Theresa didn't move for a long while.
The word "Jihad" had slipped from the King of the Nachzerer's mouth like a stone cast into still water—and yet the ripples spread all the way to her heart. It clung to her thoughts, stirred echoes she had buried long ago.
She adjusted the cloak around the sleeping child in her arms.
The girl murmured faintly in her slumber, her head tucked against Theresa's shoulder, breathing soft, even. The desert's cruel cold winds did not reach her. Whether it was power, destiny, or just the natural heat of youth, the girl was warm. Anchored in her own silence. Waiting.
The blade to slay the regent king.
The spear to pierce the royal ring.
The words of Scareye, the Cyclops prophet, were not easily forgotten to her and her brother. His people were regarded not only with fear but with deference. Their visions were rarely not possibilities. They were certainties. Their curse was to dream of what must happen, not what may.
And yet Theresa's thoughts drifted far from the girl in her arms, and towards the woman her brother carried across the Catastrophe blasted dunes of Kazdel.
That woman. Wounded, her mind shackled from her fears, was not born of prophecy, not truly. Her mere existence was a shaped, honed,band directed...
Lies.
Coincidence.
The Confessarius cult had crafted the myth. Her myth with brutal precision. She was not a sign sent by whatever heavens exists out there, but a signal carved from flesh and belief, then held aloft like a banner.
A vessel for the lies of the Golden Path.
"Let them believe," one of the Confessors had whispered to Theresa, once, in the dark. "Faith is the only metal that can hold the spine of a dying people."
She hadn't understood it then.
She did now.
Because now… now she had heard the word spoken aloud.
Jihad.
And its meaning, its implication, unfurled like a scroll in her mind.
War.
Conquest.
A Holy War.
A fire meant to burn across generations and borderlines until nothing was left but a rebirth.
It was then that the other prophecy came to her—the old one, the stranger one, the one told in the tongue of the Teekaz, whispered around dying fires by the tribes who camped themselves all around the wastes of Kazdel.
They called it:
"T'khal'az izh-kahn tevré'dal Y'nazh."
The silence before the world sings again.
In the oldest form, barely decipherable, it went:
"Eshkan val Yna'tel, hakh t'zahr.
Sha y'renn khazr, sha t'ven al-Kaaz.
Alth-na-shir, yezthar shan,
Et sha'nar… ti'thresh, ti'revaz."
And translated loosely by Ylís:
"One voice shall cry out from the shadow of still waters.
He shall walk untouched by sun or stone.
To the Teekaz, he shall bring a song
And lead them to green lands, beyond the reach of flame."
Theresa remembered the unease in Ylís' voice when she recited it. He was her and her brother's old mentor, the previous Lord of Fiends who had lived before the court became ever more bloated with poisons of ambitions.
"It's too old to be disproven by any recent Lords of Fiends," Ylís had once warned. "Too old, too deep. This... Zar'ka uln Vezharath... the Voice of the Outerworld who will one day lead the Sarkaz to a Green Paradise was not simply borne from anger nor hatred—it was carried in dreams of the desperate. I fear it more than I do the lies of the Confessarius."
Theresa tried to reconcile both visions.
On one side, a child—a prophecy from a tribe renowned for their prophetic dreams .
On the other, a woman—wounded, breathing slowly in her brother's arms.
The lie made flesh.
And now, beneath it all, a fire stirring in the sands—the Free Men of the Wastes' minds stirred beneath the illusion of divine purpose, bound by a myth the Confessarius had sown for generations to hold Kazdel together.
It was the ultimate irony: the prophecy they made up to bind the desperate Sarkaz had now taken root.
It grew teeth.
It had eyes.
And now it moved on its own.
Jihad.
A Green Paradise.
Theresa clutched the child a little tighter.
A Blade.
A Spear.
And somewhere out there… the fire to ignite them both.
She whispered softly into the wind:
"Which fire is real?"
But there was no answer. Only the murmurs of the dead being carried by zealots, the ghost of a voice long buried in ash, and the rising wind that carried the words of the old Teekaz language like a curse too sacred to name.
Theresa stood still against the stinging Kazdel wind, as the processions of Sarkaz warriors and Mercenaries walks past her.
Her arms wrapped around the sleeping girl, shielding her against the world.
Two prophecies.
One in her arms.
One in her brother's.
And both demanding truth.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Her pink eyes—so often lit with command—were distant now, chasing thoughts she could not tether down. Which of these roads was real? Which of them led to salvation, and which to the abyss?
The first prophecy, spoken by the Cyclops, was without a doubt, as real as stone and bone. Their kind had no need to lie; they could not. When a Cyclops spoke, it was not a choice—it was a wound ripped open in the world to let the truth bleed out.
This girl, this child she now carried, was destined. A blade and a spear to slay both her brother and herself one day.
A death and a reckoning.
