75°56'17.2"S 53°44'36.7"E - Nuevo Trujillo, Spanish Antarctic Colonies

  21.05.2024- 16:15 UTC +03.00

  We were running down the emergency exit stairs following Cecilia when Salva’s whispers reached us. It was not a breeze, but rather a clutter of whispers flying in every direction. I was sure it wasn’t only myself, but every one of the Escapadas, that could hear his warning. The messages reached me in quick succession.

  Wardens are holding against a psychic intrusion.

  It must be the Sagrados, they are bringing our defenses down.

  Tees are coming with snow rovers. Artillery incoming.

  Brace for impact.

  “Tees?” I asked.

  “Trastamara Agents,” one of the two brothers said, the buff one.

  “Gabi, are you feeling good?” his brother told him. Although he appeared younger and thinner, his protective tone betrayed he was the older one. Gabi nodded positively.

  “We have the headstart,” Hanying said as she ran next to us, possibly the only calm one among us, “but Oriol, it is time to ward us, just in case.”

  Oriol pulled his hoodie up on his head and raised his left hand. A symbol emanated a blue light that enveloped all of us.

  This was different from the last time he had warded me. Back then, he had used the yellow symbol on his right palm and everyone around us ignored us – but I had to muffle my ears from the excruciating noise that every step we took made.

  I saw the blue light delineating everyone’s figure, enveloping us and highlighting our skin with a blue hue. I looked at my hands as blue glitterdust sparkled around me.

  “What is this?” I tried to ask, but no voice exited my mouth. In fact, all noise from our running was canceled out. No more sirens or whispers as well.

  I looked around trying to be more alert; being deprived of one of your senses while running was more disorienting than one would think. Cecilia was still in a trance running faster than all of us down the stairs, and I wondered if Oriol’s ward would somehow influence whatever she experienced.

  The floor shook violently. The lack of sound confused me – did something shake from above or below?

  Hanying grabbed my hand and pulled me closer to her, as debris landed right where I was just a second ago.

  I looked up and I saw that somewhere two or three floors above us some kind of explosion had erupted, with more debris falling on us. I screamed but no one could hear me. Hanying pulled me on the other side again accurately predicting where I would be safe.

  I had previously hesitated to ask her what her Curse was, but it felt like she could somehow see the future but in a different way than Cecilia.

  Suddenly, all the sound rushed in. In the front, Oriol had lowered his hand trying to open a door that Cecilia could not handle in her state, nullifying his ward in the process.

  “Gabi get ready!” Oriol shouted as Hanying and I reached them. Another explosion, somewhere further away but strong enough to shake the building, sent shockwaves across my body.

  Tears run down my cheeks. I hated to admit it – but all I wanted was to scream for my mother. Hanying shook me violently to shake me out of the shock and put me right next to Gabi, while Oriol was trying to wrap Cecilia with her jacket and close up all the buttons.

  I took this as a sign that we would exit into the polar cold, and I immediately started copying them.

  “Once Oriol opens the door, we run very fast. Follow Gabi’s steps!” Hanying shouted at me, but a deep familiar voice cut her short. It seemed like every particle of air and every molecule on the stone walls commanded us:

  YOU BELONG. YOU OWE. SURRE-

  The voice dissipated the moment Oriol raised his hand, covering us in silence and blue sparkling light again. Almost immediately, the lighting of the building shut down, leaving only the cursed blue light to shed light. The earth shook once more, as heavier explosions hit the compound farther away from us.

  With his other hand, Oriol reached and finally pushed the door open. Strong winds faced us immediately and the white of snow blinded us. Were we really going to sprint through the snow?

  I saw movement next to me. During the moments of panic, I hadn’t noticed, but Gabi had begun using his curse. It was more occult than Oriol’s symbols or Hanying’s subtle maneuvers. The young man had taken his shirt off revealing an impressive physique, not one built by vanity in the gym, but built by necessity. His chest was carved by scars, one of them not entirely healed and one of them brand new and bleeding, while his hand held a knife with freshly drawn blood. The sight tightened my guts as his blood dripped to cover the front of his body, but even more so when he launched and ran bare-chested outside. Surprisingly, Cecilia continued her frantic run but followed Gabi instead of leading. Whatever Gabi’s ritual meant, I needed no further explanation, and I joined everyone running in a line behind Gabi.

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  This time, I felt the cold hit me in the face and the icy wind went down my lungs causing spikes of pain with every breath. Gabi and Cecilia were in front of me, and all my mind was focused on was following them. I didn’t know where we ran to or why, but all I could sense was that I would be safer following their steps. Everything around me was blurred by the bright white snow, and looking back, the building we were in was already blurring out of our limited vision.

