In an extremely noisy and crowded place, the day that was supposed to be like any other was exceptionally more agitated — with conversations that sounded more like shouting, overlapping each other with the specific density of many people trying to talk about the same thing at once, each at a slightly louder volume than the previous, as though volume were argument. It was possible to make out some isolated words when the conversations separated for a second before colliding again. And above all it was possible to understand the reason for so much agitation — because the reason was the same in every conversation, just wrapped in different versions of shock.
"Did you hear?"
"What?"
"In the last Purge… only one survived."
"What? But that's never happened."
"Hey, did you all hear?"
"Yes. Has anyone found out who the survivor is?"
"That's the strangest part of all…"
"What do you mean?"
"The Oasis chose to omit the name."
"What?"
The place was known to almost all former Lords — it was there, at the center of human territory, that the largest human guilds were located, and among them the most well-known: DarkBlade. It was there that most former Lords had access to everything a Lord possessed while seeking ways to grow stronger without a kingdom to give them power or glory. A space that had grown not by central planning but by accumulation — each service attracting the next, each concentration of power attracting those who needed power, until the result was that: a nucleus of constant movement that never stopped completely because there was always someone arriving or someone leaving or someone in the middle of both.
In that moment it wasn't about glory they were talking — it was about the shocking information they had received and didn't know how to process, the kind of information the brain rejects on the first reading and demands confirmation on the second and still can't quite fit into place on the third.
The Purge event wasn't a secret to those who had been through it — the Oasis itself always made a summary available in the market for the price of a few medium-sized Nectar Stones. It wasn't cheap, nor available to newcomers, but it had constant demand for reasons that went beyond curiosity: active Lords were fascinated by identifying potential forces for alliance or trade.
The information that should have remained restricted to Lords didn't take long to leak — there was always someone willing to sell what they knew, and always someone willing to pay market price for something the official market hadn't yet released. It was a parallel economy everyone lived with and nobody spoke of out loud.
What arrived this time, however, was different from anything that had circulated before: the Purge had refused to name the survivor. And had informed that only one had survived.
Everyone knew there would be deaths. That the challenge varied, that some editions were more brutal than others. Sometimes survival without water or food in an environment that made both impossible to find. Sometimes an arena where only a pre-established number came out alive — cruel in its transparency, at least. Sometimes a frantic hunt conducted by the strongest predators in the universe, with a defined quota and rules that everyone needed to follow. But in all the forms the Purge had taken over the years, there was one constant that everyone knew as immutable law: the Oasis always gave opportunity. There would always be survivors. Never so many deaths that only one remained.
Of course for nobles there were variables as secret as they were illegal — guarantees bought with items most would never see and negotiated with races most would never encounter. But even those still left room for survivors. In the end, the Oasis had been, in a quite macabre way, consistently fair in the amount of destruction it allowed.
At least until that day.
The fear was simple and needed no complex formulation: was this an exception or a new rule? And if it were a new rule, what did that mean for those who still needed to enter?
The fear factor triggered various reactions in that kingdom — not all rational, not all useful, but all understandable. As the hub where many humans gathered, things needed to be calmed and the information needed to be investigated before panic replaced reasoning, because panic was the state where people made the worst decisions with the greatest conviction.
At the center of that turmoil, on the top floor of the largest guild in that territory, another conversation was happening — more contained, more profound, and therefore more dangerous. The kind of conversation that didn't need volume because those conducting it had learned that volume was for those who needed to compensate for lack of weight.
"Lord Vigas, thank you for your presence. I feel we need to ask your Saint what happened."
"Miss Briane, here you may call me Supreme Lord — as far as I know, this is still my territory where you are merely guests." — he said with the tone of someone who had decided that showing irritation was a sign of weakness, but couldn't completely avoid the sharp edge that appeared when he felt disrespected. — "Besides, what do you want to know from my Saint? The Purge has always killed people. Some incompetents gathered in greater numbers this time and paid with their lives. There is nothing to prove this could even become a new pattern."
