Mrs. Shaltrice's house was one of the few in Tertiary equipped with a proper bathroom. A small room, entirely wooden. In one corner, the floor gave way to metal grates through which the water drained into a narrow channel, guided down toward barrels stored beneath the house. A simple seat opened over a deep pit leading to the cesspool, where Copros lived—large anthemic larvae, commonly called filth-eaters, creatures that consumed everything that fell in. Sometimes, when hot water poured through the grates, Santvic felt something stir below. A brief, unsettling scrape—like something dragging itself through the dark—vanishing the moment she held her breath, like rats slithering out of sight. She told herself it was the Copros, reacting to the warmth, trying to flee the pit as the water rushed past.
Sitting atop the grates, arms wrapped around herself, she gathered the courage to reach for the tin cup. Her hand hesitated before dipping it into the barrel of hot water beside her. When she finally poured it over her body, the skin burned, flared, and the muscles clenched in a reflexive spasm. She scrubbed, fighting to remove any trace of slime that still clung to her. Then came a pause. Her gaze fixed on the firefly lantern hanging beside the rotted door. Its light pulsed faintly as the insects struck the glass. Her eyes quivered, alert.
No matter how hard she tried, the memory of being inside the slime would not loosen its grip. No matter how much she washed, the sensation lingered. At times, she swore the water ran thicker than it should. Her body would not forget anytime soon.
She dipped the cup again, stretching toward the barrel's mouth; her shoulder protested. Drawing a deep breath, she poured the water over her head, biting down to smother the sound that tried to escape. The rush of water draining away was followed by a muffled groping sound, rising from deep underground. Santvic froze. A second passed—then she exhaled and leaned against the wall, forcing herself to relax. At least the blood, sweat, and mud were gone now. She felt renewed, even knowing she would need a long night's sleep.
Toc-toc.
The knock cut short the next pour, the cup suspended midair. Her heart leapt. A nervous breath slipped free, already picturing Daric Vanhallow on the other side.
"Leave me alone, foolish man."
"Sorry, miss…" came the thin, sad voice of a small boy beyond the door.
She blinked, surprised. A silly smile escaped before she could stop it.
"Wait—wait!" she called, stifling a laugh. "I thought you were my knight. Come back, please."
"Oh! Okay!" he answered in a rush, breathless. "Mrs. Curator, Grandma told me to bring the spool 'cause you forgot it, 'cause she said you're tired and told me to bring it, but said to be careful 'cause you're either pooping or taking a bath. Are you naked?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's fine!" he replied cheerfully.
"No—no, I mean—what's a spool?"
"It's for wiping your butt, ma'am! And for drying off after the bath. Are you bathing?"
"Oh. Yes." A calmer smile surfaced. How curious the customs of this village were—a spool for personal hygiene. "I am bathing. Please leave it behind the door. Thank you very much."
"You're welcome! Just holler if you need anything!"
His footsteps faded into the grass. Santvic let her breath out slowly.
Silence.
She sensed the presence before the voice. Irritation flared in advance.
"Want the spool, boss?"
Her eyes closed for a brief moment.
"Roll it over here, knight," she said. A short pause. "Respectfully. With your eyes closed."
Hallow opened the door; Santvic instinctively leaned back. Eyes shut, he carefully rolled the spool across the floor and closed the door again. When he turned away, she stood quickly and retrieved it.
It was a wooden spool, wrapped several times with a kind of cloth. She tore it apart with her hands, forming small rags, and used them to dry her hair and body. Each touch felt like skin being peeled away.
She dressed in fresh clothes—simpler fabrics. She doubted she'd ever wear the old ones again. Sandals. Black, loose trousers. A white ruffled chemise tucked in at the waist. The spare green gloves followed. Then she stepped outside, drawing in the cool air.
"Thank you for standing guard, knight."
"A spool," he laughed. "Who would've thought."
Both of them returned to Shaltrice's house. After all, the bathroom was outside. They knocked, and the old woman answered: simple brown fabrics falling to her feet, a small faded beret, gray hair framing her face. Hallow swore she looked like a frog—thick, purplish lips stretching almost from ear to ear. She always carried a wooden cane painted gold, a spiral symbol carved into its tip.
"Oh, my dear, come in… you'll catch a cold out there. Come in, come in, hurry now!" she said, her voice worn and worried.
They entered, with little choice.
