He headed back toward the Observatory Deck. Time to check on his crew.

  Above them, Mikki's laughter cut off abruptly.

  Kai's head snapped up, searching the shadows. He couldn't see them, but he could hear movement, fast, violent, the sound of impacts.

  "Oni?" he called in comms.

  No response.

  "Clutch," Alexandra said when he entered the Deck. Chase was sitting in a corner, eyes closed. "Anya's not here. I think she went into the Aviary."

  "I didn’t know she could join the hunt. But good for her." Kai said. "Pick your target, Poison."

  "Sounds like you've made a choice."

  He hadn't. But suddenly, he knew. Like catching a wave, you didn't think about it, you just knew when the moment was right.

  He'd seen enough. Sitting still wasn't helping anyone. Time to ride.

  "I'm going for the big shiny one," he said.

  Chase stood up fast. "Bahamut is mine."

  "It rejected you," Kai said.

  "It rejected my first approach. I can adapt. I can…"

  "You can't." Kai was already walking toward the Aviary. Certain. The way his dad used to walk when a decision was made and argument was pointless. "Because you still think you need to win. To prove you're the best. To master it. And Bahamut doesn't want to be mastered."

  "Then what does it want?"

  Kai paused at the door, looked back. "Someone real. Not a performance."

  Chase's expression went through several emotions, anger, frustration, and underneath it all, something that looked like fear. "You think you're better than me."

  "Nah, man." Kai's voice was easy, almost gentle. "I just know I'm different than you. And maybe that difference is what it needs."

  He walked out before Chase could respond.

  On the way to the platform, Kai found Sanyog, standing in shadows twenty meters from Taniwha. Neither had moved in forty minutes. The Dragon's blue scales caught the bioluminescent light, creating patterns that seemed to shift when you looked directly at them.

  "Ghost," Kai said quietly, approaching from the side so he didn't startle him. "How's it going?"

  "Uncertain." Sanyog's voice had that glitch again, two voices overlapping for just a syllable. His cybernetic hand was opening and closing in patterns that didn't match any command he was giving. "The Dragon sees me differently than it sees others."

  "How so?"

  "It looks at the parts that are missing." Sanyog's organic hand touched his cybernetic shoulder. "Like it's trying to decide if I'm whole enough to bond with."

  Kai studied Taniwha. The Dragon hadn't moved, but its eyes tracked them both. Waiting.

  "You know what I think?" Kai said. "I think it's not looking at what's missing. It's looking at what you built to replace it. That takes strength. Maybe that's what it wants to see, if you're strong enough to keep building."

  Sanyog was quiet for a moment. "Perhaps."

  "Take your time," Kai said, squeezing Sanyog's organic shoulder. "But know this, whatever you decide, you're crew. You're not doing this alone."

  He left Sanyog there, still circling his Dragon, but standing a little straighter.

  The Aviary felt different this time.

  The air still tasted wrong, the temperature still cycled in uncomfortable waves, but Kai's hindbrain had stopped screaming. Or maybe he'd just learned to ignore it. Like paddling out in rough surf, the ocean didn't care if you were scared. You either rode it or went under.

  Bahamut was back on its central platform, settled into a resting coil that somehow made the Dragon look both relaxed and ready to strike. Those gold eyes tracked Kai's approach, patient and predatory, like the Dragon had known he'd come back.

  Kai walked straight through the mercury moat. It crawled up his legs with disturbing warmth, but he ignored it. He climbed onto the platform, boots ringing against metal.

  He didn't stop five meters away like Chase had. Didn't circle cautiously.

  He walked right up to the Dragon's massive head, then turned and sat down on the cold platform, not just sitting, but moving with the fluid ease of someone used to trusting their body in dangerous situations. Like dropping into a wave, or leaning into a corner on a speedbike at 200 kph. Committed. No hesitation.

  He'd learned young: momentum kept you alive. Stillness got you killed.

  He sat with his back to those golden eyes, legs crossed, looking out at the chaotic Aviary like he was sitting on his favorite pier back home, watching the speedbike races blur past.

  For a long moment, nothing happened.

  Kai could feel the Dragon's presence behind him, heat radiating from its scales, the sound of its breathing like a reactor's pulse. Every instinct screamed that sitting with his back to a predator was suicide.

  But he was tired of listening to fear. Tired of the performance.

  Even sitting, his body wasn't completely still. One hand tapped a rhythm against his knee, old habit from the bikes, from the cockpit, from every moment when his mind worked faster than his body could move.

  He let out a slow breath, shoulders relaxing.

  "That was decent of you," Kai said, voice calm, conversational. Not turning around. "With Payback. You could've let him fall. Would've been cleaner. But you didn't."

  He gestured toward where Mikki and Orochi flashed across a high gallery, the Dragon's wings tucked tight as it pursued her through impossible angles.

  "You fished him out," Kai continued. "Good call. He was terrified, but he didn't deserve to die for being scared."

  Behind him, the Dragon shifted, scales sliding over scales with a sound like wind chimes made of knives. But Bahamut just adjusted. Listening, maybe. Or deciding whether to bite his head off.

  Kai's lips quirked. "Look at this place. Chase is over there having an existential crisis. Mikki's making Orochi work for it, I respect that. Sanyog and Taniwha are having a staring contest that might last until the heat death of the universe."

