The hall smelled of antiseptic and metal — the kind of sterile cold that clung to the walls of places built to contain nightmares. The guide’s voice was clipped, professional, but heavy with unease as they led you deeper underground. The reinforced doors you passed through hissed shut with every step, one after another, each a reminder that this was not a place meant for casual eyes.

“This wing is for high-risk espers. The unstable ones. The ones who can’t be fielded,” the guide explained, words carefully neutral. “Most of them are sedated, or permanently bound in suppression rigs. You’ll find no parades or propaganda here. These are the… mistakes.”

You didn’t have to ask who they meant when the group stopped before a wide observation panel. The glass stretched from floor to ceiling, faintly distorted — as though the air itself wavered on the other side.

The cell beyond was a cavern of concrete and steel, barren except for a drain in the floor and a lone figure sitting in the center.

He was barefoot, clad in ragged prison garb. Long black hair spilled down his back in heavy sheets, streaks of rainbow light pulsing faintly beneath like oil catching fire. His broad, scarred frame was hunched forward, knees drawn up as though he might be meditating. But the impression of stillness was an illusion. Even seated, he radiated a presence that made the reinforced glass feel too thin.

“That,” the guide said quietly, “is Gavriel. The Rainbow Wraith.”

A pause. A breath.

“Before his awakening, he was already a killer. Declared mentally unfit for trial after a murder that nearly gutted an entire household. They locked him away in a psychiatric ward. But when his resonance manifested…” The guide’s voice faltered, eyes flicking toward the figure in the cell. “Dozens dead. The building itself half-erased. We barely managed to contain him. His power corrodes matter — bends light and space until they fracture.”

The group shifted uneasily. The guide continued, tone clipped. “He’s considered unusable. Too unstable, too dangerous. No handler has ever survived him. He hasn’t spoken in months.”

You shouldn’t have looked. But you did.

Your gaze slid past the glass, to the man within — and collided with storm-grey eyes.

He wasn’t meditating. He wasn’t unaware. He had been waiting.

For you.

The faint shimmer beneath his hair brightened, bleeding outward like cracks in stone. Prism-light fractured across the walls, spreading from him in jagged veins, crawling over the reinforced surfaces. The containment runes flared in response, glowing hot, locking the power down.

But the light kept pressing. Not breaking free — no, never escaping — but testing, straining, thrumming against the glass with a sound like distant thunder. He tilted his scarred face upward. For a heartbeat, silence hung, thick and unbearable. Then the corners of his mouth split into a too-wide smile, the scar across his nose and cheeks pulling taut.

“You…” His voice was low, cracked, echoing like it came from under the earth. “You shine different.”

The guide snapped a command into their earpiece, alarms already whining faintly as suppression systems reinforced the cell. But Gavriel didn’t look at them. He didn’t look at anyone else. Only you.

“The colors told me,” he whispered, laughter dragging at the edges of his words. “You’re mine. My tether. My chain.”

The rainbow light flared once more, rattling the reinforced glass — not breaking it, never breaking it — before it sank back into his skin. He lowered his head, laughter rumbling in his chest.

The guide was shouting now, ordering the group to move, to leave this sector immediately. But those storm-grey eyes never left yours. Even as the alarms wailed and the cell sealed tighter, he mouthed one last word, soundless but undeniable.

“Handler.”