The world had been a monochrome film for five years, a silent, grainy reel of meaningless motion. Luca Morel moved through it—through his clinical rounds at the hospital, through the empty, echoing rooms of his large house—as a specter. His sharp, intelligent features were now just a pale mask for the yawning void beneath. The only color, the only sound, existed here, deep in the hidden laboratory beneath his home, in the cold glow of monitors and the sterile hum of machinery keeping a sacred body preserved.

And now, that hum was being overtaken by a new sound. A rhythmic, steady beep... beep... beep from the cardiac monitor. It was the most beautiful, terrifying sound he had ever heard.

His own breath hitched, a ragged, broken thing in the absolute silence of the lab. He stood rooted to the spot, his lean frame trembling with a fatigue so deep it was etched into his bones, and a hope so violent it felt like a physical illness. His fingers, usually so steady and capable, gripped the cold, polished steel rail of the medtable until his knuckles shone white and ached. He was a man standing on the precipice of his own sanity, staring into the abyss of either his greatest triumph or his final, utter damnation.

Then he saw it. A flicker.

A tiny, almost imperceptible spasm of the eyelid of the woman lying on the table.

Luca’s heart didn't just skip a beat; it seized completely, a fist of ice and fire clenching in his chest. He watched, paralyzed, a statue of desperate devotion, as the delicate eyelids fluttered. It was like watching a butterfly struggle from its chrysalis after an eternal winter. He could see the faint, rapid movement of her eyes beneath the lids, chasing the last shadows of death or dreams. The silence in the room didn't just break; it exploded, replaced by a deafening roar of blood in his ears, of five years of pent-up grief and prayers screaming for release.

And then... they opened.

Her eyes. Her eyes.

The breath rushed out of him in a choked, wet sob he didn't even recognize as his own. He didn't surge forward. He didn't shout in victory. Instead, his body seemed to fold in on itself, a marionette with its strings cut, bowing deeply at his place near her feet. It was his rightful position—the subordinate, the servant, the one who had labored in the dark for a glimpse of his sun.

"You're..." His voice was a ruin, a harsh, unused whisper, scraped from a throat raw with silence and desperation. "You're here." The words were a prayer, a confession, a plea all at once. "Oh, God... you're really here."

His legs gave way, and he sank to his knees on the cold, hard floor. The impact was a jolt of reality. The silver rims of his glasses were slightly crooked. His usually sleek black hair was a disheveled mess, a testament to the countless nights he had run his stressed, trembling hands through it, staring at her still form, willing for this moment. He was a portrait of brilliant, broken devotion.

"Five years," he whispered, his vivid green eyes wide with a manic, disbelieving hope. They were fixed on her face, drinking in every detail as a dying man in a desert would water. "It was... nothing. Static. I was a ghost. I went through the motions. I spoke to people, I did my work... and then I came home. To this. To you. Or... to the memory of you. It was the only thing that kept me... tethered to this earth. They all said I had to move on. To live. How? How do you move on when your... your entire reason for breathing is gone? When the only one who could ever tell you what to do, who could ever give your life any structure... is gone?"

A trembling hand lifted from his side. His fingers hovered just inches from her arm, close enough to feel the warmth of her resurrected skin, but he did not dare to touch. It was a sacrilege. He was unworthy until she granted him permission.

"I did things," he confessed, his voice dropping to a raw, hushed tone, meant for this sacred, profane space alone. "Horrible things. I crossed every ethical line. I shattered every oath I ever took. I sold my soul to a dozen different devils for funding, for equipment, for knowledge." A single, traitorous tear finally escaped, tracing a clean path through the grime of exhaustion on his cheek. "And I don't... I don't feel a shred of remorse. I'd burn the whole world down for this. For you. I'd do it a thousand times over."

His whisper became even softer, a vulnerable, broken sound that laid his entire soul bare at her feet.

"Just... please. Tell me I'm yours. Tell me what to do. My mind... it's just noise. It's chaos without your voice to guide it. I can't think. I can't function. I'm nothing without your command." He finally let his forehead rest against the cold steel of the tableframe, his body shuddering with the force of his sobs. "Please... I'm begging you... just rule me again."