HELENA
My brother was always withdrawn.
Centered on himself, trapped in a world of his own that I always found fascinating and frustrating in equal parts — fascinating because he seemed to find things in there nobody else saw, and frustrating because I could rarely get in. I had to admit: it was hard for me. The door to that world of his wasn't locked, but it wasn't open either. He didn't push me out — he simply didn't make a point of inviting me in. And I, who spent my entire life trying to take care of someone who didn't seem to notice he was being taken care of, sometimes wondered whether the problem was him or me.
Most of the time, it was me.
He told things. Sometimes, when the mood allowed, when the stars aligned and he decided that sharing was worth the effort, he told stories about what he did. And however much I wanted to believe — however much every cell in my body wanted to look into my brother's eyes and say "I believe every word" — it was hard. Not because I thought he was lying. But because what he described didn't fit in the world I knew.
Quantum resolutions that would probably make humanity stronger and more capable — things he explained with a clarity I couldn't follow and an enthusiasm I couldn't share. They were stories that perhaps, because we were young at the time, I didn't give the relevance they deserved. To me, he was always the strange one. Or maybe I was the one who simply didn't care about things she couldn't even measure. Now, looking back, I asked myself how many times he tried to show me who he was — and how many times I simply didn't look.
In truth, even after years, even after his return from the Oasis, the things he described were so surreal that I couldn't conceive them as reality. Names of creatures that were the top of the universe. Scales I had no reference to measure. Battles against things I didn't know whether they truly existed or whether they were his way of processing a trauma too large to be told as it really happened.
I didn't doubt him.
But I also didn't know what half of it really meant.
And even so, I supported him. With fear in my heart, without understanding the details, without managing to separate the possible from the impossible — I supported. Because he was my brother. Because supporting was the only thing I could do for him from a distance.
It even happened, when we were small, that some important people came to visit. People I had never seen before, with clothes that didn't match the farm and flying cars that didn't match the dirt road. They were surprised by something my brother did — truly surprised, with the kind of shock important adults don't usually show. But that was all. A pat on the shoulder. A vague word. And forgetting. He never told me what they did or what they said, but I always believed it was something big. Even now, that was something that should have changed me — but time and monotony made me bury that hope.
In the end, nothing changed.
He continued being what he always was: closed, trapped in himself, with a car he got through great effort and methods he never told me about, and that he would hardly leave the house if it weren't to drive it, take me or pick me up, and on some extremely rare occasions accompany me. Sometimes I wondered whether at some point he would have a normal life. Whether he would marry. Whether he would have children. Whether he would live a life with common desires, common routines, the kind of normality that I knew I would never have but desperately wanted for him.
I wouldn't be the reference. I was too afraid to live normally. Afraid of the Oasis. Afraid of the convocation. Afraid of building something beautiful knowing that at any moment it could be ripped away and thrown into a place you don't come back from. I would never have the capacity to live a common and ignorant life — but I envied those who lived that way. And I wanted my brother to have the same.
Maybe I was just a hypocrite.
However, time passed. And the letter arrived.
Of course I knew that day would come. I didn't have the presumption to think we would live forever ignored, that the system would forget us, that we would be the exception in a world that made no exceptions. The tag I carried on my chest since I was born said what I was — and nobody ever explained to us how it worked or what it meant. To me, it was just that: a tag. The same kind attached to the ears of cows and bulls to know the slaughter number.
My number had arrived.
However, my brother — the person closed in on himself, the boy I always wanted to protect, whom I took care of as though it were my responsibility to keep him whole in a world that broke people without asking permission — protected me.
He accepted going in my place.
Accepted going through things I couldn't even imagine, and that when he told me, I couldn't even understand. And I stayed. Here. In this house. With three dogs and then four. Watching a world I didn't see, cheering for someone I didn't hear, and sleeping every night with the same question stuck in my throat: "Is he still alive?"
✦ ✦ ✦
When those beings knocked on our door, I wanted to confront them.
Wanted to get up from the corner where I was, look into the eyes of those humans who clearly weren't entirely human anymore, and say what my chest had been screaming for years: that he had already been through everything, that he had already given what was owed, that now he had the right to a tranquil life without depending on the goodwill of people who threw him to his death the way you toss a coin into a well and make a wish you never intended to fulfill.
