"So they have arrived."
The words left lips that weren't made for the language they used — dark lips, thick, with the texture of something that belonged more to rock than to flesh. The voice was deep. Feminine, but deep, with a resonance that vibrated in the walls around as though the hall itself responded to each syllable she uttered.
And the hall responded.
The place was enormous — not enormous like something built by hands, but enormous like something that grew. The walls rose in organic curves that had no angles, no edges, no straight line that recalled architecture. They were made of something that pulsed. Veins — thick as arms, intertwined over one another like roots of a tree that decided to grow inward instead of outward — covered every surface. The floor. The walls. The ceiling that vanished into a damp darkness up above. Each vein beat in a uniform rhythm, synchronized, as though the entire hall were the interior of something alive. The sound they produced was low and constant — a deep pulse you didn't hear with your ears, but felt in your bones.
The air was hot. Not the dry heat of a desert — the wet heat of entrails. Dense, heavy, with a smell that was at once sweet and rotten, like ripe fruit decomposing in a place without ventilation. Each breath brought with it particles that stuck to the throat and descended with the resistance of something that didn't want to be breathed.
At the center of that hall, a woman.
Enormous. Voluminous. Standing before something that, at first glance, seemed part of the grotesque painting — an oval object, organic, pulsing in the same rhythm as the veins around it and of others like it. But this one was different from the others. Dozens of oval forms spread across the hall like bubbles on a viscous surface, each the size of an adult human, each coupled to the veins as though being fed by them. But this one — the one the woman observed with attention — was at least three times larger than the others. The pulse that emanated from it was stronger. Slower. As though what was inside needed more time, more energy, more of everything to finish forming.
The woman was half-naked. The uncovered body was wide, muscular in a way that wasn't human — the muscles didn't run in defined lines, but in dense masses that moved beneath the dark skin like animals sleeping under a blanket. The two tails — thick, long, with the texture of cured leather and tips that tapered like whips — swayed in rhythm with the pulse the room emitted, as though they were part of that place's circulatory system. It was as though she belonged there. As though the hall and she were extensions of one another — the woman as organ and the hall as body, or the hall as temple and the woman as priestess who never left its interior.
Two tails. That meant something. In the Infernal hierarchy, each tail was power. Was history.
Her horn rose from the forehead — caprine, curved backward, advancing nearly forty centimeters beyond the skull with the presence of something that wasn't decorative. It was weapon. It was crown. And even so, the only thing the horn really did was transform the feminine features into a thicker neck and a square face that carried authority before any word.
She made movements. Slow. Shapeless. The arms rose and fell in patterns that seemed to have no logic — but that, for anyone who watched carefully, carried the precision of something rehearsed. It was an offering. A ritual. Something between prayer and command that she executed before the great egg with the devotion of someone who serves something greater than herself.
Beside her, at irregular intervals, Tyrannomorphs appeared.
They came from the hall's shadows — crawling on four legs, bodies flush to the ground, the shoulder blades folded against their backs, some wounded or nearly dead. One at a time. And each approached the veins that dominated the floor and stopped before something that, now that one looked more carefully, resembled a mouth. Enormous mouths — circular orifices that opened at the end of the veins with the obscenity of exposed wounds — waited for the Tyrannomorphs like receptacles waiting for offerings.
And then the creatures regurgitated.
The jaws opened disproportionately — more than anatomy should allow, more than any creature should manage — and what came out was horror. Human hands. Dented helmets. Weapons broken in half. Torsos. And faces — faces that still had expression, faces frightened and disfigured and half-dissolved by the acid saliva that had marinated them from within during transport. Each piece was dumped into the mouths of the veins, which closed around the contents with a wet and satisfied sound, as though feeding the system were exactly that: feeding.
But the most terrible thing wasn't what they regurgitated.
It was what the wounded did.
The Tyrannomorphs that returned injured — with legs torn off, blades broken, bodies cracked by combat — didn't seek help. Didn't look for healing. They advanced toward the mouths of the veins with the serenity of someone walking toward an altar, not toward a death. Serene. Calm. As though being part of something greater were something beautiful and sublime — and not the horror it truly was: being crushed alive, swallowed by the pulsing flesh of the hall, the screams of agony muffled by the sound of mouths closing around a body that still moved.
They offered themselves. Voluntarily. With the devotion of someone who believes that disappearing inside the system is the highest form of existing.
Miranda's movements, which had been rhythming that macabre scene, stopped the moment the answer to her question came followed by a new variable.
Not gradually — all at once. The arms froze in the air.
"Yes, milady. They are being led by a tamer with a giant Yokai." The voice came from behind her — from below, from the floor, from someone who was kneeling with their head nearly kissing the pulsing veins that dominated the floor. "We believe it is him."
Yokai.
The word changed everything.
Miranda turned slowly — not the fast spin of someone surprised, but the slow turn of someone who hears something they expected and who now needs to decide what to do with the confirmation.
