At the gates, I did not raise the box above my head.
I took it straight to Mira.
Before her lay a wounded low-class beast with no core, no evolutions and only one wing. Her lifespan had returned to what was normal for her species.
They kept one side of the enclosure open. Whenever Styx tried to leave, they turned off the light. The procedures took five times longer, but no one held her with a seal.
On the first day, she would not let Mira touch her damaged wing. Mira placed the instruments beside the open enclosure and stepped away. An hour later, Styx crawled over to the anaesthetic crystal herself.
Arden came on the second day. He saw her proboscis from the doorway and froze. The fingers of his right hand began to tremble.
"I'm not ready to be in the same room with her," he said.
Styx hid behind the wall of the enclosure.
Arden left. No one called it cowardice. A month later, he came back and sat against the far wall. Another week after that, he allowed the door to be closed, but asked for the window to remain open.
On the third morning, she bit my finger. The System did not appear. Styx simply took blood.
The city learnt of her return a week later and demanded to see its defender. When the crowd frightened Styx with shouts of gratitude, the Council introduced a rule: being saved gave no one a claim over the saviour.
The rules continued to change. Silence was no longer treated as consent. Observers gained the right to stop a contract if a person concealed the exit or used hunger as leverage. Leon opened a prosthetics workshop for beasts and made Styx an artificial wing. The little dragon tested the fitting first and broke two tables.
Styx threw off the first wing within a minute. Leon wanted to tighten the strap, but the little dragon butted him in the knee. They made the second model heavier and left it beside the enclosure. Styx put it on only at night, when the workshop was empty.
The egg from the nest hatched after three weeks. The little mosquito did not obey Styx and flew out of the window twice. The third time, it returned to the healing light on its own. It was entered in the archive with no owner and no obligation to join a swarm.
Lily compiled the city archive. Arden insisted that it record how he had felt everything while the parasite controlled him. Taya changed 'Rex's supporters' to 'residents saving their homes'. Leon removed the line about the dragon's sacrifice: the beast had never explained its reasons.
The story was becoming less convenient and more truthful.
Styx learnt to fly. At first she fell into a cup, then under a cupboard. She avoided my hand.
I stopped holding out my palm after every attempt.
We learnt to share a room without constantly reaffirming the bond.
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