Suddenly, she felt a touch on her shoulder. She spun around sharply, but to her surprise, it wasn't the mysterious figure she had seen earlier by the oak; it was someone completely different. Standing before Ema was a girl who could have been around twenty years old. She had brown hair pulled back into a practical bun and brown eyes burning with immense urgency. She wore a simple brown robe that looked like an apparition from another world in that polished hall.

  "Who are you?!" Ema blurted out, instinctively stepping back as the figure in the brown cloak appeared before her.

  The woman immediately pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head wildly. "Shh!" she hissed. Without warning, she grabbed Ema by the wrist and began dragging her toward the servant's entrance. "There's no time for questions. You must come with me. Now!"

  But Ema wouldn't be swayed. She braced her feet against the floor and tore herself free from the woman with all her strength. "I'm not going anywhere with you!" she shouted, defiance in her voice. "Tell me who you are and what you want from me!"

  The woman looked desperately toward the door, where voices were approaching, and then back at Ema. "I don't have time to explain, but listen to me! Once the ritual takes place... once you mentally connect with the Family, there will be no turning back. They will never let you leave. Their bond is eternal."

  "That's nonsense," Ema snapped, backing further away from her. "They take care of me. They offered me protection when I had nothing. I am safe here."

  The woman threw up her hands, sheer desperation in her eyes. "Protection? Can't you see? They are liars! Whatever they promised you—love, safety, a home—it's just bait. You are not a woman to him, Ema. You are just a piece on a chessboard. A pawn he will sacrifice in the first move that suits their game of power."

  Ema paused, but her wariness did not waver. She measured the woman with her gaze. "And what would I be to you? Another weapon? Just another piece in a different color?"

  "No," the woman breathed, taking a step toward her. "Hope. You must understand that the Architects... they are indirectly responsible for what happened to your city. Their wars, their arrogance destroy the world. I belong to the Resistance. We don't want to misuse your power; we want you to use it for good."

  At that moment, the thud of heavy boots echoed through the corridor. The sound came from all sides—from the main hallway and the servant's entrance. They were surrounded.

  The woman in brown froze. She knew the trap had snapped shut. That she wouldn't leave here alive.

  Instead of attempting to flee, she took one final, decisive step toward Ema. Her expression changed—fear vanished and was replaced by deep humility and determination. She grabbed Ema's hand again, this time not to pull her, but to hold onto her. Her grip was firm, hot, and urgent.

  "It is too late for me," she whispered quickly, looking directly into Ema's eyes. "But remember... everything here is a lie. The Family. The Order. When you are ready... when you truly desire it inside, we will help you. We will find you."

  The woman smiled sadly and made a sharp, slashing gesture with her free hand against her own throat. The air in the room sparked. The woman's head separated from her body without the touch of steel, by the sheer force of her own will, and her body crumpled limply to the ground. Her hand, however, was still convulsively gripping Ema's.

  In that moment, Ema felt an impact. It wasn't pain, but shock, like suddenly plunging into icy water that was somehow searing hot inside. An invisible, hot wave of energy poured into her through her fingertips, where the dead woman had touched her for the last time.

  The sensation didn't just travel through her blood, but directly through her nerves, straight to the center of her consciousness. It was as if someone had poured liquid light into her—thick, heavy, and pulsating with alien life. Ema stopped breathing for a fraction of a second.

  She felt an unbreakable determination that was hard as diamond. It wasn't the fear of death she would have expected, but triumph. She felt a tremendous inner strength that didn't stem from muscles, but from the conviction that truth is more important than breathing. And finally came peace. The deep, quiet calm of the ocean after a storm. It was a feeling of absolute reconciliation with the end because the end had meaning. The energy embraced her from within, warmed places in her soul she didn't even know were frozen, and left an imprint of alien courage within her.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It lasted only a moment, a heartbeat, but to Ema, it felt like an eternity. When the wave receded and merged with her, Ema felt like Ema again... but something had changed.

  Her senses, hitherto dulled by fear and confusion, sharpened into a crystalline, almost painful clarity. She saw every speck of dust dancing in a beam of light, smelled the metallic scent of blood and the pungent ozone of just-used magic. She heard the racing beat of her own heart, which now beat not with fear, but with the rhythm of battle.

  Suddenly, Friedrich burst into the room.