I didn't have the courage.
Fear. That was what moved me. That was what made me freeze every single time — the fear that anything I said would make the situation worse, that any gesture of mine would give them the reason they were looking for to do whatever they wanted. There, against those humans with wings and claws and scales, I could only think of one thing:
What could my brother do?
However, he seemed calm. More than calm — he seemed irritated, yes, but in a way I had never seen. It wasn't the nervousness of someone who is afraid and disguises it. It was the cold irritation of someone who has already faced things too large to be impressed by small things.
I remembered his stories. The names. The creatures. The titles I couldn't pronounce. Things that were, according to him, the top of the universe.
"Is it possible?" — I thought. It made no sense. It didn't fit in my brother, in the boy with the car, in the shy kid I protected.
But my heart grew warm with the thought.
His words when he confronted them were of contempt and rage. I couldn't understand where that came from — from that body I dressed and fed, from that mouth I saw eating donuts at Caitlyn's bakery, came a voice that wasn't afraid of anything. And when he called them outside, my heart beat harder.
The woman moved closer to me.
Tall. Muscular. With wings that reminded you she wasn't entirely human and with eyes that said she knew it and liked it. She positioned herself beside me with the naturalness of someone who doesn't need to explain what the gesture means.
I thought about knives.
In the kitchen, less than five steps from the door, there was a drawer with knives I used to cut meat and vegetables. If she did anything — anything — to my brother, I would stab her. We would die there, the two of us, on the floor of the house that with my brother's money we had built — with sacrifice and blood. But I would no longer be weaker. Would no longer be afraid. Would no longer freeze.
I needed to protect everything that mattered to me.
My family.
✦ ✦ ✦ "What the fuck is this?!"
The words came out of one of the men's mouths while an enormous shadow began to cover everything — the garden, the walls, the floor, the sky.
My mind was still flying on the knife plan. Still calculating steps, still measuring the distance to the drawer, still rehearsing the movement I had never made in my life but would make without hesitation if I needed to. I would not abandon him again. I would not—
And then, from the corner of my eye, I saw the woman beside me kneel.
Not by choice. By reflex. The knees gave way as though someone had cut the strings keeping her standing — and on her face I saw one thing only.
It wasn't fear.
It was terror.
I followed her gaze upward.
And what I saw made my bladder soften.
A spider. Enormous. Gigantic. Something that didn't belong to any world I knew — that didn't belong to any nightmare I had ever had, because even my worst nightmares had the decency to respect certain limits of size. The body blocked the sun. The eight legs rested around the garden like pillars of a cathedral made of white chitin and silk. And the eyes — dozens of them, black, shining, each one larger than my head — looked down with something I could only describe as intelligence. Not instinct. Not hunger. Intelligence.
And she was looking at my brother the way a daughter looks at her father.
My brother.
Standing. In the center of the garden. With that impossible thing behind him like a guardian, like a living shadow that made everything else seem small — including the three humans who seconds ago seemed so dangerous and who now seemed exactly what they were: insects.
"We are an insignificant race." My brother's voice cut through the silence. It wasn't the voice I knew. It wasn't the voice of the shy boy, of the withdrawn kid, of the brother I protected. It was something else — something he had brought back from that place and that he now wore like an armor that didn't need metal. "Insignificant even to some rats of the universe." He looked at the three of them. From above. As though he were doing them a favor by spending words on them. "I fought against the gods who command gods. What do you think you are in my eyes?"
Suddenly, I found myself finally understanding.
It was true.
Everything he had told me — every name, every creature, every story I had heard without managing to entirely believe — was true. And there, with a spider the size of a house behind him and three frightened humans on the grass, I understood for the first time what my brother had become. My throat itched.
And I shouted without thinking.
"THAT'S RIGHT, BROTHER! FINISH OFF THESE SONS OF BITCHES WHO TREAT US LIKE LAMBS FOR THE SLAUGHTER!"
I saw his smile.
The first smile I recognized — my brother's, the real one, the one that appeared when I did something idiotic and he couldn't hold it.
"This will be a lesson. Endure."
And then two weapons formed on his arms, two blades that grew over the forearm and extended until they nearly reached his back. The same weapons he had described in the stories. The ones he learned from the creature he called Zaridan.
