Chapter I: The Original Queen of Dragons
The Baal known in later memories and the Baal recorded within these pages shared the same appearance.They did not, however, share the same soul.The first was Baalysia—the Dragon Queen who ruled the dragon tribe of Lapis Manalis.To outsiders, she was Queen Baalysia.To the people beneath her protection, she was simply Baal.And during the final days of her kingdom, she carried within her an unborn daughter who had not yet been given a name.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Part I: The Queen in the Snow
Snow had begun falling before sunrise.It came softly at first, drifting between the black pines and settling upon the roofs of Lapis Manalis in a thin veil of white. By morning, the paths winding through the village had nearly disappeared beneath it, leaving only the deeper impressions of boots, paws, and wooden sled runners to show where anyone had walked.Baalysia stood upon the mountain path overlooking the settlement.A freshly killed mountain beast rested upon the sled behind her, secured beneath ropes and strips of treated hide. Three hunters followed several paces back, carrying bows, spears, and bundles of winter herbs gathered from beneath the shelter of the trees.The wind caught Baalysia’s long white hair and swept it across her shoulders. Faint lavender and rose-colored strands glimmered near its ends beneath the pale morning light. Her dark clothing formed a sharp silhouette against the unbroken snow, while the horns rising from her head and the tail moving behind her marked her unmistakably as the Dragon Queen of the mountains.One gloved hand rested upon the rope attached to the sled.The other lingered over the small curve concealed beneath her winter layers.The movement had become instinctive.Whenever she stood overlooking the village, her hand found its way there—as though her daughter might somehow see what Baalysia saw through the warmth of her palm.Below, smoke rose from chimneys built into homes of dark stone and timber. Hunters crossed the central clearing carrying bundled firewood. Two elders worked together to repair a fence damaged during the night, while several children chased one another around a frozen water trough despite the warnings of the woman attempting to sweep the nearby steps.It was not a grand kingdom.There were no gilded halls.No marble throne room.No endless line of servants waiting to fulfill the smallest request of their sovereign.Lapis Manalis was a village carved into the mountains of Garlemald, protected by steep cliffs, hidden caves, and generations of dragons who had learned to survive where the cold offered little mercy.It was Baalysia’s home.The people below were hers.Not possessions.Not subjects whose lives existed to serve her crown.They were her responsibility.Her family.And now, beneath her heart, another life had joined them.One of the children noticed her first.“Baal!”The cry carried across the clearing.Several small faces turned toward the mountain path at once.The children abandoned their game and ran toward her, slipping through the snow with more enthusiasm than balance. One stumbled, disappeared entirely into a drift, and emerged laughing as though falling face-first had been the intention all along.Baalysia folded her arms.“You were told not to run upon the ice.”“We are not on the ice,” one of them answered.“You were when you began running.”“But we are not now.”A faint smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.The child appeared to take that as victory.Another moved toward the sled, eyes widening at the size of the animal resting upon it.“Did you kill that by yourself?”“No.”The children looked at one another.Baalysia glanced toward the three hunters following farther behind her.“We tracked it together.”“But you struck it down.”“When it charged.”“So you did kill it.”“I did not say otherwise.”The children crowded around the sled, speaking over one another as they inspected the morning’s success. One attempted to lift the animal’s horn before discovering it was far heavier than expected.Baalysia caught the child by the back of their coat before they could fall beneath it.“Careful.”“I had it.”“You were beneath it.”“I almost had it.”She set the child upright.“Almost is often the word spoken immediately before someone is crushed.”The child brushed snow from their clothing and glanced toward the hand Baalysia had returned to her abdomen.“Did we hurt the baby?”Baalysia’s expression softened.“No.”“Can she hear us?”“I suspect everyone in the mountains can hear you.”Several children laughed.The smallest among them stepped closer and stared solemnly at Baalysia’s winter coat.“Will she be a dragon?”“She already is.”“Will she have horns?”“Perhaps.”“A tail?”“Perhaps.”“Wings?”Baalysia considered the question.“Perhaps.”The child frowned.“You do not know very much about your own baby.”“I know enough.”“Does she have a name?”Baalysia’s hand became still.“No,” she answered after a moment. “Not yet.”She had considered many names.Some belonged to the mountains.Some to dragons whose stories had been carved into the oldest stones of Lapis Manalis.Others came from a distant land touched by morning light, where spirits walked in the shapes of foxes and an emperor had once taken Baalysia’s hand beneath trees that had never known Garlemald’s snow.None of them had felt right.Her daughter possessed a soul all her own.Baalysia did not want to place a name upon her merely because tradition demanded one. She wanted to look into her daughter’s eyes first. To hold her. To hear the first sound she made and discover what name answered.“Perhaps she will tell us when she is born,” Baalysia said.The children accepted this possibility with far more ease than the adults ever had.By then, the hunters had caught up. Baalysia took hold of the sled rope and helped pull it toward the village rather than leaving the task to them.One of the hunters immediately protested.“My Queen, you should not be hauling that.”“I was hauling it before you found your voice.”“You are carrying a child.”“I am aware.”“The healers said you should avoid unnecessary strain.”“This is not unnecessary. The village requires food.”“We can manage it.”Baalysia gave him a look that ended the objection before it could fully become one.A title did not exempt her from labor.Neither did pregnancy make her fragile.It required caution.It did not require surrender.The animal would be divided among the village. Its meat would feed families through the coming days. Its hide would become clothing and blankets. Its bones would be shaped into tools, needles, and handles.Nothing the mountain offered them was wasted.Baalysia helped carry the first portion toward the preparation house before noticing the elders still struggling with the broken fence.She changed direction without explanation.One of the elders saw her approaching and shook his head.“No.”Baalysia stopped.“No?”“You have already hunted, dragged half the mountain home, and allowed every child in the village to climb over you.”“Only three climbed over me.”“Then I stand corrected.”The elder gestured toward the damaged fence.“We can repair this without our pregnant queen lifting it.”Baalysia placed both hands upon the broken beam.“You may repair it without me once it has fallen on you.”The second elder laughed.“Let her help. Arguing with Baal only makes the work take longer.”Together, they lifted the damaged beam back into place. Baalysia held it steady while the others secured it, her strength making the task easier without replacing their contribution.That was how she preferred it.She did not stand above Lapis Manalis.She stood within it.By midday, the village had become louder. The hunted meat was being prepared. Tools rang against stone. Steam drifted from the washhouse. Somewhere near the edge of the settlement, two young hunters argued over whose arrow had first struck the morning’s prey.Baalysia sat upon the steps outside one of the larger homes while several children gathered around her.They had demanded a story.She had informed them that queens were not obligated to provide entertainment whenever requested.They had responded by sitting down and waiting.Baalysia had endured less patient sieges.“What manner of story?” she asked.“One about the world beyond the mountains.”“You have heard those.”“Tell another.”“I cannot invent a new country merely because you have grown bored with the old ones.”The smallest child leaned carefully against her side.“Tell us about the Land of the Morning Light.”Baalysia’s fingers moved toward the charm hidden beneath her clothing.It rested against her chest upon a thin chain—a small piece of pale metal shaped like a fox beneath a rising sun.She rarely allowed anyone to see it.“It lies very far from here,” she said.“Farther than the sea?”“You must first reach the sea before you can cross it.”“Have you seen the sea?”Baalysia looked toward the distant peaks.“No.”“Then how did you meet someone from beyond it?”The older children immediately leaned closer.Baalysia narrowed her eyes.“You have all become far too interested in matters that do not concern you.”“Was he a dragon?”“No.”“A warrior?”“Yes.”“A king?”Baalysia did not answer.The children exchanged excited looks.“He was!”“I did not say that.”“You did not say no.”Baalysia sighed.The man she remembered had not merely been a king.He was the fox-spirit emperor of the Land of the Morning Light, born into a court of spirits, ancient traditions, and obligations every bit as binding as the duties Baalysia carried within Lapis Manalis.He wore authority differently from the rulers of Garlemald.Where Emperor Solus demanded obedience through fear, the fox emperor earned loyalty through patience and wisdom. His power never needed to announce itself.Baalysia had met him during one of the rare journeys that had taken her farther from the mountains than she had intended to travel.Their time together had been brief.Brief enough to become precious.Brief enough to leave far too much unsaid.He had eventually returned to his distant empire.Baalysia had returned to her mountains.Only afterward had she learned that she had not returned alone.The smallest child tugged gently at Baalysia’s sleeve.“Was he kind?”“Yes,” she answered.“Will he come here?”Baalysia’s fingers closed around the hidden charm.“I do not know.”“Does he know about the baby?”That question struck more deeply.Baalysia looked down at the snow beneath her boots.She had written a letter.Then another.Neither had found a safe path beyond Garlemald.Imperial patrols watched the roads. Ships were searched. Messengers disappeared. The Land of the Morning Light lay farther away than any journey Baalysia could undertake while remaining responsible for Lapis Manalis.“I hope,” she said quietly, “that one day he will.”The children seemed to recognize the sorrow in her voice and, for once, did not press further.One of them rested a small hand against the side of Baalysia’s coat.“Maybe she will find him.”Baalysia looked down at the child.The possibility should have felt impossible.Yet something in their certainty made her smile.“Perhaps she will.”The child beneath Baalysia’s heart moved.A faint warmth accompanied the motion.Baalysia’s smile faded slightly.Life carried warmth. That alone was not strange, even beneath the endless cold of Garlemald.Yet the warmth within her daughter did not resemble the heat of dragon blood.Baalysia knew that fire as she knew her own breath—the deep furnace of scale, bone, and sovereign blood that had passed through generations of her kind.What stirred within her daughter felt quieter.Smaller.Not weaker, but distant somehow.Like the last coal of a fire still glowing beneath a sky Baalysia had never seen.The sensation vanished before she could understand it.Her daughter shifted once more, alive and apparently untroubled.Baalysia placed her palm over the movement.“Is something wrong?” one of the children asked.“No.”The answer came easily.The certainty beneath it did not.“My daughter is merely reminding me that she is listening.”That evening, after the fires had been lowered and the children sent back to their homes, Baalysia sat alone beside the window in her chamber.Her journal lay open upon the table.She wrote about the successful hunt.The damaged fence.The children’s questions.The unfamiliar warmth she had felt beneath her hand.The increasing frequency of distant Garlean patrols.Then she turned to a fresh page.For several moments, her quill hovered above the parchment.At last, she began to write.To the child beneath my heart,You have not yet seen the mountains, but they already know you.The children argue over whether you will have horns, wings, or a tail. The elders insist that you will be as stubborn as your mother. I fear they may be correct.Your father comes from a land where dawn touches the earth before it reaches us. He is a spirit of the fox and a ruler whose responsibilities carried him home before either of us knew of you.Perhaps one day you will meet him.Perhaps you will stand beneath the morning light and understand the part of yourself that I cannot teach you.There is something else about you that I do not understand.Sometimes, when you move, I feel a warmth that does not belong to my fire.It does not frighten me.It feels as though you are listening to something very far away.Whatever it is, you need not answer it yet.You need only grow.Until then, you are a child of Lapis Manalis.You are loved here.Whatever name you are one day given—or choose to carry—remember that first.Baalysia paused.Her daughter shifted beneath her hand.A faint pulse of warmth followed.Then nothing.Only an unborn child resting beneath her heart.Baalysia smiled despite the unease that remained.Below the unfinished letter, she added one final sentence.Perhaps one day, when the mountain no longer needs its queen, I will discover whether the horizon truly has an end.She closed the journal and looked outside.Snow covered the village.For that moment, Lapis Manalis was peaceful.Baalysia did not yet know how little of that peace remained.
Part II: Those Who Fled the Capital
The warning horn sounded three days later.Its call rolled through the village shortly before dusk: one long note, followed by two shorter blasts.Strangers approaching.Baalysia was already moving before the final note faded.Villagers abandoned their work and guided the children indoors. Hunters retrieved bows and spears from the racks beside their homes. The oldest members of the tribe moved toward the central lodge, following the defensive practices Baalysia had made them rehearse countless times.She climbed to the northern watchpoint.Figures staggered along the mountain road below.There were fewer than a dozen.They wore dark armor beneath torn traveling cloaks, and several were wounded. One supported another by the waist. A third left small spots of blood upon the snow with each step.Garleans.At least, they had once served Garlemald.The weapons upon their backs were those carried by Reapers.“Imperial scouts?” the huntmaster asked beside her.“No.”Baalysia watched the figures struggle through the wind.“Scouts would not approach openly. Nor would they arrive half-dead.”“That does not make them safe.”“No,” she agreed. “It does not.”She descended to meet them before they reached the village.The Reapers stopped when they saw her.For a moment, neither side spoke.Baalysia stood in the center of the road while hunters spread out behind her. Snow gathered in her hair and along the dark ridges of her horns.The leading Reaper lowered his weapon to the ground.“We do not seek a fight.”“You crossed into my territory armed.”“We did not know whether the mountain held beasts or men.”“It holds both.”His gaze briefly moved toward her horns, then lower toward the tail behind her.Baalysia’s expression hardened.The Reaper looked away.“We need shelter,” he said. “Only for the night.”“You are Garlean.”“Not anymore.”Several hunters shifted their grips upon their weapons.Baalysia studied the strangers.The Reapers were exhausted enough that none could conceal it. One woman’s face had gone pale from blood loss. Another breathed with the shallow restraint of someone hiding broken ribs.“What happened?” Baalysia asked.The leader hesitated.That hesitation told her the answer would bring danger.“We made an attempt upon Emperor Solus.”The wind seemed to sharpen.Someone behind Baalysia whispered a curse.The leader continued.“We failed. Those of us who escaped the capital scattered. Imperial forces are hunting us.”“And you brought them here,” the huntmaster said.“We did not know there was a village.”“You knew someone lived in these mountains,” Baalysia answered. “Otherwise you would not have followed the smoke.”The Reaper did not deny it.One of the wounded stumbled.The woman beside him tried to hold him upright, but his legs folded beneath him. He struck the snow with a muffled groan.Baalysia stepped forward.The other Reapers reached for their weapons.Her hunters did the same.“Enough,” she commanded.Both groups became still.Baalysia crouched beside the fallen man. His cloak had frozen to the blood along his side.He would not survive another night upon the mountain.Perhaps not another hour.As Baalysia examined the wound, a familiar pressure tightened low within her abdomen.She inhaled slowly.The sensation passed.The huntmaster noticed.“My Queen?”“I am well.”“You should return to the village.”“So should he.”She looked toward the settlement.Sheltering the Reapers would invite retaliation.Turning them away would condemn them to death.The life within her made danger feel sharper than it once had.It did not make the decision less clear.“Bring them inside,” Baalysia ordered.The huntmaster stared at her.“Baal—”“Disarm them. Place them under guard. The healers will examine their wounds.”The leading Reaper looked at her in disbelief.“You would shelter us?”“I would prevent you from bleeding to death upon my road.”“That is not an answer.”“It is the only one you require at present.”The elders gathered in the central lodge once the wounded had been carried inside.The argument began before the doors had fully closed.“They attempted to murder the emperor.”“They attempted to remove a tyrant,” another answered.“And failed. Solus will tear these mountains apart searching for them.”“He has already taken enough from the tribes beyond the eastern ridge.”“That is precisely why we cannot provoke him.”Baalysia listened from the head of the long table.The Reapers waited in an adjoining room while the village healers examined their wounds. Their weapons had been collected and placed beneath guard.One of the older healers stood beside Baalysia rather than taking a seat.“You should be resting.”“I am sitting.”“You know what I mean.”“I am not leaving while my council decides whether wounded people deserve to live.”The healer lowered her voice.“You are not risking only yourself now.”The chamber became quiet.Baalysia’s hand settled over her abdomen.“No,” she answered. “I am not.”The huntmaster leaned forward.“Then you understand why they cannot remain.”“I understand why this decision must not be made from fear.”“They came here because they believed we would be easier to endanger than the settlements nearer the capital.”The leading Reaper could not hear them from the adjoining room, yet the huntmaster still lowered his voice.“We should force them to leave before their trail grows cold.”“They cannot travel,” Baalysia replied.“That is not our responsibility.”“Any life that reaches my gates becomes my responsibility.”“And what of the lives already within your gates?”Baalysia met his eyes.He was not challenging her authority.He was afraid.They all were.They knew what Garlemald did to those who resisted. Villages vanished. Families were relocated. Those with useful strength were conscripted, imprisoned, or studied. Those without it were discarded.Now their queen carried an unborn daughter.To lose Baalysia would already leave Lapis Manalis vulnerable.To lose both mother and child could end the line that had protected the tribe for generations.Baalysia looked around the table.“I will not pretend that sheltering them carries no danger. It does.”“Then send them away.”“To freeze?”“They chose their path.”“So did we,” Baalysia said. “Each time we refused to kneel to Garlemald. Each time we protected a child they would have taken. Each time we hid our people when imperial patrols crossed the lower passes.”She rested both hands upon the table.“If we decide that only those born beneath our roofs deserve mercy, then the empire has already taught us to think as it does.”One of the elders glanced toward her abdomen.“And what will you teach your own daughter if this mercy leaves her without a mother?”The question cut more deeply than it was intended to.Baalysia did not look away.“That compassion ends the moment it becomes dangerous?”No one answered.“I will not teach her that.”Her voice softened, but it did not weaken.“I will teach her that strength exists to protect life, not merely to preserve one’s own. I will teach her that fear may warn us, but it must not rule us.”The huntmaster sat back.“And should soldiers come?”Baalysia looked toward the walls of the lodge, beyond which her people waited.“Then they will find that Lapis Manalis does not surrender its guests to die.”The Reapers remained.Their wounds were treated. They were fed. Those still strong enough to stand helped carry supplies and reinforce the northern barricade.Baalysia spoke with them individually over the following days.Some had joined the attempt upon Solus because they believed Garlemald had lost itself beneath his rule.Others had personal reasons they would not share.None believed the emperor would forgive them.Their leader found Baalysia one evening near the edge of the village.She stood watching the lower road, one hand resting beneath her winter cloak.“You are expecting a child,” he said.Baalysia glanced at him.“You are observant.”“And still you allowed us inside.”“The two facts are not opposed.”“They should be.”“To you, perhaps.”He looked toward the village.Children were helping one of the Reapers stack firewood. The wounded woman sat nearby, showing them how to bind a cord so it would not loosen beneath weight.“He will not stop with us,” the leader warned.“I know.”“You should have left us in the snow.”“No.”“You may think differently when his soldiers arrive.”Baalysia’s fingers closed around the fox-shaped charm beneath her clothing.Her daughter’s father ruled a land far beyond Solus’s reach.Had Baalysia abandoned her people and crossed the sea, she might have found safety beneath the banners of the Morning Light.She might have placed her daughter within the arms of her father.She had considered it.Then she had looked at Lapis Manalis and understood that she could not save her daughter by teaching her that everyone else was expendable.“No,” Baalysia repeated. “I will not.”
