The guest quarters they'd been assigned were a mockery—silk prison cells with barred windows overlooking a courtyard where armed guards pretended to patrol casually. Alex sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands. They looked the same as they had twelve hours ago in his dorm room, but something fundamental had shifted beneath his skin.
"Brother?" Vlad's voice came from the connecting door between their chambers. "You awake?"
"Yeah." Alex didn't look up. "Can't sleep either?"
Vlad entered without invitation, moving with a restless energy that hadn't been there back home. "Something's wrong with me. Or... right with me? I can't tell." He flexed his fingers, and Alex caught a glimpse of something dark beneath his brother's nails—not dirt, but something that seemed to absorb light.
"Show me."
Vlad picked up a letter opener from the writing desk and, without hesitation, dragged it across his palm. Blood welled up, bright red against his skin, but instead of pain creasing his features, Vlad's eyes went wide with something like hunger.
"Jesus, Vlad—"
"It doesn't hurt." Vlad's voice was barely a whisper. "It should hurt, but instead I feel... more. Stronger. Like the pain is feeding something inside me." He looked at his brother with eyes that held too much darkness for an eighteen-year-old. "What's happening to us?"
Alex took the letter opener and examined the cut. It was already beginning to close, the bleeding stopped. "Accelerated healing. And if I had to guess, you're developing some kind of pain-to-power conversion ability." His voice was clinical, but his hands shook slightly as he set down the blade. "They weren't lying about the summoning awakening something."
"You sound like you're diagnosing a machine malfunction."
"Maybe I am." Alex met his brother's gaze. "We need to figure out what we're becoming before anyone else does. Information is power here, and right now, we're operating blind."
A soft knock interrupted them. "Alex? Vlad? It's Nyt."
Alex opened the door to find the silver-haired woman standing in the hallway, her dress now replaced with simple traveling clothes someone had provided. But it was her eyes that caught his attention—they seemed to shimmer with an inner light that definitely hadn't been there during the summoning.
"I can hear them," she said without preamble. "The magic users in this castle. Their spells are like... whispers in my head. And I think I'm starting to understand what they're saying."
"Come in." Alex stepped aside, his mind already racing. "Close the door."
Nyt entered, wrapping her arms around herself. "I've been walking the halls for hours. The guards don't stop me—I think they can't quite focus on me properly when I don't want them to." She looked between the brothers. "Something's happening to us, isn't it? Something more than just being kidnapped."
"We're changing," Alex said simply. "The question is into what."
"And whether we can control it," Vlad added, still staring at his healed palm.
"Where's Eli?" Nyt asked.
"Probably trying to help someone," Alex said with a hint of disdain. "I saw him in the courtyard earlier, attempting to treat a guard's infected wound."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"It's naive. We're prisoners here, not guests. The fact that they're letting us roam around just means they're confident they don't need bars to keep us." Alex moved to the window, looking out at the courtyard where torches flickered in the pre-dawn darkness. "They summoned us for their war. Everything else—the comfortable rooms, the fine clothes, the freedom to explore—it's all designed to make us compliant."
Nyt joined him at the window. "You don't trust them."
"Do you?"
She was quiet for a moment. "No. But I don't trust what's happening to me either." She held up her hand, and sparks of silver light danced between her fingers—light that definitely wasn't there yesterday. "I can feel the magic in this place. It's... hungry. Like it wants to be shaped, used, consumed. And part of me wants to let it."
"That's probably your developing ability," Alex said. "From what I observed during the summoning, you're some kind of magical parasite or absorber."
"Parasite?" Nyt's voice sharpened.
"I don't mean it as an insult. I mean it literally. You're developing the ability to absorb and repurpose magical energy from your environment." Alex turned from the window. "Which makes you incredibly valuable to anyone who understands what you can do."
"And incredibly dangerous to them if I choose not to cooperate."
"Exactly."
Vlad stretched, and the sound of joints popping echoed through the room. "So what's your power, brother? You've figured out ours, but you haven't said anything about yourself."
Alex was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was distant. "I see patterns. Cause and effect chains that stretch out like spider webs. When I look at this castle, I don't just see stone and mortar—I see decades of decisions that led to structural weaknesses. When I look at the nobles, I see the exact sequence of events that will lead to their downfall." He paused. "And when I look at us... I see possibilities. Terrible ones."
"Terrible how?" Nyt asked softly.
"Because the most efficient path to survival in this world isn't heroic. It's not even remotely moral." Alex's voice was flat, emotionless. "And I can see exactly how to walk that path."
The room fell silent. Outside, dawn was beginning to creep across the horizon, painting the sky the color of dried blood.
"I don't want to be a hero," Vlad said suddenly. "I never did, even back home. I just wanted to protect you, Alex. But now... now I want to hurt things. I want to feel that rush again, that strength that comes with pain." He looked at his hands. "Is that what this world is doing to us? Making us into monsters?"
"Maybe," Alex said. "Or maybe it's just stripping away the pretenses we needed in our old world." He looked at both of them. "The question isn't whether we're becoming monsters. The question is whether we're becoming the right kind of monsters to survive here."
"And Eli?" Nyt asked. "What about him?"
Alex was quiet for too long. "Eli's going to get himself killed being a hero. And probably get the rest of us killed trying to save him."
"So we abandon him?"
"We use him. His idealism makes him useful for gaining trust and information. But we don't let his moral compass steer our decisions." Alex's voice was cold, practical. "He can be the face we show the world while we do what needs to be done."
Nyt stared at him. "You're talking about manipulating someone who just wants to help people."
"I'm talking about survival. Eli's going to play the hero whether we guide him or not. At least this way, his sacrifice might accomplish something meaningful."
"His sacrifice?" Vlad's voice was sharp.
"Look at the patterns, Vlad. Look at this world, this kingdom, the forces that summoned us here." Alex's eyes were distant, seeing futures that hadn't happened yet. "Heroes in dying kingdoms don't get happy endings. They get used up until there's nothing left. The only question is whether we let that happen blindly, or whether we take control of the process."
"Jesus, Alex." Nyt's voice was barely a whisper. "Back home, you were studying computer science. You wanted to work for a tech company, maybe start your own business someday. Now you're talking about... about using people like game pieces."
"Back home, people didn't kidnap me and my brother to fight their wars." Alex's voice remained steady, but something flickered in his eyes—pain, quickly suppressed. "Back home, the worst thing that could happen to us was failing a class or getting our hearts broken. Here, the worst thing that can happen is death. Or worse—becoming someone else's weapon."
"So we become our own weapons instead?"
"Yes."
The single word hung in the air like a blade. Outside, the sun climbed higher, burning away the last of the night's shadows. In a few hours, they would be summoned for breakfast, then training, then whatever other preparations the kingdom had planned for their "heroes."
But in this room, in this moment before dawn, three people who had been ordinary just yesterday made the choice that would define everything that came after.
They would not be victims. They would not be tools.
They would survive. No matter the cost.
Even if it meant becoming exactly the kind of people their old world would have called monsters.