Brando clenched his fists, feeling his Cold Veins protest beneath his skin. Every attempt to control the nanospores only seemed to make things worse. The blue currents intensified around him, reacting to his frustration.

  "You don't have much time," AGATHA warned him. "The nanospores are becoming more aggressive."

  She was right. The tingling on his skin had transformed into something more intense, almost painful. It felt like millions of tiny needles were trying to penetrate his flesh.

  Brando tried to visualize ice as he'd learned, forcing the cold through his Cold Veins. The result was immediate and terrible. Searing pain shot through his arms. The nanospores reacted violently, creating chaotic vortices around him.

  "Don't force them," AGATHA said. "They'll kill you if you try to dominate them."

  "I don't... understand," he gasped. "How can I use something I can't control?"

  "That's the mistake. You don't control them. You harmonize with them."

  Brando closed his eyes, ignoring the pain. He remembered the processions in Rione Sanità. How as a child he'd watch the crowd move through narrow alleys, a human mass that seemed to have a life of its own. You couldn't oppose that tide of people; you had to learn to move with it and become part of the flow.

  He breathed deeply and stopped resisting. He imagined the nanospores as that crowd, letting them flow through him instead of trying to block them.

  The chaos of the nanospores slowly began to calm. Brando could still feel their movement, but it was no longer frantic. It had become rhythmic, almost hypnotic.

  "You're beginning to understand," AGATHA said. "The Cold Veins aren't just an organ. They're a bridge."

  Brando closed his eyes, letting that intuition guide him. He stopped visualizing the Cold Veins as tubes of ice to control. Instead, he felt them as a natural extension of himself, like new nerves that had developed in his body.

  The pain changed. They were no longer needles piercing his flesh, but an electric current sliding under his skin like living mercury. The nanospores weren't fighting anymore but responding.

  "Holy shit," he murmured, opening his eyes.

  The transformation started in his hands. First, a faint violet glow pulsed as if his veins had been filled with liquid neon. Then the color intensified, transforming the network of Cold Veins into a luminous web branching from his fingers to his wrists.

  "This... is this supposed to happen?" Brando asked, observing his hands with a mixture of fascination and concern.

  "No," AGATHA's voice betrayed a note of alarm. "The Cold Veins shouldn't be visible."

  "What do you mean they shouldn't be visible? What the fuck does that mean?"

  "The process should remain internal," AGATHA explained. "The Cold Veins are designed to contain energy, not manifest it visually. That could only happen if a Bearer were using their Cold Veins at maximum capacity, but you aren't yet capable of releasing such energy. What you're experiencing is anomalous."

  "How anomalous?"

  "In seventy years of records, it has never happened."

  But the violet glow was already climbing up his arms like an infection of light, following the natural path of his veins. Each heartbeat pushed the color further, creating increasingly complex patterns. In a few seconds, his entire body was crossed by that luminous web that pulsed as if it had a life of its own.

  The puppy approached, sniffing the air with curiosity. Its three eyes followed the movement of the luminous veins not with fear, but with a sort of recognition. It curled up next to Brando, as if that were the most natural place to be.

  "The transformation is completely outside parameters," AGATHA continued. "Your Cold Veins are absorbing the nanospores at a rate never recorded before. The process should be gradual, but instead..."

  Brando felt every cell in his body vibrate. The world around him had acquired an off-scale sharpness, and the currents of nanospores in the air now formed patterns that his brain was beginning to recognize.

  "Is it... dangerous?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

  "There's nothing normal about what's happening," AGATHA said. "Your Cold Veins aren't accepting the nanospores. They're devouring them."

  "What the fuck does that mean?" The violet network under Brando's skin pulsed faster and faster.

  "The Cold Veins aren't a simple organ. They're locks," AGATHA's voice lowered. "Designed to protect the body and mind from what's on the other side."

  "The other side of what?"

  "Of what the nanospores are trying to reac—"

  AGATHA stopped abruptly.

  The pain in Brando's veins changed. It was no longer burning, but something scratching from the inside. The nanospores formed increasingly tight spirals around him, as if they'd been called by something.

  The puppy stood up sharply, its third eye completely wide open.

  "Impossible," AGATHA murmured. "It's as if the nanospores have found a crack. A fissure in something that had been sealed. You need to slow down, your Cold Veins—"

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  But it was too late. Something inside Brando broke. Like a chain snapping. Like a seal shattering.

