The pain in her foot was a constant, throbbing presence, but Inês transformed it into fuel. Each sharp twinge as she limped down the smoke-filled corridor was a reminder of a face: The face of the Whisper. The shooter who wounded her. Every drop of blood that dripped and crusted on the hem of her dress was a promise.

  The gems in her necklace—one large red gem that looked like petrified blood droplets—pulsed softly against her skin. They weren't tools; they were parts of her. Like extra fingers, like a sixth sense that felt the life around her through the rhythm of blood in bodies.

  "Insects," she snarled, turning a corner. "Insects crawling through every corridor of my castle. Killing my slaves. Touching my things."

  She stopped before a broken window. Down below, in the inner courtyard, she saw three figures in green—the leaf-green of republican uniforms. They were going through bodies, looking for survivors.

  Something inside Inês snapped.

  The nightmare gems could be activated automatically, even from a distance—perfect mental traps, and with her nearby, she could still influence them. She focused on the three soldiers, whispering to the gems. After a few of them fell under the illusion, the gem at her neck pulsed, and she felt the blood inside them.

  They see shadows, she projected, her mind touching the most primitive corners of their consciousness. Shadows behind that column. Whispers coming from that door. The smell of smoke... no, of burning flesh. Their own flesh.

  One soldier turned sharply, rifle raised, pointing at his comrade.

  "Easy, Ribeiro!" the second said, but his voice held a note of tension.

  The third, younger one, began scratching his arm frantically. "There's something crawling on my skin... something..."

  Inês smiled. It was good. It was easy. Ordinary people were clay in the hands of someone who understood fear. But then the first soldier—Ribeiro—shook his head like a wet dog.

  "It's not real," he murmured to himself, a mantra. "It's just her gem. Breathe, focus."

  He turned directly toward the window where Inês stood. He couldn't see her in the darkness, but he knew.

  "There! Second-floor window!"

  Three rifles rose. Inês ducked back a second before the cracks filled the courtyard and glass shards flew over her head.

  Damn it! she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. This group is more mentally resilient!

  Fury gave way to cold calculation. She couldn't stay. She couldn't fight an entire army alone. But she wasn't alone.

  "Fábio."

  The name of her surviving son burned in her mind like a beacon. But Fábio, her seven-year-old... where would he be? Not in the living quarters—she'd already checked. Maybe the stables? She'd left him with a trusted servant.

  She remembered. The Hall of Columns, where Garcia kept the most valuable treasures. Where the money was stored.

  She moved faster, ignoring the pain. Her blood gem was working continuously now, clotting the wound, keeping her upright. The castle was a labyrinth of distant screams and explosions, but she knew every shortcut, every secret passage her own servants were unaware of.

  Entering the Hall of Columns, the air changed. The smell wasn't of gunpowder, but of velvet and polished wood. And of panic.

  Fábio was there, yes. His face pale, smudged with soot, illuminated by a single lantern. Around him, crouching like cornered animals, were half a dozen of the house's most loyal servants—the old butler Arlindo, two of the cooks, Garcia's personal slave, a youth named Lucas who had a talent with numbers.

  And the safe—the large steel safe embedded in the wall—was open. Empty.

  "Mother!" Fábio ran to her, his eyes wide with terror.

  "Where is it?" Inês's question was a blade, cutting the air.

  Arlindo, the butler, swallowed hard. His hands trembled. "Madam... it was Peixoto. He appeared less than an hour ago, with two of his mercenaries. Said he had authorization from Lord Garcia to... to evacuate the treasure."

  Inês felt the world spin. "Everything?"

  "Everything, madam," the old man confirmed, eyes downcast. "The gold bars, the unactivated gems, the lady's jewels... even the silverware. They loaded it into three chests and disappeared through the south passage."

  The laugh that escaped Inês held no humor. It was a dry, broken sound, like grinding bones.

  "So that's how it was," she whispered. "While my son died buried, while the castle fell, the rat stole the cheese."

  Fábio grabbed her arm. "Mother, we have to get out of here! They're everywhere!"

  At that moment, the hall door burst open violently. Four men, their rifles sweeping the room.

  "Hands up! Everyone on the floor!"

  The slave Lucas, in an act of panic or surprising courage, threw himself forward, trying to close the door. The first shot hit him in the chest, throwing him against the wall.

  Screams filled the room. The two cooks clung to each other. Arlindo fell to his knees, pleading.

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  Inês didn't plead. Her gem ignited with a deep, sinister red light. She didn't aim at the soldiers—not directly. Instead, she focused on the servants around her.

  They are weapons, she thought. Disposable weapons. I chose them precisely because they were mentally weak.

  The gems whispered. And the servants heard.

  Arlindo stopped pleading. His eyes glazed over. He stood up, not with the slowness of his seventy years, but with a robotic determination. He picked up a heavy bronze candlestick.

  The cooks broke apart. Their hands, accustomed to holding kitchen knives, now held them with the same firmness, but with a different purpose. Their faces were empty masks.

  "What the..." one soldier began, confused.

  "ATTACK!" Inês's order echoed in the minds of the controlled.

  They obeyed. Not as warriors, but as desperate puppets. Arlindo charged with the candlestick raised. One cook threw her knife, which grazed a soldier's shoulder.

  The rifles spat fire.

  Arlindo took three shots to the chest before falling. The cooks were cut down by short, efficient bursts. In seconds, they were all dead, their bodies forming a macabre barricade between Inês and the soldiers.

