"Lord Preker…"
"How is she?"
The room smelled of metal and something he couldn't name — the kind of smell that exists only in places where the body is being kept alive by means the body hadn't asked for. The girl in the bed looked smaller than he remembered. The face that had been full of life was skeletal, the dark circles deep as though someone had excavated the space beneath her eyes with deliberate care. A device beside the bed moved at a constant rhythm, helping her breathe with the regularity of something that had no choice but to continue.
Preker was sitting beside her.
The calloused hands — hands that had held weapons, built borders, buried companions — brushed her hands with the delicacy of someone who knows that strength isn't what the moment calls for. He looked at those small hands with the expression of someone trying to memorize something they fear losing.
Weeks without sleeping properly. Divided between the Oasis and that room, trying to find a way to be in both places at the same time and only managing to be halfway in each. The border had learned to function without him during those days. She hadn't.
"She'll survive."
The doctor paused.
"Unfortunately."
"What? Don't take me for weak."
"It's not weakness, Lord Preker. It's what needs to be said before the rest."
A pause that weighed more than it should have.
"She won't be able to walk again."
Preker didn't respond.
He kept looking at his daughter with the stillness of someone who had received information the body was refusing to process. His feet, even while seated, swayed slightly — the only external sign of something happening inside at a scale he couldn't completely contain.
He had faced things that killed experienced Lords. Had remained standing when others fell, not from courage, but because the alternative had always seemed unacceptable. He had learned, over decades on the border, that there was always something to do. Always a next step. Always an exit that existed before being found.
Now he was sitting in a chair beside his daughter and couldn't find anything.
"How can this happen to my daughter."
It wasn't a question.
"I tried so hard."
The older doctor stayed silent. There were things he couldn't say — secrets involving what had happened in the arena, information that nobody in that place was permitted to reveal, not even to a father who had crossed borders to be there. He knew about Preker. Knew about the medals, the battles, the reputation built in the kind of place where reputations cost what they cost. And there was that man, showing what few would ever see.
"Father…"
The girl's voice was weak. But it was there.
Preker got up from the chair before realizing he had gotten up.
"Paprini, my little one."
The word came out before he could hold it back — the name he only used when he thought nobody was listening, the name she had chosen when she was still too small to know that Infernals didn't choose affectionate names.
"Forgive me."
"I'm leaving."
The doctor stepped back slowly.
"You can stay and talk with her."
He left before waiting for an answer. There were things an Infernal shouldn't witness if they wanted to honestly say they hadn't seen anything.
Preker nodded at the empty space where the doctor had been. Then turned his eyes back to his daughter.
"Daughter. My dear daughter."
A pause.
"What happened?"
"You were right, father."
She looked toward the window.
In the territory visible beyond the glass, the wall. And on what should have been the smooth surface of the wall, a gash — deep, vertical, going from the base to the highest point with the precision of something made by a force that hadn't cared about what was in its way. Workers covered the extent of the damage with the urgency of those trying to erase evidence before questions were asked.
She had seen when it was made.
Even now, awake, the reflex of having seen it still appeared on her face as fright.
"What is it, daughter?"
Preker followed her eyes to the gash. He knew less than he thought — the secrets about what had happened in the arena were guarded with a care that even his influence hadn't managed to completely penetrate. What he knew was that someone had caused that. A single someone.
He had thought about that human since receiving the call to return to the Oasis. Had calculated, with the experience of someone who had spent decades evaluating threats on the border, what that human represented. Had arrived at conclusions he hadn't shared with anyone.
But that — that gash in the wall — was something else.
Even the most cunning, intelligent and strong rat was still a rat.
He had believed that.
"Daughter. What happened?"
The blood tears began slowly. First one, then both sources open — the kind of crying that has no control because whoever is crying isn't trying to contain anything, is simply letting out what had been dammed up for too long.
"I thought I was going to die, daddy."