Part III: The Hunt Without Birdsong
No soldiers came that week.Nor the next.The villagers began to hope that the Reapers’ trail had vanished beneath the winter storms.Baalysia did not share their confidence.Garlemald did not forget defiance.It waited until punishment would hurt most.The morning of the attack began beneath a clear sky.Baalysia left the village before dawn with four hunters. Food stores had begun running low, and fresh tracks had been found along the western ridge.The Reapers offered to accompany them.Baalysia refused.“They are your people now,” their leader said. “Their danger is ours.”“The injured still require protection.”“That is not your only reason.”“No,” she admitted. “It is not.”If imperial forces appeared, the Reapers would be their first target. Sending them outside the village would expose them unnecessarily.The healer objected as well.“You should not be hunting.”“I am not climbing the highest ridge.”“You should not be climbing any ridge.”“I know these mountains better than any hunter here.”“That does not change what you are carrying.”Baalysia fastened her cloak.“It changes why I intend to return.”The healer stepped in front of her.“Promise me that you will listen to your body.”Baalysia’s impatience softened.“I promise.”“And if there is pain?”“I will stop.”“If you become faint?”“I will sit.”“If the child begins moving strangely?”“I will return immediately.”The healer searched her face.“You are lying about at least one of those.”“Only one.”“That does not reassure me.”Baalysia kissed the elder woman lightly upon the brow before stepping around her.“I will return before nightfall.”She expected the danger to come from the lower road.She did not consider that the Garleans might already know her habits.Hours passed without a successful trail.The animals seemed to have abandoned the western ridge.Baalysia crouched beside a line of tracks partially buried beneath snow. They were too straight to belong to a beast.Boots.Heavy ones.The pattern crossed the hunters’ trail and disappeared toward the south.One of her companions knelt beside her.“Imperial?”Baalysia brushed the loose snow away.The print’s edges were already softening.“Several hours old.”“They were moving away from the village.”“No.”She rose too quickly.The world shifted beneath her.One hunter reached for her arm, but Baalysia steadied herself before he touched her.“My Queen?”“I am fine.”“You nearly fell.”“I stood too quickly.”Her daughter pressed low beneath her ribs.Baalysia placed one hand against the sensation and waited.The mountains were never truly silent.Even in winter, branches creaked beneath snow. Wings disturbed the treetops. Small animals moved beneath the drifts.Now there was nothing.No birdsong.No wind through the higher branches.Only stillness.Baalysia turned toward Lapis Manalis.A dark line rose beyond the ridge.Smoke.“Back,” she ordered.The hunters did not question her.They ran.While their queen had been drawn toward the western ridge, Garlean troops approached Lapis Manalis through the eastern ravine.They came with magitek armor, rifles, and chains forged for creatures stronger than ordinary men.The first villager to see them sounded the warning horn.The second note never came.A gunshot shattered the horn in the watchman’s hands.The Reapers understood immediately.“This is not a raid,” their leader said. “They came for her.”The huntmaster ordered the children and elders toward the hidden caves behind the village.The passages had been used generations earlier when Garlean scouts first crossed the mountains. Narrow tunnels ran beneath the cliffs and emerged in a ravine several malms away.Not everyone could escape before the soldiers reached the central clearing.The Reapers divided.Some remained behind to slow the advance.Others guided villagers toward the caves.“Go!” one shouted as imperial troops broke through the northern barricade. “Do not stop until you reach the lower passage!”The village became smoke, shouting, and falling snow.Garlean soldiers dragged families from their homes. Those who resisted were struck down or restrained. Rifles were positioned toward the cave entrance, forcing the remaining villagers away from it.The imperial commander did not order a massacre.He needed hostages.Emperor Solus had not sent him merely to kill the Dragon Queen.He had sent him to teach her obedience.Baalysia heard the gunfire before she reached the village.The sound echoed through the mountains.She ran faster.Branches struck her arms. Snow broke beneath her boots. The hunters struggled to keep pace behind her, but she no longer slowed for them.Pain tightened beneath her side.Baalysia stumbled.The nearest hunter caught her elbow.“You must slow down.”“My village is burning.”“And your child—”“Is still with me.”“You cannot help either of them if you collapse.”Baalysia tore her gaze from the smoke long enough to look at him.He was right.The knowledge felt like a betrayal.She forced herself to breathe.Once.Twice.The pain eased.Baalysia pressed one hand over her daughter.“Hold on,” she whispered.Whether she spoke to the child, herself, or the people waiting beyond the ridge, she no longer knew.Then she continued.Smoke filled the sky above Lapis Manalis.Her home came into view.The northern barricade had been destroyed.Garlean banners hung from the watchtowers.Bodies lay in the snow.Baalysia stopped at the edge of the clearing.Dozens of rifles turned toward her.The villagers who had not escaped had been forced together near the central lodge. Soldiers surrounded them. Several children clung to their parents. The huntmaster was on his knees, blood running from a wound along his brow.The Reapers who remained had been disarmed.One lay unmoving.Baalysia’s breath left her slowly.The old power of her blood answered her anger.It did not merely gather beneath her skin.Something vast stirred behind the shape she wore—a presence older than the village, older than the paths carved through the mountains, older perhaps than the empire that believed it had cornered her.Ancient wings pressed against the boundaries of mortal flesh.Sovereign fire gathered behind her ribs.For a single instant, Baalysia felt the greater form waiting beneath her skin.She could surrender this smaller shape.She could allow bone, scale, claw, and fire to answer the soldiers occupying her home.The mountain would remember what she truly was.So would everything buried beneath it.Then something answered beneath her heart.Not Baalysia’s fire.The sensation was too small to belong to the sovereign fury gathering inside her and too unfamiliar to belong to any dragon she had ever known.A single pulse of warmth moved through her daughter.It did not flare.It did not awaken.It merely answered, like a coal buried beneath ash remembering that somewhere, impossibly far away, another fire still burned.Baalysia’s breath caught.Her hand moved protectively toward her abdomen.For one fleeting instant, she felt that her daughter was listening to a call Baalysia herself could not hear.Then the warmth disappeared.Only the child remained, quiet beneath her heart.Baalysia looked across Lapis Manalis.Stone homes stood close together beneath the cliffs.Villagers had been gathered within the central clearing.Others were still escaping through narrow tunnels cut beneath the mountain.If Baalysia transformed here, the Garleans would not be the only ones caught beneath her wings.Roofs would collapse.Her weight could break the hidden passages through which her people were fleeing.The force of her transformation might tear stone from the cliffs.Snow already burdening the higher ridges could descend upon Lapis Manalis in a single white wall.And Baalysia did not know what surrendering herself to that greater shape might do to the daughter she carried.The sovereign presence receded.Not because Baalysia lacked the strength to become what she truly was.Because she possessed enough strength not to.The soldiers noticed the power gathering around her.Their weapons shifted away from Baalysia.Toward the hostages.The imperial commander stepped into the clearing.“There she is,” he said. “The Queen of Lapis Manalis.”Baalysia stared at him.“Release them.”The commander smiled.“You misunderstand your position.”
Part IV: The Queen’s Surrender
Baalysia entered the village alone.She had ordered the hunters behind her to remain hidden among the trees. They protested until she silenced them with a look.If she failed to save the hostages, someone would still need to find those who had escaped through the caves.Someone would need to keep Lapis Manalis alive.She stopped several paces from the commander.Behind him, the villagers watched her.Fear filled their faces.Not fear of her.Fear for her.Some of them knew that she carried a child.The healer stood among the hostages with blood staining one side of her face. When her gaze fell to Baalysia’s abdomen, her expression crumpled.Baalysia gave the smallest shake of her head.Do not tell them.The commander drew his sword.“You gave shelter to traitors of the empire.”“They came to me wounded.”“They attempted to assassinate Emperor Solus.”“Then your emperor should ask why his own people believed death preferable to his rule.”Several soldiers bristled.The commander merely laughed.“You believe yourself untouchable because you hide among mountains.”“I believe you are standing in my home.”“Not anymore.”The heat beneath Baalysia’s skin sharpened.She could kill him before he completed another breath.She could cross the clearing faster than his soldiers expected, tear through steel, and break the magitek armor standing behind him.And if the body she wore proved insufficient, she could abandon it.The greater shape waited within her.Ancient.Sovereign.Large enough that its wings would darken the village and its claws would split the frozen earth beneath the Garleans’ feet.For one furious heartbeat, Baalysia imagined answering their threat with the form that had once made other dragons lower their heads.But Lapis Manalis had never been built to contain her true enormity.Her wings would strike homes.Her weight could break the mountain passages through which her people were still fleeing.One frightened movement could bury the settlement beneath stone and snow.The Garleans had not simply surrounded her people.They had placed themselves so close to them that Baalysia’s greatest strength had become another weapon held against her.She could defeat the soldiers.She could not guarantee that her people—or her daughter—would survive the victory.The commander seemed to understand precisely what she was calculating.“Go on,” he said. “Show us the beast the reports speak of.”Baalysia’s eyes narrowed.“You gathered my people around you because you know precisely why I will not.”His smile confirmed it.The hostages were not only protection from her weapons.They were protection from the dragon herself.The commander lifted one hand.A soldier seized a young villager and pressed a blade beneath the child’s jaw.Baalysia became still.“Fight,” the commander said, “and your people die.”The child trembled.Baalysia knew them.She had carried them through the village during a snowstorm when they were too young to remember it. She had taught them how to tie a fishing line. Only days earlier, they had sat beside her and asked whether the sea was larger than the frozen lake.The child looked at her now.They did not cry.That hurt more.Baalysia’s hand moved before she could stop it, settling protectively over the life hidden beneath her winter clothing.One child stood before her, trembling beneath a Garlean blade.Another rested beneath her heart, too young to understand the danger surrounding them.The commander believed love made her weaker.He did not understand.It gave Baalysia twice as much to protect.And twice as much to lose.“Or,” the commander continued, “you will surrender yourself to Garlemald. Your people will be spared. The surviving traitors will be taken into imperial custody.”One of the Reapers struggled against the soldiers holding him.“Do not believe him!”A rifle struck him across the face.Baalysia did not look away from the commander.“You attacked while I was gone.”“We knew you would be more reasonable once we held something you valued.”Cowardice.Every instinct demanded that she burn the arrogance from his face.Her hands curled into fists.The snow around her boots began to melt.The sovereign beneath her skin stirred again.Ancient wings pressed against flesh.A roar without sound rose behind her ribs.Then her daughter moved.A faint warmth pulsed beneath Baalysia’s palm.Quiet.Sleeping.Unaware of the choice being made around her.Baalysia closed her eyes for half a breath.The warmth was not a plea.It could not have been.Her daughter did not yet know fear, surrender, or war.Yet the small presence reminded Baalysia of what would remain after this moment.A future she might never see.Several villagers shook their heads.The huntmaster forced himself upright despite the soldier pressing him down.“My Queen,” he said, “do not—”The commander gestured.The blade beneath the child’s jaw pressed closer.A thin line of red appeared against their skin.“Enough,” Baalysia said.The word rolled across the clearing with enough force to silence everyone.The heat faded from the air.Water darkened the snow beneath her feet.The vast shape beneath her skin became still.Baalysia reached for the weapon secured across her back.Soldiers tensed.She removed it slowly and held it before her.For one final moment, the Dragon Queen stood armed within the heart of her village.Then she lowered the weapon into the snow.It landed with a muted weight.“No!” someone shouted.Baalysia removed the knife from her belt and placed it beside the first weapon.The commander’s satisfaction deepened.“You will release them,” she said.“When you are restrained.”“You gave your word.”“My word is that their lives depend upon your obedience.”Baalysia looked beyond him.Some villagers were missing.The cave passages had worked.Not everyone had been captured.The realization did not ease the pain of what she was about to do, but it gave the sacrifice purpose.Lapis Manalis might yet survive.Perhaps someone who escaped would find Baalysia’s journal.Perhaps they would preserve the letter written to her unnamed daughter.Perhaps, should Baalysia never return, her child would still learn that she had been loved before she ever opened her eyes.Baalysia raised her hands.“I surrender.”The words felt colder than the mountain wind.Soldiers approached carrying heavy restraints reinforced with magitek mechanisms. They moved cautiously, as though expecting her to change her mind.One seized her wrist.Baalysia could have broken his arm before he closed the shackle.She did not.Metal locked around her skin.The second soldier shoved her shoulder, attempting to force her to her knees.Baalysia twisted instinctively, turning the blow away from her abdomen.Her eyes flashed.“Touch me like that again,” she said quietly, “and surrender will not save you.”The soldier froze.The commander studied her more carefully.His gaze moved toward the hand Baalysia had placed over her stomach.She lowered it immediately.Something changed in his expression.Recognition.Or suspicion.“Secure her,” he ordered.The second restraint locked into place.The magitek mechanisms hummed to life, sending a numbing pressure through Baalysia’s arms.As the chains tightened, something vast roared soundlessly within her.The restraints could bind the woman.They had not bound the sovereign sleeping beneath her skin.Baalysia bound that power herself.She held it still for the villagers standing behind the soldiers.For the families escaping beneath the mountain.For the unnamed daughter beneath her heart.Her surrender was not the absence of power.It was power denied its fury.The child held beneath the blade was released.They ran toward their family.Only then did Baalysia allow herself to breathe.The commander stepped closer.“The great Dragon Queen,” he murmured. “Brought to heel without a battle.”Baalysia turned her head toward him.“You did not defeat me.”He glanced toward the weapons lying in the snow.“You surrendered.”“To save them.”“History will not care for the difference.”“My people will.”The commander’s smile faltered.Baalysia looked toward the villagers.Some were crying openly now. Others stood in stunned silence. The elders bowed their heads, not in submission but in grief. The huntmaster strained against those restraining him, rage and helplessness written across his face.The healer stared at Baalysia.Her lips moved without sound.The child.Baalysia held her gaze.Protect the journal.The healer’s expression changed.She understood.Baalysia wanted to tell her people that she would return.She could not promise that.Garlemald had not come to imprison an ordinary ruler. Solus had taken an interest in her, and the emperor’s interests rarely ended in mercy.If the commander had recognized her pregnancy, then Baalysia no longer knew whether Garlemald intended to take one dragon or two.She instead spoke the only promise she could still make.“Lapis Manalis is more than its queen.”The villagers listened.