There is an absolute truth in the human world.
Money generates power. And power generates money.
The vicious cycle that always corrupted humanity in a definitive way and that separated into castes what should be inseparable. The truth is that however much humans were of the same species, there was always a division. First came the clerical — who prayed to the right god and who prayed to the wrong one. Then the ethnic — who was born the right color and who was born the wrong one. And finally, the most dangerous of all: the economic.
Because this one was harder to see.
It wasn't prohibition by something physical — a closed door, a wall, a sign saying you didn't belong. It was something technical. Subtle. Easily disguised in words like capability, merit, indulgence. Nobody stopped you from entering. They simply didn't give you the tools to remain.
It was money that, even after thousands of years and after we had colonized stars and terraformed planets and built domes that fit entire cities, was still what divided the most.
And that was made clear by what I saw before me.
"This is…?"
The man with violet eyes watched me attentively, trying to understand what I wanted to know. But perhaps the simplicity of my surprise made everything easier — because my jaw was genuinely dropped, and there is no diplomacy that hides a dropped jaw.
"Yes. This is the largest school in my quadrant." The patriarch said with the voice of someone showing something they love and fear losing. "It's here that all the nobles train and graduate to fulfill their duties."
✦ ✦ ✦
The flying car soared over a castle that seemed to have come from a chivalric romance — but with the technology of something the stories didn't know how to imagine.
Towers of polished stone rising hundreds of meters into the air. Walls that shone with a coating I didn't recognize. Internal courtyards the size of battlefields — and they were exactly that, because below us, while we flew over the place, I could see dozens, maybe hundreds of people fighting.
Not against each other.
Against machines.
Training robots that moved with speeds and patterns I recognized — combat patterns from the Oasis, reproduced out here with a fidelity that gave me chills. Some youths used magic. Others used only swords — blades that shone with energy I didn't know whether it was technology or inheritance from the Oasis. Others trained in what seemed to be a three-dimensional simulation of entire kingdoms, holograms that recreated battlefields at scale with the precision of someone who rehearses a war before waging it.
They were preparing.
Preparing for something that, for me and for everyone from the farms, had been a surprise. A shock. A letter that arrived without warning and took without mercy.
For them, it was curriculum.
What shocked me most wasn't the school itself — it was where it was. I hadn't left the planet. The vehicle had flown only a few hours, leaving Colony 22 and going in the opposite direction from when I first left my dome. The place was in another dome that was easily ten times larger than the one where I lived — and mine was already the size of a city. By the hour, it should be night. But that place still had a false sun at its zenith, as though darkness were another luxury the nobles could afford to eliminate.
"As you may have noticed, we don't have nights in this place." The patriarch said, observing the same view I observed — but with eyes that had already seen it a thousand times and that now looked with the sadness of someone who knows it might be the last. "Except for specific simulations. Normally, the youths train physical aptitude and improvement of their basic magics here." A pause. "Unfortunately, the place isn't as full as one would normally expect. Many families already withdrew their children from this quadrant a few weeks ago."
The words came out in a melancholy way — as though he were speaking of an animal about to go extinct. And in a way he was. That place, with all its beauty and all its power, could cease to exist if what was coming arrived. But to me, seeing that grandeur for the first time, everything there seemed permanent. Seemed eternal. Seemed impossible to destroy.
I knew it was an illusion. The Oasis taught me that everything that seems eternal is merely something that hasn't yet found the thing that will destroy it.
"So that's why you have such a high rate."
It wasn't a question.
Everyone went to the Oasis at some point — that was the rule, the sentence, the price of existing. The question was that those present there prepared. Chose when they went. Trained for years with robots and simulations and magic and instructors who had already returned and knew what to expect. While we, from the farms, received a letter that could come at any moment. Without warning. Without preparation. Without anything between the life we knew and the death that awaited us.
The injustice laid bare in a beautiful landscape.
My fists clenched. My mind flew between hatred and sadness — sadness because that training was what made the survival rate so high for them while it was so low for us, and at the same time rage because I knew that had no solid justification. It didn't. It was a choice. Someone, at some point, decided that some lives were worth more than others and disguised the decision as public policy.