For an Infernal, that word was almost forbidden. Daddy — not Lord, not father, not the treatment that children of the great houses learned before learning to walk. Daddy, as she had always called him when she thought he wasn't paying attention, as she called him in moments when she forgot she had learned she shouldn't.
He embraced her.
The stern Lord who made other Lords step back a pace simply by being present embraced his daughter with arms that had brought down four-meter creatures and let his own tears out without trying to hold them. There was nobody to see. And even if there had been — he had stopped caring about that the moment he saw that bed and that equipment and that face that had been full of life.
For a moment, the room was silent except for the equipment and the crying of both of them.
Then the girl stopped.
Stepped back slightly.
Looked down.
"Father."
The voice had changed. It was no longer crying — it was something quieter and more dangerous than crying.
"Why can't I feel my legs?"
Preker's throat went dry.
He eased out of the embrace slowly. Looked at her. Her eyes were on her own feet — motionless beneath the sheet, motionless despite her staring at them with the concentration of someone trying to move something that should respond and doesn't.
"You were found beneath rubble. It struck your body."
The tears returned. Stronger this time.
He understood the reason for the despair — and it wasn't just the pain.
The walled city had no room for uselessness. It was an unwritten law that had become as much a part of Infernal culture as any official decree — within the walls, every individual needed to be capable of contributing, of defending, of sustaining what had been built at the cost that had been paid. Disability had one known response. It wasn't cruel out of cruelty — it was the cold logic of a race that had survived surrounded by forces that wanted to see it extinct, and that had learned that survival accepted no exceptions.
Her daughter knew that.
Had known since childhood, as every child who grows up within those walls knows — not because someone sits down and explains, but because the environment explains by itself, gradually, until the rule is so internalized it seems natural.
And now she was lying in a bed unable to feel her legs.
"I don't want to die, daddyyy—"
"Listen."
It wasn't forced firmness. It was the specific calm of someone who had made a decision before opening their mouth — the kind of calm that doesn't need effort because the effort had already happened inside, in silence, before any word was spoken.
"A riddle for you, my little one."
She stopped crying for a second. Not from joy — from surprise. He always did that. Had done it since she was small enough to find it funny.
"What is stronger than a wall, faster than any creature and the hardest to kill on the border?"
She stayed silent, eyes still glistening, trying to process the change in tone.
"I don't know, father."
"I thought you had more faith in me."
She understood, a smile emerged from the corner of her mouth in response, only to fade into anxiety.
She said nothing. Just looked at him with that expression he had seen few times — her face when something had arrived before she managed to build the defense to keep it from arriving.
"Daddy will find a way. Don't worry. There's an agreement to be made, and I'm going to make it."
"Agreement?"
A remnant of something that wasn't yet hope, but was closer to it than anything else that had appeared on her face since he had entered that room.
"If I go back to the kingdom, I promise I'll never come back, father. I can stay with you on the border. My heroes are strong. It'll work out—"
"Something is happening, daughter. Rumors of war."
He said it carefully — not to spare her, but because there was information he genuinely didn't have yet, and lying to her had never been something he managed to do well. She always knew. Since she was small.
"War? What are you talking about?"
The memory arrived before he could respond.
Not his memory — hers. What she had seen in the arena. What had made that gash in the wall. What she had witnessed before losing consciousness the first time.
The device beside the bed began to accelerate.
Infernals outside the room heard the alarm before the door opened.
"Adrenaline at two thousand. What happened here? We'll need to put her under for now."
The girl was looking at her father while the others tried to contain her. The voice was getting lower, but he could still hear it.
"Don't go. Don't go. He—"
A pause.
"A monster."
Her eyes closed.
After a few minutes the girl's body finally calmed into a deep sleep.
"She's resting."
"Thank you."
"Lord Preker — you'll have to see her later. We'll stay and monitor her."
"Don't worry."
He looked at his daughter one last time. At the hands he had brushed with his own. At the face that had held an expression of peace that hadn't been there a few minutes before.
