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I sit up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “And he needs my blood to confirm it.”

“Just one vial today,” Hargen says, the slight emphasis on “one” our private code. He’ll take less than they’ve ordered. A concession to me.

I cross to the table, extending my arm without being asked. The inside of my elbow is a map of tiny scars—a history of violation written in my flesh.

As Hargen prepares the needle, I study him. Despite decades of this routine, his face remains eerily unlined, his dark hair showing no hint of gray. Like me, he doesn’t show his age, though the silver streak at my hairline betrays the stress I’ve endured. I’ve always wondered about him, about the magic I sense beneath his clinical exterior.

“Busy week ahead?” I ask as the needle slides into my vein. I don’t flinch. I stopped flinching somewhere around year five.

“Three scheduled extractions.” The tube fills with my blood, darker than normal blood, almost black with magic. “Creed’s obsessing over some new energy signature they detected in the field.”

“Must be important if they’re risking three in one week.” I watch the vial fill, keeping my voice neutral despite the dread pooling in my stomach. Three sessions means weakness, means vulnerability. Means pain.

“That’s what I said.” Hargen withdraws the needle, pressing gauze to the puncture with gentle fingers. “Creed doesn’t care about the toll it takes.”

Of course he doesn’t. Dragons measure time in centuries. My suffering is a blip to them, insignificant against their endless power struggles.

“What happened to the last witch they burned through?” I ask, though I know the answer. Hargen never says it, but I’ve felt the absences, the empty spaces where other magical prisoners once existed.

Hargen’s mouth tightens. “Transferred.”

Transferred. Syndicate code for eliminated. Used up. Discarded.

“How long will they keep pushing?” The question slips out before I can stop it. A rare moment of vulnerability. After all this time, I still haven’t learned to lock everything away.

Hargen’s eyes meet mine, and I glimpse something there—regret, perhaps. Or guilt. “Until they get what they want.”

He caps the vial of my blood, placing it carefully in the case’s cooling compartment. His hands are steady, but I see the tension in his shoulders.

“Something else,” I prompt.

He hesitates, then sighs. “Creed’s pushing for a deep extraction next month.”

My stomach clenches. Deep extraction. Their term for a procedure that takes me to the edge of death to access the furthest reaches of prophecy. I’ve survived two. Barely.

“Why now?” I keep my voice steady, refusing to let him see my fear.

“They’re getting impatient. They still don’t have what they want.”

The Heartstone. Another thing they want me to see. The crystal heart of dragonkind, capable of binding dragons to a single will. The weapon that could end their endless factional wars. Or start a worse one.

“I need time to prepare,” I say, pressing my fingers to the gauze on my arm. “At least two weeks.”

“I’ll try.” We both know it’s out of his hands. Hargen may be my handler, but he’s as much a prisoner of the Syndicate as I am. Just with better quarters and the illusion of freedom.

He packs up his case, movements efficient from years of practice. When he looks up, his expression softens fractionally.

“I’ll bring you something for the pain after the session.”

This small kindness—one of many over the years—is why I haven’t completely lost myself to hatred or despair. Hargen remembers I’m human, even when the rest of them treat me like a magical battery to be drained.

“Thank you.” The words are inadequate, but they’re all I have to offer.

After he leaves, I move to the small window that offers my only glimpse of the outside world. It’s reinforced with magic and technology—unbreakable, like everything about my cage. The mountains shimmer in the morning light, crags reaching toward a freedom I can barely remember.

A freedom that grows completely unattainable when I’m taken from my quarters later. It’s time for the extraction procedure. The process they’ve designed to draw the visions from me. Visions that once came naturally are now pulled out on demand. A “medical” procedure. And like any medical procedure, it’s conducted in a specialized space. A space I’ve learned to despise.

Extraction chambers are designed to intimidate. White walls. Steel tables. Equipment that looks more suitable for torture than medicine.

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