"Look how benevolent our great goddess is." Her voice gained something that hadn't been there before — satisfaction. Dangerous, warm, the kind that precedes decisions that cost lives. "Not only did she allow us to escape the great crusade, but she also delivered to us the nail that pierces our princess's flesh."
Finally, she picked up a robe that was lying beside her — dark fabric, thick, with edges that seemed to have been made of something that wasn't fabric — and placed it over her body. The two tails adjusted beneath, finding space with the familiarity of someone who had worn it a thousand times.
"Rise, Boris." The voice dropped a tone. "Our mission will be to kill that worm and bring the head to our princess."
✦ ✦ ✦
The Infernal didn't move.
The head remained lowered — the forehead nearly touching the veins on the floor, the caprine horns pointing forward like weapons at rest. One tail only. Smaller than Miranda's. Younger. But the body beneath that tail was dense, wide, built for combat in a way that didn't need two tails to be respected.
Miranda observed the hesitation. And seemed to understand.
"Speak, Boris. What is filling your mind?"
The Infernal finally raised his head.
And looked at her.
Not at the emissary. Not at the bearer of the goddess. At her — the woman beneath the titles, beneath the horn, beneath everything the hierarchy said she was and that he could never touch. There existed between them something that could never happen between a sacred emissary and a warrior. Both knew. Both knew that if they were discovered, death would be little — it would be example, it would be spectacle, it would be the kind of punishment that exists to teach others what happens when lines are crossed.
But love finds strange ways of happening.
"Miranda." He said the name the way one holds something fragile — without title, without honor, just the name. "We need to protect this location. Allow me to go alone and bring the head of the humanoid creature."
Miranda observed the face of the one who had awakened her to things the teachings forbade. Something in her body grew warm — and it wasn't the hall's heat, it wasn't the ritual, it was the kind of warmth that came from a place priestesses shouldn't access and that warriors shouldn't provoke. That Infernal's courage, the power he radiated even with just one tail, the way he looked at her — all of that had been the main factor in her rebellion against the teachings of an entire lifetime.
What he said made sense. Their mission wasn't to seek vengeance — it was to protect that hall, that system that fed something greater than both of them. However, losing the opportunity to kill the human their princess wanted dead made her forget, for an instant, the true duty.
"You are right." The words came out with the reluctance of someone who yields reason when they wanted to yield something else. "Go. And bring the head of that creature."Her eyes descended upon him with something she would never show before others. "Take with you the children of our goddess."
✦ ✦ ✦
Miranda raised her arm.
And the hall responded.
The pulse of the veins — which until that moment beat in a uniform and constant rhythm, like the heart of something very large sleeping — began to accelerate. Slowly at first. Then faster. The rhythm doubled. Tripled. The veins on the walls swelled and deflated with the speed of something that was entering panic — or that was being forced to awaken. The deep sound that before was felt in the bones now vibrated in the teeth, in the skull, in the floor that trembled beneath Boris's knees as though the entire hall were about to split apart.
And then it stopped.
All at once. As though it had never beaten.
The silence that followed lasted less than a second — and was replaced by something worse.
Screams.
Not human — they didn't have the right frequency to be human. They were sharper, more visceral, coming from places that weren't throats. The oval objects spread across the hall — the ones that before seemed like mere structures incorporated into the environment, part of the organic decoration of that place — began to crack. Fissures opened in the shells with dry snaps that echoed through the hall like bones breaking. And from inside each fissure, hands emerged. Not human hands — claws. Blades. Appendages that tore the shell from within with the frantic urgency of something that needed to be born and that was born hungry.
Tyrannomorphs.
Dozens of them. But these seemed different.
They emerged from the eggs covered in a viscous and translucent substance that dripped from the new bodies like afterbirth, falling to the floor with wet sounds that mixed with the screams. They grew visibly — the bodies expanding as they exited the shells, the legs solidifying, the shoulder blades extending and folding against the backs like knives that know where they should rest. Each was born the size of a dog and, in seconds, reached the size of a horse. But now something more satanic was visible: human eyes, some bipedal, others almost humanoid beings, a grotesque, raw, and frightening mixture. And all — all, without exception — moved in Miranda's direction.
The Infernal woman swayed her arms in a new rhythm now — different from the previous ritual, faster, more hypnotic. Each time one of the Tyrannomorphs approached her, it seemed entranced by the movement, the head following the arms as though it were being programmed, calibrated, synchronized with something Miranda transmitted not through the gestures, but by them. The creatures repeated the movement with their heads — to the left, to the right, to the left — like cobras before a flute playing at a frequency only they could hear.
Boris, still on his knees, found himself surrounded by countless grotesque creatures that grew visibly. The bodies solidified around him — muscles defining, chitin plates hardening, jaws opening and closing while testing their own strength. The smell was unbearable — rust mixed with rotting flesh, exactly as it existed on the battlefield outside. And the sound they made now, so close, was the click. Wet. Rhythmic. The sound of bone nails scratching stone that never stopped.
