My hand was warm and wet.
That was the first feeling I had when I woke. Before the eyes. Before the pain. Before any thought that resembled consciousness — just the sensation of something warm and moist enveloping my fingers, as though someone had dipped my hand into something that wasn't water.
My heavy eyes were still trying to understand what had happened. It wasn't that I didn't remember the fight — I remembered every blow, every bone breaking, the red smile I gave with blood on my teeth, the face of the woman with purple hair before everything went dark. But I was lost in an empty space between what had happened and how long I had been in that state. Hours? Days? Weeks?
I turned my head slowly — and finally saw what was wetting my hand.
Tears.
And a face sleeping against my fingers.
"Sister?"
Helena. With the swollen face of someone who cried until the body decided that sleeping was less painful than staying awake. Her fingers interlaced with mine with a strength that hadn't loosened even during sleep — as though letting go meant losing again, as though the physics of touch could keep someone tethered to this side.
My confusion was enormous. She should be on a ship, far from everything that was happening. That was the deal. The patriarch had promised. Her safety was the price of my war.
The door opened with a soft screech of metal against metal. And what crossed through was a woman carrying what seemed to be two trays.
"Well, well… Seems someone woke from their beauty sleep."
The woman who entered wasn't what caught my attention — after all, if I was alive it was because that woman with purple hair and a perfect face before me had allowed it. She wasn't the enemy. In truth, what caught my attention was the mechanical sound the door made when it opened. That sound was unfamiliar to me. It wasn't a common door. My eyes began to scan exactly where I was — metal covered every space. Walls, ceiling, floor, everything made of a dark and polished alloy that reflected the artificial light with a cold shine. It wasn't a room. It was a cabin. On a ship.
"Where are we?"
My eyes returned to the woman, who looked at me with interest. And even in that moment she still seemed more beautiful than the last time I saw her, which I didn't think possible, but which reality insisted on contradicting. This time she wore a uniform that covered the entire body in a dark violet color — the kind of piece that on any other person would look military, on her looked as though it had been tailored to prove that uniforms could be elegant. The purple hair was tied in a bun that left the neck exposed, and the white smile made me wonder whether it was possible for a person this beautiful to exist in a universe that made a point of being so ugly.
"I see that besides being very strong, you're also very intelligent."
The words came out more as observation than compliment while she advanced to my side, where a table now held the two trays with what seemed like something edible and clearly unappetizing. Before I could formulate an answer, she continued:
"We are on the main ship. Or, as you can simply call it…" Her eyes traveled the interior of the cabin with something that resembled affection — the hand touching a metal wall as someone caressing something alive. "…my ship."
Helena finally began to wake with our conversation. The face rose from my fingers — the eyes swollen, red, with that fragile shine of someone who fell asleep crying and wakes without knowing whether the reason for the crying has ended.
"Brother… you woke up…"
She quickly threw herself against my chest while squeezing me, and it was there that I realized that, despite being awake, the pain was still there — every muscle, every bone, every joint answering her hug with a complaint that went from discomfort to agony. Automatically, I began casting my healing ability on my own body. The magic was weak — I didn't have mana to spare for nearly anything — but it was enough to transform the unbearable into merely very bad.
"Don't worry, sister. I'm fine." A lie. But the kind of lie siblings tell because the alternative is worse. "Now what the hell are you doing here?"
Helena didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked at the woman with purple hair — and in that look I read an entire story I still hadn't been told.
"I'm the one who transferred your sister to this ship."
My chest ached, but the rage rose faster than the pain. If I was right, this ship was heading straight to war. That was nothing like what we had agreed.
"Can I know the reason for this?"
My voice came out sharp while my hand searched for something that was nowhere — under the pillow, beside the bed, on the floor. But before I could elaborate, the woman seemed to perceive exactly what I was looking for.
"You're looking for this." She raised her hand — and between her fingers, pulsing with that inner light I knew by heart, was my Vivarium. "Sorry. I couldn't let someone else take it. I must say this is a fascinating item. Fortunately, it only responds to its owner."
She tossed it in my direction. I caught it in the air — and the instant my fingers closed around the sphere, I felt them. Each of them. Arachne, the Urskra. Almost all of them in there.
"Where's my griffin?"
My voice came out more hoarse than I wanted, but the woman didn't seem to mind while observing what appeared to be a machine connected to my body.
"No need to worry. He's with other creatures." She said without taking her eyes from the monitors. "We also have something similar to what you have. Of course, not as sophisticated and expansive. In any case, the moment you want to transfer him to your item, just let me know." A brief pause. "The truth is he wasn't very cooperative, so I wasn't able to act subtly. But he's fine now."
All intact. All alive. The relief that struck me was so intense it almost hurt.
"Thank you." The word came out more sincere than anything I had said since I woke. "But what is my sister—"
"We have a traitor among us."
The sentence cut everything.
The woman said it the way one reports the temperature — without drama, without pause, without preparation. As though the information were a fact and not a bomb.
"Her being with me is the best thing I can do for you." Her eyes — which I now saw more clearly were of a deep violet, darker than the patriarch's, more similar to the tone of her hair than to the family's tone — found mine. "Many saw what you're capable of. Honestly, not even I expected that." She turned toward the door as though she had finished what needed to be done. "When you're ready, go to the mess hall. Your sister knows the way. Of course, if you still want to eat the food I brought, no problem." She stopped and looked at the floor, as though weighing what she should say. "Unfortunately, I won't be able to give you another day. We're arriving."
A minimal pause. The eyes returned to look at me.
"Welcome to the Unicorns."
The automatic door opened and closed. The sound of metal sealing behind her was the only period that sentence had.