“Those who escaped must be found. The wounded must be treated. The homes must be rebuilt.”“My Queen—”“You will survive this.”Her voice nearly broke.She did not allow it to.“You will remember who you are. You will not let them turn my surrender into the end of our people.”The huntmaster lowered his head.Not in defeat.In acceptance of the burden she was placing upon him.Baalysia’s gaze moved across the village one final time.The central lodge where the elders argued long into the night.The preparation house where the morning’s hunt had been divided.The steps where children gathered for stories.The narrow window behind which her journal remained closed upon its table.Inside it waited a letter to a daughter who had no name.A child of dragon blood and fox-spirit lineage.A child whose father ruled beneath a distant dawn and did not yet know she existed.A child who carried a quiet warmth neither parent could explain.Then the soldiers pulled Baalysia away.The villagers did not kneel as she passed.They stood.One by one, despite their wounds and fear, they straightened.The child Baalysia had saved lifted a trembling hand.“Baal!”She stopped.The commander ordered the soldiers to continue, but for a single moment Baalysia resisted—not violently, only enough to turn and look back.The child’s family tried to quiet them.The child called again.“Come home!”Baalysia’s composure finally cracked.Only slightly.A sorrowful smile touched her face.“I will try.”The soldiers dragged her beyond the broken barricade.Snow continued falling over Lapis Manalis, covering blood, footprints, and the weapon their queen had laid down to save them.Beneath Baalysia’s clothing, the fox-shaped charm pressed against her heart.Her daughter moved.A faint warmth followed.For the briefest instant, the cold metal against Baalysia’s wrists seemed farther away—as though a tiny ember had lit somewhere the chains could not reach.It vanished almost immediately.Baalysia did not understand what she had felt.She knew only that it had not come from her.Her daughter carried something into Garlemald that Baalysia could not name.Something quiet.Something sleeping.She prayed the empire would never find a way to wake it.One restrained hand could not reach her abdomen, but Baalysia turned her wrist as far as the chains allowed, reaching toward the life she carried.“I am still here,” she whispered.It was a promise made to her unborn daughter because she could no longer promise her people that she would return.Behind her, Baalysia’s journal remained within her chamber.Its final pages spoke of a successful hunt, children asking about the sea, and the distant fox-spirit emperor of the Land of the Morning Light.They also held a letter addressed to the unnamed child beneath her heart.The pages after it were blank.The remainder of Baalysia’s story was carried by those who watched their queen surrender—by the unborn daughter taken into Garlemald beside her—and by the mountain that remembered the sound of her chains.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Chapter II: The Captive Queen
The Empire called her many things after Lapis Manalis fell.Prisoner.Specimen.Draconic asset.Subject Baalysia.None of them called her Queen.None of them called the child beneath her heart a daughter.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Part I: The Queen in Chains
The transport moved through the Garlean mountains beneath a sky without stars.Baalysia could not see the road.Metal walls surrounded her on every side, broken only by narrow seams through which the cold entered. The magitek restraints around her wrists were fixed to the floor, their mechanisms humming whenever she shifted too suddenly.A second chain circled her waist.It had been placed there only after the soldiers realized how carefully she guarded her abdomen.Baalysia sat against the rear wall of the transport with one shoulder braced against the iron. Her hands could not reach the child beneath her winter clothing, but she kept her body curved protectively around the life she carried.The soldiers seated across from her watched every movement.None came close.The commander from Lapis Manalis had warned them what she was.Not merely a dragon.Not merely a queen.Something older.Something whose true shape could tear open the side of the transport before the first alarm was sounded.They did not understand that Baalysia had already considered it.The sovereign form waited beneath her skin.Bahamut stirred whenever the wheels struck a deep rut or a guard tightened his grip upon his weapon. Ancient wings pressed against mortal flesh, impatient with steel, chains, and men who mistook restraint for weakness.Baalysia held that presence still.Transforming within the transport would crush the soldiers.It might also crush the child beneath her heart.She would not exchange one cage for another built from grief.A guard shifted uneasily when her gaze settled upon him.“You should sleep,” he muttered.Baalysia said nothing.“You will need your strength.”“For what?”The guard looked toward the sealed door.He did not answer.Baalysia already knew.The Empire had not taken her merely because she had sheltered the Reapers.Solus had sent chains designed for something stronger than a woman. He had sent soldiers who knew of the greater shape beneath her skin.They had come prepared to capture a Dragon Queen.Whatever awaited her had been planned long before she placed her weapon in the snow.The child within her moved.Warmth followed.Not the familiar heat of Baalysia’s blood.Not Bahamut’s sovereign fire.Something quieter pulsed once beneath her ribs, like a coal remembering another flame across an impossible distance.Baalysia closed her eyes.“I know,” she whispered.One of the soldiers leaned forward.“What did you say?”“Nothing intended for you.”The warmth faded.Only the child remained.Alive.Still with her.For the moment, that was enough.* * *The transport descended beneath the capital through gates too thick for ordinary fortifications.Baalysia counted every turn.Three downward inclines.Two lifts.A corridor carrying the smell of oil, metal, and antiseptic.Then a chamber filled with white light.Soldiers detached her restraints from the transport floor but left the cuffs locked around her wrists. They led her between rows of instruments whose purposes she did not recognize.Some were shaped like examination tables.Others resembled machines built for war.At the center of the room stood a tall Garlean man in a dark coat, one hand resting behind his back.His third eye marked him as pureblood.The instruments and assistants surrounding him marked him as something more dangerous than a common soldier.He did not introduce himself at first.He merely studied her.His gaze traveled from her horns to her tail, then to the slight curve beneath her clothing.Baalysia turned enough to place one shoulder between his eyes and her daughter.The man smiled.“A protective response.”“A warning.”“Those are not mutually exclusive.”He stepped closer.The soldiers raised their weapons.Baalysia looked at them.“If I intended to kill him, you would not stop me.”The scientist lifted one hand before the soldiers could react.“She is correct.”His calm displeased her more than fear would have.“Aulus mal Asina,” he said. “Head of the research division assigned to your examination.”“Examination.”“A gentler word than vivisection.”The room became very still.Aulus’s smile remained.“Not that we have reached that stage.”Baalysia pulled once against the restraints.The magitek cuffs discharged.Electricity tore through her arms and struck behind her ribs.She remained standing.Only the sudden tightening of her jaw revealed the pain.Her daughter moved sharply.The strange warmth pulsed in answer.A nearby instrument flickered.One of the assistants looked down.“Sir?”Aulus’s attention shifted.The readings vanished before he reached the display.“What did it register?”“I am not certain. A secondary aetheric fluctuation.”“From her?”The assistant hesitated.“Lower.”Aulus looked again toward Baalysia’s abdomen.Understanding entered his expression.Not compassion.Interest.“You are carrying a child.”Baalysia said nothing.“How far along?”Silence.Aulus stepped toward her.The sovereign beneath her skin stirred.The lamps trembled.Thin cracks spread through one glass instrument.Aulus stopped.“Your cooperation will determine how safely we proceed.”“You invaded my home.”“Yes.”“You placed blades against children.”“Yes.”“You chained me and carried me beneath your city.”“Yes.”His willingness to admit each crime without shame chilled her.“And now,” he continued, “you stand within an imperial research facility carrying a second specimen whose value may rival your own.”Baalysia moved before the soldiers expected it.The chain around her waist snapped taut.One cuff sparked as she lunged.Aulus stepped back, but not quickly enough to hide the surprise upon his face.“Call my daughter a specimen again,” Baalysia said, “and you will learn how little these restraints protect you.”The cuffs discharged a second time.Her knees struck the floor.Pain flashed white across her vision.Her daughter’s warmth pulsed again.Stronger.One of the instruments sounded a brief alarm.Aulus turned toward it.The monitor displayed two overlapping patterns.The first was dense, hot, and unmistakably draconic.Baalysia.The second was faint enough to disappear beneath the first.A quiet foreign resonance.Aulus leaned closer.Then it vanished.He looked down at Baalysia.“What is the child’s name?”Baalysia forced herself upright.“She has none.”“No designation?”“No name.”“Then one will be assigned.”Her eyes lifted.“No name you give her will belong to her.”Aulus considered that.“Take her to containment.”The soldiers approached.Baalysia rose without their help.As they led her away, Aulus spoke to the assistants without lowering his voice.“Complete a full comparison. Maternal blood, fetal aetheric patterning, draconic compatibility, regenerative potential.”“And the secondary fluctuation?”“Record it separately.”Baalysia looked back.Aulus met her gaze.“We will discover what your daughter is.”Baalysia’s chains tightened as the soldiers pulled her onward.“No,” she said.The word followed her into the corridor.“You will discover only what she survives.”
Part II: The Red Moon’s Instrument
The Empire divided time into procedures.Baalysia measured it differently.By meals.By periods of darkness.By the changing strength of her daughter’s movements.By the number of times Aulus entered the chamber wearing fresh gloves.At first, the scientists tested what they believed would be easiest to understand.Her blood.Her scales.The structure of her horns.The regenerative properties of damaged tissue.They drew enough blood to leave an ordinary person unconscious, waited for her body to replace it, and then drew more.They scraped samples from beneath her scales.They cut into muscle and recorded how quickly it healed.They shocked her nervous system and measured how much punishment her body could withstand before the sovereign power beneath her skin reacted.Whenever Bahamut stirred, the machines became louder.Whenever Baalysia forced the transformation back into stillness, the scientists became frustrated.They wanted the greater shape.They wanted wings broad enough to darken Lapis Manalis.They wanted the fire of a High Sovereign compressed into engines that could be reproduced, controlled, and aimed.They did not understand that Bahamut was not a separate creature waiting to be extracted.Bahamut was Baalysia.Memory.Blood.Inheritance.Will.Each time they demanded that she transform, Baalysia looked toward the instruments surrounding her abdomen.Her daughter remained within her.That alone kept the sovereign silent.“Again,” Aulus ordered.Baalysia lay restrained upon a tilted metal platform.Wires had been fastened along her arms, spine, and ribs. A ring of magitek conductors surrounded the table, each one aimed inward.Her breathing had become shallow.Not from fear.From exhaustion.Aulus adjusted the controls.“You reached seventy-three percent during the previous trial.”“I reached nothing.”“The instruments disagree.”“Your instruments record what you demand they see.”Aulus glanced toward her abdomen.Her pregnancy had become increasingly visible beneath the thin garment the scientists allowed her to wear.“The fetal subject remains stable.”“My daughter.”“Terminology does not alter biology.”“No. But it reveals the person speaking.”Aulus pressed a control.Electricity struck.Baalysia’s back arched against the restraints.Sovereign fire surged beneath her skin.The conductors captured the discharge and pulled it outward in twisting streams of light.Every muscle in her body locked.Her daughter moved violently.The strange warmth pulsed once.A monitor near Aulus registered the secondary resonance.He noticed.Baalysia did too.The readings did not resemble her own.Her fire was a furnace.The child’s presence appeared only as a thin line buried beneath ash.Still there.Still sleeping.Aulus increased the current.Baalysia screamed.The sound tore through the chamber before she could stop it.The instruments drank more deeply.A projection appeared above the central console.A red sphere.Artificial.Scarred by ancient mechanisms.Baalysia’s blood went cold despite the fire burning through her nerves.“No.”Aulus watched the projection rather than her.“The signal strengthened.”“Turn it off.”“Bozja has responded.”Baalysia pulled against the restraints.The metal cut into her wrists.“You do not understand what you are calling.”One of the scientists glanced toward Aulus.He ignored her.“Maintain the draw.”The red sphere brightened.Baalysia had heard the stories as a child.Her mother had spoken them beside low fires when winter storms trapped the tribe indoors.The Red Moon.Dalamud.An Allagan prison placed in the heavens.Soldiers descending beneath crimson light.A dragon’s rage transformed into calamity.Warnings passed from one generation to the next because some powers were too dangerous to become legends alone.Baalysia forced her head toward Aulus.“Dalamud is not a blessing.”The scientists continued adjusting the instruments.“It is a cage.”No one answered.“You place your faith in a prison whose locks you do not understand.”A younger assistant looked uneasy.Aulus did not.“The connection is stabilizing.”“You will destroy more than your enemies.”“The Empire accepts risk.”“The Empire always believes someone else will pay it.”Aulus increased the draw.Baalysia’s vision darkened.Her daughter’s warmth pulsed beneath her heart.Quiet.Distant.Afraid—or perhaps Baalysia merely imagined fear because she could no longer separate the child’s movements from her own.“Stop,” she whispered.A scientist near the table leaned over her.“What was that?”“Stop.”He smiled.“Guinea pigs have no voice.”His hand struck her across the mouth.The taste of blood filled her tongue.“Only bodies to test until they fail.”Baalysia turned her head back toward him.She smiled.The expression unsettled him.“You should pray,” she said softly, “that mine fails before I decide these chains are no longer worth enduring.”The scientist struck her again.Then again.Aulus watched the instruments.Not the violence.Not the blood.Only the rising connection to the Red Moon.At last, the projection steadied.A tone sounded through the chamber.One of the assistants stared at the display.“Connection established.”The scientists erupted into relieved voices.Coordinates.Signal strength.Bozjan relay response.Project Dalamud viability.Achievement measured in numbers.Baalysia heard them through a distant ringing.The restraints released.She slid from the platform before anyone caught her.Her knees struck the floor.Blood ran from her mouth onto the metal beneath her hands.Her daughter moved.Still alive.Baalysia bowed over the child she carried and breathed through the pain.The Empire called the trial a success.Only Baalysia understood what it had cost.* * *The procedures continued.They no longer waited for her to recover fully.The successful connection had made them impatient.Each test weakened her more quickly than the last.Her body still healed, but not as it once had. The strength that should have restored muscle and blood now flowed first toward the child within her.Baalysia allowed it.Every time her body was forced to choose, she chose her daughter.The scientists noticed.Aulus called it inefficient resource allocation.Baalysia called it motherhood.Weeks passed.Then more.Only months had gone by since Lapis Manalis.Within the laboratory, they felt like years.Her proud frame diminished.Her ribs became visible beneath bruised skin and bandages.The scientists cut away clothing that interfered with their instruments and wrapped only what they considered necessary.Her long hair remained because removing it served no measurable purpose.Her tail lost some of its fullness.Her hands trembled after every trial.Still, whenever a scientist entered expecting obedience, Baalysia lifted her head.Whenever they called her subject, she remembered the mountain.Whenever they called her daughter a specimen, something in the room cracked.
