"Are you going to take long this time?"
The words came from behind me.
Morgana preferred to ask when I wasn't looking. I knew that trick — it was the same one I used when I didn't want the other person to see what my face was doing while I spoke. She was sad. And Morgana sad was something I saw so rarely that each time seemed like the first.
It was rare to have a moment of peace in the Oasis. In truth, it was almost impossible. What existed was a fragile coordination between power and threat — a constant balance where the only thing keeping the wolves away was the certainty that attacking would cost more than it was worth. And in that moment, on that gray plain where my kingdom stretched in silence, my power was far greater than any threat around.
"I don't think so." I answered without turning. "My main objective is to buy a relocation item. Unfortunately, I don't know how long it'll take to get one." I paused. I swallowed what I knew I should say and said what she needed to hear. "But I promise I'll come back as soon as I get it."
I wasn't a person who made promises.
I knew that by making one I would be accepting a weight I might not be able to carry — the simple fact that it might never happen. Promises in the Oasis were coins that lost value over time, worn down by circumstances no one controlled. I knew that. Under normal circumstances, I would never promise.
But Morgana's broken voice said that was the only possible answer.
Even with my back turned, I heard the change. Her voice returned lighter — not whole, not the Morgana of always, but enough to tell me the promise had done what promises do: bought time between the pain and the moment it comes back.
"I'll wait for you."
A crash shook the ground before the silence between us could become something heavier than either could carry.
I knew who it was.
On the other side of the courtyard, Zaridan was fighting with Livina. The sound was unmistakable: the heavy impact of glaives against something that refused to fall, followed by the indignant scream of someone who didn't know when to stop. Zaridan didn't know how to go easy — it wasn't in his nature, it wasn't part of his language, and I doubted he knew the meaning of the expression. Livina, for her part, rose from each beating with the furious dignity of someone who considered staying on the ground a personal offense.
I liked the interaction between those two. Both were hotheaded, impatient, and completely incapable of admitting when they were wrong. And they were sincere — painfully sincere — in every feeling they expressed. It was like watching two fires trying to put each other out.
Zaridan as general was already working. I could see it in the details he probably thought I didn't notice: the way the soldiers moved differently when he was nearby, the posture that changed, the obedience that wasn't from fear but from something rarer — coordination. He was still rude. Still found everyone pathetic. But he knew how to control himself.
"Take care of those two." I said, finally turning to Morgana. Her eyes were dry, but red at the edges — the sign of someone who held everything in and almost managed. "In my absence, you're in command."
Morgana confirmed with a quick nod. Precise. Military. The kind of response she gave when she knew that if she opened her mouth to speak, something else would come out.
I looked at my kingdom one last time.
The thorn walls stretching across the horizon. The defense towers dotting the perimeter like teeth of a closed jaw. The Griffin Nest with Prince perched on top, wings folded, golden eyes observing everything with the patience of someone who knows time is a resource. Arachne somewhere beyond the walls, patrolling, weaving, caring — all eight legs moving in perfect synchrony over the earth she considered her own. And in some corner I couldn't see, Pegasus, probably looking in my direction with that silent judgment he never abandoned.
Sparta.
My kingdom. My construction. My responsibility that would now stay in the hands of others while I returned to a world where I wouldn't need to worry about being attacked.
"They say the second time is better…" I murmured, more to myself than to anyone. "I hope so."
In my hands, I held the Vivarium.
The item wasn't large — it fit between my fingers, heavy for its size, with a surface that pulsed with a faint, constant inner light. Inside it, compressed at a scale the Oasis never bothered to explain, there existed an entire ecology. Environments. Biomes. Life cycles calibrated to sustain creatures I couldn't take any other way. The Vivarium was the only way to transport my creatures outside the Oasis — but it was also a permanent responsibility. The internal environments were limited; without constant replenishment of supplies, without active care, the ecosystem inside would degrade until nothing remained. It was like carrying a world in your pocket and knowing that if you forgot about it for too long, it died.
I wouldn't forget.
I entered the glowing circle. The light climbed up my feet, my legs, my torso — and the Oasis did what it always did: it took away everything I was in that place and returned me to what I was before.
