He did not notice the explosion because of the noise.

At the very instant it occurred, his ability to hear disappeared, although he was only vaguely aware of this fact. He did so because of the light. The door, still open, and all the windows were filled with a blinding white light.

If he believed in gods, he would say that was like witnessing the descent to earth of a divine being.

He was a soldier of the Azure Empire, so he didn't believe in such beings, he believed that such beings were nothing more than an excuse for the oppression his people had suffered for so many years.

He was not supposed to believe.

Still, that was the first thing that crossed his mind. He dismissed it just as quickly, of course. He had to do it.

The main building began to collapse in front of his eyes. The explosion had been too much.

His feet were not responding. I'm going to die, William thought.

I'm going to die here, just like this, in such a stupid way.

A huge piece of debris from the building fell close to him, almost crushing him, and broke into a thousand pieces against the ground. That was what broke his paralysis.

He turned and ran in panic. He was surrounded, like his companions, by a cloud of dust that was growing at great speed.

He couldn't see very well, but he didn't need to see.

He just had to be fast enough. The direction? That didn't matter. But... the dust cloud, their mouths writhing in silent screams, for he had lost the ability to hear them. As it was, they looked like ghosts wandering through the fog.

That is, they were heading towards the darkness of death. Headlong, inevitably.

Not even a trace of this fear and pain would remain of them.

There would be none left...

William stumbled over his own feet, fell forward. He couldn't hear, his ears were ringing like a swarm of bees, so he had no way of knowing how far the collapse of the building had progressed unless he turned his head. And he didn't dare do that.

But he wouldn't have time to get up, he was sure. He would be squashed like a bug and there would be nothing left of him.

Not even a corpse to bury.

How would they distinguish the pool of blood left by his corpse from the blood of the other corpses scattered on the ground?

No, rather, since they were in enemy territory, anyone who died on this mission wouldn't have a dignified burial. He had known that from the beginning. He had accepted it. Now, however, that seemed like the scariest idea he'd ever had to face in his short life.

He almost laughed.

He had been in this bloody land for forty-five years, and yet suddenly it seemed to him that he had lived very little.

How things changed, your perception of things, when it was your turn to look death in the face.

He...

He was alive to think about it.

William, with his hands on top of his head, slowly turned around.

The building had indeed finished collapsing. Now, all that remained was the cloud of dust, still expanding before dissipating. He was alive. He had been lucky enough to survive.

Others had not been so lucky. But less than one would think, less.

That thought wouldn't allow him to swallow the horror produced by seeing his comrades - who cared that he didn't know them well, not these ones, they were his comrades - in pieces. An arm here, a leg there. Blood everywhere.

The rubble that had fallen on them was, at times, like makeshift graves, leaving in view just enough for the imagination to draw the horror underneath.

In others the horror and indignity of death was on full display.

The mangled face. All the teeth exposed in a macabre smile. The bones, white as the scythe of death, glistening in the sun in a way that made them seem false. Almost transparent.

Just thinking that it could have ended like this made the contents of his stomach rise in his throat.

He would a thousand times rather have his life end with a bullet in the head, a noose around his neck, or the pommel of a sword. But this, no matter which horrible one, was nothing really.

Mages, those demons who defied the natural order, had the power to deliver fates far worse than death.

William rose slowly to his feet.

His knees trembled, he gripped them. His hearing gradually returned.

And the first thing he heard was a scream.

From someone who was even less lucky than the fallen, because he was still alive. The rubble had crushed his legs. Even with all the debris on top of him, you could see that his legs were gone.

He would never walk again, of course, that wasn't magic that technology could replicate.

And he might die anyway, from the great loss of blood and the shock, especially the shock. Only more slowly. A slow, cruel death. He didn't deserve something like that, whoever he was. If he was going to die anyway, may as well have died like the others.

But he was alive. He could be saved, so he would try. They would try.

He walked toward the soldier, staggering rather than walking.

What's his name? With his face twisted in pain, from screaming, and smeared with blood, he didn't recognize him. But he had the feeling that he should. That he owed him at least that much.

What was his name?

William was a few steps away from reaching him. His name was... called...

