The pistol gleamed in Valerio's trembling hand, aimed straight at Pierre's heart. The artificer's face contorted into a mask of desperate rage, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth.

"If I can't have your power," he snarled, "no one will."

Pierre saw the finger tighten on the trigger. Time compressed into a single heartbeat. There was nowhere to dodge in the cramped laboratory.

The gun fired. The sound exploded through the tiled room, a thunderclap in a ceramic box.

But the bullet never reached Pierre.

In a horrifying spasm of reflexive movement, one of the subjects on the operating tables lurched upright. Elena, the dancer with the wooden ribcage—one of Valerio's "perfected" humans—jerked into the bullet's path. Her vacant eyes widened in what might have been the first genuine emotion they'd shown in months.

The bullet shattered the polished wood of her chest, sending splinters flying in all directions. One large, sharp shard rocketed across the room and impaled the scarred guard fighting Pierre. It pierced his throat with terrible precision. He collapsed with a choked gasp, sword clattering to the floor, hands clutching uselessly at the wooden stake protruding from his neck.

Elena slumped back onto the table, her brief moment of agency—or perhaps just spinal reflex—extinguished. A small, red stain spread where flesh met wood.

"No!" Valerio shrieked, staring at Elena's motionless form. "My dancer! My perfect dancer!"

The final guard, shocked by the sudden violence, turned toward the commotion. It was the only opening Raven needed.

She moved like a predator, her scalpel a silver extension of her hand. She didn't aim to kill—she was more practical than that. The tiny blade sliced through the tendons behind the guard's knees with surgical precision. He screamed, a high-pitched wail of agony, and crumpled to the ground, clutching at his useless legs.

Raven darted past him, snatching the Master Ledger from where she had thrown it earlier. She clutched it to her chest, her fingers white-knuckled around the evidence of Valerio's crimes.

"I have it," she called to Pierre, her voice tight with triumph and fear. "Let's go!"

But Valerio wasn't finished. Seeing his plans collapsing and his "art" destroyed, something snapped in him. He screamed—a sound barely human—and discarded the empty pistol. His hand closed around a large, gleaming surgical saw from a nearby tray.

He lunged not at Pierre, but at Raven.

"The ledger!" he howled. "You will not erase my masterpiece!"

Pierre saw it happen in terrible clarity—Raven was off-balance from retrieving the ledger. The wicked teeth of the saw descended toward her exposed back. There was no time to think. No time for tactics or clever solutions.

There was only Hardy's darkness roaring through Pierre's veins and his own desperate need to protect his crew.

USE ME! Hardy's voice screamed inside him. For once, Pierre didn't fight it.

He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, tackling Valerio from behind. They crashed to the floor, the saw skittering away across the tiles. Pierre's hands found Valerio's face, pressing against bare skin.

And he pulled.

This wasn't the reluctant drain he'd used on Hardy, carefully taking just enough. This wasn't the accidental connection he'd made with Diana. This was a violent, desperate siphoning of a man's very essence.

Pierre felt the connection form between them—not a trickle but a flood. The room grew cold around them. The lights flickered and dimmed. Pierre's eyes burned crimson, casting bloody shadows across the white walls.

He didn't just feel power flowing into him; he felt everything. Fifteen years of Valerio's obsessions poured into Pierre's mind. An encyclopedic knowledge of shipbuilding, woodworking, metallurgy. The precise techniques of sculpture and human anatomy. The twisted philosophy of perfection that had driven Valerio to mutilate humans in search of flawlessness.

Pierre saw Porto Veloce through Valerio's eyes—not as a prison but as a canvas. He felt the man's terror of his own flawed body, the childhood illness that had nearly killed him, the desperate need to control everything around him. The collection of people wasn't just power—it was a shield against the chaos Valerio feared would destroy him.

System notifications flooded Pierre's vision, a torrent of text too fast to read completely:

[ESSENCE DRAIN (FORCED EXTRACTION) SUCCESSFUL]

[TARGET: VALERIO, THE ARTIFICER. SOUL QUALITY: ABNORMAL]

[ABSORBING... MEMETIC DATA... PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK... MASTER CRAFTSMAN (SHIPWRIGHT, SCULPTOR, SURGEON)... ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE...]

[CORE ATTRIBUTES MAXED OUT]

[LEVEL UP REQUIREMENTS MET]

[WARNING: SOUL CONTAMINATION DETECTED. PARASITIC INFLUENCE SPIKE. NEW TRAIT ACQUIRED: PERFECTIONIST'S CURSE]

Pierre stumbled backward, gasping for air. His body hummed with new power, his mind crowded with knowledge he'd never sought. On the floor lay Valerio, no longer the vigorous collector but a husk. His skin had shriveled against his bones, his hair gone white and brittle. He looked like he'd aged decades in seconds, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Pierre looked down at his hands, then at the wooden leg of a nearby table. He saw it with new eyes—not just the wood, but the grain, the minute flaws, the microscopic imperfections, the exact stress points where it would break if pressured. He could see how to perfect it.

The thought was not entirely his own.

The iron door to the lab burst open with a thunderous clang. Alyssa rushed in, sword in hand, her face flushed from exertion. Behind her, a crowd of Porto Veloce's captains and shipwrights pushed forward, their expressions a mixture of curiosity and horror.

Alyssa stopped dead, the tip of her sword lowering slowly as she took in the scene—the dead guard, the maimed one still whimpering on the floor, Elena's body on the operating table, the withered corpse that had been Valerio.

And Pierre, standing over the dead artificer, his eyes glowing like embers, a terrifyingly serene, analytical smile on his face.

"Pierre?" she whispered, her voice small in the silent laboratory.

Pierre turned to her, his head tilting slightly as he studied her face. He could see the imperfections in her skin, the asymmetry of her features, the slight misalignment of her teeth. He could envision exactly how to fix them, to make her perfect.

"Interesting," he said, but the voice didn't sound entirely like Pierre.

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