  The earth shook once more and, deprived of hearing as I was by Oriol’s ward, I looked around me. On our right, I could see flashes of light and fire bursting through the edge of my vision. A battle was already raging somewhere nearby and we were running away from it. Flames pierced through the white cloud and hit the building behind us, lighting it up on fire, casting no doubt that if Cecilia hadn’t warned us, we would all be piles of ashes.

  Oriol’s blue light dissipated, allowing me to hear him shouting.

  “Get in! Get in!”

  There was a big snow truck right in front of us. Cecilia was in the driver’s seat, her eyes now completely normal, but also completely disoriented as I jumped into the backseat of the truck. Hanying followed in right behind me and shut the door. Gabi’s brother locked the other door, while he and his brother sat next to us. Oriol sat by Cecilia in the front.

  “Everyone alive?” Cecilia asked.

  “Yes,” Hanying said with an eerie calm.

  “Drive!” Oriol shouted and the truck stirred into motion.

  “Esteban,” Gabi said weakly and collapsed right on me.

  “Fuck!” I swore as the man weighing two times as I did crashed onto my legs, dripping hot blood.

  “Gabi! Gabi stay with us!” his brother, Esteban, said. He leaned over him and shook him. “Keep your eyes open Gabi!”

  A rocket landed somewhere nearby, its explosion blanketing Esteban’s shouting. Gabi lay on top of me bleeding, his eyes fluttering open and then closing as his brother shook him. I could feel his bare skin on me – it was cold as ice. I kept my hands up, scared to touch the man.

  Cecilia stepped on it and the acceleration tossed us aside.

  Once the explosions ended, or we were far enough, I heard Esteban trying to ask something: “…you help him?”. He wanted me to help Gabi somehow. I looked around in panic. Oriol had turned looking back at the four of us with his mouth open about to say something, but hesitating to say anything. Once more, only Hanying was calm.

  “How am I supposed to help?” I asked, feeling Gabi getting colder with each passing moment.

  “By trying,” Hanying said. She grabbed and lowered my hands on his body. “He carried the burden of the hostile domain for us. You owe it back to him.”

  I did not know what any of those words meant. I wanted to shout at Hanying that I had no idea what was happening. I wanted to shout at Oriol for bringing me to the Escapadas to begin with. To Gabi and Esteban for needing my help and Cecilia for the insane acceleration that made my head spin.

  Instead, I decided to try. I placed my hands on him.

  “Okay, hostile domain. Burden. I got this,” I said. I recalled how one of those bearded men tried to subdue me in my vision earlier on the day – and then I realized that he did not matter. Or how when I walked through the collapsed domain, it simply did not affect me.

  “I don’t…”

  “You will,” Hanying insisted, grabbing my hands and guiding them into Gabi’s fresh wound. The touch of blood made my skin crawl, and I felt acid rising in my throat.

  No, I couldn’t throw up right now. I closed my eyes. I did not want to see Gabi’s unconscious face. Neither Oriol’s anxiety.

  “Please,” Esteban begged.

  A peculiar thought came to my mind.

  Everyone in a domain is at the mercy of its ruler.

  These were Salvador’s words, what he had told me when he explained what a domain was. There was something sinister at the words’ core. I hated the idea that people needed mercy.

  Before the domain collapsed and Lucia broke into a million pieces, my aunt on my mother’s side was the only person I had seen dying, a couple of years ago. She was a frail woman, and when sickness overcame her, she was disheveled and unconscious. Lying on the bed. Doctors and my parents discussed a merciful way to go, and I hated that discussion. That people needed mercy, or they could be at anyone’s mercy. People should just be. Maybe that is what I should have answered to Salva – or what I should say to Esteban now asking for my help.

  “I guess that is a way to see things,” Salva said.

  “Excuse me?”

  I opened my eyes. I was no longer in the car. I looked around me – I was back in the building of the Escapadas. A war-room. Salva stood right in front of me. Everything shook around us.

  “Sir?” A man asked Salva. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, just like Salva did. More than a dozen other people were in the war room.

  “We have a visitor. An ally,” Salva said looking in my direction.

  An unnatural calmness overcame me. I felt confident again, that same powerful feeling I eventually felt when I had appeared at the top of the Santiago Towers. I attempted to examine my hands, confirming my thoughts: I was incorporeal again. A visitor, as Salva had put it. He could see me, but not everyone could.

  Salva stood and walked to me, as another explosion shook the building. It felt like they were in a bunker somewhere underground. Was it a garage made into a hideout? They were protected but trapped.

  “I have a counter-proposal ángel. If someone has mercy, maybe let people choose if they need it,” he said, “and boy do we need some right now.”

  I nodded. Knowledge, power, and something else, foreign, were within me. No one could defeat me.

  “I think I can help all of you,” I said, hoping my voice would reach everyone, Gabi included. My thought echoed in the room, and everyone turned in my direction.

  They had heard me.