A shot rang out.

The bullet shot through the head of the soldier whose name he still couldn't remember, putting him out of his misery. A bullet. A gun.

It wasn't that mages were above using them. They were filthy, slippery creatures, to them, any advantage was a good advantage, no matter how much they said otherwise. That they would never 'stoop' to using the enemy's weapon.

But still...

It hadn't been an Albionian who pulled the trigger. His eyes drifted to the side.

It had been Zachariah, the leader of the team sent here. He had executed his own soldier in cold blood. With the smoking gun in his hand, he looked at him as if daring him to protest.

William said nothing. He lowered his head obediently. Like a coward.

But what was done was done. He would gain nothing by arguing with the captain in the middle of a war zone, that wouldn't bring the soldier back to life, he would only be asking for trouble. Besides, he imagined what Zachariah would say if he challenged him.

That he had done it with that soldier's good in mind, precisely.

To make sure that the demons would not capture him and torture him until they got as much information out of him as possible. Until they gave him the peace of death. Knowing the horrors he would experience, the soldier would surely have asked for death if he had been given time.

And, frankly, he couldn't say that was wrong. There was a reason he carried a suicide pill on him, like everyone else. Because no one wanted to fall into the hands of those demons in human skin.

But that didn't mean he had to like seeing how the captain, the person he was supposed to trust to get them home, had executed one of his soldiers.

If he had made that decision, asking someone to kill him or taking his pill, he would have been at ease. But this...

Such a sudden decision. Violent and unilateral.

It just didn't sit well with him. It wouldn't have sat well with anyone who had witnessed it.

As he passed him, he heard Zachariah snort.

William tensed his shoulders. It wouldn't have felt good to any of them, that is, those who had been able to take notice after barely surviving the collapse of the building.

None except he who had pulled the trigger. He wasn't rejoicing about it, there was no reason.

But he didn't seem to care either.

He pinned his eyes to Zachariah's back. The air was filled with the smell of blood, but, even beneath that, there was also the smell of gunpowder. The mixture of those intense smells clogged his nostrils.

The kind of man who could do that without a second thought, without batting an eye.

The kind of man who would laugh at the worry and pain in one of his soldiers, a natural thing to felt after witnessing something like that?

Was he really the kind of man worth trusting?

He had ordered about a third or so of the remaining soldiers to stay out here with him, for reasons unknown until now. And that had turned out to be the right thing to do, regardless of whether Zachiariah had known it all along or only suspected it. He had made the right decisions to lead them to victory, even though they had suffered a great deal of loss in the process, so had the other side.

Even Jacob should have died crushed against the rubble. It wasn't a death that could be escaped.

Whether the captain could have done better or worse was not the question. The results weren't the most important thing.

What was important was lives, that was the reason they were fighting this war in the first place. They were heroes who saved lives. Any man in the service of the Empire had to keep that in his heart. If they let their heart grow cold, let themselves become like the demons they were fighting....

He could not complete the thought. But, for the first time, he felt the urge to kill a human being from the bottom of his heart.

■

Jacob," Zachariah shouted, looking ahead as if he were standing right there. I know you're out there somewhere, I know you're hearing me. Why, though, should you listen to me? Because I have an offer. I know what you would say. The real question is why I should believe you! You see, it's very simple.

He pulled the trigger, firing a bullet into the air.

-We have come here for the sole purpose of capturing you. Alive. This bloodshed has been, shall we say, an added bonus. But we've already done more than enough. So, if you surrender to us, without games, without doing anything stupid, we'll let not only the students go. We'll let the teachers go too. We'll spare their lives, and I don't even have to say in exchange for yours, because, dear Jacob, you're not going to die. Not for a long, long time.

He fired until the pistol was empty and threw it in front of him. An insignificant, symbolic gesture.

As was the offer itself.

"What do you say?"

■

Jacob frowned.

That man couldn't believe he would be so stupid enough to accept that offer. Moreover, even if Jacob believed him for some reason, even if he were one hundred percent sure, he wouldn't give up his life so easily.

His existence didn't have the same value as that of a handful of students and the professors.