Part III: The Child Beneath Glass
The decision was made without Baalysia.She learned of it from a conversation outside her cell.“Maternal viability is declining.”“The secondary subject remains stable.”“Not for long if the host continues diverting regenerative aether.”“The project cannot lose both.”Aulus’s voice followed.“Prepare the artificial womb.”Baalysia rose too quickly.The room tilted.She caught herself against the wall.“No.”The guards outside looked toward her.Baalysia struck the door with both palms.“No!”The viewing panel opened.Aulus stood beyond it.“You heard.”“You will not touch her.”“We already have.”The statement was deliberately cruel.Baalysia’s fire surged.The guards raised shock-weapons toward the opening.Aulus remained still.“Your body is failing.”“You made it fail.”“Yes.”The ease of his answer struck harder than denial would have.“The child’s continued development inside you is no longer reliable.”“She is alive.”“For now.”Baalysia pressed one hand over the child beneath her heart.Her daughter moved weakly.The unfamiliar warmth followed.Smaller than before.Baalysia’s anger faltered.Aulus saw it.“If we leave her where she is, she may die with you.”Baalysia stared through the opening.“You expect me to believe you care whether she survives?”“Not for the reason you would prefer.”At least he did not lie.Aulus glanced toward the guards.“Sedate her.”The panel closed.Baalysia stepped back.The sovereign within her awakened.Not fully.Only enough to make the walls groan.Dust fell from the ceiling.The guards shouted.Alarms began sounding.Baalysia could transform.She could tear through the laboratory.She could kill Aulus, the guards, and every scientist standing between her and the surface.But her daughter was still inside her weakened body.The greater form might save the queen and kill the child.Once again, Baalysia’s most terrible power became useless in the presence of what she loved.Gas entered through the vents.She covered her mouth.The room blurred.Her daughter moved once beneath her hand.“I am sorry,” Baalysia whispered.Then the floor rose to meet her.* * *She awoke beneath white light.Pain divided her body into separate pieces.Her wrists were restrained.Her legs were restrained.A bandage crossed her abdomen.For several breaths, Baalysia could not understand what was missing.Then her hand pulled uselessly against the cuff.The child.Her body felt empty.“No.”She tried to rise.Pain tore through her abdomen.The monitors sounded an alarm.Aulus entered with two assistants.“Remain still.”“Where is she?”“The transfer succeeded.”“Where?”Aulus turned his head.A section of the wall became transparent.Beyond the glass stood a machine filled with pale liquid and soft artificial light.Suspended within it was Baalysia’s unborn daughter.Small.Curled inward.Alive.Baalysia stopped fighting the restraints.For one terrible moment, relief overwhelmed every other feeling.Her daughter’s heart beat upon the monitor beside the artificial womb.Steady.The child shifted faintly.Baalysia’s eyes filled.“Open it.”“No.”“Let me touch her.”“No.”Aulus moved toward the machine.“The artificial environment will maintain development more efficiently than your body could.”“She is not an experiment.”“She is now the most valuable component of one.”Baalysia’s gaze hardened.Aulus examined the readings.“The transfer produced an unusual response.”The monitor displayed two records.Baalysia recognized her own immediately.Dense draconic aether.Sovereign fire.A second pattern appeared beside it.Fainter.Foreign.Present within the child but not the mother.Aulus enlarged it.“This anomaly persisted after separation.”Baalysia stared at the display.She did not understand its shape.She understood only the warmth.The quiet coal she had felt beneath a sky she could not see.“What is it?” Aulus asked.“I do not know.”“For once, I believe you.”His attention returned to the child.“Whatever it is, it belongs to her alone.”Baalysia looked through the glass.Her daughter shifted.Warmth moved through the room.Not enough to affect the instruments.Enough for Baalysia to feel.A connection without touch.“Does she have a designation?” an assistant asked.Aulus glanced toward Baalysia.“No name was provided.”“Then assign one.”Baalysia’s voice cut through the room.“No.”Aulus looked at her.“She requires a record.”“Then record that she is my daughter.”“That is not a designation.”“It is the only truth in this room.”Aulus turned back toward the artificial womb.“List her as Secondary Subject Baal.”Baalysia pulled against the restraints.“That is my name.”“Precisely.”“You will not make her my replacement.”Aulus paused.The possibility seemed to interest him.“No,” he said eventually. “Not a replacement.”His gaze lingered upon the strange reading.“Something else.”Baalysia watched him leave.Only when the chamber was quiet did she turn back toward the glass.Her daughter floated beneath artificial light, separated from her by only a few yalms and every cruelty the Empire possessed.Baalysia raised one trembling hand as far as the restraint permitted.The child moved.A faint warmth answered.“I am here,” Baalysia whispered.The words fogged the air before her lips.“I am still here.”
Part IV: Only Months
Project Dalamud continued.The child remained beneath glass.Baalysia remained beneath restraints.The scientists moved her between the laboratory and her cell according to a schedule written by men who never asked whether she could still stand.They drew power from her until her hands shook.They forced the Red Moon’s connection open whenever the signal weakened.They collected the blood her body struggled to replace.Then they returned her to the chamber containing the artificial womb because Aulus had discovered that her presence stabilized the child’s development.He described it as maternal aetheric resonance.Baalysia called it love.Sometimes she sat upon the floor because the strength to reach the bench had left her.Bandages wrapped her arms, ribs, and legs.Her clothing had been reduced to strips of sterile cloth intended to leave wounds accessible.She no longer resembled the queen who had stood above Lapis Manalis in falling snow.The Empire considered that progress.One evening, Aulus entered while Baalysia sat beside the glass.Her daughter had grown.The artificial womb had accelerated nothing yet, but the months had carried her closer to birth.Baalysia lifted one hand toward the child.The gesture was slow.Unsteady.Still deliberate.Aulus reviewed the monitors.“Your output has declined another twelve percent.”Baalysia did not look at him.“You sound disappointed.”“You once produced enough aether to overload every conductor in this facility.”“I am still capable of it.”“No.”Baalysia smiled faintly.Aulus looked at her.The smile did not come from strength.That made it more unsettling.“You believe you have reduced me,” she said.“We have.”“You have reduced my body.”“There is no meaningful distinction once the body fails.”Baalysia turned her eyes toward him.“You should hope that is true.”Aulus closed the report.“The child may reach viability within several more months.”“I will hear her cry.”The statement was not a question.“Your condition makes that unlikely.”“I will hear her.”“You cannot command death through stubbornness.”“No.”Baalysia rested her bandaged hand against the glass.“But I have commanded greater things.”Aulus left without answering.The chamber dimmed.Baalysia remained seated upon the cold floor.Her daughter shifted within the artificial womb.Warmth pulsed.Quiet.Sleeping.Still unnamed.Baalysia closed her eyes and remembered her journal.The letter waiting in Lapis Manalis.The fox-shaped charm that had been removed from her clothing and stored somewhere within the facility.The children asking whether her daughter would have horns, wings, or a tail.Perhaps she would have all three.Perhaps she would have none until the world forced them from her.Baalysia did not know.She knew only that the child had survived the mountain, the transport, the procedures, and the removal from her body.She had survived everything the Empire had done before taking her first breath.Baalysia’s hand slid slightly down the glass.Her strength was failing again.She forced the smile to remain.Not for Aulus.Not for the guards.For the daughter who could not yet open her eyes to see it.“Grow,” Baalysia whispered.The child moved.“I will stay until I hear you.”Only months had passed.Within the laboratory, they had felt like years.Baalysia’s flesh had weakened.Her scales had dulled.Her sovereign fire had been dragged toward the Red Moon until only embers remained within her exhausted body.Yet the Empire had not extinguished her.Behind her smile lived the mountain.Behind her lowered head waited Bahamut.And beyond the glass, beneath artificial light, her unnamed daughter continued to grow.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Chapter III: A Queen’s Sacrifice and the False Queen
The Empire would later claim that the False Queen Project created the girl.That was its first lie.The project created nothing.It stole a daughter from her mother, denied her a childhood, and placed a false history over the truth of her birth.Across the vast ocean, unseen observers would preserve fragments of that truth.But no instrument—Garlean or foreign—would understand what Baalysia gave her daughter before she died.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Part I: The Child Who Cried
A few months had passed since Project Dalamud successfully reestablished its connection to the Bozjan base and the Red Moon.The Empire celebrated the achievement.Ala Mhigo had fallen.Garlean forces pushed farther into Eorzea, confident that each conquered territory brought the continent closer to submission. Within the laboratories assigned to Project Dalamud, scientists spoke eagerly of drawing aether from Dalamud and feeding it into a new generation of magitek weapons.They had discovered that the Red Moon was artificial.They had not learned enough to fear what that meant.Baalysia had warned them.She had told them of the stories passed down by her mother—of Allagan prisons, crimson skies, descending soldiers, and destruction concealed behind promises of power.The scientists had answered her warnings with electricity, restraints, and bloodletting.Now the connection remained open.And Baalysia was dying.She no longer walked between her cell and the laboratory.The guards carried her.Her body had become small beneath layers of bandages and scars. Her once-proud frame had been reduced by repeated aetheric extraction, forced channeling, poor nourishment, and wounds her failing regeneration could no longer repair quickly enough.Still, her eyes remained bright.Still, whenever the scientists carried her into the chamber containing the artificial womb, she searched first for her daughter.The child continued developing beneath glass.Pale liquid surrounded her small body. Tubes carried nourishment through the artificial system. Magitek monitors recorded the rhythm of her heart and the changing density of the aether within her blood.Baalysia had not been permitted to touch her since the transfer.She had not even been allowed to place her palm against the glass without restraints around her wrists.But she had spoken to her.Quietly.When the scientists left.When the lamps dimmed.When exhaustion made every breath painful.She told her daughter about Lapis Manalis.About the snow settling upon the roofs.About the children who asked too many questions during hunting trips.About the hidden caves beneath the village and the paths winding between the mountains.She told her about a fox-shaped charm and a distant land where the morning sun rose over an emperor with spirit-blood in his veins.She did not give the child a name.Names were not meant to be assigned through glass by men holding clipboards.Baalysia wanted her daughter’s first true name to be spoken with love.If she could not live long enough to offer it herself, then she prayed that someone kinder would one day do so.That morning, the laboratory was unusually crowded.Aulus mal Asina stood at the central console while assistants moved between the artificial womb and the surrounding instruments.Baalysia was restrained upon a nearby examination table.She watched them prepare the chamber.“The child is ready,” Aulus said.An assistant checked the final readings.“Development is stable. Respiratory response is within the projected range.”“And the anomaly?”“Dormant.”Aulus looked toward the faint line appearing beneath the child’s primary aetheric pattern.It remained unlike anything detected within Baalysia.The mother’s readings were unmistakably draconic—dense, heated, and immense even after months of depletion.The child carried those qualities as well.But beneath them slept something else.A quiet resonance.Not active flame.Not ordinary aether.A presence resembling a coal beneath cold ash.The scientists had monitored it for months.They understood no more about it now than they had when they first discovered it.Aulus turned toward Baalysia.“Your daughter will be removed from the artificial system today.”Baalysia pulled weakly against her restraints.“Let me hold her.”“No.”Her eyes hardened.“I have waited months to hear her breathe.”“You will hear what the procedure permits.”“She is not a procedure.”Aulus offered no answer.Baalysia’s tail moved faintly against the table.Even that small motion exhausted her.“Let me hold my daughter,” she repeated.“She must be examined immediately.”“She has spent her entire life under examination.”“And that will continue.”Baalysia looked past him toward the child beneath the glass.Her daughter shifted.Warmth answered behind Baalysia’s ribs.That unfamiliar warmth.The one that had first touched her upon the mountain before Garlemald had taken them both.Still quiet.Still sleeping.Still belonging entirely to the child.Aulus turned back to the console.“Begin release.”Locks disengaged around the artificial womb.Pale fluid drained through the lower channels.The support mechanisms retracted one by one.Baalysia stopped breathing.The glass opened.An attendant reached inside and lifted the child carefully from the remaining liquid.For one terrible moment, the laboratory held only the humming of machines.The child did not move.Baalysia’s hands curled against the restraints.“Breathe,” she whispered.An attendant cleared the infant’s mouth.The child’s small body tightened.Then she cried.The sound was thin at first.Frightened.New.Alive.Baalysia’s eyes filled with tears.“There you are,” she whispered.Her daughter cried again.Every monitor surrounding the artificial cradle surged.A pulse of draconic aether burst outward.Three scientists were struck.The first was thrown backward into a console.The second collapsed when heat burned through his gloves.The third struck the floor beside the cradle, stunned by the force of the discharge.Alarms sounded throughout the chamber.Guards rushed through the doors with weapons raised.“Do not fire!” Aulus shouted.The child cried harder.Another wave of pressure moved through the room, weaker than the first but strong enough to send instruments flickering.The dormant anomaly remained unchanged beneath it.The outburst came from draconic instinct.Fear answered by power before the child possessed language, understanding, or any knowledge of what threatened her.The attendants wrapped her quickly.The child was small.Dark-skinned like her mother.Soft white hair clung damply to her head. Her ears carried signs of the distant fox-spirit lineage inherited from her father, while the aether within her body burned with unmistakable draconic density.Baalysia strained against the restraints.“Bring her to me.”No one moved.“Please.”The word cost her more than any demand.Aulus looked toward the damaged equipment.“The child requires immediate analysis.”“She requires her mother.”“She requires stability.”“I am her stability.”Aulus’s gaze moved toward the dying queen.“No,” he said. “You are no longer stable enough to preserve yourself.”The cruelty of the answer did not change Baalysia’s expression.Her eyes remained fixed upon the child.The infant continued crying.Baalysia smiled.Not because she was unafraid.Not because she was unhurt.She smiled because her daughter was alive.The Empire had taken the mountain.It had taken her people, her freedom, her strength, and the months she should have spent carrying her child safely beneath her heart.It had not taken this sound.Her daughter’s first cry belonged to her.
