The air in Xlezas was unforgiving. Each gasp that Zirinos drew into his lungs brought the taste of copper and chemical soot, a violent contrast to the icy cold of Lunos that he still felt fossilized beneath his fingernails. He woke up with a jolt, his body tense, his fingers clawing into the earthen floor of the cabin. There had been no screams in the forest, only the chronic echoes in his own mind: the sound of dead bodies being dragged on the beaches of Decatry, the heavy silence of Luna's grave.
Zirinos sat up slowly, crushed by a fatigue that did not come from his muscles, but from his soul. The "Glitch" of Endomyar weighed on his spine like an invisible parasite, draining his strength. He looked at his own hands, soiled with dirt and charcoal, and let his head fall back against the wall of rotting wood.
"Ethan must be treated as the savior Macano chose," he thought in a bitter internal monologue. "Clean. Just. Strong. While I rot in this galaxy's sewer".
A sharp snap cut through the silence of the cabin. Xi'Hera, her thirteen years shaped by the misery of Xérius, was sitting in a corner, cleaning her jagged scimitar with a filthy rag. She glanced sideways at Zirinos, her eyes narrowed with the disdain typical of the orphans of that planet.
"Are you going to just lie there staring at the ceiling like a corpse, or are you going to be useful today, fallen noble?" the girl shot back, her voice loaded with a defensive sarcasm. "If we depend on your hunting to eat, we'll die before the sun sets".
The Zirinos of the past—the arrogant prince who had once ruled with sadism—would have ripped out the girl's tongue or crushed her skull against the floor for half of that insolence. But the man standing there merely took a deep breath. He ignored the provocation, stood up with the heavy movements of an old man, and walked to the corner of the cabin to gather the bundles of firewood that Xi'Hera couldn't carry. He accepted the humiliation in silence, integrating it into the penance he had imposed upon himself.
Near the improvised hearth, the Old Man was stirring a pot with an infusion of bitter herbs, whose steam cut through the effect of the poison hanging in the air. Without saying a word, the Old Man extended a clay mug to Zirinos. They didn't share names, they didn't speak of the worlds they came from, but the tacit respect between the two was sealed in that silence. Zirinos accepted the mug, feeling the heat burn the palms of his calloused hands.
Later, the weariness had to be cast aside. Zirinos and the Old Man ventured into the fringes of the Xlezas forest. The surrounding scenery was one of suffocating biomechanical decadence: trees of black, viscous sap rose from a swampy ground that seemed to digest the very scrap metal buried there. Hunting there was a test of patience and survival.
The tension broke when a crawling creature, a kind of mutant rodent with a chitinous shell, escaped through the roots due to a misstep by Zirinos, whose body faltered from exhaustion. For a millisecond, the floodgates of Zirinos's mind threatened to give way. His old sadomasochism, the blind fury of having failed, and the destructive impulse rushed up his throat. His fist clenched so hard that his knuckles cracked; a faint, distorted spark of the "Glitch" threatened to flash at the tips of his fingers, ready to obliterate the tree, the creature, and everything within reach.
Before the first movement could materialize, a gnarled, firm hand clamped down over Zirinos's wrist. The Old Man intervened. His Perceiving Eye of the 8th World had expanded, his irises gleaming with that characteristic glassy reflection. He had seen Zirinos's surge of violence and conceptual collapse seconds before they happened. The Old Man used no physical force to stop him; he simply maintained his grip and spoke with a calmness that chilled the prince's blood:
"The wind doesn't destroy the mountain just because it's tired of blowing, boy. Bear your own weight".
Zirinos held his breath. The destructive energy slowly dissipated, swallowed by forced self-control. He relaxed his muscles, lowered his head, and nodded. No slip-up had occurred. The creature disappeared into the darkness, but his humanity remained intact for one more day.
On the way back, as they bypassed an old, deactivated trading post on the outskirts of the forest, the voices of a group of scrap scavengers—the so-called Coerentes—echoed through the twisted metal. Zirinos and the Old Man froze in the shadows, listening to the whispers running through the fringes of Xérius.
"They say the healers no longer leave the king's room in Xalizar," said one of the men, his voice trembling with fear and aversion. "Xenariuthus won't make it past this month".
"May the Universe protect us when he falls," the other replied, spitting onto the oily ground. "Xerazith already has the generals on his side. As soon as the old man dies, he will turn this entire galaxy into a slaughterhouse. That feudal monster will crush anyone who doesn't submit to mutilation".
Zirinos heard everything, motionless. The people's hatred against Xerazith's imminent ascension to the throne was palpable, a political storm threatening to drag all Worlds into chaos.
Upon returning to the cabin, Zirinos sat by the door, watching the thick, toxic darkness of Xlezas. The world outside was about to burn, the gears of power were already moving in the capital, but all that weary prince wanted was for the forest to keep hiding his ghosts. He wanted silence, though deep in his chest, he knew his time in purgatory was about to expire.