"Take care of her. I hope she's better when she wakes up."
He left.
Didn't wait for an answer.
There was nothing more to say in that room — only things to do on the outside.
✦ ✦ ✦
The walled city looked normal.
That was what bothered him most — that everything around continued with the usual routine while something had changed in a way he still couldn't completely measure. The rumors of war and of an agreement circulated through the alleyways with the speed of things that people know they shouldn't repeat and repeat anyway. The sudden summons had been about that, he was certain. What he wasn't certain about was the extent.
He walked through the city with the gaze of someone cataloguing without appearing to be cataloguing — a border habit, where what you seemed to notice and what you actually noticed were two completely different things.
A few hours later, the castle.
Colossal. Centralized. The kind of structure that exists to remind those who pass by it where power was — not as an affirmation, because affirmations need an audience, but as an architectural fact that simply existed regardless of who was looking. Preker had grown up on the periphery. Had come here few times. And was glad of that — because what came out of that place was always veiled threats and corruption, which the inhabitants of the center preferred to persistently call politics.
He preferred Wyverns.
At least Wyverns were honest about what they wanted, even if it was just to set everything on fire.
"Lord Preker. You arrived on time. Follow me."
The fine clothing and cultured mannerisms of the Infernal who appeared at his side confirmed what he had feared since receiving the summons.
"Let's get this over with quickly."
The corridor was the kind that exists to make whoever walks through it feel the weight of where they are. Preker ignored the corridor, the scenes on the walls, the guards' gazes.
He was thinking about his daughter.
"We've arrived. The queen is waiting."
"The queen?"
The shock was genuine. So things were more serious than he had calculated.
He advanced without waiting for the protocols. Didn't care. He wanted to resolve what needed to be resolved and return to his daughter.
What he found on the other side wasn't a common meeting.
Too many Lords. Most from the center — irrelevant in the field, powerful in the room, the kind that Preker had learned to recognize and ignore in the same sequence. But there were great houses there. Old nobility. And on the throne, Lagherta.
"Lord Preker. It is a pleasure to have you here."
"Queen Mother. Nobles."
He had accumulated more medals and glory than ninety percent of those in that room. Knew it. They knew it. And still he knelt in respect — after all hierarchy was hierarchy.
"Queen Mother — who is this?"
The discussion began before Lagherta answered. She didn't mind — continued observing Preker with the kind of attention that wasn't curiosity, it was evaluation.
When she raised her hand, the silence was immediate.
"Lord Preker. I see you have some doubt. You may speak."
"Forgive me, Queen Mother. I don't know what is happening, nor why I was summoned."
The other Lords in the room exchanged glances with the expression of those who had expected competence and had received ignorance. Lagherta remained neutral.
"Lord Preker — perhaps you don't know, as you were on the front line protecting our control. And I thank you for that."
A pause.
"I also see that the first place you went when you received my summons was to see your daughter."
Preker swallowed hard.
Her smile said more than the words. She knew more than she showed — and showed exactly enough for him to know she knew. It was the kind of game she had learned to play before most of the Lords in that room had learned to talk.
"How is that lovely girl?"
There was something specific in that question. Not curiosity. Something more calculated — like someone who already knows the answer and is measuring whether the person before them will lie.
Preker wasn't going to yield.
"She's fine. A scare, perhaps."
A pause.
"What is happening?"
✦ ✦ ✦
The silence fell over the hall with the weight of something that had been waiting to fall. The stranger's arrogance before the Queen Mother was clear to all — and the fact that she had done nothing about it was, in itself, information that nobody in the room knew how to process yet.
It was the oldest of the nobles who broke it first — with the voice of someone who had been waiting for that moment and had rehearsed what they would say, and who for that very reason sounded exactly like someone who had rehearsed.
"Queen Mother — I believe we can handle such an obstacle without needing outside help. Especially from…"
His eyes found Preker.