Miranda stopped her arms.
And began to speak.
The tongue that left her mouth wasn't the one Boris knew. It wasn't the Infernal language — it wasn't any language that had words. It was something between moan and roar, a vibration that was born at the base of the throat and rose through the skull, making the air around tremble with each syllable that wasn't a syllable. Boris had already tried to reproduce that sound — alone, in secret, on nights when curiosity defeated good sense. His throat heated to the point of making him scream in pain before the first sentence. The male didn't have the capacity. Not in that race.
Because among the Infernals, magic was feminine.
Not exclusively — but predominantly. The females were born with a connection to what they called "the voice of the goddess" that the males simply didn't possess. A male Infernal could be strong. Could be fast. Could be the best warrior that ever existed. But magic — true magic, the kind that controlled creatures and made walls of flesh obey and transformed eggs into armies — was their territory. And Miranda wasn't merely a female with magic. She was the apex. The peak. One of the few chosen by the goddess to command the beasts that surrounded her. The kind of power that made most other females seem like males in comparison.
"Go."
The shout came out like a fuse.
The mutant Tyrannomorphs detached from Miranda like a wave that finally finds the edge of the cliff — all at the same time, all in the same direction, without hesitation, without looking back. The bodies still wet from birth cut across the hall like a tide of claws and blades and hunger, pouring through the openings that led outside with the urgency of something born for a single thing and that could now finally do it.
When the last creature left, the silence returned.
And Miranda staggered.
The voluminous body swayed — the knees weakening, the arms descending along the body like cut strings. The ritual had drained her. Each egg hatched, each creature commanded, each syllable of that impossible tongue had cost something she didn't have to spare.
Boris advanced before she fell.
His hands — enormous, dark, calloused by decades of combat — held her shoulders with a delicacy that didn't match the body that possessed them. He supported her as though she weighed nothing, as though the body that seconds ago made an entire hall obey were now only the woman he loved and who was tired.
"My lo—" The word almost escaped. The beginning of something both knew couldn't be said aloud. He swallowed before it finished. "Miranda."
She held her head high. His words — the almost, the stumble, the tenderness he tried to hide and that she heard anyway — made something inside her recover. Not from the tenderness. From the danger the tenderness represented. She pulled away. Fast. With the brusqueness of someone ripping off a bandage knowing it will hurt.
"Kill them all and show your worth." The voice returned to the emissary's tone — cold, distant, with the authority the ritual demanded and the heart denied. "Or die on the field like an inferior creature."
The words frightened Boris — but he recovered. Both knew that would lead nowhere. He was made for one thing — war — and she for another — serving the goddess. What existed between them had no name in their language and no space in their world. If it were discovered, death would be little. It would be spectacle.
"I beg your pardon." Boris lowered his head one last time. The voice came out with the formality of someone wearing a title that doesn't fit but who has no choice but to use it. "Oh bearer of the goddess and tamer of darkness. I promise I will destroy the enemy. In your name."
He struck his hand against his chest — the sound of the impact echoing through the empty hall — and a device coupled to his arm began to project an armor. The metallic plates appeared one by one, clicking into the body with the precision of something that already knew every curve, every muscle, every centimeter of that warrior. The armor covered everything — torso, arms, legs, face — leaving exposed only the tail and the horns. And in his left hand, materializing from the same device, a kite shield appeared — enormous, nearly his height, with a surface that shone with the same dark red that dominated everything in that world.
Boris turned his back.
And walked toward the exit without looking behind him.
Miranda watched him leave. The face that seconds ago was ice was now something else — something she couldn't name and couldn't show and couldn't feel and even so felt. Her eyes followed his silhouette until the corridor's darkness swallowed him, until the sound of his steps disappeared, until the only sound that remained was the pulse of the veins around her and the deafening silence of what she didn't say.
She turned.
To the great egg.
The only one that hadn't hatched. The only one that remained whole while all the others around it had opened and poured their children into the world. Three times larger than the rest. Pulsing in its own rhythm — slower, deeper, as though what was inside needed more time to become what it was.
Miranda approached.
Her hand rose slowly — trembling, not from weakness, but from reverence. The fingers touched the shell. The surface was warm. Alive. With the texture of something that was neither mineral nor organic, but something between the two that had no name.
And beneath her fingers, for the first time, the egg responded.
A sound. Deep. Coming from within — not like a scream, not like a moan. Like a breath. The first breath of something awakening after a very long sleep. The shell vibrated beneath Miranda's fingers. The veins around the egg pulsed stronger, as though the entire hall knew that moment had arrived.
Miranda's eyes went wide.
And a smile — slow, wide, with the devotion of someone who finally sees the answer to a prayer made for years — filled the face that seconds ago was sad.
"Finally you have awakened. I wonder how they will react when they see what you have become."
The smile on the dark lips contrasted with the squeeze on the shell, with the delicacy of someone holding something sacred.