✦ ✦ ✦
Farm 22.
My eyes opened to a ceiling I didn't recognize for three seconds.
I was lying down. The body heavy, the head spinning with the disorientation of someone who has just been torn from one world and thrown into another — like a monumental hangover, only without the alcohol and without the party. The Pod around me hummed low, the capsule still cooling from the transport, the internal lights blinking in a pattern I had seen once before and that meant everything had worked.
I was back.
Looking around, I recognized the structure. The Crivald family's hive — smaller than the main installation I had seen before, but just as technological. Curved walls of a material that seemed like metal and glass at the same time, panels pulsing with data I didn't know how to read, corridors that opened and closed with a logic that seemed more organic than architectural. The Crivald family wasn't just rich. It was the kind of rich that invented its own technology.
"So I'm back…"
The words came out on their own, hoarse, with the weight of someone who doesn't know whether they're relieved or empty. Maybe both.
Footsteps approached.
I recognized Cris before seeing him completely — the same measured walk, the same posture of someone who carried too much information and showed too little. A member of the Crivald family, one of those who had taken me to the Pod the first time, when all of this began. His face appeared at the edge of the capsule, and my eyes dropped instinctively.
I didn't even understand why.
Maybe because looking into the eyes of someone who knew I had failed was too heavy in that moment. Maybe because I still saw her name rising in the gray sky every time someone from the family appeared before me. Either way, I didn't look.
Cris didn't demand that I look. He simply placed his hand on my shoulder — a simple gesture, firm, without drama.
"Thank you for giving your maximum protecting Miss Eris."
His face seemed so sad. But the voice didn't tremble. Not for a second. It was the kind of control that came from practice — from someone who had already received enough bad news to know how to deliver and how to receive without anything breaking on the outside.
I didn't ask how he knew. Maybe the family had ways of monitoring the Oasis that I didn't know about. Maybe there were channels of information between the noble families that operated at a speed I would never have access to. There were so many things I still didn't know about my own world — the one inside and the one outside — that the question seemed too small for the moment.
"We've already separated your Pod and you can send us your location so we can ship it."Cris spoke with the smooth efficiency of someone returning to protocol because protocol is easier than feeling. "Unfortunately, our leader is in seclusion. Due to everything that happened."
Seclusion. The word hung in the air like a euphemism wearing a suit. Eris's father — the man who sent supplies every week to keep his daughter alive, who promised more resources if I protected her — was in seclusion. I imagined a dark room. A closed door. And a man who had enough money to buy worlds but couldn't buy back the only thing that mattered.
Cris paused. A few seconds of silence — the kind that happens when someone is deciding whether to speak or not.
"We will add an additional amount due to the performance you delivered."
Performance. The word should have meant praise, but it sounded like a receipt.
I was distraught. All of that — the protocol, the efficiency, the payment for services rendered — didn't match the weight I carried. And before I could hold myself back, the question came out:
"Do you think there was a Burman in her Purge? I mean…"
I didn't finish the sentence. I didn't need to.
"It wasn't your fault." Cris answered quickly — too quickly. The kind of speed that comes when the answer is already ready before the question. "Unfortunately, our family, despite being strong, still can't deal with other families without scruples…"
He stopped.
Suddenly. As though he had heard his own words and realized, too late, that he had said more than he should have. The face didn't change — he was too good for that — but the posture did. A minimal stiffness in the shoulders. An adjustment in his breathing.
"Don't worry." He said, with a voice that now seemed carefully trimmed at the edges. "We're resolving the issues."
The words were tossed with the rehearsed casualness of someone who wants them to seem insignificant. But I heard what was underneath.
Eris had been betrayed.
Not by the Oasis. Not by Burmans. By people. By families. By someone who calculated that the death of a girl was worth the political price of eliminating her — and that the Purge was the perfect stage, where deaths looked like accidents and nobody asked questions.
The ground beneath my feet seemed to shift.
I said nothing. I stored the information in the same place where I stored everything that takes too long to process in the moment — deep, locked, for when I had time to look at it head-on.
