"Where am I?"
I woke standing, suddenly, without knowing how. One moment I had been in bed, eyes heavy, head full of plans — now, none of that mattered. Everything was different.
Ice. Earth. Cold.
I crouched and pressed my fingers against the ground. The surface was too real to be a dream — rough, damp, cruel. The cold passed through my palm like a knife and my teeth began to clash before I noticed. The air tasted of iron and emptiness.
I stood slowly.
Before me, an infinite plain of white stretched as far as my eyes could reach. No trees. No mountains. Nothing. Only ice, sky and the heavy silence of a place that didn't want to be found — and that clearly wasn't expecting visitors.
A strange agony squeezed my chest.
"You do not belong to my people."
The words came from behind.
It wasn't a sound. It was a weight. As though the air around me had been replaced by something denser, more ancient. My entire body vibrated — not from fear, but from the pure cadence of that voice. It was like standing beside a giant bell at the exact moment it sounds. The echo needed no walls to exist.
Cold sweat ran down my forehead.
My lungs stopped.
I turned.
What I saw took away what air remained.
If the Yokai queen was the size of a blue whale, that creature was an oil tanker. Easily fifteen, twenty times larger. A colossal spider of pure ivory, whose legs would touch the horizon if extended. Each joint was a sculpture. Each bristle, a smooth silk thread woven by something time still hadn't managed to name. The cold light of that place cast no shadow on her — it was as though she herself were the source of the light.
She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my life.
"Hmm… So my daughter made you her bearer."
A pause.
"How pathetic."
She spoke as though I weren't present. Like someone reading a report about a mistake already made with nothing left to do but catalogue it.
"You are beautiful."
It left my mouth before I could stop it.
Something changed in her posture. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. Like a mountain that breathes.
"I have been called many things, by many species, over many centuries."
She tilted her head slightly — the movement alone displaced the surrounding air like a silent gust of wind.
"But beautiful is something new."
Her mouth moved differently from the sound that reached my ears. Translation magic. Few creatures in the Oasis had that capability — and sufficient interest to use it.
I knelt.
I didn't think. The body acted before the mind. In the Oasis, size is power, and power is time — and she had millennia written in every segment of that colossal body. The least I could offer was respect.
"Where am I, Empress?"
She examined me. The eyes descended slowly along my body like someone evaluating something that shouldn't exist. Each eyeball was my size. My reflection appeared in them — small, kneeling on the ice like an offering nobody had asked for.
"A peculiar race. What is your name and species?"
"I am human, Empress. My name is Leonidas."
"Tell me, Human Leonidas… In your world, are you a king?"
"No. Of course not. I am just one among many, an ordinary human."
She was silent for a moment.
Then something that could only be described as a smile crossed that ancient mouth.
"How did this come to pass… Has my race truly fallen this far?"
She wasn't answering me. She was thinking out loud. Like someone opening a drawer expecting to find gold and finding dust.
"What a disappointment."
✦
The roar came from the horizon.
The ice ground beneath my feet cracked — fissures spread like veins in a body that has just received a blow.
I turned on instinct and saw nothing beyond snow and white — but the sound was unmistakable. Deep. Primordial. The same that had come from the small red box, diminished by the distance and vastness of that place.
"Dragon."
It wasn't a question.
"So you recognize that sound."
The matriarch brought her eyes closer.
"In all my time, I have never seen anyone recognize that sound, survive to hear it again and still be considered ordinary, Leonidas."
"No — you must have misunderstood. In my case it was chance. I received a prize from the Oasis. A box, but when I opened it, that roar came out."
She pulled back slightly.
"Interesting."
The pause arrived, and with it my chance. It was the question that had been burning in me since the moment I had woken there:
"Why am I here?"
The enormous leg — thick as a building, sharp as a sentence — pointed at my wrist.
And I remembered.
"The cocoon."
"Yes."
The roar returned. Louder. Closer. My eyes turned to the horizon — the cloudy sky was swallowing the approaching form, but the shadow was already visible, without edges, without end, like a storm that decided to take shape.
"This is only a memory. Don't worry."
There was no revelation in her voice. It was simply what it was. Before I could question more about what that meant, she continued.
"I die here. In this field."
Simple. Without drama. Like someone announcing the weather.
"The irony of my life," she continued, and now there was something different in the tone — not fear, but a sadness too old to have tears, "is that even doing everything possible to protect my species, I must watch it be dominated by something as pathetic as a human."
"I don't intend to enslave your race. If you think I'm like the Bloodsuckers, actually I—"
"Spare me."
She cut in.
"My blood-corrupted sisters bowed because they were weak — and received collars for it. You celebrate submission as though it were glory. I killed thousands who tried to impose it on me.
Of course they were never the strongest among us, nor the most cunning. I surpassed them in power since the first molt. Even so, they should have understood what it meant for their descendants to submit to something that doesn't share their nature.
"Other races, including our own, don't build allies. Build servants."
A pause that weighed like an avalanche.
"Honestly I would rather see my species dead."
✦
The weight of those words silenced me.
And then, as though they had been a sentence, blood poured from my mouth.
"ARGH—"
It was different from anything I had ever felt. Different from losing arms. Different from having bones broken or being pierced through. It was as though something inside me was being denied — no. Destroyed. Like a flame being extinguished not by wind, but by the absence of the very air.
