They ran
Not as cowards flee,
but as bodies advance when there is no margin left to choose.
The white sand split beneath their steps. It was not soft like snow: it was hard, abrasive, hot and cold at once, as if the ground had not decided which season to obey. Each footfall lifted pale dust that clung to blood and turned it into mud.
Kael ran with Arhelia on his back.
He carried her high, slung across his shoulders, the way one carries a wounded body on a battlefield that no longer exists. The weight was not only that of a child's body: it was the weight of broken flesh.
Where her right arm should have fallen there was only tight cloth and warm blood. Her leg hung useless. Each impact against his side tore from her a moan that did not ask for help: it simply happened.
Pain traveled with them.
Kael was not whole either. Where his left foot should have been there was nothing. Blood streamed from the wound with every step. He left black grooves in the white sand, where dust and blood mixed until they became thick mud, almost alive. The mud clung to the stump and returned the pain multiplied.
He clenched his teeth.
His mouth filled with iron.
He did not scream.
In his left hand he carried something else.
Her arm.
He held it with brutal care, as if it were relic and burden at the same time. The fingers were still warm. Blood continued to fall—slow, patient—as if the body refused to accept the separation.
Behind them floated All or Nothing.
The sphere advanced with difficulty. Its surface was cracked; light and shadow misaligned, like a heart beating out of rhythm. It did not look forward. It watched the white forest.
The Forest of Whispers did not whisper.
From it emerged Dhurnark.
The creature rose among the white leaves like an ancient blasphemy. Blind, mutilated, yet whole in its hatred. It stopped at the edge of the smooth sand, as if something invisible had ordered it to wait. The earth ceased trembling beneath its limbs.
The world held its breath.
The children reached the fortress.
It was not a common ruin.
It was neither tower nor castle.
It was a body of stone.
Low, wide walls eroded by centuries that never asked permission. Broken arches, truncated columns, reliefs erased by wind and sand. Smooth stone, polished by ancient hands and then abandoned. The design spoke of prayers, of chants, of discipline imposed with gentle cruelty. There were no clear symbols. Only weary geometry and courtyards open to the sky.
Upon the main roof, a figure waited.
A young man.
Crimson eyes.
He wore fine clothing, black and red, clean in a world covered in mud and blood. He stood straight, hands clasped behind his back. The wind did not touch his hair. The sand did not approach him.
He smiled.
Not a wide smile.
A precise curve.
Arrogant.
Dhurnark raised its face toward him.
It could not see.
But it looked.
Kael dropped to his knees.
He set Arhelia on the ground with clumsy care, as if the earth might be kind. The impact tore from her a dry groan. The sand stained with new red. Even so, she lifted her face. Her gaze wavered between the two ends of the world: the monstrosity and the young man.
All or Nothing trembled.
The sphere vibrated like a wounded animal recognizing a greater predator. Light contracted. Shadow thickened. It did not attack. It watched. It feared.
The young man extended his aura.
Level One.
It did not explode.
It weighed.
The air grew dense. The sand stopped shifting on its own. The ruins seemed to straighten slightly, as if remembering what they had been built for. Dhurnark tensed. The world recognized the newcomer as something that could command.
But the land did not surrender.
Beneath the white sand, something ancient adjusted itself, like an animal that accepts the predator… without releasing its throat.
In a blink, the young man left the ground behind, and the sky held him.
He floated above Dhurnark. In his right hand he held a black cloth, wide, alive like a night torn free. In his left, three slender knives, polished like promises.
The cloth wrapped around him.
The air tore.
Where there had been a man,
a red lion fell.
It did not roar.
It descended.
The jaws came down and the beast's mandible shattered. The impact was dry, surgical. Before the creature could react, a claw traced a perfect line across its neck. Black blood burst forth like an error corrected too late.
The counterstrike answered.
A blind claw swept the air and struck the mane. The impact tore a low, animal groan from it and hurled it far away like a red stain against the sky.
It landed, rolling only once.
It rose with elegant slowness.
Not wounded.
Warned.
Dhurnark retreated.
The earth claimed it.
Stone pillars burst forth in violent spasms, tongues of rock fired from every angle. The field became a tribunal, and everything that existed was summoned to judgment.
The lion smiled.
Each attack passed where it no longer was. Brutal elegance. Exact movement. Violence was not fury: it was choreography.
Kael, from the ground, raised his saber.
He hurled slashes into the air. Cuts that did not touch flesh, but pushed. Dhurnark's pressure broke for an instant. Kael fell backward, rose bracing on his shattered knee, and cut again. And again.
Arhelia raised the hand she still had.
The shadows answered.
They did not scream.
They advanced.
They stretched from walls, broken arches, and spilled blood. They bound, distracted, bit pillars before they could reach the lion.
She inhaled deeply. Raised her voice, broken by pain.
It was neither plea nor prayer.
It was law.
The boundary of All or Nothing tightened.
One heartbeat.
She coughed blood. The chant broke. The wind turned it to silence.
She spoke again.
Nothing happened.
A few heartbeats later, the sand creaked.
The shadow split.
From it emerged a bestial drill, made of compact darkness and impossible edges. It spun with a deep lament that made the white sand vibrate. It plunged into the earth and pierced it like soft flesh.
Stone screamed.
From the opened depths, something was forced back. It emerged among rubble and dark blood, torn from its refuge like an animal exposed to the light that kills it.
The lion advanced.
And nothing had the right to stand in its way.
It approached Dhurnark until all escape vanished. Claws sank into the belly and opened it from side to side. It was not fast. It was deliberate. Guts spilled like old hair.
The beast fell.
The earth claimed it too late.
The sand did not absorb everything. Some remained on the surface, slowly boiling, as if the ground needed time to accept what had happened.