Preker returned the gaze with the expression of someone who had seen that look before — in different faces, in different contexts, always with the same meaning.
"Someone from the periphery."
"Yes, Queen Mother. Allow us to lead—"
"I implore for command, my queen—"
"House Verath has sufficient experience to—"
The voices overlapped. Then began to rise. And when Infernal voices rise in competition, instinct leads to the only resource that guarantees being heard above the others — hypersonic attacks vibrating at frequencies that weren't language, they were pressure, each trying to occupy more sonic space than the previous.
The hall became something between debate and attribute war.
Preker stood still. Observing. With the expression of someone who had spent decades on the border and had learned that most problems that seemed urgent resolved themselves if you waited long enough.
"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP."
It wasn't volume.
It was frequency.
What came from Lagherta crossed the space and entered bodies before ears registered what had arrived — something that settled in the center of every person's chest in that hall and squeezed with the surgical precision of someone who knows exactly where to squeeze. Some Lords curved slightly. Others went rigid. Nobody made a sound.
Preker hadn't moved.
Lagherta noticed.
"Noble colleagues — before any of you questions my capacity for choice, I want you to meet who is truly standing before you."
She let the silence last a second longer than necessary.
"The Black Stallion."
The name fell in the hall like a heavy object in still water.
There were Lords there who had never gone to the border. There were others who defended the territory, but who knew only their own sectors — the border was long, and each Lord guarded what was theirs without necessarily knowing who guarded what was beside them. But there were names that crossed that distance. That arrived before the people, carried by accounts from those who had been there and had returned with something to tell.
The Black Stallion was one of those names.
Holder of the largest territory on the border. One of the few Lords to obtain an egg on a maximum-level mission — and what had come out of that egg dominated the skies with the exclusivity of something that hadn't found a rival in nearly a decade. Nobody knew for certain whether it was a Wyvern, a Drake or even a Serpent. What they knew was the result: the Oasis border under his control had been free of incursions for long enough for other Lords to begin depending on that silence without needing to understand where it came from.
The faces in the hall made the transition.
Disgust to confusion. Confusion to disbelief. Disbelief to something closer to the discomfort of those who had said what shouldn't have been said in front of someone who shouldn't have heard.
"You're saying the holder of such a creature is this…"
The oldest noble didn't finish the sentence.
Lagherta laughed.
It wasn't the laugh of someone who is happy. It was the laugh of someone who had arrived at a conclusion about the people around them that the people around them hadn't yet arrived at about themselves — and who had decided that this was the moment to share that conclusion in a way that left no doubt.
"You are idiots."
The hall went silent.
Not the silence from before — that had been surprise. This was the silence of someone who had received something they didn't know how to process. Only the oldest seemed irritated.
"How dare you—"
The spear left her hand before he finished.
There was no rage in the movement. No urgency. It was the kind of throw that happens when someone is so convinced of what they're doing that the execution is merely the consequence of the thought. The old noble was pinned to the chair with the spear through his shoulder — alive, but immobilized, with the expression of someone trying to calculate whether they had misread what had just happened.
Nobody else spoke.
"All of you here are Lords who serve me for nothing beyond your numbers and your influence."
She stood slowly. She went looking into the eyes of each one as she walked — not with rage, with the cold evaluation of someone taking inventory.
"If you think you're going to win simply because the adversary is weak, know that you will die. And more importantly — you will make me lose my revenge."
Her eyes stopped on Preker.
"Black Stallion."
A pause.
"Don't take me for a fool. I know everything. I see everything."
Another pause — this time with the specific weight of something being decided while she spoke.
"This war will be commanded by you. And you will bring me that human's head."
Preker was motionless for a moment.
Then his eyes widened — not from fear, but from the kind of reaction that happens when pieces that had been loose suddenly fall into an order that changes the meaning of everything that had happened before. The sudden summons. His daughter's condition. The gash in the wall. Her words before losing consciousness.