Part II: The Queen’s Last Gift
The guards surrounded the artificial cradle.The attendants spoke in numbers.Heart rate.Aetheric density.Respiratory stability.Regenerative response.No one called the child a daughter.Baalysia did.The word lived inside her more deeply than speech.Her strength had nearly vanished.She could not rise from the examination table.She could not tear through the restraints.She could not cross the few yalms separating her from the child she had protected before the Empire ever knew she existed.But the Garleans had spent months proving that aether could cross distances the body could not.Baalysia closed her eyes.She reached inward.The Empire had emptied much of her.Her blood had filled their instruments.Her power had been dragged toward the Red Moon.Her muscles had withered.Her scales had dulled.Her sovereign fire had been forced down again and again until every attempt to resist threatened the child she carried.But places remained inside her that their machines had never reached.Memories remained.She gathered them carefully.Not every memory.Her daughter did not need to inherit the agony of the laboratory.She did not need every scream, every cut, or every moment Baalysia had been forced to choose endurance over escape.Baalysia chose what she would give.Snow falling over Lapis Manalis.The laughter of children gathered around a hunting sled.The warmth of villagers sharing food during winter.Hidden paths through the mountains.The sound of her mother’s voice.The warning that power without wisdom became calamity.A fox-shaped charm resting against her heart.A distant emperor beneath the rising sun.The certainty that her daughter had been loved before the Empire ever placed a number upon her.Baalysia gathered those memories and folded them into the last untouched part of her aether.Then she reached deeper.Beneath memory.Beneath blood.Beneath the mortal shape Garlemald had weakened.Ancient wings opened within her soul.The greater form had always been part of her.Not armor.Not a summoned creature.Not a power separate from the woman who ruled Lapis Manalis.High Sovereign Bahamut.The sovereign dragon she had refused to become upon the mountain because the transformation would have destroyed the very people she meant to protect.Bahamut stirred within her now.Not in anger.Not in hunger.In recognition.The sovereign presence felt the child across the room.Baalysia’s daughter.Her heir not merely to a throne, but to the strength required to survive what the Empire intended to make of her.Baalysia understood what she was asking.Her daughter was too young to bear the sovereign form.Her body had only just drawn its first breath.So Baalysia did not awaken Bahamut within her.She entrusted it to her.Ancient wings folded.Sovereign fire lowered into silence.The shape of High Sovereign Bahamut passed from mother to daughter, settling beneath the child’s blood where no Garlean instrument could identify it.It would remain dormant.Waiting until the daughter was older.Waiting until her body could survive the transformation.Waiting until terror, desperation, or power finally called it awake.Baalysia gave her daughter her draconic abilities.Her instincts.Her chosen memories.And the sovereign form that had once belonged to the Queen of Lapis Manalis.The quiet Ember already sleeping within the child responded.One small pulse of unfamiliar warmth crossed the chamber.Baalysia felt it.She did not understand it.It had not come from her.She had not created it.It had existed within her daughter before the blessing, listening to something distant beneath a sky Baalysia had never seen.Baalysia did not touch it.Whatever future slept within that Ember belonged to the child alone.The blessing moved.No visible flame crossed the room.No beam of light connected mother and daughter.The transfer followed a path built before the child’s birth—blood, spirit, recognition, and love.Several instruments surged.One monitor shattered.Another lost all readings.The lights dimmed and returned.Aulus looked toward the central console.“What happened?”An assistant moved quickly between the displays.“Aetheric discharge from the maternal subject.”“Destination?”“I cannot determine it.”“Did it reach the child?”“The readings overlapped for less than two seconds. The equipment failed before the pattern stabilized.”Aulus looked toward Baalysia.Her eyes were open again.Across the chamber, the child’s crying softened.The infant turned her head.Her unfocused gaze found the direction of her mother’s table.For one fleeting moment, Baalysia imagined that her daughter could see her.“You survived,” Baalysia whispered.The child made a small sound.Not a word.Not a name.Only life.Baalysia smiled.“My daughter.”Her eyes closed.Her breathing stopped.The monitor beside her flattened into one continuous tone.The child began crying again.Aulus looked from the dead Dragon Queen to the damaged instruments.“Record the time of death.”An assistant obeyed.“And the discharge?”“Terminal aetheric release,” Aulus said.It was the easiest explanation.The cleanest.The most measurable.He did not know that Baalysia had acted deliberately.He did not know that memories now slept behind the child’s eyes.He did not know that High Sovereign Bahamut had passed beyond the Empire’s reach.The Garlean report reduced a mother’s last gift to a malfunction occurring at the time of death.
Part III: What the Mother Did Not Carry
The laboratory remained sealed for several hours.Baalysia’s body lay beneath a sterile covering.Her daughter rested inside an artificial cradle while scientists processed the surviving readings.The child had stopped crying.Her chest rose and fell beneath a thin blanket.Alive.Viable.Already surrounded by people deciding how she would be used.Aulus stood before the comparison display.He opened Baalysia’s complete examination first.Draconic aether.Extreme regenerative capability.High tolerance for forced channeling.Unusual compatibility with the conductors used to reestablish Project Dalamud’s connection.Signs of a greater draconic capacity the researchers had never successfully forced into visible form.The reports from Lapis Manalis had been inconsistent.Some witnesses claimed the Dragon Queen possessed another shape.Others described only a shadow passing over the mountain, pressure in the air, or wings too large to belong to the woman the Garleans had captured.Aulus had dismissed most of it as frightened exaggeration.Baalysia had died without revealing the truth.The Empire knew she was a dragon.It did not know what kind of dragon had slept beneath her mortal shape.Aulus opened the child’s readings.Her draconic potential had increased after the mother’s final discharge.Regenerative activity was stronger.Aetheric density had deepened.Several previously incomplete pathways now appeared stable, though their ultimate function remained impossible to determine.Aulus could prove that something had changed.He could not prove what had passed between them.He categorized it as residual maternal aether.Then he returned to the anomaly.The child had carried it before Baalysia’s death.Before the final discharge.Before her first cry.A faint dormant pattern beneath the primary readings.Aulus compared it again to every examination taken from the Dragon Queen.Nothing.No compatible flame.No foreign resonance.No trace of the dormant Ember.The mother had not carried it.The daughter did.An assistant approached.“Could the anomaly have come from the father?”“The records concerning him are incomplete.”“Fox-spirit aether?”“It does not match the samples available to us.”“Then what is it?”Aulus stared at the quiet line.“I do not know.”The admission irritated him.He began a restricted report.Baalysia’s daughter demonstrates dormant anomaly absent in maternal subject.He paused.The truth remained there for several seconds.Daughter.Not clone.Daughter.Then he continued writing.Postmortem maternal discharge coincided with increased draconic stability. Exact nature of transfer unknown.The distinction mattered scientifically.It would matter far more later.“Prepare two copies,” Aulus ordered.“One for the central archive?”“One for Emperor Solus.”“And Emperor Varis?”Aulus’s gaze remained upon the child.“No.”The False Queen Project did not yet exist.But secrecy had already begun.* * *The inner audience chamber had been emptied before Aulus arrived.No guards stood beside the imperial throne.No ministers waited beneath the banners.Emperor Solus had ordered privacy.Aulus approached with the sealed report beneath one arm.“Your Radiance.”Solus regarded him with mild impatience.“The Dragon Queen is dead?”“Yes.”“The child survived?”“She did.”Aulus placed the report upon the table.“The maternal subject produced a significant aetheric discharge immediately before death. The child’s draconic stability increased afterward, though several instruments failed during the event.”“An inheritance?”“Possibly.”“Deliberate?”“We have no evidence.”Solus opened the report.Aulus continued.“The child also carries an anomaly unrelated to the final discharge. It was present before birth and throughout her development inside the artificial womb.”“Was it found in the mother?”“No.”Solus turned a page.“The full examination of Dragon Queen Baalysia showed no corresponding resonance. No foreign flame. No dormant pattern of this nature.”“But the daughter carries it.”“Yes.”“Dormant?”“Entirely. Even during the defensive outburst following birth, the anomaly remained inactive.”Solus stopped reading.A smile touched his face.Not surprise.Not confusion.Recognition.“The young dragon has an Ember of Two Worlds’ Flames,” he said.Aulus stared at him.The phrase appeared in no Garlean scientific database.No Allagan translation available to his department.No draconic text he had studied.“Two worlds?”Solus’s eyes remained upon the report.“Very interesting to have someone from these lands carry something foreign.”He sounded pleased.“Truly, fate has blessed us with a challenge.”Aulus watched him carefully.“Your Radiance recognizes the anomaly?”“I recognize opportunity.”“That does not explain—”Solus looked up.Aulus stopped.Whatever knowledge lived behind the emperor’s expression would not be shared with him.“The exact nature of the Ember remains unknown,” Aulus said carefully. “If we provoke it without understanding its limits—”“Then you will record the result.”“It could kill the child.”“She possesses the Dragon Queen’s regeneration.”“Her regenerative capability is considerable, but not limitless.”“Then improve it.”Aulus lowered his gaze.“The girl’s body will require years before it can withstand serious training.”Solus closed the report.“Then do not wait years.”Aulus became still.“Your Radiance?”“Accelerate her maturation.”“The process remains experimental.”“So does the child.”Aulus looked toward the sealed pages.“How far?”“Adolescence. Approximately fifteen years of physical development should be sufficient for the first stage.”“The strain may be severe.”“She will heal.”“And if the dormant anomaly destabilizes?”Solus smiled again.“Then we shall learn what it does.”Aulus did not share the emperor’s confidence.But refusal was not an option.“What designation should be entered into the official project files?”Solus leaned back.“The ordinary records will identify her as a clone of Baalysia.”Aulus glanced at the report.“She is not a clone.”“I know.”“The original scientific file identifies her as Baalysia’s daughter.”“That file will remain restricted.”Aulus understood.The clone designation would conceal the pregnancy.It would conceal the artificial womb.It would conceal the child’s relationship to the fallen queen and prevent questions concerning lineage, inheritance, or legitimacy.More importantly, it would shape the girl’s understanding of herself.A manufactured subject possessed no family.No mother.No stolen childhood.No origin beyond the Empire.“For operational stability,” Aulus said slowly.“To encourage controllability,” Solus answered.“To reduce identity variance.”“And prevent attachment to origin.”Aulus looked down at the report.“And the visor?”“Develop one.”“For battlefield guidance?”“For command delivery, sensory restriction, and informational filtration.”Solus rose.“She is to receive only what is necessary for the mission in front of her. No uncontrolled history. No external attachments. No knowledge that invites questions.”“What designation will she be taught?”“Code 000.”A number.Not daughter.Not child.Not heir.Solus walked past Aulus before pausing.“For ordinary address, call her Baal.”Aulus looked up.“The mother’s familiar name?”“A dead queen’s name placed upon an imperial weapon.”Solus smiled.“Let Eorzea believe we took more than her life.”Aulus bowed his head.“And the project?”“The False Queen Project.”Aulus glanced once more at the first line of the restricted report.Baalysia’s daughter.The truth would remain there.Buried beneath classifications, copied files, and the word clone repeated until even the girl herself believed it.“The False Queen Project has begun,” Aulus said.* * *The conversation had taken place behind sealed doors.It had not been entirely unheard.Far beneath the imperial districts, several streets away from the palace, a covert listening station operated behind the false front of a foreign shipping concern.Garlean authorities believed the building stored navigational instruments and preserved food for long-distance merchants.The upper floors did.The lowest did not.A woman sat before an array of modified receivers, one hand resting against a narrow headset.She wore no uniform.Nothing upon her clothing identified her as Fatui.Her orders had never concerned the Dragon Queen directly.The observation cell had been established to monitor Garlean military development across the vast ocean from Teyvat.Project Dalamud had drawn particular attention.The Red Moon produced energy readings unlike ordinary magitek, and Snezhnaya had no intention of ignoring an empire attempting to control a weapon suspended above Eorzea.The Fatui monitored transmission surges.Restricted power-grid fluctuations.Encrypted messages between imperial research divisions.Naval developments that might one day reach the waters surrounding Teyvat.Most intercepted information was incomplete.Fragments.Numbers without explanations.Names hidden beneath project codes.That evening, several words survived Garlean encryption.Daughter.Dormant anomaly.Accelerated maturation.Clone designation.Ember of Two Worlds’ Flames.The operative removed the headset.The last phrase appeared nowhere in the ordinary intelligence references available to her.More troubling was the emperor’s reaction.Solus had not sounded confused.He had spoken as though he recognized the term.She opened a narrow field ledger.PROJECT DALAMUD — SUPPLEMENTAL OBSERVATIONGARLEAN SUBJECT: BAAL / CODE 000Maternal identity: Dragon Queen Baalysia.Restricted communication identifies subject as biological daughter.Future operational records expected to designate subject as clone.Reason appears related to control and suppression of origin.Dormant anomaly detected in child and absent from mother.Emperor Solus identified anomaly as:EMBER OF TWO WORLDS’ FLAMES.Research personnel demonstrated no prior recognition.Source of imperial knowledge unknown.The operative paused.She had also captured the energy surge recorded at the time of Baalysia’s death.The instruments in the Fatui station had registered only a sudden rise followed by several seconds of distortion.She added another entry.Terminal maternal discharge coincided with increased stability in child.Nature of event unknown.Garlean classification incomplete.She did not know that Baalysia had transferred memories.She did not know that a sovereign dragon form now slept within the child.She did not know the name Bahamut.She knew only that something had passed between mother and daughter—and that Garlean instruments had failed to understand it.The operative sealed the copied notes inside a coded packet.At the next safe departure, the report would cross the vast ocean and enter the intelligence archives of the Fatui.No particular officer waited for it.It became one fragment among thousands.A dying queen.A stolen daughter.A dormant anomaly.An emperor who recognized words his own scientists did not understand.Years would pass before further reports gave those fragments a more dangerous shape.