But not everyone shared that same opinion, of course. Everyone cared more about themselves than about everyone else. Then Jacob understood to whom that soldier had addressed his words.

They, not him. The soldier knew perfectly well that he wouldn't accept the offer. That he wasn't that stupid.

But it would act as bait so that the group would betray him, handing him over in the hope of buying their lives with him, only to be shot on the spot.

Very clever, you little bastard, he thought. Very clever.

But I didn't get to my position for nothing. I'm adaptable.

Jacob turned around to look at that girl. He already knew that prodigy was among the candidates, but knowing she was one of only five people who possessed shadow magic and seeing her in action were two very different things.

Knowing that a sixteen-year-old girl had the power to kill him if she went for his life was disconcerting. More so than the corpse tucked in the shadow of what had once been a person.

And she could be, too, the key to turning this disaster into a victory.

"What is your name?"

"Christina," she said slowly and after a while.

"Can you control the shadow of a soldier near the spider, to destroy its heart? "

"My shadows have the strength to split a human being in two. As you have no doubt seen. But the spider's heart withstood a whole barrage of magical traps, and the heart is still there, without even the smallest crack. I don't think that would be enough. "

I know that, he thought, irritated that she had felt the need to question him. Not implicitly, but...

"The machine is so gigantic that the heart has probably taken few direct hits. And well, even if a few blows aren't enough, I'm sure you'll be able to improvise."

The girl looked at the corpse she was dragging behind her as if it was going to open his eyes, as if it was going to give her the answer. Then she looked away. At the spider, probably. Only then did her eyes fall on him again, and she nodded her head.

"Wait for my signal."

"What signal?"

"You'll know when you see it. Matthew, make me a chair. I have to make myself presentable to go wait on our guests."

"Are you sure about this?"

He looked his old friend in the eye.

"Very sure. It's the only way."

Matthew sighed, but he made her a wheelchair with his magic. It didn't grow before his eyes. One moment there was nothing and the next there was a wheelchair. It wasn't metal, not exactly. It was made of a material for which there was no name in this world.

The closest, he supposed, would be magical energy. But not entirely appropriate. It had been, but now the magical energy had assumed another form.

Matthew, while he was at it, also helped him into the chair.

Jacob emerged from the trees quietly, to meet the leader of the group. He had said he didn't trust him, but that wasn't entirely true, after all, his plan depended on them wanting to capture him instead of killing him.

He stood in front of him.

"There you are. I didn't expect a demon like you to make an altruistic decision. "

He closed his eyes softly.

"I have no idea what your name is, you have me at a disadvantage, but are we so different? My hands are stained with the blood of countless people, just like yours. We are both soldiers. Today you have killed children, directly or indirectly, even. "

"Not children. Demon offspring. Had they been born on the other side of the world, I would have given my life to protect them. I would have fought for them to live long and happy lives. Yet they were born here. Knowing what they will be turned into once you're done, I won't hesitate to carry out this mission to the end. But... I must at least admit one thing. It's a shame. I wish things were different. That this wasn't necessary."

Jacob opened his eyes.

"None of this was or will be necessary. If you Azure people had no such lust for power...."

"Power? What we want is revenge. This war started for the very reason we are here. Because we cannot forget The Slaughter, because we couldn't, even if we wanted to."

From the inflection he had put on it, you could hear the capital letters. It was an appropriate name for the tragedy he was referring to.

Unimaginative, but appropriate, the only way to refer to what had happened that day. There was a reason that name was used on both sides of the world. The problem was that, out in the open, the Azure Empire proclaimed a different truth.

And that too many believed it, ignorant of the truth of the events. He saw the hatred in that soldier's eyes.

For him, it was not just an excuse to attack Albion.

He wanted revenge, just as he had said. But... even so, it was still an excuse. An excuse so he could still see himself as a savior, a hero, regardless of what he did in the process.

"Leaving aside the empty propaganda...."

And it was no more than that. He wasn't an innocent young man who believed in the government blindly anymore, but he had been there that day. He had seen it all with his own eyes, so he didn't need anyone to tell him the truth.

He remembered it as if it were yesterday.