The woman with heterochromatic eyes sighed upon seeing me in that state — the clenched fists, the locked jaw, the entire body rigid with something I didn't know whether it was rage or pain or the two things fused into a feeling that had no name.
"Unfortunately, despite the Oasis existing, we can't ask everyone to stop and prepare."Rose said, her voice measured — and I noticed she had already given that explanation before. Many times. To many people. "That would destroy the world's economy."
"So you choose a few to be privileged with the capacity to focus only on surviving" — my words came out harsher than I wanted, but I didn't care — "while the masses live their lives generating wealth only to be rewarded with death?"
The silence that followed was that of someone who heard a truth that hurts and doesn't have a ready answer.
The rage came from something simple and terrible: despite hating that system with all my strength, I would still have to protect it. Those privileged youths down below, training with their robots and their simulations and their magic — some of them could have fled to other quadrants, other planets, other corners of the universe where the war wouldn't reach. And even so, they chose to stay. While I had no choice. Everything I loved was on that planet, and protecting it didn't come in the form of a favor — it came in the form of a trade. I would have to be there to manage to protect who I wanted.
But that didn't mean I didn't hate them.
I just didn't know what to do with that feeling heating my face.
"Honestly…"
The patriarch's tired voice cut the air — and surprised not only me, but everyone in the vehicle. Rose turned her head so fast the tablet nearly slipped from her hands. Benfior raised his face. Even Alexandra, who since the lightning had been nearly invisible in the corner, looked.
"…I always thought the idea of only allowing nobles to train was shit."
The violet eyes were lost in what was happening down below — in the youths training, in the robots spinning, in the simulations shining. He wasn't looking at us. He was speaking to himself. But he ended up being heard — and the weight of that sentence, coming from the leader of an entire quadrant, from the patriarch of one of the most powerful noble houses, was the kind of thing nobody in that vehicle would forget.
"But I'm just one voice among many others."
The sentence died in the air with the resignation of someone who had already fought that battle and lost too many times to believe the next one would be different.
✦ ✦ ✦
Rose coughed — the diplomatic cough I already knew — and resumed what she knew how to do: organize chaos into numbers.
"We managed to gather five thousand Lords. Three thousand eight hundred from House Unicorn and twelve hundred from other lesser houses." She slid something on the tablet and the numbers appeared on the hologram between us. "Unfortunately, it's not much. But we believe that if we fight together, with our technology, we can not only prevent the enemy from advancing on this planet but also counterattack."
Honestly, my first thought was that that girl was being extremely generous in her assessment.
Five thousand people preventing the advance of an entire planet. An Infernal planet — with billions of creatures whose nature was war, whose body was forged in war and blood, whose instinct was to destroy first and think later. Even an average Infernal who had never set foot in the Oasis would be capable of killing at least ten humans in equal conditions. Not through technique — through biology. They were born stronger, more resistant, more everything.
But what Rose was considering — and she wasn't wrong — was the human advantage in the matter of technology.
It was no secret to anyone that the Infernals, like the majority of civilizations in the universe, were averse to technology. My theory had always been that a great portion of these races had their encounters with advanced technology and realized early that it could kill them — not from outside, but from within. So they opted for basic technology tied to a strong and independent culture. Basic, in the universal context, still meant spaceships. But it also meant those ships weren't cutting-edge, didn't use artificial intelligence, much less delegated decisions to machines that thought faster than their creators.
AI seemed to be a taboo across the entire universe.
And for good reason. Every example that had existed — every documented case, every civilization that gave too much of itself to machines — ended in catastrophe. It was a pattern so consistent it had become unwritten law: whoever automates too much, disappears.
Apart from the Travellers, I didn't know another civilization that handed over as much of its capacity to AI as humans. And humans, faithful to the tradition of their species, were too arrogant to learn from others' mistakes.
