Chapter 2
The Weight of the Choice
Amarantha, only seventeen years old, was in the middle of a brutal combat session against Uther, Reydem's general. No weapons. Just bare fists.
The young woman lay on the ground, battered, a thin line of blood staining her lips as she looked up at her instructor.
Uther stared down at her from above, impassive.
Uther, Reydem's General (60 years old)
"Come on. Get up."
Amarantha clenched her teeth.
Uther didn't change his tone.
"Get used to pain. No one is going to show you mercy."
Driven by rage and discipline, Amarantha shot up and lunged at him.
The fight resumed with violence.
She managed to slip and deflect several of the warrior's heavy blows, showing remarkable agility. Still, one crushing punch broke through her defense.
Amarantha managed to block it by crossing her arms, but the force of the impact was so great it drove her down to her knees, gasping.
Uther stopped the assault.
"We'll continue tomorrow. Rest. And practice what I told you."
He walked away without looking back.
In the distance, Hedo Murem's figure remained still, having watched every second of the training.
Not long after, Amarantha was sitting on a bench, visibly injured and exhausted.
Hedo approached with a calm stride.
"That was intense training," he remarked. "I see you're preparing even before you enter Zafiro."
"It's not enough," she replied, wiping the blood away.
Hedo watched her for a moment.
"I've been keeping an eye on you. And whether you believe it or not, you've improved quite a lot."
Amarantha looked at him skeptically.
"You really think so?"
Hedo nodded.
"Uther is probably Reydem's strongest fighter. In training, he shows no weakness and no gentleness. The fact that you can hold your ground against him for more than five minutes already puts you above many."
He paused, as if making sure she understood what mattered.
"I know you want to be ready, and you are. But don't forget what truly sets you apart: your mind."
Amarantha looked away into the void, recalling rumors, profiles, reports.
"You said Zeldrin is cold-blooded. That he has no trouble sacrificing members if he believes it will bring results."
"That's right," Hedo confirmed bluntly.
"Then why do we allow it?" she pressed harshly. "Having members we treat as disposable will only weaken us in numbers."
Hedo exhaled. Not as if he were tired… but as if that argument was far too old.
"You may be right. But you need to be in Zafiro to understand what it costs to get things done."
Amarantha looked at him.
Hedo continued, serious.
"Zeldrin is an indifferent pragmatist. I won't deny it. But he's also the one who has managed to keep our enemies at bay on the most difficult fronts. He's achieved results where others have failed."
He paused briefly.
"I'm not saying I agree with his methods. But in this war… many times, what works is all that's left."
Amarantha stayed silent for a moment.
"I know… but maybe there's another way."
Hedo looked at her with a mix of sadness and resignation.
"I wish I could say the same. Even when we have options… sometimes we don't."
Years later, Amarantha woke up.
Her eyes—dull, and completely expressionless—fixed directly on the ceiling.
It was her first morning after visiting the Stable for her preparation.
She lay perfectly still in bed, staring upward as the cold, gray light of dawn began to reveal the cracks in the wood and the dust motes drifting through the stale air of the room.
She didn't move.
She didn't blink.
She only breathed—slowly.
As if her body was awake… but something inside her was still somewhere else.
The Only Thing We Have Left
After several days, Victor had settled back at the operations base.
He was inside a thick canvas tent, dimly lit by an oil lamp, gathered with the subordinates of his secret intelligence and field-messaging team.
Over a rough wooden table covered in tactical maps and terrain reports, Victor delegated operational instructions for the different regions of Gleidmur. He assigned surveillance routes, delivery schedules, and passage points meant to avoid patrols or high-risk areas.
The men listened in silence, memorizing.
When he finished, they collected the necessary documents and withdrew from the tent to begin deployment to their positions.
Victor stored the remaining papers, lowered the lamp a little, and stepped outside.
The camp was active: guards rotating shifts, soldiers training, messengers weaving between tents, and internal patrols moving with routine precision.
As he walked between the tents, he ran into Carla.
The relief was mutual.
They approached and shared a brief embrace.
"I'm glad you're alright," Carla told him.
Then they began walking together through the settlement.
Victor lowered his voice.
"I managed to find a way for Amarantha to get into the Rousth Palace."
"How?" she asked, already sensing the weight of it.
Victor stopped and looked at her.
"We're arranging things… altering them… so she can enter as a Cloth Maid."
Carla froze. The impact was immediate.
"We can't allow that," she said, shaken.
Victor kept his tone firm.
"There's no other option. And Amarantha knows it."
Carla lowered her head, overwhelmed.
Victor continued, calmer now:
"You joined Reydem voluntarily. You didn't have to."