That park submerged in silence. The water of the broken fountain overflowing, running down the sides, over the marble, spreading over the ground.

No matter how much water fell, however, it could not wash away the blood.

The broken fountain, as if representing the dreams and hopes of the kingdom, was surrounded by blood and corpses.

There were even children.

No matter how many people you had seen die, or killed with your own hands, seeing a child in that state was completely different. It was one of those things that you never forgot, because it was engraved in your mind, in your retinas.

At that time, he hadn't been able to conceive that a human being could be capable of doing that to a child.

Now he understood that it was not only easy, there was nothing strange about it.

But that didn't change how horrible The Slaughter had been, where even innocent people from the Azure Empire had died. That didn't change that that day had changed everything, and there was no turning back.

"What makes you different from me, I repeat? You say that your pulse didn't tremble. That it was a pity, but you didn't feel anything. If only that were true."

"Do you think you know me better than I know myself?"

"I think you, deep down, know the truth as well as I do. When you executed your own soldier it was when your pulse didn't tremble, when you felt nothing, no grief, no anger, no relief. But, when you came here, when you had so many children die under your orders and participated personally.... There was an explosion of feelings inside your heart, wasn't there? Look me in the eye and try to tell me that you didn't enjoy every moment. That you wouldn't do it again, and gladly."

"You're trying to convince me that we're not so different, after all," the soldier replied through gritted teeth. "Whether I agree with you or not, that means you're admitting that you enjoy killing us. Us and even our children."

Jacob shook his head.

He wasn't surprised by that answer. He was talking to someone who was essentially a child.

By which he didn't mean to take the responsibility for his actions away from him. No one could do that. The nameless soldier standing before him, certain of his victory, wasn't innocent.

But he was still a child, all the same.

His thoughts, his feelings, weren't his own. He had first taken those of his parents, as was natural, then those of his mother country. And from that mixture no human being had been born.

He hated to admit it, but in that respect they weren't so different either. The difference lay in the fact that he had already passed through that phase, managing to stand up on his own. Whereas the soldier was still crawling.

And he would die here and now, without ever becoming a man. Yes, it was a shame.

All this. This useless war.

"What I'm telling you is that we're both monsters. But I'm a monster born of necessity, and you're a monster who enjoys what he does. Tell me, at this point, do you need reasons to go on? To go further and further? I don't think so. I think you've forgotten about reasons, that all you have left is desire."

The silence fell between them, heavy, thick as the fog of war.

"I have not come here to talk philosophy with you. You are here, but are you willing to surrender? Prove it," the soldier said, pointing a finger at the ground. "Get down."

Jacob got down from his wheelchair without a second thought, hiding a smirk. He had seen that order coming. It wasn't difficult.

The first thought of all those who wanted him dead, after learning that he was in a wheelchair, had probably been to see him crawling on the floor. And then to kill him.

"Come here."

Jacob crawled forward. Forgetting his dignity, his pride.

All the pieces were in place. Now all that remained was to hope that girl wouldn't rush in unnecessarily, springing into action before he could give the signal.

The soldier, that is, the leader of this gang of assassins, pulled a hand back without taking his eye off him.

A shotgun was passed to him.

"The great Jacob literally at my feet. You are the greatest enemy of the Empire, but it has been so easy, so easy to bring you down inside the fortress that is the center of your power."

Jacob laughed harshly.

He couldn't help it.

"Easy? But a few demon spawn almost wiped you out completely. Whether they had help or not, that's embarrassing, makes me wonder how we haven't won the war already. Speaking of questions, what do you plan to do with that shotgun?"

And suddenly he was staring down the darkness of the gun barrel.

As stupid as it sounded, it caught him by surprise. Even when he ordered one of his men to hand him a gun to replace the one he had discarded, it hadn't crossed his mind, not for a moment, that he was wrong in that to the Azure Empire he was more valuable alive than dead.

"What happened to capturing me?" he asked with a wry smile.

"I lied," he answered, and pulled the trigger.

Jacob created earth under his feet, pushing the dead weight that was his legs up. He picked up the shotgun and turned it on the soldier, pulling the trigger with his hands on his enemy's hands. Staring into his eyes as if he could convey one last thing to him before he went into oblivion.