The living room was cozy, even more so with the fireplace lit. Another old man slept on a leather couch, hands folded over his stomach, what looked like a book pressed awkwardly against his face. The boy—black hair, chubby cheeks, gray clothes—sat on the floor carving a small wooden figurine, using an improvised knife, utterly absorbed in the task. The only light came from the crackling fire, the firefly lantern beside the boy, and another resting on the table.
"Ma'am, thank you very much for letting me use your bathroom."
"No trouble at all! Come back whenever you need, my dear. Anything at all, just say so, you hear? And do say it!"
"I will be explicit if I require anything. Thank you, ma'am."
"Wouldn't you like some coffee? A little something, a biscuit maybe?"
"We don't need anything at the moment. Thank you very much."
"Oh, nonsense, dear! Come on, come on—"
It took them some time to escape. Unfortunately, Santvic's looks weren't enough to stop Hallow from accepting the biscuits—and leaving with an entire jar full of them.
They returned to their horses and rode back toward home, the knight leading with one hand, the other busy holding the jar.
"Boss, can I ask something?"
Santvic didn't answer.
"Can I come bathe there tomorrow?"
She shot him a tense look.
"Don't be foolish. Of course you can, knight."
"Thanks."
They rode in silence for a while longer, until they heard Tertiary's curfew bell, just as Santvic had requested. The roads were already empty, and anyone still outside would surely be rushing home now.
"However," Santvic added, remembering something, "as punishment for the hell you put me through, you'll be working through the night."
"What?!" He twisted in the saddle, incredulous. "Come on!"
"No arguing, knight. You'll patrol the village overnight and destroy slimes. One for every thousandth of the pain I felt."
"Damn…"
"Still, I have a request. Capture the smaller ones and restrain them somehow. I'll start a small slime farm and study their growth up close."
"Well." He lifted his head after the humiliation, intrigued. "I hadn't thought of that."
"Tomorrow, we'll build a fence."
When they returned to the house, the horses were tied up. Santvic left Mouse unrestrained.
"Are you sure?" Hallow asked. "He won't run off?"
"He understands this is home now." Santvic stroked the skinny horse's neck. "He won't flee. Mouse has been loyal for years."
"I couldn't trust Chestnut like that," Hallow said, envy threading his voice.
He took his leave with a brief nod, reminding her to keep the blade at her waist at all times—good practice. In return, Santvic demanded proper work with the slimes. Neither voiced the same unspoken fear: that the other might be hurt again before morning. Santvic did not truly wish to punish him as much as she feared for the village.
The door was locked behind her. Inside the bedroom, she put the spare glasses on before moving to the table. Small vials filled with remnants of blue slime waited at the workstation. She sat and began writing down what had been learned, preparing for a round of tests. Darkness crept in gradually; lanterns were removed from the walls and drawn closer to the table.
Write. Think. Write again. Write, write, write—until it felt endless.
Then the knock. Tap. Tap.
Santvic rose at once, fingers closing around the hilt of the saber at her waist, just as Hallow had instructed. The door opened to nothing—until her gaze dropped. Straight black hair caught the lantern light.
"Good evening, Ms. Curator!"
"Child," Santvic whispered sharply. The street lay empty, silence heavy after the curfew bell. "What are you doing here? How did you get here? Inside—quickly! Do you have any idea how dangerous these roads are at this hour?"
He was pulled inside before answering. The door locked. Only then did the breath trapped in her chest escape.
"Yes, Ms. Curator… Grandma talks about that all the time." The boy shifted his feet, restless. "But you forgot your glasses, so I came to return them."
He held them out—clean, free of slime. Santvic accepted them carefully, resisting a smile.
"Does your grandmother know you're here?"
"No." A pout followed. "She thinks I'm asleep. I snuck out."
Santvic crouched to his height, straightening his collar without thinking.
"What's your name?"
"Serim, ma'am."
"Serim." The name was spoken firmly. "I'm going to explain what you did wrong. The village is very, very dangerous right now. Night is no game. Slimes aren't as weak as Grinders tell you—you saw that, didn't you? I was swallowed by one."
The boy's fingers clenched in his clothes.
"It's true," he said quietly, remembering the Curator drenched in slime, begging for shelter.
"My knight is strong. Very strong." Santvic held his gaze. "Even so, fighting these creatures requires caution. And you—more than anyone. Your duty is to protect your family, which means staying home. Do you understand?"