Part IV: Childhood Denied
The accelerated maturation procedure began three days later.The child was returned to an artificial chamber.This one had not been constructed to nurture life safely.It had been designed to hurry it.Aulus called the process controlled developmental compression.The reports described cellular advancement.Aetheric reinforcement.Regenerative adaptation.Skeletal progression.None used the word childhood.The girl’s body grew.Days replaced years.Bone lengthened.Muscle developed.Her white hair grew long enough to float around her within the chamber.Her tail became fuller.Fox-spirit traits sharpened beside the draconic density of her blood.The process injured her constantly.Tissue tore and healed.Bones strained and strengthened.Organs struggled to keep pace with the demands placed upon them.Her inherited regeneration repaired each new injury before it became fatal.The scientists attributed that survival to genetics.They did not know what Baalysia had given her.The dormant Ember remained asleep.It did not flare.It did not answer the machinery.It endured beneath the child’s changing body, closed against every instrument attempting to understand it.The girl dreamed.That was not anticipated.Her eyes moved beneath closed lids while another artificial year passed through her flesh.She dreamed of snow.A mountain village.Children laughing near a hunting sled.A woman with long white hair standing beneath falling flakes.A fox-shaped charm warmed by a hand.A voice she could not fully hear telling her that strength existed to protect life.The memories did not feel borrowed.They felt distant.Like rooms inside a home she had never been permitted to enter.The scientists recorded the dreams as neurological instability.Aulus ordered suppressants.The images faded.They did not disappear.Far beneath them, ancient wings remained folded.The girl did not know they were there.Garlemald did not know they were there.High Sovereign Bahamut slept within her blood, waiting for a body old enough to survive awakening.Two months after accelerated maturation began, the chamber opened.The girl emerged with the body of someone approximately fifteen years old.She had not lived fifteen years.She had lived only months.Her legs failed when her feet touched the floor.Two attendants caught her beneath the arms.Instinct answered before thought.She twisted.The first attendant was thrown into the wall.Her tail swept the second from his feet.A third reached for a shock weapon.The visor around the girl’s eyes activated.Pain struck through her skull.She froze.Her breathing became shallow.Her head lowered.Aulus watched from behind the observation glass.“Conditioning response confirmed.”The girl stood unsteadily.Her body appeared tall and lithe, with proportions closer to an elf than an ordinary Garlean.Her endurance was draconic.Her ears and tail carried the distant inheritance of her fox-spirit father.Her mother’s strength lived beneath unfamiliar flesh.The attendants dressed her.A fitted combat garment designed for unrestricted movement.A divided cloak in dark red and black.Reinforced gloves for weapon grip.High boots built for speed and agility.The specialized visor remained over her eyes.It would deliver commands.Restrict sensory input.Filter information.Show her only what the Empire wanted her to see.Aulus entered the preparation chamber.The girl turned toward him.Her eyes remained hidden.“Designation.”She said nothing.The visor pulsed.Pain tightened her expression.“Designation,” Aulus repeated.Her lips parted.“Code 000.”“Operational name.”“Baal.”“Allegiance.”“Garlemald.”“Authority.”She hesitated.A fragment moved beneath the conditioning.Snow.A woman’s smile.My daughter.The visor activated again.The memory broke apart.“Authority,” Aulus demanded.The girl straightened.“Emperor Solus.”“Good.”He turned toward the guards.“Bring her.”* * *The presentation had been intended to remain private.Varis zos Galvus arrived before it began.His anger entered the chamber ahead of him.Aulus stood beside Code 000 while Varis crossed the floor toward the imperial throne.“I have heard of your False Queen Project,” Varis said. “I had hoped the reports exaggerated its depravity.”Solus remained seated.“You sound disappointed.”“You created a weapon from the remains of a conquered queen.”Aulus said nothing.The official records had already begun using the word clone.Varis looked toward the girl.She stood motionless in the center of the chamber. Her visor concealed her eyes. The dark red-and-brown cloak rested around her narrow body.“She is a clone?”Aulus glanced toward Solus.Solus smiled.“For every purpose that concerns the Empire.”“That is not an answer.”“It is the official one.”Varis’s expression hardened.“You concealed this project from me.”“I preserved it from your lack of imagination.”“We should rely upon Garlean strength—not a counterfeit queen manufactured from foreign blood.”At the word queen, something moved inside Code 000.A snow-covered mountain.Warm hands.A voice saying daughter.The fragment disappeared before she could understand it.Varis pointed toward Aulus.“He should be stripped of his Mal rank and assigned to lesser duties. This project should be terminated.”Aulus stiffened.Solus waved the demand aside.“Aulus has completed the work required of him.”“Then end it.”“No.”Solus rose and approached Code 000.The girl did not move.He circled her once, studying the result of months compressed into adolescent flesh.“She is a very special Garlean.”“She is not Garlean,” Varis said.“She will believe whatever we teach her to believe.”Varis looked at the girl again.For one brief moment, discomfort crossed his face.“She is a child.”Solus laughed softly.“Not anymore.”“She has lived less than a year.”“And already possesses strength soldiers spend decades failing to achieve.”“That does not make her ready.”“No,” Solus agreed. “That is what training is for.”He looked toward Aulus.“You will be reassigned to assist with magitek improvements.”Aulus bowed.“As you command.”Varis’s hands tightened.“You treat the Empire as your private laboratory.”Solus’s smile cooled.“I built the Empire you inherited.”Silence followed.Varis turned sharply and left.The chamber doors closed behind him.Solus faced Code 000.“Salute.”The command reached the visor before his voice had finished carrying through the room.The girl raised one hand.Her motion was exact.Mechanical.Learned without understanding.Solus returned the gesture.“I hope you are ready.”Code 000 remained still.“This training will be unforgiving. You will become a weapon for your Emperor and for Garlemald.”Weapon.The word entered the empty place where a name should have been.Something beneath the conditioning recoiled.Something older remained silent.The girl did not know she had once been held beneath her mother’s heart.She did not know a queen had died listening to her cries.She did not know memories of Lapis Manalis slept beneath the visor’s commands.She did not know High Sovereign Bahamut waited within her blood.Garlemald did not know either.The Empire believed it had measured everything that mattered.Draconic strength.Regeneration.Combat potential.Obedience.It had not measured love.It had not measured inheritance.And it had not measured the unnamed daughter still alive beneath Code 000.The girl lowered her hand.“Yes, Your Radiance.”The False Queen Project entered its next stage.Beneath every lie placed upon her, Baalysia’s daughter endured.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Chapter IV: Empire's Assassin and Finding a Purpose
Garlemald taught Baal how to distinguish three kinds of people.Authority.Target.Obstacle.Authority was obeyed.A target was eliminated according to the designation attached to their name.An obstacle was removed with only as much force as the mission required.The Empire did not teach her mercy.It taught her precision.It did not teach her sorrow, affection, trust, gratitude, joy, or love.It allowed her only two emotions it considered useful.Anger made her obey.Rage made her impossible to stop.Everything else was classified as weakness, instability, or malfunction.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail
Part I: Forged in the Emperor’s Shadow
One month after her training began, Baal entered Emperor Solus’s private chamber and stopped upon the line marked into the floor.Her boots aligned perfectly.Her arms rested at her sides.The visor covering her eyes recognized the emperor and placed his authorization seal across her vision.COMMAND AUTHORITY: ABSOLUTE.Baal raised one hand in salute.“Code 000 reporting for instruction, Your Radiance.”Solus did not immediately acknowledge her.He stood beside a long table, reading a report bearing the insignia of Gaius van Baelsar.The imperial flagship Agrius had fallen at Silvertear Skies.A great wyrm named Midgardsormr had wrapped himself around the vessel and dragged it from the heavens. Garlean command believed the wyrm dead, but hundreds of soldiers had perished with him, and one of the Empire’s greatest symbols of aerial superiority lay broken beneath the lake.Solus placed the report upon the table.“Dragons continue to make themselves inconvenient.”Baal remained silent.The word dragon produced no sense of kinship within her.The visor taught her that dragons were threats, resources, weapons, or biological classifications.She knew that she was one.She did not know what that was meant to feel like.Solus gestured toward an armored figure standing at the far side of the chamber.A servant drew back the covering.Black and crimson waited beneath it.The garments had been entered into the imperial registry as equipment commissioned specifically for Code 000.That was true only in the narrowest sense.Garlean hands had shaped the outer layers.Garlean craftsmen had fitted the armor to Baal’s measurements, reinforced its fastenings, and divided the lower panels so her tail could move without obstruction.They had not created what lived inside it.None had been permitted to examine the crimson threads running beneath the black material.None had been allowed to question why instruments failed whenever samples were taken.Solus had forbidden both.Layered black armor followed the shape of a body built for speed rather than the weight of an ordinary imperial soldier.Some sections resembled overlapping scales.Others narrowed into featherlike edges, severe and sharp enough to make ornament resemble warning.The right shoulder rose into a hooked structure like a dragon’s claw or the beak of a carrion bird.Behind it hung long divided panels.Not wings.Not cloth intended merely to trail beautifully.Dark, torn shapes designed to follow her through battle like shadows considering whether to become blades.Crimson lines ran through the black material.They were faint beneath the chamber lights.Not decoration.More like embers buried beneath scorched metal.Baal looked upon the garments without reaction.“Are these required for today’s instruction?”“They are required for what you will become,” Solus answered.He did not require an instrument to identify the power sleeping beneath the seams.He knew that fire.He had seen its scarlet light beneath a different throne, in an age whose name Garlemald had never learned.It had been ancient even then.Time had changed it.A darkness deeper than ordinary night had changed it more.But neither age nor shadow had erased the memory of the old moon from its flame.Solus had concealed that knowledge from Aulus.He had concealed it from Varis.He had concealed it from every craftsman permitted to touch the outer layers.The official records would describe only old imperial material refined under his direct authority.They would contain no origin.No maker.No explanation.Beside the garments rested a narrow weapons case.“Open it,” Solus said.Baal obeyed.Two daggers lay within.The first appeared almost entirely black, its surface swallowing the light that touched it. Scarlet moved faintly beneath narrow channels carved into the blade, vanishing whenever Baal attempted to focus upon it.The second carried a deeper crimson glow along its edge, restrained beneath dark metal like fire pressed behind a closed door.Small imperial plates beneath them bore their names.ABYSS.FIRE.Baal read each one aloud.“Abyss. Fire.”The names had not come from the Garlean forge.Solus had provided them.“Why are they named?”“Because they are not interchangeable.”“With other weapons?”“With one another.”Baal reached toward Abyss.The moment her fingers closed around the hilt, cold pressure traveled through her hand and along her arm.Her visor attempted to classify the response.No result appeared.She lifted Fire next.Heat answered beneath her skin.Not enough to burn.Enough to recognize.The dormant Ember remained closed.But something within it shifted, as though hearing a distant knock and choosing not to answer.Baal’s expression tightened.“Anomalous response detected.”“I expected one,” Solus said.She turned toward him.“You knew?”“I selected them for you.”That was not an answer.The visor did not permit her to challenge it.Solus approached and rested one finger against the flat of Fire’s blade.The ancient energy did not resist him.It knew nothing of Emperor Solus zos Galvus.But the man beneath the crown remembered it.“Wear them.”Baal secured Abyss and Fire at her waist.The attendants approached with the garments.They dressed her in black armor and crimson seams, fastening an ancient dead dynasty’s power around her body one piece at a time.None of them understood what they touched.Solus did.He watched carefully to see whether the Ember would wake.It did not.His smile held no disappointment.There would be other methods.“Today,” he said, drawing a training sword, “you learn assassination.”“I have been trained in unarmed termination.”“Any brute can kill with strength.”Solus lowered the sword’s point toward her.“A true assassin kills while allowing everyone else to believe the victim died by another hand.”Baal placed one hand upon Abyss and the other upon Fire.“Understood.”“No. You have heard the words.”Solus entered a fighting stance.“Understanding comes after repetition.”He lifted the blade.“Attack me.”Baal moved.Abyss sought the opening beneath his ribs.Solus turned it aside.Fire swept toward the artery in his throat.He caught her wrist.The visor flashed a correction.TOO DIRECT.PREDICTABLE APPROACH.Baal twisted inside his grip, drove her knee toward his abdomen, and reversed Abyss toward the inside of his elbow.Solus released her.“Better.”She did not feel pride.Pride had never been explained to her.She understood only that the absence of punishment meant she was permitted to continue.They trained for hours.Solus taught her to hide a blade beneath cloth.To strike between armored plates.To imitate weakness so an enemy moved closer.To turn one person’s body into a barrier against another.To injure without killing when interrogation or capture was required.To distinguish a termination order from an incapacitation order.“A weapon that kills everything before it,” Solus told her, “is not precise. It is merely uncontrolled.”Baal absorbed the lesson.A name marked for termination meant death.A name marked for capture remained alive regardless of resistance.An unmarked person was irrelevant unless they obstructed the mission.Obstacles were disabled.Targets were killed.No hesitation.No confusion.Only designation.By evening, Baal’s arms trembled.Blood ran beneath one glove where Solus’s blade had opened her palm.Her regeneration was already closing the wound.Solus stood at the far end of the chamber.“Again.”Baal lowered herself into a fighting stance.She did not ask to rest.Rest had never been offered as a choice.She attacked.* * *Months passed.Baal became a shadow moving through Garlean territories.She entered buildings through windows too narrow for armored soldiers.She crossed rooftops without disturbing snow.She learned to control her tail so it never betrayed her position.She learned the exact amount of pressure required to render a person unconscious without damaging the information inside their mind.She learned how easily the same pressure could become death.The assassin garments remained restricted imperial property.They were issued only under direct authorization.Their first confirmed deployment took place in Ala Mhigo.The target was a resistance organizer who had survived three imperial sweeps and begun uniting scattered cells beneath one command.His name appeared across Baal’s visor.TERMINATION AUTHORIZED.No capture requirement.No interrogation request.No surviving witness necessary.Baal entered his quarters before midnight.She watched him speak with two allies.She listened until she understood the fractures between them.Then she killed him using a resistance blade, placed evidence implicating one of the surviving men, and departed without being seen.Abyss and Fire never left their sheaths.The target had been ordinary.He did not require them.By morning, the resistance cell had turned upon itself.Baal returned to Garlemald.Varis yae Galvus received her report in a chamber far smaller than the imperial throne room.“You made it appear that one of his own people murdered him,” he said.“Yes, my lord.”“Efficient.”The word meant approval.Approval meant the visor remained quiet.Baal waited.Varis looked toward another report upon his desk.His expression darkened.“There is troubling news from Bozja.”Baal remained still.“The citadel has been destroyed. Project Dalamud’s primary transmission struck the city with enough force to annihilate the facility, the surrounding districts, and nearly everyone stationed there.”The visor presented the information as strategic loss.Baal saw something else.A woman with long white hair.A voice beneath crimson light.Do not trust the moon.The memory existed for less than a heartbeat.Pain flashed across her vision as the visor suppressed it.Baal’s jaw tightened.Varis noticed.“Is there a malfunction?”“No.”“What did you see?”“Nothing.”The visor accepted the answer.Varis leaned back.“The surviving Project Dalamud personnel require additional security and transport. Report to the research division before returning to Emperor Solus.”“Yes, my lord.”Baal saluted and left.As she walked through the imperial corridor, the memory returned in fragments.White hair.Snow.A warning.She did not know the voice belonged to her mother.She did not know the pressure twisting inside her chest was grief.Grief had never been included in her conditioning.The visor interpreted the disturbance as anger.Anger was permitted.Baal accepted the explanation.* * *Years passed.Her body remained nearly unchanged while her designation spread through restricted Garlean channels.Code 000.The False Queen.The Silver Dragon.Solus trained her personally whenever imperial duties allowed.Varis deployed her where armies were too visible.Commanders used her to remove insurgents, spies, defectors, and officers whose loyalty had become inconvenient.The assassin garments were released from the imperial vault only for the most sensitive operations.Three confirmed deployments survived in the accessible records.The first was the Ala Mhigan resistance leader.The second concerned an imperial defector whose knowledge could not be permitted to cross the border.The third had not yet occurred.Baal became stronger.Sharper.Colder.Not because she possessed no heart.Because no one had taught her that the sensations within it were allowed to become anything other than weapons.When a dying target begged her to spare his family, Baal felt pressure behind her ribs.She called it irritation.When soldiers celebrated after successful campaigns, she felt distant from their laughter.She called it indifference.When she awoke from dreams of a mountain village and discovered tears upon her face, she assumed they were a reaction to pain.The visor agreed.Neurological instability.Residual dream contamination.Nothing more.* * *After Baal’s second restricted deployment, Solus summoned her without scheduling another training exercise.A small leather pouch rested upon the table.It appeared plain beside the assassin garments.Worn dark leather.Reinforced fastening.Two straps designed to secure it against the small of her back beneath the divided armor panels.“Take it,” Solus said.Baal lifted the pouch.Something inside possessed more weight than its size should have allowed.“What is its function?”“A contingency.”“For equipment failure?”“For enemies the equipment cannot overcome.”Baal opened the pouch.A crystal lay inside, wrapped in dark cloth.It was not large.Black facets enclosed a restrained scarlet light, as though a flame had been buried inside stone and taught to wait.The visor attempted to examine it.No classification appeared.Only interference.Baal looked toward Solus.“What is it?”“A final measure.”“How is it activated?”“When every other path has failed, you will remember.”“I do not remember now.”“You are not meant to.”The scarlet light shifted once beneath the black surface.Baal’s hand remained steady.“What will happen when it is used?”Solus regarded the crystal.He knew what had been sealed inside its facets.He knew the age of the fire.He knew what shadow had done to it.What he did not know was what the stone would become in the hands of a daughter carrying the Ember of Two Worlds’ Flames.That uncertainty was why he had given it to her.“I know what was placed inside it,” he said.Baal waited.“That was not my question.”“No.”Solus sounded faintly amused.“It was not.”“What will it do to me?”“That is the question you may one day answer.”The response should have produced fear.Baal did not understand fear outside the language of physiological instability.She wrapped the crystal again and closed the pouch.“State the operational parameter.”“Last resort.”Baal repeated it.“Last resort.”The visor accepted the phrase.She secured the pouch beneath the trailing panels of her assassin garments.From that day forward, Baal carried a locked answer against her back without knowing who had first placed the storm inside it.