A human.
He had thought about that human since the border. Had calculated, with decades of experience evaluating threats, what that human represented. Had arrived at conclusions he hadn't shared.
But there was still one piece that didn't fit.
Without realizing he was speaking out loud:
"How?"
Lagherta stopped.
Was silent for a moment — the kind of silence that indicates the person is searching for words for something that words weren't built to describe.
"That is not an ordinary human."
A pause.
"A monster."
It was the second time that day Preker had heard that word associated with the same being.
The first had come from his daughter — with the despair of someone who had seen and couldn't find another word for what they had seen.
The second came from the queen — with the coldness of someone who had evaluated and had arrived at the same conclusion by a completely different path.
Two sources. Two perspectives. The same word.
"Everyone leave. Let me speak with your commander."
A pause.
"And find someone to replace this one."
Her eyes went to the noble pinned to the chair.
"Kill him and his family. We don't need more useless mouths occupying our already restricted territory."
The shock moved through the hall in different ways — some with disbelief, others with the specific fear of those calculating whether they had said something that could put them in the same category. Nobody challenged. The hall emptied with the speed of people who had decided the outside was substantially safer than the inside.
Only the two remained.
"My queen — I would like to leave my daughter in my territory. I promise I'll never bring her here again, that she will never be a problem—"
"Shut up."
She lightly touched her own caprine horns with the distraction of someone thinking about something else while speaking.
"What you do with that cripple doesn't interest me. Leave her in your territory or forget her in some alley you consider safe."
A longer pause.
"But lying to me—"
Preker knelt.
Not from obligation. From choice.
His face didn't emanate shame. It emanated something closer to relief — the kind that appears when someone has carried something for too long and has finally found where to set it down. Decades on the border. Decades of choices that cost what they cost. Decades of being what was necessary to be so that others could continue to exist.
Now it was a different choice. Simpler than any he had ever made.
It didn't matter what they did to him.
If his daughter lived.
And there was something more — a secret he carried that would protect her even if he were no longer there to protect her personally. A last gift he had prepared without knowing he was preparing it. He shook his head.
"I accept everything. My daughter is everything to me. Allow her to live and I will do anything."
The silence that followed was different from all the previous ones.
"Anything?"
Lagherta finally seemed interested.
✦ ✦ ✦
Standing on the battlefield, Preker observed.
He had arrived there by a path he hadn't chosen — and that he would choose again without hesitation. The room smelling of metal. His daughter's face. The doctor who had left before seeing too much. The castle corridor that existed to intimidate and that he had ignored. The queen and her cold evaluation. The name that had fallen in the hall like a sentence. The agreement made without hesitation, on his knees, without shame — because the only calculation that mattered had been made before arriving there, and the result had always been the same.
And then what had come after the agreement.
The integration. The awakening inside something that was no longer separate from him. The consciousness that screamed where he preferred to hear silence. The field that appeared when the Oasis opened the portal — and the first time he felt, inside that colossal body, that he was exactly where he needed to be.
It was what he did best — not the fight itself, but what came before it. The reading. The inventory. The construction of a map of who was ahead before any blow was exchanged. Decades on the border had transformed that into a reflex so integrated that he could no longer distinguish where instinct ended and reasoning began.
There, in that place, he felt more comfortable than he had in months.
However even with decades of experience what he saw confused that reflex.
The human's technology was something the Oasis shouldn't have permitted — and yet had. The Yokais with coupled bombards were a solution that races with thousands of years of technological advantage hadn't found — but a simple human had. The queen had said he was a monster.
Preker had heard that word from his daughter before hearing it from the queen, and had dismissed it as the despair of a traumatized child and a resentful queen.
Now he was less certain of the dismissal.