In that room, even though the woman owned the place, it was she who was kneeling — while her own chair was occupied by an old man who swung his feet without reaching the floor. The chair was too large for him — it had been made for someone bigger, and on that small man it communicated not inadequacy, but the kind of comfort of someone who had long since stopped worrying about what the furniture said about him.
There, in that chair, was exactly where he felt owner of everything — and the difference between feeling and being, in that specific case, had collapsed long enough ago that the distinction no longer mattered.
Before him, kneeling: the leader of the largest guild in the human kingdom and one of the strongest former Lords in the territory. On the other side, also kneeling, the leader of the largest trade network between wanderers and former Lords.
At his feet.
The old man understood that those women were part of the growing economy of his kingdom — and there were things that couldn't be changed, only shaped. They weren't the kind of piece discarded without cost. But even so he couldn't completely hide the anger he felt toward what he considered deliberate ignorance — the way they spoke, the way they looked, the specific quality of those who had learned to respect power without learning to respect the one who carried it. If they had come from less wealthy families, he would have rid himself of the misfortune long ago. Unfortunately, that meeting was too important for personal opinions and desires to be prioritized — after all, counting those two, nearly eighty percent of all his economy was directly or indirectly in their hands.
"Miss Veronica of the Blue Unicorns…" — the voice that came out wasn't the Lord's, but from the one beside him, with the naturalness of someone who had learned that speaking for the Lord was part of the function and not a deviation from it. It was clear it wasn't human — not only from the nearly three meters of height, the red skin and the two caprine horns, but also from the tail that moved with a life of its own, always in motion, always observing the environment as though it were a separate sense from the rest of the body, gathering information independently of what the head was doing. — "My Lord is very tired to deal with such a situation. I appreciate the desire for wisdom, but know that events like these are rare but not without precedent. Even when I was still alive, I saw them more often than I would have liked. There is nothing to fear."
The way it gestured. The way it carried itself. Unsettling in ways that were difficult to articulate — not for the size, not for the horns, but for the specific quality of presence of something that had existed for too long to still need to make an effort to intimidate. The effort had disappeared at some point that probably coincided with the moment the creature had realized there was nothing left that required effort. The tail continued moving, slow and deliberate, as though assessing each person in the room independently from the rest of the body — a parallel sensor, collecting data that the main conversation wasn't collecting.
It was not an unknown race to those who knew what to look for.
Infernal.
"I understand the challenge may have been herculean, Supreme Hero Azgaroth." — Briane said with the deference of someone who had learned that title required a specific tone — not submission, but recognition, the difference between the two being the difference between communicating fear and communicating respect. — "But all the nobles sent died. What challenge was this that not even the tools nobles use to guarantee their survival were sufficient — and of which we know absolutely nothing? Not even a name."
Azgaroth seemed to understand the doubt. And also seemed to suspect what might have happened — there was something in the face that wasn't an answer but was recognition that the question had come close to something he knew.
"This year we obtained information that a novice Aquamarine entered the Oasis." — he said with the pause of someone who was building the conclusion before delivering it, choosing the order of information with the deliberation of something that had learned that order mattered as much as content. — "I believe the two are related."
"What do you mean, Supreme Azgaroth?"
"A hunt." — the word arrived simply, this time from Vigas, who didn't like being ignored even by his own hero — there was a limit to how long he could remain in the background. — "That was the challenge. A hunt that most likely got out of hand."
Everyone there knew what a hunt was — a challenge where a superior race was sent to hunt another, with defined parameters and a quota that needed to be respected. And everyone knew that, among the many possible challenges, the hunt was one of the most acceptable: the hunters had defined quotas, and it was precisely among challenges of this type that more people survived — the quota structure guaranteed survivors by design. So the question arrived like lightning.
"How could a hunt go so wrong?"