Part II: The Dragon Beneath the Red Moon
Project Meteor brought Dalamud closer.The artificial moon grew larger above Eorzea with every passing month.Its crimson light stained battlefields, cities, and imperial encampments.Garlean command called it victory approaching.Baal looked upward and felt rage.She did not know the rage was protecting something older.A memory without a name.A warning without a face.During the Battle of Carteneau, Baal was assigned to an Imperial relay station positioned near the battlefield.The station transmitted commands to mechanisms connected with Dalamud.The assassin garments had been authorized for the deployment.Abyss and Fire rested at her waist.The scarlet-black crystal remained sealed against her back.Baal stood before the central control array while battle raged beyond the reinforced walls.The visor delivered her instructions.MAINTAIN RELAY.IGNORE EXTERNAL CONDITIONS.AWAIT PRIMARY ACTIVATION.Baal placed both hands upon the controls.The relay answered.Not with sound.With pressure.The entire station seemed to pull inward around her.Crimson light raced through the control array.Symbols changed too quickly for the visor to classify.Baal's fingers locked against the surface."Primary activation?"No answer came from command.The floor disappeared.There was no sensation of falling.No corridor of light.No familiar Magitek displacement field.One moment Baal stood inside the Imperial relay station.The next—she did not.Her boots struck metal.Baal staggered.The visor flashed.POSITION ERROR.RELAY CONTACT LOST.LOCATION—The final line broke apart.Baal looked up.Red.Everything was red.Not the crimson illumination of an Imperial warning lamp.Not fire.Not sunset.A vast mechanical interior surrounded her.Curved structures disappeared into darkness above.Black metal crossed black metal in impossible layers.Great ribs of machinery arched around her like the bones of something too large to have ever lived.Between them burned lines of crimson light.Baal turned once.Then again.There was no door.No visible transport platform.No Imperial control console.Only the enormous structure closing around her.A cage.The word surfaced without instruction.Baal did not know where it came from.Her visor rejected it immediately.UNAUTHORIZED ASSOCIATION.DISREGARD.Baal's breathing changed.The structure groaned.Not mechanically.Something deeper.Something so large that the vibration traveled through the soles of her boots and into her bones.Then the aether came.The first surge struck through her entire body.Baal screamed.Her knees hit the metal beneath her.The visor flooded with warnings.AETHERIC EXPOSURE ABOVE OPERATIONAL LIMIT.MAINTAIN POSITION.AWAIT COMMAND.Another surge followed.Not across her skin.Into her.Baal's back arched.Her hands clawed against the floor.The aether did not pass through her as current passed through a conductor.It remained.Filled.Pressed.More followed.Too quickly.Too much.Her veins burned.Her lungs stopped understanding how deeply they were supposed to breathe.Her heart struck once.Twice.Too hard.The visor attempted correction.SUBJECT INSTABILITY DETECTED.SUPPRESS RESPONSE.MAINTAIN FUNCTION.Baal could not answer.Another wave entered her.Something inside her blood moved.Not the Ember.Not the scarlet-black crystal.Something older.Something that had existed before Garlemald placed a visor over her eyes.Before Code 000.Before Baal understood the word daughter.Ancient wings opened inside her.Baal screamed again.The cage answered.Crimson light surged through every structure surrounding her.Her visor filled with corrupted symbols.UNKNOWN DRACONIC RESPONSE.AETHERIC CAPACITY EXCEEDED.SUBJECT CONTROL FAILURE."Stop."The word left her before she understood she had spoken.No one answered.The aether continued."Stop."Another surge.Her hands curled against the metal.The assassin garments ignited along their crimson seams.Not with ordinary flame.The black material tightened around her body as though recognizing something the Imperial systems did not.Abyss and Fire answered from their sheaths.The scarlet-black crystal against her back became hot.Its seal strained.Scarlet light pushed against the black facets.But the crystal did not open.The last resort remained locked.It was not the thing waking.The visor flashed again.SUBJECT CONTROL FAILURE.SUBJECT CONTROL FAILURE.SUBJECT CONTROL FAILURE.Baal could no longer see the cage clearly.Only red.Metal.Pain.Aether entering a body that could not contain any more of it.She remembered thinking that the entire place was a restraint.She remembered the crimson light.She remembered wanting out.Then—nothing.No wings.No battlefield.No fire.No name.No choice.Nothing.* * *Dalamud opened above Carteneau.The false moon broke apart.The world saw fire.It saw colossal wings tear free of the crimson prison.It saw a sovereign body unfold where no such body had existed moments before.Regional communications found a name before Imperial command found an explanation.Bahamut.High Sovereign Bahamut emerged from the ruin of Dalamud carrying a draconic inheritance that had slept inside Baal since her mother's death.The awakening had not been requested.It had not been trained.It had not been chosen.Project Dalamud had forced aether into a body already carrying something ancient enough to answer.And when that inheritance finally answered—Garlemald discovered it had awakened something it did not know how to control.The assassin garments did not burn away.Their black panels dissolved into the transformation like shadows dragged into flame.Abyss and Fire became two narrow lines of scarlet-black light.The scarlet-black crystal remained sealed.The sky burned.Fragments of Dalamud fell across Eorzea.Soldiers vanished beneath fire before they understood what had killed them.There was no Code 000 command channel anymore.No visor directive.No target classification.No voice of Emperor Solus.No operational parameter.Only rage.Rage at chains.Rage at crimson light.Rage at pain without explanation.Rage at the prison in the sky.Rage carried through blood from a mother whose face the daughter had been taught to forget.Bahamut moved through Carteneau beneath the weight of all of it.At first, without direction.Fire crossed battle lines without allegiance.Imperial.Alliance.Neither distinction survived the scale of the calamity.Then—resistance.A source of light rose against her.Louisoix Leveilleur stood before the destruction gathering across Carteneau.Aether gathered around him.Not Imperial.Not command.Not submission.Resistance.Baal did not know his name.Bahamut knew only that something stood against her.The enormous wings stopped their restless movement.Opened fully.Held.Power began gathering around the sovereign's center.Orange-white light.Blue-white discharge.Aether twisting through flame.Energy beyond anything the battlefield instruments could classify consistently.Bahamut turned toward the resistance.The attack focused.Somewhere beyond that confrontation, observers who had never been noticed continued watching.Some would not survive what came next.Bahamut released.The battlefield became light.Louisoix answered.Their powers collided.The impact tore through aether, flesh, memory, and sky.Then everything became silence.* * *Baal awoke on the floor of the ruined relay station.She was in her smaller form again.For several seconds, she did not move.She did not know where she was.Then the alarms reached her.Broken.Intermittent.Familiar.Baal opened her eyes.Blood covered one hand.Her garments had returned with her, scorched and torn in places but intact.The crimson seams remained warm.Abyss and Fire rested at her waist.The scarlet-black crystal remained sealed against her back.One horn was cracked near its base.Pain moved through nearly every part of her body.A deeper weakness sat beneath it.Empty.Drained.The visor hung damaged across her eyes.Its casing had split from heat.One side flickered.The other produced only fractured symbols.Baal pushed herself upright.The room tilted.She stopped.Waited.The visor attempted to identify her location.RELAY—ERROR.PROJECT—ERROR.CODE 000.AWAIT—Static consumed the remainder.Baal pressed one hand against the side of the damaged device.Her last clear memory was not the battlefield.It was not Bahamut.It was not the destruction outside.The relay had activated.Then—a cage.Metal surrounding her.Crimson light.Aether being forced into her body.Pain.The visor declaring that control had failed.After that—nothing.The next thing she remembered was waking here.Baal looked toward the ruined control array."Requesting command clarification."Only static answered.She tried again."Requesting operational status."Static.No memory returned.No enormous wings.No fire crossing Carteneau.No man standing against her surrounded by light.No knowledge of how she had left the cage.No knowledge of how she had returned to the relay.Only an absence where hours should have been.Garlean soldiers found her minutes later.They saw a wounded Imperial asset inside a ruined relay station.They saw catastrophic damage to her visor.They saw severe aetheric depletion.Thermal injury.A cracked horn.A subject who could not explain where she had been.They did not see High Sovereign Bahamut.They had no image of a transformation.The surviving relay telemetry was worse.Code 000 entered the station.Primary activation began.Energy levels exceeded expected tolerances.Then her established signature disappeared.No recognized Magitek transport sequence was recorded.No conventional teleportation vector was detected.The system simply lost her.Separate battlefield sensors recorded Bahamut appearing almost immediately afterward.Then, after Bahamut vanished—Code 000's injured signature returned near the ruined relay.Garlean analysts possessed two impossible events.They failed to unite them.Baal herself could not help.She remembered the relay.The cage.The forced aether.Then waking.Nothing between.Whether the visor had erased the missing interval, whether the aetheric trauma had destroyed it, or whether the sovereign transformation itself had made human memory impossible—no one could determine.She was carried from the station and transported to Castrum Centri.* * *The covert Fatui observation cell recorded more than Garlemald realized.Its instruments registered Code 000 entering the Imperial relay field.They recorded primary activation.They recorded a sudden instability in the subject's established signature.Then—absence.No conventional departure vector.No recognized teleportation event.No secondary human-scale signal emerging from the relay station.Code 000 simply ceased to register.Almost immediately afterward, an energy source appeared above Carteneau so vast that several Fatui receivers overloaded before producing usable measurements.Eorzean battlefield communications supplied the designation.BAHAMUT.The entity remained detectable throughout the interval in which Code 000 was absent.No Fatui instrument recorded both simultaneously.When Bahamut's signal finally disappeared, Code 000's injured signature returned near the ruined relay.An analyst began comparing the readings.The sequence was difficult to ignore.CODE 000 PRESENT.RELAY ACTIVATION.CODE 000 SIGNATURE LOST.BAHAMUT MANIFESTATION.BAHAMUT SIGNAL LOST.CODE 000 SIGNATURE RECOVERED.But sequence was not mechanism.The analyst did not know about the cage.Did not know that Baal remembered being somewhere inside Dalamud.Did not know that aether had been forced directly into her body.Did not know that the final thing the visor had shown her before memory vanished was:SUBJECT CONTROL FAILURE.The preliminary conclusion was filed beneath a separate classification.PROJECT DALAMUDCARTENEAU MANIFESTATIONENTITY DESIGNATION: BAHAMUTCode 000's personnel records remained elsewhere.FALSE QUEEN PROJECTSUBJECT BAALCODE 000The analyst requested that the files be joined.The personnel packet continued through the proper intelligence network.The Carteneau analysis did not.Somewhere between the overseas observation cell, a maritime relay, and the archives across the vast ocean, the analytical annex was misrouted.One file concerned a Garlean assassin.The other concerned an apparent battlefield entity.No archivist realized they described the same subject.The final conclusion never reached the primary dossier.
Part III: The Fall of the Waking Sands
Baal remained at Castrum Centri while technicians repaired the basic functions of her visor.The device could still identify authority.It could still deliver pain.It could still filter unauthorized information.It could no longer suppress every fragment of memory.Snow sometimes appeared between commands.A dying woman’s smile surfaced when Baal closed her eyes.The word daughter moved through her dreams without context.Each time, Baal awoke angry.Anger was the only response she understood.The assassin garments were removed during treatment.Technicians requested permission to dismantle the damaged sections.The request was denied before it reached Gaius.An imperial directive bearing Solus’s seal arrived instead.NO DISASSEMBLY.NO MATERIAL SAMPLING.NO DUPLICATION ATTEMPT.RETURN ALL EQUIPMENT TO CODE 000 UPON FIELD CLEARANCE.The technicians obeyed.They did not know why the emperor cared about old fabric and two personal blades.They knew better than to ask.The scarlet-black crystal was never removed from its pouch.One technician attempted to open the fastening.The visor beside Baal’s bed activated without command.Her hand closed around his wrist hard enough to fracture bone.“Last resort,” she said.The technician withdrew.The incident was classified as conditioned equipment protection.No one attempted it again.* * *When the visor was judged operational enough for field deployment, Baal was brought before Gaius van Baelsar and Livia sas Junius.She wore the assassin garments.Abyss and Fire rested at her waist.The scarlet-black crystal was secured against her back.This would become the third confirmed restricted deployment listed in the surviving records.Baal stopped before Gaius and Livia and saluted.“Lord Gaius. Code 000 reporting. State your orders.”Livia looked her over.Her gaze paused upon the repaired visor and the faint damage still visible along one horn.“Welcome to the land of savages, Silver Dragon.”Baal gave no response.Livia smiled.“You will join me in hunting the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Their resistance ends today.”Gaius stepped toward the tactical display.“Our informants have located their headquarters at Vesper Bay. The Waking Sands.”The map appeared across Baal’s visor.Entrances.Escape routes.Known occupants.Combat capabilities.A list of names followed.Minfilia Warde.Urianger Augurelt.Y’shtola Rhul.Papalymo Totolymo.Yda Hext.Tataru Taru.Each designation carried the same instruction.CAPTURE.NO TERMINATION AUTHORIZATION.Baal reviewed the list.“No lethal targets designated.”“Correct,” Gaius said. “Their knowledge is more valuable than their corpses.”“Resistance parameters?”“Incapacitate anyone who interferes with the capture.”Livia rested one hand upon her gun.“If I designate an individual for termination during the operation, you will act.”“Yes.”No hesitation.No concern.Had any name upon the list carried a termination designation, Baal would have killed that person without a second glance.They did not.Therefore she would not.Gaius looked toward the tactical projection.“You and Livia will lead the assault. Capture the Scions’ leadership. Secure all useful personnel. Prevent escape.”Baal saluted.“Yes, my lord.”* * *The assault began without warning.Garlean soldiers entered Vesper Bay from several directions.Baal moved ahead of them.The long black panels of her garments followed behind her.Crimson lines shifted beneath the armor with each movement.Abyss and Fire remained sheathed.The capture order did not authorize their use.The first defender drew a blade and charged.No name appeared across Baal’s visor.No termination designation.Obstacle.Baal stepped inside the attack, struck the defender’s wrist hard enough to force the weapon from his hand, and drove the heel of her palm beneath his jaw.He collapsed unconscious.Alive.Another adventurer attempted to cast.Baal crossed the distance before the spell formed.She struck the focus from his hand, swept his legs from beneath him, and pressed one boot against his chest until an imperial soldier secured him.Alive.A lancer attempted to block the corridor.Baal caught the shaft of his weapon, broke it between her hands, and struck him once behind the ear.Alive.The Waking Sands became noise.Shouting.Steel.Magitek fire.Baal moved through it with the precision Solus had carved into her.She did not spare anyone from compassion.She did not understand compassion.She obeyed the mission parameters.Capture.Incapacitate.Do not terminate.Elsewhere in the complex, Garlean soldiers were less restrained.Weapons discharged.People fell.Those deaths belonged to the soldiers and commanders who caused them.None belonged to Baal.The daggers remained at her waist.Had one designation changed from CAPTURE to TERMINATE, either blade would have been in her hand before the command finished appearing.No designation changed.No one Baal struck died.Urianger began casting near the rear of the chamber.TARGET CONFIRMED.CAPTURE ALIVE.Baal seized him by the throat and lifted him from the floor before the spell could be completed.Tataru cried out and attempted to reach him.TARGET CONFIRMED.CAPTURE ALIVE.Baal caught the smaller woman with her other arm and raised her as leverage.The surviving Scions stopped moving.Y’shtola stood among them.Her ears flattened against her hair.Aether gathered around one hand, but she did not release the spell.Her turquoise eyes fixed upon Baal.Not upon the visor.Not upon the weapons.Upon the woman beneath them.Baal registered the stare.TARGET RESPONSE UNCLEAR.HOSTILE CAPABILITY: HIGH.TERMINATION AUTHORIZATION: ABSENT.Y’shtola’s expression contained anger.Baal understood anger.It also contained something else.Horror.Concern.Pain that did not come from physical injury.Baal possessed no names for those things.Minfilia stepped forward with her hands raised.“I will surrender if no one else is harmed.”Livia smiled.Baal looked toward her commanding officer.“Accept,” Livia ordered.Baal lowered Tataru toward Urianger.She directed the Lalafell’s weight into his arms, forcing them both toward the floor without inflicting lethal injury.Baal released Urianger only after imperial restraints had been secured around his wrists.Garlean soldiers closed around the surviving Scions.Y’shtola continued watching her.Baal looked away first.She did not know why the attention disturbed her.The visor classified the response as anger.Baal accepted the explanation.* * *The prisoners were gathered for transport.Minfilia passed close to Baal as Livia directed the remaining soldiers.Their shoulders touched.The Echo opened.Minfilia saw an artificial womb.She heard a newborn child crying.She saw a dying queen reaching across a laboratory without moving.She felt memories pass through blood.Snow.A village.A mother’s love.Then the vision fractured.An infant inside an acceleration chamber.A visor closing over frightened eyes.Pain attached to commands.A child taught that she had been manufactured rather than born.A young woman dressed in black and crimson.Two daggers at her waist.A scarlet-black crystal carried against her back.Years of killings carried out without understanding remorse.Rage used whenever obedience began to fail.Minfilia gasped.The Echo did not remain contained within her.It moved through Baal’s damaged visor and struck the memories buried beneath its conditioning.Baal staggered.The Waking Sands disappeared beneath falling snow.A woman stood before her.White hair.Bandages.A smile.My daughter.Baal clutched her head.“No.”The visor flashed.UNAUTHORIZED MEMORY.SUPPRESS.SUPPRESS.SUPPRESS.The woman remained.Baal screamed.Two Garlean soldiers reached for her.Their hands closed around her arms.Draconic power erupted.The first soldier was thrown backward into a stone pillar.The second was lifted from his feet and hurled across the chamber.Armor cracked.Weapons scattered.Both men collapsed.Both remained alive.The first gasped through broken ribs.The second attempted weakly to move one arm before losing consciousness.The visor sparked.Its command display disappeared.Abyss and Fire answered from their sheaths.Scarlet-black light crawled briefly along their edges.Baal did not draw them.The soldiers were not targets.The crystal against her back warmed.The seal remained closed.The condition had not been met.Baal fell to her knees.She felt too many things at once.Pain.Rage.Something crushing and hollow.Something reaching toward the woman in the memory.Something recoiling from the bodies and blood around her.She knew only the first two.Everything else became terror without a name.“Make it stop,” she gasped.Y’shtola took one step toward her.A Garlean weapon rose between them.Baal looked up.Turquoise eyes.No command.No visor symbol.No imperial authorization.Only the same expression Y’shtola had worn before.Concern.Baal did not understand the word.Darkness closed over her.