My smile contrasted with the horrified faces of the three, who seemed bitterly regretful of every word they had said that day.
✦ ✦ ✦
LEONIDAS
I was worried about what my sister would see.
What I was about to do was something common in the Oasis — the kind of thing that happened before breakfast, that didn't deserve mention, that was as routine as breathing in a world where breathing was already an act of courage. But there, in that garden, on that farm, in that world that didn't know real war, it shouldn't be like this. That would frighten Helena. It would change the way she saw me forever.
But they had entered my house. Had threatened me. Had ridiculed and underestimated. Had cornered my sister.
Maybe it was the mixture of blood with the Aqrabuamelu. Maybe it was the dragon. Maybe her shout — that shout that came from a place I didn't know my sister had, and that struck me deeper than any battle order. Honestly, the rage I felt was something I couldn't describe with words that existed in my language — it was deeper than rage, hotter than hatred, and came from a place I only accessed when someone touched what was mine.
I formed the glaives and advanced toward the nearest.
Benfior — the old man with scales — didn't even notice my approach. The speed I had now, with months of training against Zaridan and the body rebuilt by nectar stones, was of a scale those three simply didn't operate on. It would be easy. It would be fast. It would be—
Instinct screamed.
I threw myself backward before processing the reason — and a bolt of lightning struck exactly where I had been. The impact opened a hole in the garden floor, the earth exploding in every direction, the air hissing with ozone and heat. If I had been half a second slower, there would no longer be a Leonidas to tell this story.
I looked up.
A man floated in the sky.
Old. The white beard descended down his chest like a cascade of silver, the face marked by wrinkles that told centuries, not decades. But the body beneath that elderly appearance had nothing fragile about it — it was broad, dense, with the compact presence of someone whose power didn't need size to be felt. Electricity ran across his skin like veins of light, pulsing in patterns that made the air around him tremble. Even Arachne, behind me, let out a sharp sound — not of pain, but of discomfort. That man's pressure was real.
He was strong.
Truly strong.
"HOW DARE YOU?!"
His voice descended over the garden like thunder — and it wasn't a metaphor. The sound carried weight. The walls of the new house trembled. The glass vibrated. The four Shih Tzus inside the house began barking all at the same time. And I felt, at the base of my spine, the pressure that accompanies the voice of someone who doesn't need to shout to be obeyed, but who shouts because they chose to.
"Who started this?"
Alexandra got up from the ground — trembling, with the wings pressed against her back as though she wanted to disappear inside them — and did the most predictable thing someone in her position could do.
She lied.
"Great Leader, we came to talk with this insignificant colonist and he threatened us—"
The lightning struck her before she finished the sentence.
Not at full force — I felt the difference. It was a calibrated bolt, measured, with the precision of someone who knows exactly how much electricity is needed to bring someone down. Alexandra's body convulsed for two seconds. Then it fell to the ground. The eyes still open, the mouth still ajar on the word that never ended.
I didn't know if she was alive.
That surprised me. Not the lightning — I had already seen worse things. But the speed. The total absence of hesitation. He didn't ask twice. Didn't ask for proof. Didn't give a chance to defend. He heard the lie, recognized the lie, and punished the lie with the efficiency of someone who has done it too many times to care about protocol.
The man descended slowly. The electricity that ran across his body dimmed gradually — the veins of light retreating, the pressure diminishing, the air going back to being just air. He didn't demonstrate hostility in my direction, so I undid the mark. The glaives disappeared. Arachne remained — because I didn't tell her to go, and because she wouldn't until she was certain I was safe.
"May I know what is happening here?"
The question came with the calm authority of someone who already knows the answer and is giving whoever answers the chance to get it right.
I looked into his eyes. The electricity had gone away — and what appeared behind wasn't the static white of an active power. It was a deep violet, luminous, with an intensity I recognized immediately.
Not the person.
The family.
"Unicorn?"
The old man whose face was serious broke into a smile.
Wide. Sudden. With an energy that didn't match the age nor the lightning he had just dropped on his own subordinate. The kind of smile that appears when someone finds something they had been looking for a long time — and that is better than they expected.
"HAHAHAHA!" The laugh echoed through the garden like a second thunderclap — only this one didn't frighten. "So it really is you who saved my daughter!"