It was a question that, despite knowing in advance from his hero, even Vigas wasn't certain how to answer — after all, it was something he himself had never lived through, and there were things that power didn't replace when what was missing was direct experience. Azgaroth made a point of filling the gap with the patience of something that had told enough stories to know that haste ruined the best ones.
"The hunt, my lords, is a mission I myself have received in my time."
The surprise wasn't great — the hunters were almost always the highest ranked, and Azgaroth was elite in that regard in a way that made the coincidence expected rather than shocking.
"Perhaps you don't know, but our missions in a hunt can change when something peculiar happens."
"Peculiar?"
This time it was Briane who questioned — with the restraint of someone who had been seeking the answer for a long time but didn't want to show how much, because showing was giving the interlocutor information about where she was vulnerable.
"It is very rare." — Azgaroth said with the calm of something that had witnessed or heard enough things not to rush any narrative — it had learned that rushed narratives lost what mattered most. — "I only heard of one account from my kind. At the time he was also a novice — he was called by the Oasis for a hunt alongside another race. The hunt got out of hand when another hunter from another race made an error that wasn't foreseen. In the end, the Oasis changed the mission to neutralize the executioner that had been sent. There was a great battle — and one of my kind killed the ally." — he paused, with something that could have been humility if it weren't so clearly the opposite. — "A battle that, forgive the language, would have killed any of you in this room before the first blow, even today."
"But then that explains everything. Doesn't it?" — Veronica finally spoke, with the tone of someone trying to close a concern that seemed larger than her experience allowed her to measure — the desire for the explanation to be sufficient, communicated before knowing if it was.
Azgaroth's face — which only his Lord could read with precision — showed something that wasn't exactly confusion, but was close. As though a piece were missing that he was still looking for, or as though there were one piece too many that he didn't know where to place.
"What is the full story, Azgaroth?" — Vigas inquired, now as curious as the subordinate former Lords questioning him — and there was something revealing in that equality, because the old man rarely placed himself at the same level of curiosity as the others.
"When the hunt ended and my countryman won…" — he paused, as though the weight of what was coming asked for space before being said, as though it needed a moment to verify whether it was really going to be said. — "All the survivors had died. A battle between races so strong was something that destroyed everything around it — and even so…"
He stopped.
It wasn't hesitation. It was calculation — the kind of pause of someone weighing the cost of continuing before deciding the obligation was greater than the risk. Exposing what he believed could open something he didn't know how his Lord — or anyone else in that room — could close afterward. There were things that, once said, changed what was possible to think. And there was responsibility in that which he felt even when he didn't express it.
Even so, he continued.
"What surprises me, my lords, is not the number of survivors." — he said, with the voice of someone who had arrived at a conclusion they didn't like having arrived at, the kind of conclusion you reach and then keep looking at hoping it will dissolve. — "It is the existence of one. In my ten thousand years, across all twelve Purges where this happened, the result was always the same: everyone who was not a hunter died." — a pause that wasn't for drama, but to let the arithmetic settle. — "Always."
The silence that filled the room was the kind that isn't the absence of sound, but the presence of something everyone was processing and no one had finished processing. The kind of silence where you can hear people thinking not because they make noise but because the absence of any other noise leaves space to imagine what is happening behind the faces.
Then the woman with scarlet hair and scaled skin stood up abruptly.
"Extraordinary."
The word hung in the air — too short to be an explanation, too long to be dismissed. There was no elaboration, no gesture indicating what conclusion had been reached. Those present exchanged confused looks, but she made no effort to shed light on what she had said. She thanked them briefly and left with long strides, with the naturalness of someone who had finished and saw no reason to remain beyond the finish.
Leaving behind the silence of someone who had understood something the others weren't yet ready to understand — and the specific frustration of those who knew they had been left behind, but didn't know in what.
In the end, everyone seemed to have the same question.
"What the hell happened."