"We've arrived."
✦ ✦ ✦
The room was too large for two people.
A woman waited for us at the center — standing, her hands crossed in front of her body with the studied elegance of someone who learned to be in every place without seeming out of place in any. She wore fine clothes, expensive in appearance, the kind that didn't shout money but whispered it with an accent. The light hair fell straight over her shoulders. The blue eyes found mine the instant I entered.
And the first thing I noticed was the smile. Permanent. Calibrated. The smile of someone whose profession was making you feel welcome enough not to ask questions.
"Good afternoon, Lord Leonidas." The voice was soft and polished like marble. "I've heard a great deal about you. My name is Minerva Crivald, and I'll be accompanying you from here on."
Before I could respond, Cris turned to me and extended his hand. I gripped it. He looked into my eyes — this time without diverting, without protocol, without the professional shell he wore as armor. For a second, there was just a man who had lost someone and was thanking another man who had tried to prevent it.
"I would like to thank you once again. And we hope to be able to count on you at another time." A minimal pause. "At the right price, of course. Goodbye, Lord Leonidas."
Cris didn't wait for my answer. He turned and vanished around a bend in the corridor I didn't even remember taking. The sound of his steps disappeared fast — and with it, the last connection I had to what had happened in that gray world.
I was alone with the smile.
Minerva was still observing me with that calibrated attention when she seemed to give a start — as though caught by her own distraction.
"My apologies. Just a second."
She drew from a ring on her finger a small book that materialized in her hand — the kind of expensive technology the Crivald family treated like someone grabbing a notebook from a drawer. She leafed through a few pages. Found what she was looking for.
"Please, take this."
She brought a card to my hands. Thin, dark, with no visible inscription.
"With this card you'll have access to the additional prize we're delivering. In total, we've put—"
I raised my hand.
She stopped. The smile wavered for a fraction — not of offense, of recalibration. Someone accustomed to delivering numbers and seeing gratitude was receiving refusal.
"You don't need to worry. I'm tired. I just want to go home."
"Of course, I'm sorry." The smile returned, adjusted to the new frequency. "Take this phone as well. It already has my contact — any request you need, call me and I'll help." She handed over a device with the same fluidity with which she had handed over the card. "We've also released a house in the noble territory. If you'd like to transfer, we can also help with the paperwork—"
I raised my hand again.
This time she noticed before the gesture finished. The smile softened — and for a very brief instant, I saw something behind it that seemed genuine. Maybe pity. Maybe respect. Maybe only the recognition that the man in front of her didn't want anything she could offer.
"Follow me, Lord Leonidas. We've left a driver available to take you."
I followed her without thinking. In truth, I just wanted to leave that place. Being there was heavy in a way I couldn't describe — every corridor, every curved wall, every Crivald family logo reminded me that I had been paid to protect someone and that person was now a name vanishing in the sky. Either way, it didn't take long.
In a few minutes, an enormous garden opened before me — green, silent, absurdly well-kept, the kind that existed only to prove someone had enough money to keep green what didn't need to be green. A flying car sat in the center of the stone path, and beside it a man as large as me held the door open like someone who had been doing that long enough not to think about the gesture anymore.
"Magnus. Take Lord Leonidas to this location."
Minerva sent an address to the enormous driver's phone, who merely confirmed with a nod. I got into the car. The door closed behind me with a soft sound that seemed to belong to another universe.
And the world outside began to pass.
✦ ✦ ✦
Things hadn't changed at all since the moment I left.
It was funny — and I use that word again knowing there is nothing funny about it — how things in the Oasis were always dynamic, always changing, always in a state of war or preparation for war. My territory changed every day. Each dawn brought something new to kill or build or defend. But out here, in this world I was supposed to call mine, everything remained exactly the same. The same streets. The same buildings. The same light. As though humanity had collectively decided that changing wasn't worth the effort.
They didn't know what war was.
While I lost myself in the contrast between the two worlds, I noticed something strange.
"Why is there no one on the street?"