His head disappeared. It simply disappeared, along with part of his neck.

The soldiers aimed at him, fired.

Jacob created a stone wall around him, but it wasn't fast enough, some bullets passed between gaps he hadn't yet closed.

Of those bullets, many hit the earth behind him, not even close to his body.

But two hit him, and only one bullet was enough to kill someone, if it hit the right place.

Ah, the feeling was almost nostalgic.

That of the impact of a bullet and of the blood running through his fingers, as he held a hand over his throat. He had gone five years without being shot. Without being harmed in any way, drowning in the claustrophobic school.

It had been an unexpectedly long and, at the same time, cruelly short peace.

The earthen wall was being eroded by the continuous volley of bullets faster than he could rebuild it. Before he fell, his body would be riddled with bullets.

It was very likely that he would die here, just like this, of all possible ways.

When he had just returned home.

But he felt no fear.

The only thing that this situation provoked in him was a slight feeling of satisfaction, since the soldiers' attention was focused on him, the plan was going smoothly.

The rest was in the hands of that girl. There was nothing more he could do.

■

Christina looked at the girl with the intention of asking her what her name was at last, before the battle started again. However, she couldn't. She had lost consciousness at some point.

It was almost a relief.

It didn't make things look good, but at least she wouldn't have to worry about her trying to get in the way, a suicidal act driven by her stupid sense of pride. Or duty.

She didn't have any way of knowing. In any case, Christina didn't think she was wrong about her.

So it was better that she sleep.

That the next time she opened her eyes would be when this was all over.

Which might as well be never.

That's up to me, Christina told herself. Everything and everyone depends on me now.

Like the others, she looked back at the director. She saw him get out of the wheelchair and crawl across the floor, following that soldier's orders.

And she saw the signal.

It couldn't have been any clearer, of course. The roar of a shotgun that made everything above the soldier's light disappear. But not without a trace. The contents of his skull ended up painting the ground. The skull itself, broken into a thousand pieces, flew everywhere.

She didn't see it, she didn't have that keen an eye, but surely some soldier or other would end up with pieces of skull or molars in their hair or on their clothes.

As Jacob was shot, and defended himself not with the shotgun he had snatched but by raising a wall of earth around him, she braced herself.

She was capable of using shadow magic. But that was it. Like all people, she was bound by her affinity. And the only extra benefit it gave her was the ability to see just as clearly in the darkness of a moonless night as she could in sunlight.

In other words, it's not like she could sense shadows near her within a hundred meters, regardless of walls and other obstacles.

Or multitask as if she were only dealing with one thing at a time. Amazing things like that.

Her magic didn't come with an advantage, but with the bare minimum to allow her to use her full potential without harming herself more than helping herself. Earlier, in the main building of the academy, it wouldn't have been as effective if she was as blind as her enemies. She would surely have died.

What she was getting at with all this is that keeping Desmond bound in his own shadow was costing her concentration and effort.

It made it harder for her to accomplish her mission, as she would have to concentrate her will on two things at once.

Desmond was a corpse. There was nothing left to protect.

Even if he were barely clinging to life, nothing would really happen if he was left on the ground. He would be safe, and the fight was about to end. One way or another.

She barely knew him, and it wasn't that she had particularly liked him. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Still, she didn't want to separate from him, as if it wasn't too late to have a better relationship. A good relationship for both of them. And she couldn't let him go.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

She didn't like feeling this way, because it made her think that she wasn't herself. That the other 'side effect' of her power was acting up, and soon she would be lost in a sea of someone else's feelings, unable to find herself again.

Or perhaps even worse. She already had, and that sense of self she wanted so badly to protect was nothing more than a patchwork. A patchwork of the people she had used her power on throughout life.

She returned to the idea that these feelings were somehow Desmond's. His heavy regrets that he could never get rid of because there was no afterlife. No second chances.

Christina gritted her teeth.

She didn't let go of Desmond, but she fulfilled her purpose. She manipulated the shadow of the soldier closest to the spider to attack the heart.

It wasn't something they could just feel like that, so she'd have some time to spare before they realized what she was doing and got in her way.