  His face was white as chalk, pupils dilated with sheer terror mixed with insane rage. He rushed to her, and although he didn't want to hurt her, he grabbed her by the shoulders and began shaking her desperately, as if trying to wake her from a nightmare.

  "Did she say anything?!" he shouted in her face, his voice cracking with panic. His fingers dug convulsively into the fabric of her dress. "Ema, look at me! Did that woman say anything to you?!"

  Ema looked at him. Thanks to that new, unnatural sharpness, she saw more than ever before. She saw every wrinkle around his eyes, every bead of cold sweat on his forehead. beneath his mask, she saw fear. Fear not for her, but for what she might know. And this glimpse into his core gave her strength. The gifted determination stiffened her spine.

  "No..." she breathed, her voice surprisingly steady, even as she tried to look shaken. She quickly invented a lie he would like. "She didn't say anything. I... I was trying to break free from her, I wanted to get out of her who sent her, I wanted to help you... but she was silent. And then... then she did that..." Her voice broke, this time genuinely, at the sight of the limp body on the ground.

  Friedrich froze. His eyes X-rayed her, searching for traces of a lie in her mind. When he saw only tears and heard her attempt to "help," he visibly relaxed. His shoulders slumped, the muscles in his jaw loosened, and his grip on her arms instantly softened into an almost tender touch.

  "Thank God," he exhaled, closing his eyes for a second. "I am so glad you are alright, Ema. I apologize... I apologize for yelling at you. I was terrified for you."

  He gently released her and stepped back, as if afraid he had broken her with his intensity. "Please, go to your room immediately. You must rest."

  Then he spun around sharply toward the guards standing in the doorway, and his relief changed in a split second into icy, tyrannical anger.

  "Take Miss Ema to safety immediately!" he barked at them. And as soon as Ema took a few steps, he began to roar so loudly that the panes in the windows shook: "And you explain to me how this is possible?! How could you allow this scum to get all the way to the dining room?! We have the best defense in the country, and you let a rat slip through to my fiancée?! If I find out someone on the inside had a hand in this, I swear I will execute you with my own hands!"

  While Friedrich's roar filled the corridor and bounced off the walls, the guards quickly and with respectful distance ushered Ema away. Ema looked back one last time. The woman's body lay there alone, but inside herself, she felt that gifted light still glowing quietly but persistently.

  Later in the afternoon, the door to Ema's room burst open, and Hanna rushed in. She looked incredibly worried, her breathing rapid, and urgency reflected in her eyes that Ema hadn't seen in her before. She immediately leaped to her side and took her hands, as if checking she was whole.

  "Ema, dear! I am so glad you are alright," Hanna breathed, her voice sounding almost frightened, like the voice of a best friend who just learned about an accident. "I am terribly sorry I wasn't here sooner. As soon as the news reached me, I immediately returned to protect you from that terrible sight. It must have been awful."

  Ema looked at her a bit coldly, still shaken by what she had seen. "Who was it, Hanna? Why did that woman kill herself right in front of me?"

  Hanna sighed deeply and sat down next to her on the edge of the bed. "Rebels, Ema. They call themselves the Primal. Do you remember what I told you in the gallery? That if we were just individuals acting on our own, we would differ little from animals? We would be just predators fighting for scraps of power. The Order and the Family are the only things keeping us from the abyss of barbarism. And these people, these rebels, do not respect the Order. They are pure evil, Ema. Their words are not truth; they are an infection. They spread lies like a virus that writes itself into your mind and slowly eats away at you with doubt until it destroys you."

  Ema was silent for a moment and then asked what burned her the most now. "I want to become stronger. I want to be able to protect myself so I never have to just watch helplessly again. How do I do that?"

  Hanna stroked her hair. "That is the right attitude. An Architect's strength grows with the development of your mental energy. Through training, meditation, and study, your 'self' will strengthen, and with it, your shard of power."

  "Is there another way?" Ema fired back, staring intently at Hanna. "Friedrich hinted at something yesterday... that strength can be gained differently than just through patient training."

  Hanna hesitated for a moment. Her face, usually so mask-like calm, betrayed a shadow of old anxiety for a second. "Friedrich told you about that?" she sighed and folded her hands in her lap, as if trying to calm an inner tremor. "Yes, he is right. There is a process of transferring existence. It is the darkest and simultaneously the noblest thing we are capable of."

  She walked to the window, back to Ema, and her voice now sounded deep, almost as if she were reciting some ancient chronicle.