And yet — and yet — what was ahead was still a human. A race that the Oasis sometimes allowed to use resources that higher-ranked races couldn't access, not because they were superior, but because they were sufficiently inferior for the system not to consider them a threat that justified blocking. It was a system irony that Preker had observed before: the weaker the user, the less the Oasis worried about what they found. The stronger, the more restrictions appeared.
Building that at scale had cost that human time and effort that any stronger race simply wouldn't have invested — because there were more direct paths to power when you had the strength to follow them.
The human didn't have that strength.
That was why he had found this path. But this path, by itself, wasn't the problem — it was exceptional, yes, but within an acceptable margin. Nothing that justified the word that two different people had used on the same day. Nothing that came close to what it meant for an Infernal.
Something didn't fit.
"How did you do this?"
Preker hadn't planned to speak out loud. The words came out before he realized — not directed at anyone in particular, just the thought finding an exit.
The answer that arrived wasn't from anyone on the field.
It came from inside.
"LET'S FIGHT. I WANT BLOOD."
The voice struck the interior of the body he now shared with something that was no longer separate from him — integrated, fused, a consciousness that had been something else before and that still carried the instincts of what it had been before he entered.
Preker moved by instinct before he could hold the movement.
"Not yet."
The silence that followed on the other side was the kind that indicates something had heard and had retreated — not from agreement, but because it had learned that that voice had precedence when it decided to use it.
Preker was still learning to exist in this way.
Becoming a Vorthari had cost what it had cost. The biological integration was permanent — he had known that before entering, had accepted that before entering, and had entered regardless because the agreement with the queen had left no alternative he was willing to consider. If his daughter lived, the price had been fair. It was the only metric that mattered.
What he hadn't completely calculated was the consciousness on the other side.
It wasn't hostile. Wasn't an enemy. It was simply different — with different instincts, different urgencies, a different relationship with the battlefield that was visceral where his was analytical. The consciousness inside the Vorthari didn't understand waiting. Didn't understand strategy. It understood blood and movement and the specific pleasure of something that had been built to destroy and was being prevented from doing what it had been built to do.
Learning to coexist with that without being consumed by it was a process he had begun and that clearly hadn't ended.
"Be quiet."
The silence returned.
Preker breathed.
On the field ahead, the battle had developed in ways he had observed with growing attention. Two of the three Vorthari had fallen — and the way they had fallen had said more about the human than any report the queen had received. The first by a single shot that had calculated the exact point of impact to maximize damage. The second by five smaller shots converging on the same point — not by the same force, but by the same logic multiplied.
It wasn't luck.
It was method.
A signal arrived through the channels the Infernals used for field communication.
"Stallion — we have reached confrontation. It's a matter of time. Allow us the honor of destroying the enemy."
Honor.
Preker had spent decades beyond the walls, where honor was a concept that existed in speeches and disappeared the first time you needed to choose between it and surviving. The fights he had waged hadn't been about honor. They had been about living or dying — and he had chosen living every time, by whatever means living required.
If someone wanted to waste energy honoring an adversary, he gladly accepted the time that bought.
"Do as you wish. I'll be here to reinforce when necessary."
The signal ended.
Another arrived immediately — but this one was different. It didn't come from the nobles on the field. Didn't come from the consciousness he shared. It came from someone he recognized by frequency before recognizing by identity.
The only creature that had been with him since the beginning. That had emerged from the egg on a mission that had nearly killed him and had decided, for reasons Preker had never managed to fully explain, that he was the right place to be. That had grown in the skies of the border for nearly a decade and that no human being had seen close enough to survive to tell.
The ace nobody knew existed.
"I'm ready."
"Easy."
Preker didn't take his eyes off the human on the field.
"It's not time yet."
A pause.
"Something tells me that human has more things to show. We need more information before acting."
The field moved around him with the specific chaos of a battle that had left the planning of both sides and had entered the territory where improvisation and instinct determined who survived the next minute.
In the middle of it all, the human.
Who continued revealing nothing beyond what had already been revealed.
And who for that very reason revealed everything Preker needed to know.