I tried to activate the healing magic.
Nothing.
"I reject you."
Her voice was as cold as the ice beneath my knees.
I thought fast. Blood ran like a river from my nose and eyes. My field of vision began to darken at the edges. There was one option. Just one.
"O Queen of Queens of the Northern Yokai — come to my aid. Allow me to perpetuate your life. Do not let everything you built be undone. Help me."
"How dare you spit those words at my own offspring — I was there when she was conceived and never would I—"
The ice ground exploded.
I rose.
Below me, a giant spider emerged from the depths — not carbonized as I had left her, but in her absolute splendor. Ivory and gold filled my field of vision as I was lifted above her head. My blood still fell, dripping on her like a thin red rain. But I could breathe.
"How dare you interfere in my judgment."
The matriarch wasn't asking.
"He carries my daughter," the voice that came from beneath my feet was the gentlest thing I had ever heard — sweet as honey poured over hot iron, "and the last of us. Do not let this be lost."
"How can you say that. He killed you. Why?"
One of the matriarch's legs struck the ground in fury. The impact echoed through the bones — the horizon trembled. The queen beneath my feet, even being smaller, remained unshakeable before the empress's fury.
I said nothing. I had too many problems staying alive, as blood ran like a river of red staining the ivory and gold.
"For love."
A pause.
"I love her. You loved me without measure. It doesn't matter who she's with now — she is all that remains of us, and I don't want to see her die. Don't carry Mordrak's hatred. Our era has ended. But not our people."
"You fool. She will be as much a slave as our relatives who—"
"No. I don't believe that. And neither do you."
Silence.
"The time has come, Mother."
The roar from the horizon was deafening. Blood ran from my ears. The great empress, finally, seemed silenced before the Yokai queen's words. I swallowed the scream of pain — I couldn't ruin that moment. It was my only salvation.
"Very well."
The matriarch finally looked at me again. For the first time — different from repulsion and contempt. There was something there I couldn't name. Perhaps acceptance. Perhaps merely the weariness of centuries.
"He still needs to survive for this to be possible. If he is capable of that, I won't mind. But I do this for you. Now leave my memory, my daughter. There is not much to see here beyond death and despair."
When the empress stopped speaking, something finally struck her senses. She looked toward the horizon — and at something behind me. Still trying to keep myself alive, I could perceive a gigantic shadow darkening everything, transforming the world into night.
With my back to her, looking at that ivory colossus, I managed to see something more in that magnificent eight-legged being:
Fear.
Before I could see what she saw —
Everything changed.
The pain stopped. A warmth took the place of the cold — gentle, like a fire lit deep in the chest. The environment transformed. The ice plain disappeared, and the forest where I had found the queen at our first meeting took its place. The treetops swayed as the sun pierced between the leaves and reached my face with a gentleness I didn't deserve.
And then, without my realizing, she knocked me from her head — throwing me onto the damp dark earth.
"Thank you for the help. I promise that—"
"I don't want your promises."
No anger. Only weariness.
"I didn't do it for you. I did it for my daughter. Now wake up — before it's too late."
The great spider seemed exhausted, as though something had drained everything from her. I didn't know what it was but before I could say anything. Everything changed again.
✦
Dark.
Then — a ceiling. My ceiling. The ceiling of my room.
And a face.
"Morgana?"
"YOU FINALLY WOKE UP. HELP ME, DAMN IT!"
I tried to understand the environment. I was soaked. I thought it was sweat.
It wasn't.
Morgana was using her ability on me. While trying to sit up, I realized why she looked so frightened — multiple points of my body were pouring blood, as though I had been hit by a spray of bullets. The cocoon, which had previously occupied only a small region of my forearm, already covered the entire arm. Pulsing. Draining.
"DAMN."
I coughed blood.
I tried to activate the healing. Too weak.
"Save your ability, Lord. I can hold for a while. Then we'll take turns."
Livina entered the room with quick steps, her eyes sweeping the scene — the soaked bed, Morgana exhausted, me in the bed like something the Oasis had chewed up and spat out.
"My Lord, allow me to cut off this anomaly that's killing you."
I spat blood before speaking.
"No. I've already sorted it. I just need to hold on."
She didn't understand. But she didn't dare go against the order. She stayed where she was, fists clenched, eyes fixed.
Time passed in a way I can't precisely measure. Pain. Cold. The weight of something emptying you from the inside, sip by sip. I wanted to sleep. I couldn't — I felt that if I slept I wouldn't wake.
I alternated with Morgana. Healing. Pause. Healing. Pause. Until finally, the suction began to diminish.
"I think it's ending."
It stopped.
Morgana knelt at my side, splattered with red, breathing heavily like someone who had come out of a war. Livina, further back, watched with clenched fists — powerless, anguished, intact.
Then came the sound.
A crack. Soft. Precise.
"Something is coming, Lord."
I looked at my arm.
The cocoon was splitting.
Slowly. Carefully. Like something choosing the right moment to be born.
What came out from inside was something the world still had no name for.
[ New creature detected in territory. Domestication probability automatically activated — Rebirth of legendary creature: Queen of the Northern Yokai Queens (One of a Kind): 51%. ]
"Welcome."