  The memory hit him like a punch to the stomach: Michele's eyes, wide open in what was no longer terror, but recognition of something he shouldn't have seen.

  "No," Brando whispered. "Not now."

  The veins under Brando's skin pulsed with sudden ferocity, as if they were searching for something. As if they had found a crack in a wall he didn't know he had built.

  "Anomaly detected," AGATHA's voice was distant now. "The nanospores are converging."

  The air in the chamber became dense, almost solid. The puppy stood up sharply, all three eyes fixed on a point above Brando's shoulder. It didn't bark, didn't growl. It was completely still, as if time itself had stopped.

  That's when he felt it.

  It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a smell. It was as if something vast had suddenly become aware of him.

  "The nanospores are forming impossible configurations, this isn't—"

  But before the AI could finish its sentence, the shadow moved. It rose from the floor like oil rising toward the sky, a column of liquid darkness three meters tall and as wide as a man. It twisted and took shape, a cyclopean torso emerging from the mass, broad shoulders and powerful arms. The head appeared last: a perfect, empty oval.

  And then an eye opened on the head. The same exact red eye that Brando had seen on the Artifact. Fixed on him with an intensity that seemed to pierce his soul.

  "S?i?l?e?n?c?e?,? ?m?a?c?h?i?n?e?,"

  The creature thundered with a voice that was a non-voice resonating directly in Brando's mind.

  "Y?o?u?r? ?p?u?r?p?o?s?e? ?i?s? ?f?i?n?i?s?h?e?d?."

  With an almost listless gesture of its enormous hand, the entity swept AGATHA away. Her systems shut down one after another. In a few moments, silence fell in the chamber, broken only by the low hum of the crazed nanospores.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Brando shouted, his voice broken with terror. "What are you? What do you want from me?"

  "I? ?h?a?v?e? ?f?o?u?n?d? ?y?o?u?,"

  The creature said, now addressing Brando.

  "K?a?r?a?n?t?i?.? ?Y?o?u? ?c?a?n? ?n?o? ?l?o?n?g?e?r? ?c?o?n?t?a?i?n? ?m?e?."

  "Karanti? What the fuck are you talking about?" Brando backed away, raising his hands in a pathetic semblance of defense. "My name is Brando, damn it! Brando!"

  But the creature ignored him. The cold came before everything else. Not the cold of the Cold Veins, but something more exotic. The kind of cold that existed before the universe knew what warmth was. It crept into Brando's bones, a frost that threatened to freeze the marrow itself.

  The puppy emitted a sound that had nothing canine about it. A terrified, grotesque, desperate sound. It huddled against the floor, all three eyes wide open in a mixture of terror and ancestral recognition.

  "No, no, no," Brando curled up into himself, hands pressed to his ears in a vain attempt to block out the creature's voice. "This isn't real. It can't be real."

  The nanospores swirled as if mad, forming spirals that hurt the eyes to look at. The violet network under Brando's skin pulsed once, hard, like a response to a call he didn't know he'd heard. The Cold Veins glowed with an intense violet, pulsing with a new force. With a new awareness.

  "T?h?e? ?s?e?a?l? ?w?e?a?k?e?n?s?,"

  The creature whispered with a voice of frozen mercury in Brando's mind.

  "S?o?o?n? ?I? ?w?i?l?l? ?b?e? ?f?r?e?e?.? ?A?n?d? ?y?o?u?r? ?d?e?s?t?i?n?y? ?w?i?l?l? ?b?e? ?f?u?l?f?i?l?l?e?d?"

  "What seal are you talking about?" Brando shouted, confused and desperate. "I don't know you! I don't even know what you are!"

  The shadow expanded, filling the chamber with a presence that made infinity seem too small. For an instant, Brando saw—or thought he saw—shapes writhing in the darkness. Faces, tentacles, geometries that shouldn't exist in this universe. A kaleidoscope of unspeakable horrors that threatened to collapse his sanity.

  "L?o?o?k?,"

  The creature commanded.

  "L?o?o?k? ?a?t? ?t?h?e? ?t?r?u?e? ?f?a?c?e? ?o?f? ?r?e?a?l?i?t?y?."