Serim looked away. Shame crept slowly across his face at the thought of leaving his grandparents alone. Santvic almost smiled, seeing the reprimand take hold.
"Sorry…"
"You'll apologize to them tomorrow." A hand rested on his shoulder. "It's too late to go back now. You'll sleep here tonight. It's safer."
The boy nodded, silent.
Santvic returned to the table, the boy following, curiosity pulling him like a magnet, as if he were witnessing something forbidden. At least, thanks to having sent Hallow away that night, there was a place for him to sleep. Or not—Hallow could certainly take him safely if necessary. Santvic, however, would not trust herself with that task. She pictured Mouse stumbling into a slime, the boy sliding straight into the gooey mass. The image clenched her chest. She could never forgive herself.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Hm?"
"These jars… what are they?"
Santvic shook her head, brushing the images away before they took root. She moved the vials closer to the lanternlight.
"Slime samples. I'm studying them to understand where they come from and to drive them out of your village."
"Oh, don't worry about that, ma'am!" The boy puffed out his chest, excited. He climbed onto the workstation and sat next to her, legs swinging. "Grandma already knows where they come from!"
"Does she?" Santvic raised an eyebrow slightly, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "And where's that?"
"From the Antesystem," he said with conviction. "It spawns them."
"Spawns them, huh?" Santvic paused deliberately, letting the silence stretch. The boy stared, certainty beginning to falter. "Why?"
Why.
Selim had never thought about it. The word landed heavy in his lap.
"Ah… it's because…"
The boy's eyes widened, as if shoved to the edge of a cliff filled with possibilities. Why?
"It's true," he murmured, almost to himself. "Why?"
"Exactly what I'm trying to figure out, Selim." Santvic returned her gaze to the jars, her voice solemn. "This is my work."
"Hey… don't slimes have a mom and a dad? Since the Antesystem makes them. That must be sad…"
The boy lowered his head; his shoulders drew inward. He stayed still for a second, lips puckering into a small pout.
"You're right—they don't," Santvic said slowly. "When they're born, they already know what they need to do… in the case of slimes, it's just to eat and eat and grow."
"That's sad…" he murmured, genuinely.
"For some, it's an adequate existence." Santvic offered a half-smile that wasn't very funny; the boy didn't catch the joke. She shifted tone, more teacher than humorist. "We don't know why things are this way. There are many theories about where we come from. Does the village have any sort of magistrate, Serim?"
He shook his head. His legs swung from the bench, one foot tapping softly against the floor.
"Grandpa taught me everything. But I wanted to go to school in Satus!" he said, eyes wide. "They teach you how to hunt there!"
"They do," Santvic said, leaning in, carefully lifting one of the vials and setting it back down. "In Satus, they say we all came from the great tree of life, in the Capital—Yggdrasil."
The boy's eyes lit up like fireflies. "You've seen Yggdrasil…?"
"I have. Many times." Santvic let a trace of reverence slip into her voice, the memory sharp and brief. "The Agora, where we study, lies close to the sacred fields. It's as beautiful as they say. Now, Shaltar…"
"My grandma's mom came from there!" the boy interrupted proudly.
"I thought so—your great-grandmother." She smiled, then lowered her voice again as she placed a sample onto the microscope's plate. "Some very, very old scholars theorized a different origin. They claimed we came from something called Yggdramör."
"What's that?" Serim tilted his head, stumbling over the long word.
"It's… an idea too big." Santvic sighed, seeing the confusion on his face. She chose not to push images of creators or endings of the world. "Yggdramör is so vast we couldn't possibly understand it. Bigger than our village, bigger than Doural."
"Bigger than our world?" He tried to measure it with his arms.
"Bigger than a thousand worlds," Santvic said—and laughed softly, surprised by the scale herself. The boy let his imagination run loose, eyes drifting through worlds she preferred to keep as bedtime stories. A thousand worlds were a lot of worlds.
"I have a mom and a dad… so I didn't come from the Antesystem," the boy concluded, a trace of pride in his voice.
"Exactly. You have something no anthemic creature has." Santvic rested her elbow on the table. "That something special is called a Divine Spark. It allows you to connect to the Nullity."
"Nullity…?" He scrunched his face, feeling the weight of the word.
"You'll understand one day." Santvic didn't press further. "Still, you do have an Antesystem profile, don't you?"
"I do…" Serim lowered his voice. "Grandma told me not to show it to anyone."