+-+
The sound of scrap metal screeching against the gravel broke the fetid monotony of that morning. On the fringes of Xlezas, where the chemical mist hung so thick that it almost merged with the mud, a rudimentary cart—a mechanical monster made of overlapping sheets of metal and driven by an unstable combustion engine—sputtered in a blast of black smoke. The rear axle had given way, blocking the wheels and causing the modified beast of burden to whine in frustration.
Xi'Hera moved in the blink of an eye. Her hand was already gripping the hilt of her jagged scimitar, her thirteen-year-old eyes gleaming with the feline distrust of someone who knows that, in Xérius, any unexpected noise brings death. Zirinos, however, remained motionless, wiping the viscous blood of a prey onto his worn trousers.
The Old Man, adjusting the cloth covering his mouth to filter the toxic gases, looked toward the clearing and gave a brief nod to the prince.
"They are not scouts," murmured the Old Man, his voice muffled by the filter. "They are traveling merchants. Their engine is digesting its own oil. Go help."
A middle-aged woman, her skin weathered by the sun and her fingers stained with grease, jumped down from the driver's seat, cursing the atmosphere and kicking the metallic structure. It was Dess. But Zirinos barely registered her.
From behind the torn canvas of the cart, a second silhouette emerged to cough because of the engine smoke. When she brushed the hair from her face and looked around, Zirinos's world stopped.
Air seemed to fail his lungs. His calloused hands, still dirty, froze. It was Fánia. But to the prince's shattered mind, it wasn't her. That girl possessed the exact same physiognomy, the same gentle and restrained manners upon stepping down from the cart, and the very same sweetness in her gaze that Mira had displayed before her world was reduced to ashes. It was as if the corpse he himself had disinterred in Decatry and buried beneath the frozen soil of Lunos had gained flesh and bone, walking under the sickly sky of the third world.
In the depths of his psyche, the ancient monster—the sadistic, possessive, and relentless Zirinos—roared, trying to break its chains. A torrent of sick impulses invaded him: the violent urge to tear her away from there, to lock her away, or to break her just to silence the unbearable agony of guilt devouring his chest. His fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles cracked beneath his skin.
Before a single muscle of his body moved toward disaster, a shadow crossed his line of vision. The Old Man took two steps forward, placing himself subtly between Zirinos and the girl. His glassy irises gleamed for a second under the hood; the Perceiving Eye had seen the prince's internal cataclysm long before it manifested. The Old Man did not touch him, but his firm gaze functioned as an insurmountable barrier.
"Remember who you are now," that silence said.
Zirinos closed his eyes, breathed in the poisonous air, and forced the monster to retreat into the darkness. When he opened them, his superior and cold mind had taken control. Without uttering a single word, he walked to the cart, ignoring Dess's distrustful looks. He knelt in the oily mud, assessed the broken axle with the surgical intelligence of a royal engineer, and grabbed Dess's heavy tools. His movements became mechanical, brutal, and focused. He used the physical exertion of the metalwork as a protective shield, refusing to lift his eyes so as not to face the ghost of Mira.
Halfway through the work, a soft shadow cast over the metal where he was striking.
"Drink," said a sweet voice. "Your throat must be burning from this smoke."
Zirinos stopped dead. He looked to the side and saw Fánia holding out a mug of clean water to him, accompanied by a compassionate smile that did not belong to the harshness of that planet. That smile shattered what remained of his defenses. It brought him a momentary peace that he knew perfectly well he did not deserve, mixed with a pain so sharp in his chest that it almost made him bend. He accepted the mug, drank the contents in one gulp, and nodded rigidly, returning immediately to work.
In less than an hour, the engine roared again, stabilized by the hunter's silent expertise. Dess nodded with the typical harshness of Xérius, putting away her tools, while Fánia climbed onto the cart, casting a final curious and intrigued look at that man of noble posture, but terribly heavy gaze. The cart went on its way, disappearing into the mist toward the peripheral villages.
When the sound of the engine faded, the silence of the forest returned, more oppressive than ever. The Old Man approached Zirinos, who remained standing, looking at the tracks left in the mud.
"A copy does not heal the wound of the original, boy," said the Old Man, his voice devoid of judgment, but carrying a dark warning. "It only makes the blood run faster. If you try to bring your shadows near that girl, you will destroy her the same way you destroyed what makes you look at her like that. Let them go."
Zirinos did not answer. He walked back to the cabin, feeling that the little stability he had gained had been pulverized. His purgatory was no longer a safe haven; his demons knew exactly where to strike.
And, as he withdrew into the darkness, deep in the Xlezas forest, the black foliage moved without a sound. Two modified scouts—Dissonants at the service of Xerazith—watched the cabin from a distance. The brief surge of conceptual energy that Zirinos had emanated when he went into shock had been detected by their biomechanical sensors. The trail of pure blood had been found. The time of isolation had come to an end.