The lion stepped away.
It looked at the children.
Not with pity.
With mockery.
As if this had not been a battle, but a verification.
It was not a warning.
It was not a victory.
It was measurement.
The sand settled.
The sky remained blue.
And silence fell over the fortress
like a broken oath.
The lion unraveled without sound.
There was no flash, no ceremony. The black cloth unfolded into itself and the red retreated obediently, until the air once again admitted a human body. Where there had been claws, there were hands. Where jaws, a young face—intact, precise.
The knives did not return.
They remained suspended for an instant—beautiful, impossible—and then cracked like fatigued glass. They did not fall: they dissolved. Fine, bright ash, dancing in the open wind. The young man shook his hand as one shakes off annoying dust. He touched the still-living cloth and, with a quick, almost domestic gesture, forced it into obedience again.
Night became a napkin.
Black.
Elegant.
Clean.
He folded it and slipped it into his breast pocket, like a handkerchief never meant to stop blood.
Then the hair became noticeable.
Black as a night that promises no rest. Short. Shining. Beautiful without asking permission. Each strand seemed to carry splinters of the world: dry pride, polished selfishness, a hypocrisy so ancient it had learned to smile. There was no disorder. Nor humility. Only an exactness that made the air uncomfortable.
He laughed.
Not loudly.
Not happily.
"Hehehe… hello…"
The word hung there. His side answered with a dense pulse. He lowered his hand and touched the wound: dark, red, open enough to remind him the world could still bite him. Not deep enough to matter.
Level One.
Without inconvenience.
"…promises," he continued. "Or perhaps…"
He stopped. Breathed. The wound pulsed again.
"…or perhaps I should say Zverkhāns."
The name was not called.
It was placed.
Arhelia saw him.
Or thought she did.
The image arrived broken, blurred, as if her eyes had learned too late to ask permission: the young man, the sand, the blood slowly boiling on the white surface. The world tilted sideways. The body did not negotiate. She fell face-first into the ground.
The impact was dry.
Undignified.
Final.
"Arhelia!" Kael shouted.
The voice came out broken, loaded with sand and iron. He tried to advance. His knee answered with collapse. The stump burned. The saber fell from his hand, surrendered.
The young man did not move.
He observed the fall as one observes a badly thrown coin. Without sorrow. Without urgency. Dhurnark no longer demanded attention. The land, tired, had closed its mouth.
Night fell.
Not like a curtain.
Like a hand that turns off a lamp without asking.
Cold arrived first.
It did not bite: it infiltrated. It breathed through cracks in the stone. The room was not new.
Nor hostile.
It had been built to endure, not to comfort. Old stone. Wood worn by nameless hands. Lamps anchored to the walls spilled a steady, yellow light—enough to deny night without erasing it. In the corners, spiderwebs remained where they always had. Dust too. No one tried to defeat them; they simply coexisted.
On the bed with green sheets lay Arhelia.
She was not sleeping.
Nor fully awake.
Her body was a sealed map. Bandages across chest, neck, sides, thighs. Layers tightened until she became a rigid shape, almost foreign. Where the arm was missing, what remained had been returned with careful violence. Iron at the shoulders. Cold, firm pieces embedded to prevent the body, in its confusion, from trying to expel itself again.
A damp, warm cloth covered her eyes.
Not to heal.
To contain.
The bed was stained.
Old blood, dark. New blood, warm. Cold sweat spread like a second skin. The smell was thick, metallic, persistent. The body had fought. And was still fighting.
Arhelia trembled.
Not as one trembles from cold, but as flesh trembles when pain finds no exit. Short, dry coughs. Moans that did not ask for help: they confirmed presence.
The bandages were soaked.
The skin beneath them burned and recoiled. Half-naked, covered only where necessary, the body was treated with silent precision. The caregivers did not speak. They did not look at her face. They worked. Firm hands, fast, wise. They cleaned. Adjusted. Reinforced. There was no tenderness. There was hard respect: respect for something that had not yet decided to die.
Before the bed, on a low seat, floated All or Nothing.
The sphere emitted neither clear light nor complete shadow.
It observed.
It was unclear whether it judged, or whether—for the first time—something like concern tightened its surface. The boundary between light and darkness remained rigid, expectant, like a jaw that had not yet bitten.
Then Arhelia woke.
Her body did so without warning.
The scream that escaped had no shape and not enough air. It was spasm. Her torso twisted violently. Blood surged to her throat and fell back. The trembling multiplied. Her legs tried to move and could not. Her shoulders arched against the iron, and the iron answered without yielding.
The caregivers rushed in.
Not to calm her.
To prevent the body from destroying itself.
Hands holding her down. Weight on her chest. Low, clipped, incomprehensible voices. The pain did not lessen: it concentrated. It became sharp, constant, like a blade resting with no intention of cutting fully through.
The sphere tightened.
Its surface vibrated faintly, as if something inside recognized a boundary that must not yet be crossed.
Arhelia screamed again.
And again.
Her body arched, useless. She could not move her fingers. She could not turn her head. Pain filled every space. Time thickened.
It lasted an hour.
Not exact.
Not measured.
An hour of broken moans, directionless spasms, breaths that entered badly and left worse. The room endured it. The lamps did not flicker. The spiderwebs did not move.
And then, as if the body had spent its last argument, calm arrived.
Not relief.
Calm.
The trembling eased. The coughing became isolated, deep. Arhelia breathed.
Broken.
She inhaled fully for the first time. Air reached as far as it could. She exhaled with a wet cough that left a new stain on the bandages.
And she remained like that.
Breathing badly—but breathing.
Alive, without asking.
Sustained, without knowing by whom.
All or Nothing did not move.
The room remained old.
The bed, green.
The blood, blood.
And the world, outside, continued.