  And Brando looked. He couldn't help it. The red eye held him pinned, forcing him to witness horrors that no mortal mind should contemplate. He saw worlds consumed by unnatural flames, saw beings writhing in eternal agony, saw the very fabric of space-time torn apart under the assault of inconceivable forces.

  "Enough!" Brando screamed. "Enough, please! I don't want to see any more!"

  "T?h?i?s? ?i?s? ?t?h?e? ?f?a?t?e? ?o?f? ?a?l?l? ?w?o?r?l?d?s?,"

  The creature said , unmoved by his agony.

  "T????h????i???s????? ????i????s???? ???w????h???a???t??? ???w???a?????i???t?????s????? ?????b?????e???y???o????n????d???? ?????t???h????e??? ????v?????e????i????l?????.???? ????A?????n????d????? ?????y???o???u?????,???? ???K????a???r???a???n???t????i????,???? ?????w????i???l???l???? ???b????e????? ????m????y???? ???h????e?????r????a???l????d????.???"

  "Why do you keep calling me Karanti?" Brando sobbed. "What does it mean? What do you want from me?"

  But the creature didn't answer. The Cold Veins burned like acid in Brando's veins. He could feel them pulsing in harmony with the creature's evil energy, as if they were responding to a primordial call. The violet network on his skin glowed with a feverish light, almost on the verge of tearing from his own body.

  "Y?e?s?,"

  The creature whispered , sensing his agony.

  "F?i?g?h?t?.? ?R?e?s?i?s?t?.? ?I?t? ?m?a?k?e?s? ?i?t? ?a?l?l? ?t?h?e? ?s?w?e?e?t?e?r? ?w?h?e?n? ?y?o?u? ?f?i?n?a?l?l?y? ?b?r?e?a?k?.?"

  The puppy emitted another heart-wrenching sound. Its third eye glowed with a purplish light, almost in response to the presence. The nanospores crystallized in the air, forming structures that resembled fractals without any meaning. The cold was so intense now that Brando's breath condensed into clouds of frozen vapor. Each inhalation was a torment, each exhalation a struggle.

  "S?o?o?n?,"

  The creature promised.

  "V??????????e???????r?????y???????? ???????s???????o??????o?????n??????.????????? ??????T????????h???????e?????????? ??????s???????e???????a??????l??????s???????? ?????w????i???l?????l???? ???f????a?????????l????????l??????????? ????a???????n?????????d????????? ?????I???????? ???????w?????i??????l????l?????? ???????b?????????e??? ????????f???????r???????e???????e????????.???????? ???????A???????????n??????d???????? ???????y????????o?????u???????,?????? ????????K???????a????????r??????????a??????????n??????t?????i???????,???????? ???????w????????i???????l????????l??????? ???????h??????????a??????v??????e?????? ???????t????h?????e?????? ???????h??????o????n??????o?????r?????? ??????????o????????f??????????? ?????????b?????e???????i?????????n???g?????????? ???????p??????r???????e??????s???????e???????n?????????t????."

  "Please," Brando whispered, his voice reduced to a feeble moan. "Please, just tell me why. Why me? Why do you call me Karanti?"

  But once again, his questions remained unanswered. With one last, cruel smirk, the shadow collapsed in on itself. The air became breathable again. The nanospores resumed their normal movement. But something had changed irrevocably. A boundary had been crossed and a line passed over.

  Brando looked at his trembling hands. The Cold Veins pulsed with a new force, a beat that seemed in tune with the dark whispers at the edges of his mind. The violet network on his skin glowed with an unnatural, almost hypnotic light.

  "[Violet One] Stage reached," AGATHA announced, who seemed to have returned as if nothing had happened. "Vital parameters stabilized. Cognitive abilities enhanced. Nanospore control at 75%."

  Brando blinked, trying to make sense of the AI's words. Violet One? Nanospore control? What the hell was she talking about?

  Almost by instinct, he raised a hand. With a thought, Brando formed a brilliant sphere of violet-colored ice. It wasn't perfect, but he had created it.

  "But..." he murmured, eyes wide with amazement and terror.

  He closed his fist and the sphere exploded into a shower of ice crystals that covered the floor. The puppy whimpered and backed away.

  "Who are you, Karanti?" he murmured, raising his gaze to the ceiling, still in a state of great confusion. "What are you? What am I?"