After Corax had spent roughly twelve standard years in a daze within this underground prison, something quietly changed deep within his consciousness, buried beneath pain, loneliness, and the emptiness of day after day.
It was no longer mere endurance or numb revulsion, but something sharper and more dangerous.
For the first time, the will to rebel pierced his dormant defenses like poisonous thorns growing in the dark.
Despite years of inhuman experiments and controlled nutrition, the genes of the Emperor's son continued to display their power in their own twisted way.
Corax was now unusually tall and thin, standing nearly two meters high. But rather than a powerful physique, his body resembled a skeleton forcibly stretched out and covered in pale skin.
Prolonged confinement and the lingering effects of the experiments had denied his muscles normal exercise and growth, leaving them thin and taut against his elongated bones.
Yet inside that seemingly frail body, a long-suppressed, instinctive savagery and strength were silently gathering in the darkness, seething.
He had learned to wait, learned to observe.
During a routine escort to a "neural sensitivity limit test," an unknown fault caused the corridor's lighting system to flicker and its voltage to fluctuate for less than a second.
To the trained guards, it was an insignificant interruption.
But to Corax, who had stared into darkness for twelve years and had every shift of light and shadow etched into his bones, that fleeting shadow was an eternal opportunity.
There was no warning, no roar.
In the instant the light flickered, the pale giant who had kept his head bowed in silence, seemingly so weak that he needed two guards to support him, moved.
Fast!
Faster than human eyes could follow, fast enough to make even the corridor's surveillance tracking algorithms lag for an instant!