And what she had said left me in shock. I turned to my sister, who now seemed calmer and with a slight smile on her face.
"What did she mean by… traitor?"
Helena was caught off guard by my question. However, I sensed from the brief interaction between the two that she knew something. She stopped and began to observe the surroundings — the automatic gesture of someone looking for ears that shouldn't be there. I knew that gesture. It was the same one she made when she knew something and was deciding how much to tell. Our eyes finally met while she seemed embarrassed.
Before she could speak, barking exploded at the foot of the bed.
"Oops! I think they woke up! Come, girls!"
One by one, Helena began placing the Shih Tzus on the bed. Sam jumped first, missing the target and nearly falling off the other side. Clover climbed with the dignity of someone who thinks they deserve to be there. Alex needed two attempts. And Roberta — little Roberta, who days ago was pressed against the wall of my house trembling with fear — climbed on the first try and came straight to my lap, the tail wagging with the confidence of someone who had finally decided that this was her place.
I was happy. My entire family seemed to be fine. But I knew Helena was trying to change the subject — and I knew my sister far too well to let it slide.
While petting Roberta with one hand and holding Sam with the other, my eyes returned serious to Helena.
"What happened since I blacked out?"
✦ ✦ ✦
After nearly an hour, I finally understood what the woman with purple hair was talking about.
"We were betrayed."
The words came out bitter from my mouth — but they were the only thing that could explain the events that followed in the two days I was unconscious.
Two days. Forty-eight hours unconscious while the world around reorganized itself in ways I didn't ask for and didn't control. Helena told me everything — slowly, with care, choosing words like someone walking through a minefield. And each piece of information was worse than the last.
The Infernals attacked while I slept. Not an exploratory incursion, not a provocation — a coordinated attack, at scale, with the kind of precision that is only possible when someone on the inside provides information from the outside. Patrol routes. Ship positions. Shift change schedules. Everything available to the enemy with the courtesy of someone who preferred to sell their own rather than face what was coming.
"They seem nice." Helena said, referring to the family sheltering us now. "Besides, if it weren't for her, we'd probably…" She went silent without finishing — which I knew meant what it meant.
Yes. What my sister was saying made sense. The woman with purple hair — whose name I still didn't know, because nobody had formally introduced us, because everything happened too fast for things like names — was one of the only people who managed to block the Infernals' surprise attack. How, I still didn't know. But the fact that we were alive and on a ship instead of in ashes on an invaded planet said enough.
"How did they manage to get so close?" I asked, more to myself than to Helena. "And how did we manage to defend the planet without—"
Before my line of reasoning reached any conclusion, I remembered Viego. The body growing. The ivory horn. The fusion with the Unicorn. If everyone in the family had that power, things became clearer.
"Yes!" Helena spoke with an enthusiasm that surprised me. "Apparently they have a really crazy power of fusing with their Unicorns. I mean, I only saw one of their fights in a video and they're incredible!"
While my sister spoke well of the Unicorns with the energy of someone who watched an action movie and wants to tell the ending, I was getting out of bed. Each muscle complained. Each bone remembered. But I had things to do that couldn't wait for my body to agree to cooperate.
"Yes, sure." I said, putting my feet on the cold metal floor while pushing Clover and Sam aside. "Now help me get up because I'm hungry and I refuse to eat this crap. I need a rare steak. Besides, I need to talk to that woman."
"Sure. But try not to strain yourself…"
Somehow, they had withstood the Infernals' first assault. But I knew — and the woman with purple hair knew, and probably everyone on that ship knew — that winning the battle didn't mean winning the war. On the contrary: the Unicorns' trump card, the fusion power that I myself had revealed to hundreds of people in the arena, had been played before the first real battle. The enemy now knew what they could do. The surprise had been spent.
Probably, at that exact moment, we were heading toward the main objective — Erebus. Being on that ship meant things had happened too fast for plans, too fast for agreements, too fast for anything that resembled preparation.
From what Helena told me, a traitor existed, but there were still no names. The worst thing that could happen was having a traitor and nobody knowing who it was — because it meant every conversation, every plan, every strategy could be being handed over before being executed.
"Put some clothes on, at least."
Helena's voice pulled me from the spiral of thoughts. Upon standing, I realized I was wearing one of those hospital gowns — open at the back, thin, with the dignity of a trash bag with sleeves. The universal version of "you were in very bad shape and nobody cared what you were wearing while they saved you."
But I didn't need clothes.
The mark flowed over my body. It rose over my feet, my legs, my torso, my arms — and in seconds, the ridiculous gown disappeared beneath a black armor that covered every centimeter of skin, leaving only my face. Not the full combat version — a lighter, simpler version, that looked less like armor and more like clothing. The kind of thing that, with some generosity, would pass for a dark uniform from a distance.
Helena stood frozen.
Her eyes went wide — and I saw there, on that face, the same expression she had when she was a child and I showed something she didn't expect. Genuine surprise. Without filter. Without calculation.
It was the first time I showed my powers to her.
Despite having told her about everything — the stories, the names, the battles — this was probably the first time Helena saw with her own eyes something that confirmed the stories weren't just stories.
"So you have a portable armor!" The genuine smile on her face caught me off guard — wide, clean, with the energy of a sister who just discovered her brother has a cool trick and completely forgot they're on a warship heading to a battle where they could die. "That's so cool!"
I laughed.
For real. For the first time in days — maybe weeks, I no longer knew — I laughed. Because the mark's power was much more than simply creating armor. It was weapon, shield, summon, everything I had learned compressed into a capacity that, as far as I knew, no human possessed. But in that moment, before my sister's smile, it was a portable armor. And it was cool.
Sometimes, the simple things are what save you.
"Shall we?"