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  She marched for days. Time bled into a gray smear of dawn and dusk until the forest finally recoiled, leaving only the echo of crunching snow behind her. The air grew heavy with raw moisture—thick, like the onset of a spring flood, tainted with the scent of sodden bark and distant soot. Violetta crested a ridge where the wind hissed in her ears and looked down. Below lay Amplios—a city choked by high walls of dark stone, cinched tight like an iron vise. Patrols of soldiers crawled along the parapets, their boots thudding rhythmically. A grim silence reigned even at midday, as if the very air were under surveillance.

  Surrounding the city were hollowed-out villages, their fields black and barren—wounds upon the earth's hide. No smoke rose from chimneys; no children’s laughter broke the air. There was only the creak of a wagon wheel pulled by skeletal horses and the heavy march of iron-shod boots on frozen soil, each step kicking up clouds of dust and despair.

  “SCANNING PERIMETER,” the Sphere’s voice vibrated softly, its azure glow reflecting in a slushy puddle. “HIGH CALIBRATION OF FAMINE AMONG NATIVES. FREQUENT INCIDENTS OF PUBLIC EXECUTION DETECTED. QUALITY OF LIFE: CRITICAL MINIMUM. CITY CONTROLLED BY IMPERIAL GARRISON. ESTIMATED STRENGTH: 800+ COMBATANTS.”

  Violetta watched in silence. Her gaze snagged on the main gate of Amplios, topped by a heavy black shield. Upon it, a golden double-headed eagle froze in a mid-air sprawl of power. Above its heads hovered a laurel wreath—a symbol of the triumph the Empire celebrated daily, marching over the bones of its own subjects. The silver hill at the eagle’s feet was meant to represent peace, but to Violetta, it looked like a mountain of bleached skulls, meticulously dusted with snow so as not to offend the nobles in their carriages.

  The sight tasted like bile—a slow-acting poison eroding her from within. The Empire held this land in a fist of rusted iron. The cold had been an honest enemy; this was something else.

  Hiding her rucksack and pelt-mantle beneath the roots of a massive tree, she began her descent. Her movements were ghost-like, a fusion of her masked master's training and months of raw survival. Her predatory instincts, sharpened by the Sphere’s analytics, turned her into a shadow against the white.

  “DO YOU WISH TO HEAR MORTALITY STATISTICS FOR THE LAST FORTNIGHT?” the Sphere asked, its hum a low tremor.

  “Don’t,” Violetta whispered, pressing her back against a trunk. “I can see it for myself.”

  Near the gates, she froze in the lee of the wall. The stone was cold, leaching heat from her skin. Nearby, three soldiers stood in battered plate, their eyes hollow with fatigue. They warmed their hands over a fire fueled by rotting, smoky planks.

  “Heard a new ration shipment’s hitting the wall garrison soon.”

  “Hmph,” a third soldier grunted. “Last time, some crone came up with a holy icon, tried to trade it for a crust. Begging, she was. ‘God look upon me!’ she says. I told her: ‘Old woman, your God is in your stomach.’ ” He laughed. The others joined in, but the sound lacked joy—it was merely the echo of apathy.

  “Listen...” the first leaned in. “Before they ship it out, maybe we take a little for ourselves...”

  “Shut your mouth, fool,” the eldest snapped. “You want to hang next to the starvelings?”

  Silence fell, broken only by the snap of the flames and the groan of the wind. Violetta felt her fingers curl into a fist.

  “They have no fear left,” she whispered, swallowing the rage that constricted her throat. “And no shame.”

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  Violetta infiltrated the city through a derelict sewer—a narrow vein where freezing water lapped at her ankles and the walls were slick with a slime that smelled of rot and iron. Every breath was a struggle against the stench of decay.

  The first citizen she met was a corpse.

  “Ah!—” She stumbled, falling onto the snow-covered lane. Beneath the drifts, something crunched softly. A body. Semi-human, emaciated, eyes wide and sightless. The skin was stretched like parchment, mottled with dark bruises of decomposition that glistened in the dim light. Beside it lay an empty bowl—dented and scarred, as if bitten by desperate teeth.

  She stood up, brushing snow from her knees. Nausea surged, metallic and bitter, but she forced it down along with her trembling.