...
...
...
But then there was the other one.
The woman her brother carried.
That prophecy had no beginning in heaven. It had been made, written, forged, and tempered in the forges of ideology and desperation. The Confessarius had sewn it like seed into the dust, fed it with blood, watered it with centuries of whispered sermons.
A lie—yes.
And yet...
The Free Men of the Wastes believed in it with a fire so complete, so absolute, that their faith made it real. And the woman—their chosen—walked the desert with weapons not of this world. Alien tools. Guns firing a bolt of light that roared like thunder and struck ten Sarkaz down in an instant. She came as the man-made prophecy had foretold.
Her equipments are used in wars none in Kazdel had ever fought. And she carried no banner—yet the Free Men had already made one in her shape.
And Theresa… she had walked beside that woman.
She had lent her presence, her protection, her words.
And though she had never meant to, she had legitimized it.
In the eyes of those who watched, those who carried the corpses now, and whispered in awe, Theresa was the final seal on their myth.
"The Fiend Queen walks beside her. She is the one. The chosen. The fire."
But what if…
What if the truth wasn't so clean?
What if both were true?
What if she was carrying two swords, each drawn from a different forge, each pointed at different futures? A branching paths?
She closed her eyes, trying to sort the echoes in her mind, but Ylís' voice stirred once again:
"Truth is not a crown, my little star. It is a dagger in the dark. Sometimes, it is the one you hand to your enemy."
A dagger in the dark.
The girl in her arms stirred slightly ever now and again—still asleep, but the pressure of destiny on such a small form made Theresa's arms tremble.
The child had no idea of what she was meant to do.
And yet the woman in Theresis' arms… she might not have any idea as well but...
She had already killed.
She had already walked the prophecy's path.
What was worse? A lie that had become truth through blood and chance?
Or a truth still waiting, cold and unfulfilled?
Theresa's voice was almost a whisper as she stared toward the night horizon where the Free Men walked:
"What if… we shaped the lie so well… it began shaping us in return?"
She turned back, glancing at the child, then at the sands. Her thoughts splintered between the verses of the Golden Path, the warnings of the Cyclops, and the old Teekaz song that was never meant to be spoken aloud.
Was this what Ylís feared?
Was this the moment?
Was she standing at the convergence of false gods and true ones?
And worse… was she being asked to choose?
If so…
Which blade would she raise?
And which prophecy would she kill?
...
...
...
She heard it before she saw him—the crunch of boots on coarse sand, heavy and deliberate. Not the scuttling gait of the Free Men, nor the subtle ghost-tread of Laqeramaline's.
Heavy.
Purposeful.
Male.
And carrying weight.
She didn't need to look to know who it was.
"What's wrong?" came the low voice behind her, cutting cleanly through her fog of doubt. "It's not like you to daydream at times like this, Theresa."
She blinked, as if shaken awake from a long sleep, and turned just enough to see him.
Theresis.
As tall as ever—a head bigger than her, broader by half—and still carrying that damnable air of certainty about him, even under the red haze of the dying light. He came to her side, silent now, as if he too had paused to observe the same wasteland horizon where the Free Men followed the convoy with their dead. But she notices that there were fewer of them now.
But he was not alone.
In his arms, cradled with care yet clearly restrained, was her.
The Outsider.
The one who had slain the ten.
The one the Free Men whispered about in reverent tones.
She was still unconscious, but no longer free. Her arms had been bound behind her back, and her legs tied with ragged cloth, torn and rewrapped tightly—Theresa recognized the make. It was from Nezzsalem's bandages, the ones he used to conceal the decay beneath his armor and robes.
A cruel irony. To be restrained with the remnants of a dead man's shroud.
But the woman still breathed—harsh and ragged, but steady. Her body bore signs of the fight with Theresis: bruises along her temple, welts at her collar, dried blood at the corner of her mouth. And yet… her wounds had been cleaned. Dressed. Theresa could smell the distinct scent of powdered salves and field poultices from Theresis' belt.
He tended to her himself.
She narrowed her gaze slightly but said nothing.
Theresis simply stared ahead, still cradling the unconscious figure like one would a wounded soldier, or a particularly dangerous artifact. He always carried things like that—with intention, never carelessness.
He finally glanced sideways at her, his voice level.
"We need to keep moving, Theresa. Some of the Free Men are dispersing from our convoy, but they'll be back. Especially after what they've seen."
Theresa nodded, but her thoughts hadn't stopped racing. The symbolism wasn't lost on her.
She stood holding the girl—the spear, the blade, the one prophesied in the vision of a Cyclops.
And her brother now held the woman—the chosen of a lie made real.
Both in Sarkaz hands.
Both carried across the sands like relics from another world.
Theresis looked down briefly at the bound figure in his arms. There was something curious in his gaze. Not affection. Not pity. Something else.