The question didn't expect an answer. But Magnus, who drove with the heavy tranquility of someone who did it for a profession and not for pleasure, answered anyway.
"Today is the final of the battle between kingdoms, my Lord."
I frowned.
I knew little about the entertainment around the Oasis, but I knew enough: humans didn't care much about the battles between kingdoms. It was always the same thing — the same winners, the same dominant races, the same empires crushing opponents who didn't even have a chance to compete. The real interest was in the individual battles, where almost a new race occasionally surprised and gave the public something to celebrate. The battles between kingdoms were considered a closed case before they began.
"Why is everyone interested? Did the individual ones already end?"
Magnus gave a smile — the first I had seen from him. Wide, genuine, with the energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly that question. He pressed a button on the dashboard, and a screen began to descend from the vehicle's ceiling.
"Actually, no, Lord Leonidas." His voice changed. It left the professional frequency and entered one I could only describe as contained excitement — that of someone holding an itch that desperately needed to be scratched. "But this year something incredible happened."
I took the bait.
"What happened this year?"
The monitor turned on.
And what I saw made me forget, for an instant, everything I was carrying.
Two kingdoms. Face to face. The battlefield between them stretched in lines I recognized — the same structure the Oasis used for all large-scale battles, the same neutral terrain, the same tension of two armies separated by a space that would soon be filled with blood.
The first kingdom was easy to identify. T-rexes and other jurassic mounts lined up in formation, the enormous creatures snorting vapor in an air that seemed to tremble with their presence. And behind the mounts, rows upon rows of soldiers with the faces of every known feline — lions, leopards, cheetahs, tigers — each one armed, each one enormous, each one radiating the disciplined arrogance of a race that never needed to ask itself whether it was strong; honestly, their strength seemed as capable or more than what I myself had faced months before.
Burmans.
An entire army of them. The kind of force that made kingdoms surrender before the first blow.
On the other side…
I didn't understand what I was seeing.
The kingdom was simple. Small. Looking closely, it seemed even smaller than mine — and mine was already considered small. The constructions were strange, twisted, made of something I didn't recognize in any reference my mind could access. Forms that seemed to have grown rather than been built, angles that defied logic, surfaces that changed color depending on the angle of the light. I didn't know any construction of that type. No race I had ever studied built like that.
But the most surprising thing wasn't the kingdom.
It was the front line.
There was no army.
There was no formation. There were no soldiers, no creatures, no heroes lined up waiting for the signal. On the front line of that kingdom, alone, standing in the middle of the field as though waiting for a bus, there was only a figure.
Small.
A girl.
Wavy hair framing a face that had feline features — but not like the Burmans. Softer. Younger. The face of a lion cub that hasn't yet grown enough to frighten, but that already has in its eyes something that makes larger animals change course.
"I don't understand…" I said, leaning closer to the screen. "She looks like a Burman. But she seems… like a child."
I was genuinely confused. But the smile Magnus let out — loud, sonorous, the laugh of someone who could finally share the secret they had been holding — pulled me from the confusion and threw me into something else.
"That's right, Lord!" He was practically vibrating in the driver's seat. "Anyone who doesn't know what's happening would think the Oasis had gone insane. But the truth is one."Magnus turned his face to me — and in his eyes I saw something I hadn't seen on any human face since I returned: pure admiration, without filter, without calculation. "Would you believe me if I told you that this child is going to kill that entire army… alone?"
My confusion was written all over my face.
"What… how?"
Magnus turned his eyes back to the road. The smile didn't diminish. If possible, it grew larger — like that of a child about to tell the ending of a story they know nobody will believe.
"Would you believe that this innocent-looking girl…" He paused — a pause that was pure theater — and it worked. "…is a goddamn Vriseu?"
The car continued in silence.
The monitor continued showing the girl standing in the middle of the field.
And I stayed staring at the screen, with the Vivarium still warm in my pocket and Eris Crivald's name still rising in the sky of my memory, trying to process the information that the most powerful race that existed — the race that never, in all known history, had been permitted in the Oasis — was standing in front of a Burman army with the face of a child.
And that nobody seemed worried about her.
But about the Burmans.