  The streets were haunted by shadows—not people, but husks. They breathed only by habit. Their steps shuffled over the cobbles like the cough of an ancient engine. Beast-kin slaves huddled against walls, clutching one another for the last dregs of warmth, their breath freezing into rime on their cheeks and tails.

  The soldiers marched past. Their boots struck the earth with the steady thud of a dying heart. They did not look down. To them, these creatures were merely stones in the road.

  “ACCORDING TO VISUAL MARKERS,” the Sphere intoned, “THOSE ENCOUNTERED ARE CLASSIFIED AS ‘REDUNDANT UNITS.’ IMPERIAL NOMENCLATURE FOR SLAVES WHO HAVE LOST PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY.”

  “What about me?” Violetta whispered. “I’m not human either.”

  “YOU ARE ASCARI PRIME. BEYOND THEIR CLASSIFICATION. TO THEM, YOU ARE A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC ANOMALY.”

  She passed a church. The soot-stained walls exhaled incense and terror. Inside, a bloated priest draped in furs bellowed from the pulpit:

  “God scourges us for our sins! For our dalliances with the sub-human! The plague is in their very blood! They are the blight that seduced our world with dark gifts!”

  His voice was thick and oily, like tallow dripping from a candle. The crowd remained silent—not out of faith, but exhaustion. Some nodded mechanically; others hid their hands in their pockets, white-knuckled. Their fury glowed like embers beneath ash—not yet a fire, but no longer cold.

  A gilded carriage rattled past, the crest of an Imperial House emblazoned on the door. The wheels ground through the muck, splashing slush and blood. Inside, wrapped in furs, sat a pale young noble. Beside him, liveried servants. One of them, without looking, tossed a crust of bread into the filth. Hard, green with mold.

  Three slaves lunged for it instantly, biting and tearing at each other's hands, snarling like animals. Nails clawed skin, blood mingled with the mire, and the snow turned a sickening pink.

  A soldier approached. His boot slammed into the back of the slowest slave—a short, lethal blow. The snap of bone echoed longer than the scream.

  “This... this is foul,” Violetta whispered, her stomach knotting. “This city is a waking nightmare.”

  She wanted to run, but her legs were leaden. It was the first time she felt such profound revulsion—not for a monster, but for a system that devoured lives and didn't even bother to swallow.

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  She was turning to leave when she noticed a soldier staring. His eyes—narrow and bloodshot from the cold—locked onto her for a second too long. Perhaps her white hair and porcelain skin were too familiar. His hand drifted to his sword hilt.

  “Hey, you!” he barked, his voice grating like a nail pulled from a board. “You’re one of them... wait! HALT!”

  Violetta didn't wait. She spun and bolted into an alleyway. The cobbles were slick, snow yielding under her feet, the shadows of the houses reaching for her like claws.

  “ALERT,” the Sphere said, its voice flat. “THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE. CALCULATING EVACUATION ROUTE: SEWER-SECTOR-3.”

  The Visor strobed red—a trajectory line cutting left, downward, bypassing the patrol. She sprinted through narrow lanes, past rotting fences, the thunder of heavy boots and the jangle of mail echoing behind her. Her heart hammered in sync with her pursuers.

  Ahead, a rusted manhole cover—a trap waiting to snap. She leapt, the iron groaning as she disappeared beneath it. Cold water slammed into her legs as the darkness of the sewers swallowed her. The walls were slick, the air a choking noose of rot.

  Above, the shouting and stomping lingered for a long time, fading second by second until only the rhythmic drip of water remained.

  Violetta sat for several minutes, unmoving. She listened to the city breathe—heavy, rattling, like a beast in its death throes. Only then did the Sphere speak.

  “SCAN COMPLETE. NO IMMEDIATE THREATS DETECTED.”

  Its glow filled the pipe with a pale, sickly blue light that turned the puddles into staring eyes. And then Violetta saw them—right beside her. Two bodies. A small one, with spindly arms clutching an even smaller frame with beast-kin features. Both frozen in a final embrace.

  The skin of the elder had split, revealing black stains beneath. The younger was bloated, eyes open and unfocused, staring at nothing. Violetta went still. Even the Sphere was silent.

  “There it is,” Violetta whispered. “The true Empire.”

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