In any case, for that specific battle, technology gave an advantage in space. Human ships were superior in their military and autonomous capacity — each one operating with an intelligence that didn't sleep, didn't hesitate, and didn't feel fear. Our orbital defense systems, tied to an artificial intelligence that never shut down, gave us the security of being virtually untouchable in the vacuum. If the war stayed up there, we had a chance.
But as the patriarch had said: if the Infernals managed to enter the planet, it would be practically impossible to recover it. Not five thousand. And I dared say not even fifty thousand. It was for that reason that the other noble families probably saw the Unicorns as the example to be observed — but not defended. It was easier to applaud from afar than to bleed up close.
"I know it may seem like little." The patriarch said, and for the first time I heard something in his voice that resembled amusement — the kind born when you've already lost everything there was to lose and discover that, from the bottom of the well, the view is surprisingly clear. "But we have a strategy. And if everything goes right, I'll even get the power to tell those sons of bitches who abandoned us to go fuck themselves."
Rose, beside him, brought a handkerchief to her forehead and wiped the sweat with the contained irritation of someone who has already given up asking the boss to stop cursing in meetings.
✦ ✦ ✦
The vehicle descended into an open, green space — a suspended garden at the top of one of the castle's sections, with grass so uniform it seemed painted and trees that shouldn't exist at that altitude but existed anyway, because nobles had the habit of making nature obey when it didn't cooperate.
Everyone who had invaded my house had already been dispersed by Rose at some point during the descent — with the silent efficiency of someone who sends people away without needing to say "go away." They left me alone with the patriarch and her.
"They're not coming with us?"
The patriarch just laughed while he walked toward what seemed to be a house in the center of the garden. Looking around, I realized we were on one of the elevated subsections of the castle — like a terrace built on the back of a monument. And in the middle of it, a residence that, compared to the castle, was just a house. Compared to anything else I knew, it was a mansion.
"Don't worry. Those idiots have to train a lot — and more still after everything they did." He said without turning around. "You know, there are many people who think they know what I like. But very few actually do."
It was clear that being a leader meant living with sycophants — and that the patriarch tolerated them without liking them, used them without trusting them, and discarded them without remorse when they crossed the line. Those three had probably thought they were helping when they invaded my house. In reality, they had merely dug their own oblivion in the shape of a favor.
"Don't worry, Lord Leonidas." Rose spoke behind me with surgical softness. "Those three will no longer be present anywhere near you. Please, follow us."
I advanced, accompanying them to the residence. The entrance hall was ample — some sofas arranged in the center with the studied casualness of someone who wants it to seem simple but can't hide that each piece of furniture cost more than an entire house in Colony 22. Two inverted-arc staircases rose to the upper floor, curving toward each other like hands about to meet. But even there, in that place that exuded wealth and power, the light that entered through the enormous skylight in the ceiling made everything bright and alive — a light that didn't seem artificial, didn't seem bought, seemed to have been the only thing in that house nobody needed to force into existence.
It wasn't the light that caught my attention.
It was the girl.
Seated on one of the sofas, her body turned toward the skylight, she observed the green and blue of the exterior with the attention of someone who isn't really looking outside — she's looking inside, and uses the landscape as an excuse not to have to explain what she's thinking. Lost in her own thoughts in a way I recognized immediately.
Because it was the same way I got lost.
"Welcome to our humble residence." The patriarch said with an irony that didn't bother to hide. "I want you to meet my eldest daughter."
The girl turned.
And the resemblance struck me before the name.
The same violet eyes as the patriarch's — but younger, more alive, with an intensity that came not from age but from something I could only call purpose. The face had his features softened, redistributed in a version that carried the same strength but expressed it differently. Where the patriarch was rock, she was blade. Where he was patience accumulated over millennia, she was urgency concentrated in every gesture.
She stood up and advanced in my direction with steps that held no hurry, but also no hesitation — the walk of someone who knows exactly how much space they occupy in the world and doesn't apologize for a single centimeter.
"Verônica."
The name fell into the hall like the beginning of something.
"Hello." Her voice was clearer than I expected — direct, unadorned, without the rehearsed politeness I had heard from every noble since I returned from the Oasis. "My sister spoke a great deal about you. It's a pleasure to meet you."