Kur wasn't born in the Great Green. He was pulled from it, a scrap of shed scale and a wisp of forgotten fire, shaped by a dreamer's hand into something that remembered sunlight.

He opened his mouth. No flame came out—he was too young, his fire-gland still a swollen bud. But a sound came. Not a roar. A hum . A low, resonant thrum that vibrated through the concrete, through the bones of the fleeing humans, through the roots of the nearest tree.

Vines that had been dormant for decades suddenly twitched. Roots heaved. The fence that had sung with lightning groaned as a thick, black tendril of old ivy coiled around its post and squeezed . With a shriek of tortured metal, the fence toppled.

He walked. One step. Two. The floor was cold and dead under his claws. Then, the third step landed on soil. Real soil. Gritty, damp, smelling of rot and life and the ghost of a trillion tiny deaths.

The PLAZA humans were fleeing now. The gray-bearded Vonn lay on the ground, clutching his arm. Elara was trying to drag him away. She saw Kur standing in the shattered doorway of his cage. Her eyes went wide.

A soft-handed woman named Elara brought him cubes of glowing meat. A gray-bearded man, Vonn, played recordings of bird-song to "stimulate his natural development." They spoke to him in low, soothing voices. They called him "Number Seven."

But he was not a creature of the glass box.