  He gestured vaguely at the chaos. "It’s the greatest show in the Galaxy. You could charge admission." A dry laugh. "Hell, I'd buy popcorn."

  The smile faded. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, gaze distant.

  "Me? I'm tired of trying." His voice went quieter. "I have a friend. Riya. Flew like she was born in vacuum. We'd sit in the cockpit after drills, couple beers, engine hum putting us to sleep. Wouldn't say a word for an hour. Didn't have to."

  His throat tightened. "Haven't felt that kind of quiet in a while. It's the noise I can't stand now. Everyone performing. All this proving."

  He finally turned his head, just enough to see the glow of Bahamut's scales in his peripheral vision. Didn't look up at the eyes yet.

  "I think you get it," he said. "The quiet. The weight of being the one who decides who's worth saving and who isn't."

  He pushed himself to his feet, movements easy but deliberate. Like standing up from the table when a conversation was done and it was time to act. Committed physicality, the way he'd spent his life learning to move with pressure instead of against it.

  He turned fully to face the Dragon.

  Bahamut's pupils contracted, focusing with surgical precision. Up close, Kai could see the layers in those eyes, gold irises surrounding pupils that dilated and contracted independent of light, reading him through senses he couldn't name.

  "Look," Kai said, meeting that inhuman gaze. "I'm not here to be your boss. Or your tool. Hell, 'friend' might be the wrong word for whatever you are."

  He took a step forward. Then another. Until he stood within the arc of the Dragon's jaws, close enough that one snap would end him. Like standing under a breaking wave, you either trusted the timing or you died.

  His voice dropped to something raw, stripped of strategy. "But I'm done performing. So." He raised his right hand, palm open and empty, fingers relaxed. "I'm just here. If you want to be."

  Just the truth.

  Kai held the pose. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe. The only sound was the distant shriek of Orochi and the pulse of the bioluminescent walls.

  Then Bahamut's head lowered.

  The movement was slower than gravity, impossibly smooth. Hot breath washed over Kai, smelling of ozone and metal, like the air before a lightning strike. Its snout, scaled in plates that shifted white-to-silver in the light, came to rest not against his palm, but against the center of his chest, just over his heart.

  The contact was electric.

  Kai's Humanware exploded:

  > NEURAL CONTACT DETECTED

  > DESIGNATION: Clutch | BAHAMUT UNIT

  > NEW STATUS: RESONANCE BOND

  But beneath the digital noise was something else entirely.

  In his mind, not in words but in a wave of pure sensation, the chill of solitude, the vast architecture of patience, the fierce protective warmth of a sovereign's regard, came the answer.

  Yes.

  The Dragon was in his head now, and he was in the Dragon's.

  He felt the hunger, not for food but for sensation, for movement, for the exhilaration of flight through vacuum and the savage joy of the hunt. He felt the frustration of being caged, of having this incredible body built for crossing light-years and being confined to a chamber carved from stone. He felt the loneliness, the awareness of being singular, unique, without peers or pack.

  And underneath it all: curiosity. About him, about his thoughts, about what it meant to be human and small and fragile but still alive in completely different ways.

  And Bahamut could feel him now. His bone-deep need for connection. His fear of being alone. His exhaustion with performance. The quiet he'd found with Riya and lost and thought he'd never find again.

  The Dragon understood.

  Not with sympathy, Dragons didn't do sympathy. But with recognition. It was alone too. Unique and powerful and trapped in solitude just like Kai was trapped in his need for others.

  They were opposites that made something complete.

  Kai's knees buckled.

  He didn't fall, Bahamut's head shifted instantly, supporting his weight, but he felt it cascading through him: the Dragon's presence in his mind, vast and patient and utterly there. A consciousness that wasn't his own but was becoming part of him anyway.

  And for the first time in a long time, the noise stopped.

  The constant mental chatter, the need to read everyone, the exhausting work of holding the crew together, all of it went quiet.

  Peaceful.

  Like sitting on the pier back home, feet in the water, nothing but the sound of waves and speedbikes in the distance and knowing you were exactly where you needed to be.

  More than a crew. A pack.

  "Yeah," Kai breathed, voice hoarse. "Yeah, we are."

  He stood there, one hand pressed against Bahamut's snout, the other braced against the Dragon's head for balance, and felt something wet on his face. Tears he hadn't known were building.

  He wasn't alone anymore.

  Neither was Bahamut.

  They were something new now. Something neither had been before.

  Bahamut's presence rippled through his mind, carrying the sensation of wings catching solar wind, of acceleration that would crush a human body, of hunting through the black between stars.

  "Soon," Kai agreed. Soon we will fly. Like promising a friend you'd meet them at dawn for the first swell of the season.

  He carefully pulled his hand back. The connection didn't break, it had already gone too deep for simple contact to sever, but the intensity lessened, became manageable.

  His legs were steadier now. The world felt sharper, colors more vivid, sounds clearer. He could hear the hum of bioluminescent strips, the distant echo of Mikki's pursuit, the quiet whir of monitoring equipment.

  And beneath it all, constant and steady: Bahamut's presence. Waiting. Patient. There.

  Kai turned and looked out at the Aviary. From this height, he could see the whole chamber, platforms where other Dragons waited, mercury moats surrounding each one, candidates still attempting bonds or watching from observation.

  Rest of you better make it, he thought.