"And she's right." Santvic nodded. "It interacts with you the same way it does with any other anthemic little creature. Because it's part of the world. It's everywhere."
"Everywhere…?"
The boy looked around, as if expecting something to stir in the shadows.
"Yes. With some people it's stronger, with others weaker. Almost as if it had a will of its own." She hesitated for a moment. "With me, for example… the Antesystem is limited. It fights me, every day. With my knight, though—that ugly man who was near the bathroom, remember?—with him, the Antesystem is very generous."
Serim let out a small smile, quickly contained.
"I hope it's nice to me too." He thought for a moment. "Do you know where it came from?"
"Many people think they do." Santvic adjusted herself in the chair. The boy noticed immediately—it was going to be a long answer.
"Saturians keep what they believe in caves. Their libraries can only be accessed by the High Crown." Serim's eyes widened. "They're important people. Much more important than your village leader." She went on. "They say the Antesystem was created by the Archons. A distraction meant to pull us away from our true mother: Yggdrasil."
The boy scratched his head, thinking.
"That's why Satus doesn't like the Capital…" he murmured. "They have the tree."
"Shaltar is similar," Santvic said. "Just more direct. To them, you must not use the Antesystem, nor interact with it, nor accept it, nor stray from their path of sanctification." She tilted her head. "You've seen a monk from Shaltar, haven't you?"
"They float…" Serim whispered, as if saying something forbidden.
"Shaltar doesn't place much faith in Yggdrasil," she continued. "They believe in something beyond this world. Very distant. Something you can only reach after death."
The boy fell silent, chewing on the idea. It was all far too complicated for him. He wasn't really understanding any of it.
"In Mel-Purpura, it depends on the District," Santvic went on, calmer. "It's an Urbe made of many smaller Urbes. But in general, they believe the Antesystem is natural, that we emerged from it, and they don't speak of Sparks at all." She shrugged. "Anything that seems divine, they deny."
"Wow…" Serim took a deep breath. "And Friggapluvia?"
"They believe they are the original people of humanity."
Santvic paused briefly. "That's why they isolate themselves. Not like Shaltar, which flees the Antesystem, nor like Satus, which shields itself from the Capital. But because they believe they are different." She sighed. "We know little. We have no access."
Serim thought for a long moment before lifting his eyes again.
"And the Capital… what does it believe in?"
Santvic smiled at him. She didn't answer.
"Curator… do you know the whole history of Doural?"
The boy rested his elbows on the table, watching Santvic work. He yawned, rubbing his eyes, but curiosity once again overcame sleep. He hadn't understood much of what she'd explained earlier — maybe if she started from the beginning, it would make more sense.
Santvic hesitated, then smiled faintly.
"Very well… a very, very long time ago…" She leaned back in her chair. "So many years that we no longer know how to count them. People didn't live as you and I do. There were no villages like this one. Everyone lived for themselves."
She made a vague gesture with her hand.
"Can you imagine naked people, living in caves?"
Serim's eyes widened.
"These were the archaic peoples," she continued. "But over time, they began to gather. To observe one another. To learn together." Santvic tapped the table lightly. "And then they created speech. Our language. The way we communicate. This is called Metapluvian."
The boy listened in silence, completely absorbed.
"These peoples grew. They came together, just as this village once did." She paused briefly. "And they grew so much that they became the Old Capital."
"A single urbe?" Serim murmured.
"A single one. The first of all," she confirmed. "It expanded, absorbed other villages, other peoples… until none remained but itself." Santvic drew a slow breath. "That lasted until a man named Iranaeus emerged."
The name seemed to weigh on the air.
"He believed that everything the Capital preached was a lie," she went on. "That its leaders were guiding the world toward a vast deception." Her eyes lowered to her work for a moment. "From that belief, a war was born — large enough to shatter the Old Capital into many smaller towns."
Serim blinked slowly now, sleep beginning to pull at him.
"The world lost progress," she said, softer. "It weakened." Then she concluded, "Until the rise of the Archons."
Santvic lifted her gaze.
"The first was Sabaoth…"
She stopped.
With his head resting on the table, Serim was fast asleep. His face was relaxed, his breathing calm — perhaps dreaming of walking cities, or serpents too large to fit within the world.
Santvic smiled.
Carefully, she rose, lifted the boy into her arms, and carried him to the bed. She returned to her worktable and resumed her notes.
Some time later, the pen slipped from her fingers. Santvic let her head fall onto the table and fell asleep right there.