She listened for two seconds, and the first real relief since the sky had opened crossed her face. "Yes. Thank you."
While Grace fought two chains of mand at once, Kaiden glanced back at his girls and let the edge of a smirk return to his mouth.
"Guess I’ll really need that biological test to prove I’m still human."
Luna stared at him.
The girls knew the story. He’d told them what happened at the level fifty bottleneck, how the Original Sin had made him prove he deserved to wield the sins as stances instead of being consumed by them.
Hearing about that trial from Kaiden, after he had already survived it and turned the experience into another absurd piece of his life, had been one thing.
Watching the owner of that judgment cross the sky with seven arms behind the planet was another thing entirely.
The gamer girl had gone sweaty at the temples, pale beneath the adrenaline, and for once the profanity had to climb over genuine existential terror before it found the exit.
"Bruh."
"Kai..." Aria’s fingers tightened around his sleeve, her voice soft and chiding in a way that made the worry land harder. "I love you more than anything, but please take this situation more seriously."
Bastet’s gold eyes had not left Vespera.
The felinid’s tail moved once, slow and fascinated, while the shadows around the room waited with the patience of drawn blades.
Vespera had not flinched at the sight in the sky, had not raised her voice, had not even shifted her stance. She had simply begun preparing to massacre every person in the room if fear made them foolish enough to turn hostile.
"Mother, I hope to one day bee as much of a badass as you are..." Bastet admitted, admiring openly.
...
The next few minutes were the longest of the day.
The Association did not evacuate the building. Evacuation meant corridors full of panicking staff, reporters, officials, and security contractors all moving without a plan while the most dangerous unknown in recorded human history stood on the third floor with several beyond-S-tier women emotionally invested in keeping him fortable.
So the Association locked the building instead.
Elevators froze. Stairwells sealed. The press hall below turned into a holding pen full of journalists who could see the same emergency alerts as everyone else and immediately understood that nobody was leaving until the Association decided how to proceed.
Grace lowered the borrowed phone at last. "This did not go quite as planned."
Kaiden glanced at the split artifact and nodded with a dry smirk. "Yeah. I can imagine."
Then his smile softened by a fraction. "Thanks for speaking up for me."
Grace studied him for a long moment.
The man had just made the sky open an eye over the planet, forced half the federal mand structure into crisis response, and was thanking her like she’d held a door for him.
"I know you well enough to know you don’t want to end humanity," she said. "And I also saw through your... manic- I mean unusual expressions that you all were surprised."
"A freak accident, really," Kaiden nodded a second time.
"...A freak accident, huh?" Grace couldn’t believe her eyes.
But she also knew one more thing about the man before her, namely that he was a shameless creature who wasn’t about to open up regarding what just happened. His nonchalant attitude and quips made that quite clear to her.
So she elected to move on, her attention dipping toward the strip of darkness waiting beneath her own feet.
"Having Lady Ashborn turn my shadow into a blade aimed at my throat sure does help clarify the consequences of poor decision-making."
Kaiden followed her gaze and winced with absolutely no shame in it. "Aiming blades at our great allies in the Association and the United States government? My mother can be a bit extreme but she’d never do such a thing."
Grace’s professional smile returned through sheer violence of will. "...If you say so," she replied while eyeing the tendrils that were still primed to end lives of said Association and government members.
"Shall we proceed?" she asked. "Getting those results as quickly as possible is strongly advised."
"Sure. Lead the way, Miss Grace," Kaiden nodded a third time.
...
The biological suite was ready for him instantly as it had always been on the schedule.
Kaiden’s awakened tier reassessment came first, then the confirmation work Vespera had already approved for the sovereign dungeon clause: blood, tissue, mana-signature parison, and the other limited checks the agreement allowed.
The sealed trays, diagnostic arch, sample wards, and medical staff had been waiting in the adjacent suite before the sky decided to bee a theology problem.
The medical lead stepped forward in a warded coat and sealed gloves, brittle courage held together by protocol.
His prepared procedure had bee the most important test in the country in the last ten minutes.
"Mister Grey," he said, "the authorized suite is ready. I need verbal consent for blood draw, hair follicle, epithelial sample, retina scan, mana-signature mapping, and resonance parison against your pre-event registration data. You may refuse any portion."
"I consent," Kaiden said.
"If at any point you experience pain beyond the procedure, disorientation, auditory or visual phenomena, external mands, memory discontinuity, loss of motor control, or any impulse you cannot identify as your own, inform me immediately."
Kaiden nodded. "Understood."
The doctor did not relax. "Thank you."
The blood draw came first.
That should have been simple.
A needle entered his arm. Dark red filled the vial. The doctor capped it, passed it to a technician, and the room watched human blood move through a tube with the intensity of priests waiting for a miracle or a confession.
The vial behaved like a vial.
The glass stayed clear.
The monitors stayed quiet.
Kaiden had never seen so many adults relax over blood doing exactly what blood was supposed to do.
Hair came next. Skin. Retinal light. Mana resonance. A diagnostic array projected a rotating image of his anatomy over the nearest console, bright blue and gold lines mapping tissue, bone, and organ function.
Grace watched every result appear.
So did the government representatives.
So did Vespera.
Kaiden watched his girls.
Alice’s lips moved silently around every scan result, counting down categories she did not fully understand because the list was attached to him.
The others waited in their own languages. Aria had not let go of his sleeve. Bastet stood with both hands folded at her waist, ears angled back. Luna meanwhile kept having miniature celebrations when each test came back with results they were hoping for.
Honestly, at this point, who knew for certain that her anomaly of a boyfriend was still fully human? The gamer girl certainly didn’t.
The way he’d been ravaging her in bed certainly hinted at some demonic influence...
One screen finished processing.
Then another.
Then the examiner leaned closer to the primary display, read the parison twice, and stopped.
She took a breath.
"Human."
The room heard it and did not move.
She swallowed and continued, because one word could not carry enough weight after the sky had opened. "Biological profile matches Mister Grey’s prior records within awakened variance. Blood is human. Tissue is human. Neural activity is his. No foreign biological substrate detected. Mana signature is abnormal, but stable against pre-event registration patterns where parable data exists. No measurable overwrite, possession marker, or identity displacement under Association diagnostic standards."
The doctor removed his gloves with careful, exhausted precision. "In plain language, Mister Grey is biologically human. If there is a cosmic entity attached to his class, it did not turn his body into a shell while we were watching."
Kaiden exhaled. "Phew."
"Why are you relieved?" Grace asked wryly.
Kaiden, as expected, shrugged with zero shame. "Doctor visits have always made me nervous since I was a kid. Think they’ll find out I have some weird disease."
"..." Grace closed her eyes for one second.
Then duty dragged them open.
"Record the finding," she said. "Sovereign dungeon clause documentation confirmed. Kaiden Grey remains a biologically human awakened citizen under current Association diagnostic authority."
For a moment, the room had no answer.
The officials, doctors, guards, and technicians who had heard the finding stared at the young anomaly in the chair with eyes that did not quite believe the machines.
Kaiden breathed out and stood.
They had done their part.
He had submitted to the reassessment and allowed them to run their tests.
The answer was on record now: Kaiden Grey was human.
It was time to move on.
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