  But she wasn't trying to defeat them. She was trying to distract them.

  While the servants attacked, her gems were already working on another front, trying to touch the soldiers' minds. Fear, she projected. The smell of burning is from your own uniform. The shadow behind you is moving. The man next to you isn't your comrade—it's one of them, in disguise.

  One soldier began breathing heavily. Another looked at his companion with distrust.

  "Don't fall for it!" the squad leader shouted. "It's her power! Focus on the physical target, ignore the hallucinations!"

  He aimed directly at Inês. "Baroness! Surrender or—"

  She never heard the option. Instead, she did the only thing left. The gem at her neck pulsed again.

  The bodies of the dead servants—Arlindo, the cooks, Lucas—twitched. They didn't revive, but their limbs moved in controlled spasms, like puppets with cut strings. It was ghastly enough to make even the veteran soldiers take a step back.

  And in that moment, Inês grabbed Fábio and threw herself through the hall's rear door, a service passage leading to the kitchens.

  "Mother!" Fábio cried, but she pulled him hard.

  "Run! Don't look back!"

  They ran—or tried to. Inês's wounded leg nearly gave way with each step. The service corridor was narrow, dark, full of baskets and barrels. She could hear the soldiers behind, recovering from the shock.

  "This way!" one shouted.

  A green figure appeared at the corridor entrance behind them. Inês turned, her gems already raising a final curtain of illusion—the image of a wall where there was a passage, the sound of many footsteps coming from the opposite direction.

  The soldier hesitated for a second. Just one.

  It was enough for another—coming from a side door Inês hadn't seen—to appear and fire.

  The bullet hit her other leg, the left one, just above the knee. The pain was so sharp she let out a scream that didn't sound human. She fell to her knees, feeling the bone crack.

  "MOTHER!" Fábio tried to help her, his small arms trying to lift her.

  "Go!" she screamed, pushing him. "Follow the corridor, turn right, exit through the winter garden door! GO!"

  "I won't leave you!"

  The soldiers were approaching. Inês looked at her son, at his eyes full of tears and terror. And she did the last cruel thing a mother could do.

  Her gems whispered into his mind. Run, they commanded, not with her voice, but with the voice of the most primal fear. She's already dead. Escape alone. It's the only way.

  Fábio's eyes filled with pure panic, no longer with concern. He let go of her and ran, disappearing into the corridor's darkness.

  Inês fell back against the wall, both useless legs stretched out before her. Blood flowed, forming warm puddles on the stone floor. The gems at her neck tried to staunch the flow, but there were too many wounds, too much blood.

  The two soldiers appeared before her, their rifles aimed. The younger one breathed heavily, his eyes scanning the shadows, fighting the last illusions still whispering in his mind.

  "It's just her," the older one said. "She's finished."

  Inês looked at them, and even now, her smile was one of contempt. "Insects," she spat, blood staining her teeth red. "Your president is a worm who thinks himself a god. Your army is insects dressed in green."

  "Silence," the older soldier ordered, but his voice wasn't as firm as before.

  She laughed. "I will meet with the governor. He will understand. We will retake everything. And I will make each of you pay... slowly."

  She closed her eyes, concentrating on the gems one last time. Not to attack, but to feel. Out there, in the garden, she felt Fábio's blood flowing fast, alive. He was escaping. That was what mattered.

  "Surrender or death," the soldier said, the final protocol.

  Inês opened her eyes. She looked past them, to the light at the end of the corridor. To the freedom she wouldn't reach.

  "My surrender," she whispered, "is in the same place your president keeps his honor. Nowhere."

  The younger soldier moved his finger on the trigger. However, Inês used all the mana she had left to create one final illusion: that they were on the same side, that they had to help her.

  They prepared to help her walk, but it didn't matter.

  From the winter garden, from an elevated position, the sniper who had been hunting fugitives for an hour saw the figure in a dark dress collapsed in the corridor through his scope. He saw the two republican soldiers acting strangely. He saw a clear opportunity.

  The bullet crossed thirty meters of garden, a broken window, and the dark corridor.

  It hit Inês in the left temple.

  The gems at her neck flashed one last time—an intense red glow, like a final sigh.

  The older soldier turned, confused. "Who fired?"

  From the garden, the answer came through the sound gem: "Target neutralized. Blood Baroness confirmed dead."

  They approached cautiously. The younger one turned the body over with the tip of his rifle. Inês's face, still twisted in an expression of contempt, now had a small, clean hole on one side, and on the other... well, they didn't look too closely.

  "Proceed with the sweep," the sergeant ordered, his voice back to professionalism. "The castle is not yet secure."

  They left, leaving the body in the dark corridor. The gem at her neck, now just expensive jewels on a corpse, had no more stories to tell. They didn't speak of the children she had raised from a young age to serve, of the slaves whose teeth she had pulled, of the bones buried behind her properties.

  They also didn't speak of the son who was still running, alone and terrified, through the gardens of the burning castle. Fábio, seven years old, whose mind still echoed with his mother's final order: "Escape alone. It's the only way."

  He ran, tears cutting clean paths through his soot-streaked face. He didn't know he carried with him the only two gems Inês had hidden in his coat—small, discreet, one of blood, one of nightmare. Birthday gifts she said he would only understand when he was older.

  Now he was older. And the gems, orphaned like him, began to whisper in his mind for the first time.