Then he touched her face gently, lifting her gaze.
"You're going to live through hard things here. And you need to be strong."
"I know," Carla replied, her voice low.
Victor didn't drag it out. He only said what mattered.
"Amarantha will be fine. We have to trust her."
He paused.
"But you also need to become stronger. You're not home anymore. We chose to join Reydem to change things."
He looked at her directly.
"So please, Carla… train. You're the only thing I have left."
He gave her one last brief hug and walked away.
Even though his stride was steady, inside Victor was shaken by the fate he had just sent Amarantha toward.
Carla stayed there, watching her brother disappear into the camp.
Sadness clouded her face, and she whispered a name:
"Amarantha…"
Then she looked toward the edge of the camp. There were flowers there. She stared at them with a dull expression.
And the memory came on its own.
She saw Amarantha in Erthus, leaning over a small flowerbed, watering carefully. She wore a gentle, warm smile.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Amarantha."
Without stopping what she was doing, she added:
"Don't worry. I'll make sure to teach you many things about Erthus, so you'll be prepared and feel comfortable."
Then came other moments: the two of them laughing, gathering harvests, carrying reports, studying together in the library. Amarantha taught with patience, showing her around the base as if she were trying to make her feel at home.
Back then, Amarantha had been different: cheerful, warm, kind, always smiling. She was the one who always watered and cared for the flowers because she loved them.
Yet the bright light she once was stood in brutal contrast to the cold, distant assassin of the present.
The memory faded.
The flowers in front of her, there in the camp, returned fully to her sight.
She stared at them, her expression drained, thinking about what her friend had become… and what awaited her too, from now on.
Victor, Sapphire Division (40 years old)
Carla, Sapphire Division (22 years old)
The Request
Zeldrin stood atop a hill, watching the horizon with his usual unreadable expression.
Torken approached him, breaking the silence of the surroundings as he delivered the situation report:
"I've received reports that Amarantha has already entered the palace as a maid."
Zeldrin didn't take his eyes off the distance. With absolute neutrality, he processed the news.
"Good. This will allow us to act faster."
With that, Torken withdrew, leaving the commander alone.
Zeldrin remained there, motionless, his gaze lost in the distance.
The news didn't provoke any visible reaction. It wasn't surprise. It was confirmation.
His last meeting with her was still fresh—not like a distant memory, but like a conversation that still hadn't fully ended.
He had stood before Amarantha, delivering his directives with cruel clarity:
"When you become a Cloth Maid, I need you to deliver information on the plans they will carry out. I also need you to uncover information about their relatives, acquaintances, and close contacts; we must use everything to our advantage. Do you understand?"
"Understood," she replied firmly.
Zeldrin continued, raising the gravity of his orders:
"I also need you to eliminate certain people. Any merchant who works for the Sovereigns, who tries to frustrate our plans or set something in motion, I need you to eliminate them. Do you understand?"
"Understood," she repeated.
Finally, Zeldrin gave her the darkest instruction—the one that demanded the total sacrifice of her dignity for the sake of the mission:
"I need you to earn the Sovereigns' trust. To reach them. Not only to listen, but to attend to their needs and their whims. If that helps us gain more information about their plans, it will be of great use. So you will do it as well, no matter what happens. Do you understand?"
"Understood," Amarantha said, without hesitation.
Zeldrin sealed the agent's fate with his final words:
"Then you know what you must do, Amarantha."
The wind blew hard across the hill.
Zeldrin kept staring at the horizon.
The Mysterious Artist
The narrative shifts to a vast, solemn chamber—an enclosed hall that preserved the sacred atmosphere of a sanctuary, though one devoted to art.
Despite being cut off from the outside world, the place was surrounded by fresh flowers arranged with an almost ritual care, as if they were replaced again and again to sustain something that refused to disappear. Among them stood sculptures of marble and stone: frozen bodies, motionless gestures, finished works that seemed to watch in silence.
The air was saturated with a lingering, heavy perfume—one that could not fully dispel a deeper sensation, older and weightier, as if it had settled there over the years.
At the center of that personal sanctuary, a man stood before a canvas. His hands, stained with dried pigments and marked by long use, held the brush with the familiarity of someone who had repeated the same motion for far too long.
The portrait depicted a woman's body rendered with almost obsessive precision: the folds of her dress, her restrained posture, the delicacy of her hands. Every detail had been corrected, adjusted, and corrected again countless times. Yet the neck rose into an untouched emptiness. Where the face should have been, there was nothing.
That painting was not new. It had changed over years—many, many years. Always the same painting, the same canvas. Beneath the surface, layers of past attempts had accumulated: colors buried under other colors, strokes redone, shapes erased before they could ever settle.