"She fought harder than most would," he said simply, as if commenting on the weather. "I wished to disarm her, give her a choice. But she already chose death. She lived instead."
Theresa frowned. "You spared her?"
"No," he replied. "I merely didn't let her die yet. There's a difference."
Silence passed between them.
Only the wind moved.
And in the space between their hearts and the fire of Kazdel's bloodstained dusk, a silent prophecy still hummed.
Two futures. Two bearers.
One would bring a catastrophic consequences.
The other would bring an apocalyptic results.
And for now, neither knew which one was the truth—or if, by holding them, they were merely tools to bring about both.
The wind had calmed, and with it came a strange silence that settled like dust over the two Sarkaz siblings. In that moment, the war, the Free Men, and the crimson haze of the desert all felt far away. All that remained was Theresa, still cradling the sleeping girl wrapped in prophetic words, and Theresis, with the stranger bound in his arms.
He broke the silence.
"She has many questions to answer," he said lowly, nodding to the unconscious woman in his arms. "Who is she? Where is she from? What is she? Where did she get those weapons and gear? Answers we all want—but none of us have."
Theresa didn't respond immediately, but he didn't seem to expect her to. He shifted his weight, the wind playing faintly with bith his long black coat and cape.
"And yet," he said at last, voice cooling, "you're letting the winds of fate cloud your judgment, sister."
Theresa looked up at him, eyes narrowing faintly.
"Aren't you even a little shaken?" she asked. "You saw what they called her, what they believed she was. You heard that word. Jihad. You know the legends of the Free Men, the old Confessarius records, the forbidden scrolls. That isn't a word they should even know. Not unless—"
"Unless this was fated?" Theresis cut in smoothly, his red eyes calm. "You and I were raised to recognize patterns, not myth. We're... I am a general. You, a Ruler. Not priest-kings. This is all just…" He paused, and exhaled. "Coincidence."
She looked away. The girl in her arms stirred slightly but did not wake.
"Coincidence?" she repeated, hollowly. "You call a godless child dropped from out of nowhere and clothed in unknown alloy, wielding weapons that shimmer like Lungmen glass and part Sarkaz blood, a coincidence?"
"Yes," Theresis answered plainly. "Because the alternative is madness. And her weapons and equipment are merely pieces of technology we haven't understood. We never cared for prophecy. You least of all."
Theresa faltered.
"I didn't," she whispered. "But now I don't know. For this to all be a mistake, a tangle of threads… it's too perfect, Theresis. The prophecy Scareye speaks of—she fits it. But so does yours. And that's what scares me."
He was silent for a moment, considering her words with a slow blink. Then he sighed.
"When we return to Kazdel," he said, voice more firm now, "we'll summon the Confessarius. And Scareye. Let them sort through this stuffs. Let them tell us which lies are too old to be real, and which are only now finding breath."
He turned toward the direction of the setting sun amongst the receding Catastrophe.
"Then we rest. Regroup. We must finish this foolish war with Leithanien."
She nodded once. "And… what of the outsider?"
"If she awakens, we question her. She will answer us clearly, or not at all. If she doesn't wake…"
He turned his crimson gaze back to her.
"Then she stays under watch. Would your Babel be willing to take her?"
Theresa nodded again, slower this time. "Yes… but…"
"What is it?"
"You'll strain my Babel even further," she said, her voice low and pointed. "Most of my medics aren't from Kazdel. They're not Sarkaz. They came because they believed in what we're trying to build—not to take orders from the Military Commission."
Theresis looked unfazed.
"Then they'll adapt. I'll assign guards to observe, not command. They will report only to us."
She scoffed softly.
"That's what you say now. But you know how your warriors are."
A silence passed, and in it, something gentler flickered in Theresis' eyes. He looked at the girl in her arms.
"And her? Do you know who she is yet?"
Theresa looked down. The girl was resting, her small form coiled like a question unanswered. Her purple hair shimmered faintly in the red light, her expression soft despite the heat of war and prophecy.
She shook her head.
"No. She has no name. She never did."
"How do you know?"
"Because she... told me," Theresa said, "not with words—but in the way her dreams sounded. She's Sarkaz, but born far from our soil. And we all know that most Sarkaz are not named, unless they earn one."
She stepped forward, shifting her weight gently.
"If they do, it is for deeds—heroic or shameful. Or they take the name of a fallen enemy. If the enemy had a name, they take it as their own."
She looked back at her brother.
"This one has no name. Only silence. Her deeds are yet unwritten."
Theresis studied her, as if weighing the pause that followed. Then he asked, softer now:
"Would you give her one?"
Theresa closed her eyes. The wind moved softly through her pale pink hair. Her boots sank lightly into the sand as she stepped beside her brother.
"I will," she said.
A pause.
Then, with quiet finality, she whispered the name.
"Ascalon."