Unfortunately, she squandered that advantage.

The strength of the shadow was not nearly enough to break the creature's heart, spilling blue flames across the ground, the grass. And the corpses.

Most of the remaining soldiers had a grenade. But there was one who wore an entire belt.

She used that soldier's shadow to steal his belt, remove the ring from one of the grenades and throw it, of course, toward the fallen spider that was regenerating. The soldiers had noticed what he was doing, but had no idea where she was.

So the only thing they could do to stop him was to shoot at the shadow, but she could rebuild it faster than they could hurt her.

The second option was to shoot the grenade belt before it got close to the spider, preventing it from using it.

She did everything she could to avoid hitting it. Deflecting shots, snatching weapons, smashing them.

Christina couldn't be everywhere, do everything at once.

The attention problem she had talked about.

However, it was enough. The grenade belt fell near the spider, kept rolling, stopped when it hit the glass.

The grenade exploded.

Cracks spread across the glass like a spider's web. It wasn't victory, but it was much, much more than she had achieved so far. A little more, a little push, and....

And nothing.

Before her eyes, the spider began to rise again. Maybe because it had sensed the danger and had 'decided' it had to get up now, even if it wasn't one hundred percent. Perhaps it had simply completed regeneration at the worst possible moment, so close to victory.

In any case, it was over.

They couldn't fight. Not against that. If they weren't crushed, the blue fire that characterized the Empire would finish them off. It would reduce them to ashes.

Now that the spider was up, there was no hope. They had failed.

No, she had failed.

Her legs failed her. On her knees, she watched the rise of Death itself.

Someone shot a fireball at it that exploded against the glass, only it wasn't glass, not really, that formed her heart. Her pulse quickened, but she shouldn't have let herself get carried away. As she should have expected from the beginning, that spell wasn't enough.

More cracks might have formed, but the spider's heart was still functioning.

The spider took slow, powerful, world-shaking steps into the forest.

Move, she thought. Get to your feet and run.

But her body didn't budge. It was surprisingly easy to accept her fate, even though her natural instinct as a living being was to deny it with all her might, to rebel until the last moment, her last breath, even if there wasn't a hope of getting out of this one.

Her mind was screaming for her to run, but her heart understood that she was already dead.

That was why her body had become motionless like a statue.

Whoever had thrown the fireball must have been a teacher, though she wasn't going to bother turning around to check, it was pointless, like everything else, since her death was so close. She wasn't saying this because it was a complicated spell, in fact, it was most basic.

But because she assumed that it took some experience to maintain enough composure to attack.

That, if her companions had dared to do anything, it would have been to flee, in any case, not to attack.

A teacher.

They must have been old enough to accept that there was nothing more to be done. That they should surrender to the overwhelming power of the spider, which was no spider, no mere machine, but Death itself.

And yet they were still thrashing about as if they were going to achieve something. Opportunity, if it had ever existed, had slipped through their fingers. Now there was nothing left.

It was useless.

Useless, useless, useless.

Christina heard a dry sound.

She had lost her concentration, so, as a consequence, the shadow she had been holding for what felt like hours lost its robustness. Letting Desmond fall.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. It was an oversight that didn't matter because soon they would both be dead.

But she felt the need to say it anyway.

With trembling lips. She gritted her teeth. Her face, white as milk, kept trembling.

It gave the feeling that she was....

Melting.

Death advanced toward her, slowly but relentlessly. The teachers joined in an effort to bring it down. Uselessly. How could they not understand it even though things had come to this point?

No, they clearly didn't understand. But if they had been there that day. If they had seen what he...

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait a minute.

Christina's eyes went wide.

First realizing what she had been thinking, how she had been thinking. Then her eyes opened even wider and her heart leapt into her throat.

Because Desmond was moving.

He was getting to his feet, slowly.

And behind him were... wings. Black wings, coming from nowhere and spreading not through the air, but over the trees. Leaving sooty black marks on the trunks, and a considerable space between each wing segment.

It gave the feeling that the wings were the only thing holding him up.

He was standing in a posture similar to that of a puppet.

But he was standing, and breathing.