More than once, the artist had believed he was close. Very close. Then he would alter the canvas with an almost feverish devotion, convinced that this time he had found what he was searching for. But he always returned to the same point.
As he laid down a soft stroke, the man spoke into the emptiness in a low, worn voice:
"This absence…"
The brush moved only slightly.
"This pain that won't leave."
He fell silent for a moment before continuing:
"I've filled this place with flowers, with statues, with perfect forms. I've spent years surrounding myself with beauty… believing that would be enough. It's been years, so many years, and here I am painting this canvas I've never been able to finish… Here I remain, in this same place."
The canvas stayed motionless before him.
"I've changed colors. I've corrected details. I've started over more times than I can remember."
The brush stopped.
"And still… something is missing."
His fingers tightened around the wood.
"As if none of this could replace it. As if everything I do only serves to postpone it."
He remained still, staring at the faceless neck.
"As long as it's missing…" he murmured, "I can't finish it."
The silence in the chamber grew heavier. The flowers—meant to wither and be replaced—stood in contrast to the sculptures that would never change. And between them, the painting continued to demand what he did not have.
Only then, his voice laden with years, did he speak the questions that had followed him for far too long, as his hands rose toward that unfinished space:
"Why is your face always missing from all my portraits and sculptures?"
"Why is your name always missing from all my poems and songs?"
The brush hung suspended in the air.
"Will I ever find you someday? And… if I do… will I finally be able to fill this emptiness that burns inside me? An endless mourning that never fades."
The man remained there, facing the unfinished canvas. Maybe one day he would know. Maybe he wouldn't. Until then, the emptiness still lived inside him.
The Forging of an Object
After months of preparation, Amarantha was now operating inside Rousth.
She moved through the palace's endless, lavish corridor, a perfectly balanced tray in her hands, already transformed into a Cloth Maid.
As she walked, something inside her tightened. It wasn't a decision. It was a reflex. The palace was still there, but her mind slipped back to the months she had spent in the "Stable."
The memory was clinical and humiliating.
She saw herself there, stripped of all clothing and any last trace of dignity, forced to remain naked while subjected to meticulous scrutiny. Hands moved across every inch of her skin, examining her with cold, impersonal attention, probing even the most intimate parts of her body in search of imperfections, while her scars were deliberately ignored.
They performed exhaustive examinations. Cold needles pierced her skin, injecting unknown drugs, and they ran constant tests—everything under the raw exposure of her nakedness, verifying the absence of any disease or flaw.
The palace returned without warning.
Her stride continued as if her face didn't matter.
Only her body could be seen, sealed inside the maid's uniform: a garment designed with precision to leave one shoulder exposed. On that patch of bare skin, a mark stood out—a dark, exact, permanent symbol, engraved like a sign of ownership that could never be erased.
The mark was enough.
Without her needing to search for it, another fragment forced itself in.
Once the medical inspections were over, a red-hot iron—like the kind used to brand cattle—came down on her shoulder. Smoke and the stench of burned flesh sealed her fate with that symbol of property.
Amarantha kept walking.
The Cloth Maid stopped in front of a door, opened it, and entered.
Another memory dragged her under. This one wasn't physical. It was psychological.
In her mind, the scene reduced itself to the essentials: in front of her, a pair of male feet, shod; in front of them, her own, barefoot. Both seated, separated by a measured distance, facing each other in a silence that enforced hierarchy.
The man said:
"You are an object. You are something material."
And Amarantha's voice, mechanical and broken, repeated:
"I am an object. I am something material."
"You are our property. You serve us," he insisted.
"I am your property. I serve you," she repeated.
Then the man stood.
He struck Amarantha's face with hard, sharp slaps while she remained seated.
She took the punishment without flinching, without even blinking, as if her gaze no longer belonged to her.
The man pressed again:
"You are an object. You are something material..."
And she, between blows, repeated the same words.
And in that same way, she was subjected to other things only she would ever know—things her mind refused to remember—throughout those months of torture and indoctrination in the darkness of that place.
The present asserted itself again.
Back in the palace room, Amarantha set the tray down on a surface. Her hands moved at once, extracting and arranging the objects.
But even there, as her hands worked, one last memory rose.
She was with a woman—an instructor—who spoke to her coldly about how to attend the Sovereigns, detailing what she needed to consider and how she had to behave in order to please them.
At the end of the lesson, the woman handed her a small case with something light inside.
"Take these pills. You'll need them."
They were contraceptives.
Amarantha accepted them, and the vision dissolved, returning her to her current reality—ready and configured for her mission.
Like a reminder of what, from now on, she could be exposed to.