Part IV: Freedom Through Fracture
Baal awoke restrained upright against a metal frame inside a secured medical chamber at Castrum Centri.Her wrists were locked above waist level.Additional restraints held her legs and tail.The assassin garments had been removed and sealed inside an equipment cabinet nearby.Abyss and Fire rested within a locked weapons case.The scarlet-black crystal remained inside its pouch beneath a separate containment cover.The damaged visor still concealed Baal’s eyes, though its internal display flickered without forming coherent commands.Technicians moved between open panels and exposed wires.Every attempt to restart the device sent pain through her skull.Livia stood nearby.“I told Gaius we should never have brought a broken clone of a dead Dragon Queen.”Baal lifted her head.The word clone reached her through static.“The False Queen Project may have succeeded once,” Livia continued, “but you were always a doll. A thing created for our amusement and pointed toward our enemies.”Baal’s hands tightened against the restraints.“You may have been made in Garlemald,” Livia said, “but you were never truly Garlean.”The words produced pressure inside Baal’s chest.Not anger at first.Something smaller.Sharper.She did not know it was hurt.The visor could no longer rename it for her.Livia backhanded her.Pain gave Baal something familiar.Anger followed.A small, defiant smirk curved her lips.Livia’s expression darkened.“Still pretending you possess pride?”Baal did not know what pride was.She knew Livia wanted her to lower her eyes.So she did not.“Once I—”Livia struck her with the butt of her gun.Darkness claimed her again.* * *The Scions’ escape from imperial custody did not follow the route Garlemald anticipated.Minfilia remembered what she had seen through the Echo.The daughter inside the artificial womb.The dying queen.The visor.The woman trapped behind it.When an opportunity arose to flee Castrum Centri, Minfilia refused to leave Baal behind.Yda objected first.“She helped Livia take us.”“She was commanded,” Minfilia replied.“So were the soldiers who killed our people.”“I saw inside her.”Yda’s anger faltered.“She has never been allowed to choose.”Papalymo remained guarded.“And when she awakens without the visor controlling her?”“Then we give her the choice Garlemald denied her.”Y’shtola had remained silent through most of the argument.She remembered Baal’s eyes turning toward her during the raid.The brief hesitation beneath the visor.The way the black-armored assassin had possessed enough strength to kill every person who crossed her path and had not done so.Y’shtola knew that restraint had not been mercy.Baal had simply obeyed the capture order.Had the designation changed, the result would have changed with it.That truth frightened her.It also revealed the deeper cruelty.Garlemald had not removed Baal’s ability to choose between mercy and death.It had prevented that choice from ever belonging to her.Y’shtola remembered Baal screaming beneath the broken visor.She remembered the terror in a woman who understood anger but possessed no language for anything beneath it.And she remembered what she herself had felt when their eyes met.Curiosity first.Then concern.Then a protectiveness she could not justify through reason alone.Beneath those feelings rested something quieter.More personal.An attraction Y’shtola had no intention of naming aloud.The feeling belonged to her.Baal could not be asked to understand it.Baal did not yet understand kindness.Y’shtola would not burden a newly freed prisoner with another person’s longing.But neither would she permit fear to leave Baal chained.“We cannot condemn her for obeying the only structure she has ever known,” Y’shtola said at last.Yda looked toward her.“She could kill us.”“Yes.”Y’shtola’s voice remained steady.“But leaving her chained because she might choose wrongly would merely continue the Empire’s work for them.”Yda studied her for several seconds.She saw more in Y’shtola’s face than Y’shtola had intended to reveal.She did not name it.The argument ended.* * *Baal awoke to quieter voices.The restraints around her wrists had been opened.Yda stood near the doorway, watching the corridor.Papalymo worked near the control panel.Minfilia remained beside the metal frame.Y’shtola stood closest.Baal recognized her immediately.Not through the visor.The visor was dark.She recognized the turquoise eyes.“Do not move too quickly,” Minfilia said. “Your body has endured another severe aetheric disruption.”Baal looked from Minfilia to Y’shtola.“Command authority?”“There is none,” Minfilia answered.Baal waited.The words made no sense.“State command authority.”“No one here possesses authority over you.”The pressure inside Baal’s chest returned.She looked toward Y’shtola.The Miqo’te’s expression was controlled, but not empty.Y’shtola stood close enough to intervene if Baal attacked.She also stood close enough to catch her if her legs failed.Baal did not understand why someone would choose both positions.Minfilia reached toward the remaining restraint.“I saw what happened to you.”Baal’s body tensed.“I saw your mother.”The room became still.“Mother,” Baal repeated.The word existed in the visor records only as a biological classification.Source progenitor.Dragon Queen Baalysia.Deceased.Minfilia’s expression softened.“You were her daughter.”Baal turned her face away.“No. I am a clone.”“That is what they taught you.”“It is in the records.”“Not all of them.”Baal’s breathing became uneven.Anger rose because anger always rose when the world stopped making sense.“I was created.”“You were born,” Minfilia said.Baal looked at her again.“And you were loved.”The final word meant nothing.“I do not know that.”“Loved?”Baal remained silent.Minfilia did not force an answer.Yda opened the restraint around Baal’s legs.Baal attempted to step away from the frame.Her knees immediately weakened.Y’shtola moved instinctively and caught her beneath one arm.Baal froze.Touch had always meant restraint.Examination.Punishment.Command.Y’shtola’s hand did none of those things.It simply supported her.Baal looked down at it.Y’shtola immediately loosened her hold.“I can release you.”Baal did not understand why she had been given the option.After a moment, she answered honestly.“I will fall.”“Then I shall help you until you do not.”There was warmth in Y’shtola’s voice.Baal heard it.She did not know what it meant.The sensation caused by Y’shtola’s nearness was not anger.It was not rage.Therefore Baal possessed no category for it.She did not understand safety.She did not understand affection.She did not understand gratitude.She knew only that Y’shtola had asked before releasing her.No one had ever done that.Y’shtola watched Baal struggle to remain upright and felt the same quiet pull tighten beneath her ribs.Without the visor’s glow concealing her face, Baal appeared younger than her body suggested.Confused.Wounded.Attempting to stand as though accepting support were another test she might fail.Y’shtola wanted to move closer.She did not.She wanted to reassure Baal that no one in the room would harm her.She could not promise what Baal did not yet know how to believe.She kept her hand steady.Her voice calm.Nothing more.The feelings remained Y’shtola’s.The choice had to remain Baal’s.Baal looked toward Minfilia.“Why would you free me?”“Because you were a prisoner.”“I helped capture you.”“Yes.”“Your people died.”“Yes.”“I did not kill them.”“No,” Minfilia said. “You did not.”“I did not save them either.”The admission was clinical.It was also the first judgment Baal had formed without a designation telling her what conclusion to reach.“You should want me dead,” she said.Yda glanced toward Minfilia.Y’shtola answered first.“What we feel is not so simple.”Baal looked at her.“I know anger.”Y’shtola remained quiet.“I know rage,” Baal continued. “I know when I am in pain. I know when an order has been given. I know when I have failed one.”Her fingers curled against Y’shtola’s sleeve.The gesture was not affection.It was balance.“What else is there?”The question silenced the room.Minfilia approached slowly.“Many things.”“Name them.”“Not all at once.”Baal’s expression sharpened.“That is not an answer.”“No,” Y’shtola said. “It is an honest limitation.”Baal studied her.“You need not understand every feeling before you are permitted to experience it,” Y’shtola continued.“Feelings cause instability.”“That is what Garlemald taught you.”“They cause hesitation.”“Sometimes.”“Hesitation causes failure.”“Sometimes hesitation prevents cruelty.”Baal looked away.Her mind returned to Tataru held in one arm.Urianger in the other.Minfilia surrendering.The injured defenders upon the floor.Pressure gathered in her chest.Not anger.Not yet.“What is this?” she asked.Minfilia’s expression became pained.“It may be remorse.”Baal’s fingers tightened.“I followed the capture parameters.”“Yes.”“I did not kill them.”“No.”“They were not targets.”The clinical explanation made Yda’s expression tighten.Baal noticed.“If they had been marked for termination, I would have killed them.”There was no pride in the statement.No threat.Only fact.Y’shtola did not withdraw her hand.Baal looked toward her.“Does that make you angry?”“Yes,” Y’shtola answered.Baal’s ears lowered.Y’shtola continued before she could pull away.“But not only with you.”“Then with whom?”“With those who decided the choice should never be yours.”The answer stopped her.Y’shtola’s gaze remained steady.“You were taught to ask whether a name carried a killing designation. No one taught you to ask whether killing that person was right.”“Right.”“Yes.”“How do I know?”“You learn.”“From an authority?”“From yourself.”Baal looked disturbed by the answer.“No authority?”“No,” Minfilia said.“No punishment if I refuse?”“No.”“Then how do I know the correct answer?”“You may not,” Y’shtola said.Baal’s ears lowered farther.Y’shtola softened her voice.“Choice is not obedience performed with different words. It is deciding which action you are willing to carry afterward.”Baal did not fully understand.But she listened.A sound came from the equipment cabinet.Papalymo had broken its seal.Inside lay the assassin garments.Black.Crimson.Waiting.Abyss and Fire remained in their weapons case.The scarlet-black crystal rested within its pouch.Baal’s posture changed.Not toward attack.Toward instruction.“Assigned equipment,” she said.Yda looked at Minfilia.“Do we leave it?”Baal stared at the garments.The crimson seams were dark.Still.The armor looked like a role waiting for her to climb back inside.Y’shtola watched the change in her breathing.“Do you want them?” she asked.Baal turned toward her.“They are assigned to me.”“That was not my question.”Baal looked back at the cabinet.“I do not know.”Y’shtola nodded.“Then you need not decide forever.”Baal frowned.“You may take them because leaving them here feels unsafe,” Y’shtola explained. “That does not mean you must wear them. It does not mean they command you.”Baal considered the distinction.“And the blades?”“The same.”“The crystal is a last resort.”“What does it do?” Papalymo asked.“I do not know.”Yda stared at her.“You carry something called a last resort without knowing what happens when you use it?”“I was told I would remember.”“Do you?”“No.”Y’shtola looked toward the small pouch.Unlike the garments, it produced no visible response.Still, she disliked the pressure that seemed to gather around it.“Then it remains closed,” she said.Baal looked at her.“That is an order?”“No.”“What is it?”“A recommendation.”Baal considered another unfamiliar word.“Can I refuse?”“Yes.”“And you would not punish me?”“No.”Baal looked at the pouch again.“Then it remains closed.”Y’shtola felt something warm and painful move through her chest.Baal had made a choice.A small one.Perhaps the first.Yda collected the garments.Papalymo secured the weapons case.Minfilia took the crystal pouch without opening it.Nothing was left for Garlemald to reclaim.* * *Minfilia stepped closer.“Gaius intends to unleash the Ultima Weapon upon Eorzea. We mean to stop him.”Baal waited for the command that did not come.Minfilia held her gaze.“Will you help us?”The visor remained dark.No target markers appeared.No pain followed her silence.Baal looked at Yda.At Papalymo.At Minfilia.Then at Y’shtola.Y’shtola’s feelings remained carefully restrained behind discipline.Baal saw only that the Miqo’te had not released her while she still needed support.She did not know that this was care.She did not know that Y’shtola’s interest had already become personal.She knew only that Y’shtola had offered a hand without using it as a chain.“My heart…” Baal began.She stopped.She did not know whether she possessed one in any sense beyond anatomy.“There is something here.”Her free hand touched the center of her chest.“It is not anger.”“No,” Y’shtola said softly.“It is not rage.”“No.”“What is it?”Y’shtola could have offered many answers.Conscience.Hope.The beginning of trust.She did not know which was true.She would not name the feeling for Baal merely because Baal had no language with which to challenge her.“That should be yours to discover.”Baal stared at her.Y’shtola’s voice softened.“Let the next act be your choice.”For several breaths, Baal said nothing.Then she looked toward Minfilia.“I will help stop Gaius.”Yda’s shoulders loosened.Minfilia smiled.Relief moved through Y’shtola so strongly that she nearly showed it.Baal noticed the change in her face.“Did I answer correctly?”Y’shtola’s chest ached.“There was no correct answer.”“Then why do you look different?”“Because I am glad you chose to come with us.”“Glad.”“Yes.”“What does that feel like?”The question caught Y’shtola unprepared.A faint warmth rose beneath her composure.She could have described it.She could have told Baal that gladness felt like pressure releasing from the lungs or warmth returning to cold hands.But Baal watched her with the complete attention of someone taught that every answer might become an instruction.Y’shtola would not give her an emotion to imitate.“You will know when it belongs to you,” she said.Baal considered that.Then nodded once.Y’shtola helped her take the first step away from the restraint frame.Baal’s legs trembled.She did not pull away.It was not romance.Not for Baal.It was not even trust, because Baal did not know the word well enough to offer it.It was simply the first step she had taken without an imperial command telling her where to place her foot.Y’shtola remained beside her.The feelings were Y’shtola’s.The choice was Baal’s.For now, that was enough.
Part V: The Battle She Chose
Baal entered Castrum Meridianum wearing everything Garlemald had made for her.The black-and-crimson assassin garments followed the lines of her body with severe precision.Scale-like armor protected her ribs and shoulders. Dark, feathered panels divided behind her, trailing through the smoke like the remains of wings that had forgotten how to open.Abyss rested at her left hip.Fire rested at her right.The scarlet-black crystal remained secured inside its reinforced pouch against the small of her back.And the visor still covered her eyes.Its command pathways had been damaged at the Waking Sands.Its filters no longer fully controlled what she saw.Its punishments no longer guaranteed obedience.But the targeting lenses remained functional.Distances appeared across the dark glass.Structural weaknesses.Heat signatures.Estimated trajectories.The machinery could still describe the battlefield.It simply could no longer tell her with certainty what she was supposed to do upon it.Castrum Meridianum rose ahead of them beneath a blackened sky.Searchlights crossed over reinforced walls while magitek engines growled behind layers of iron. Ceruleum burned throughout the installation, staining the air blue and filling every breath with bitter smoke.The Alliance assault had already begun.Cannons answered from the outer defenses.Explosions rolled across the field.Baal stood behind a collapsed barricade beside the Scions.Minfilia watched the fighting ahead.Yda adjusted her grip.Papalymo studied the enemy defenses.Y’shtola stood nearest to Baal.No command insignia appeared around her.No authority marker.No designation.Only a woman beneath smoke and blue fire.Baal looked toward Minfilia.“State the termination parameters.”Minfilia turned.“There are none.”Baal waited for the correction.None came.“What personnel are designated for elimination?”“No one.”“That is inconsistent with the mission.”“Our purpose is to disable the castrum’s defenses and prevent the Empire from using this stronghold against the Alliance.”“That will require combat.”“Yes.”“Combat requires targets.”Yda glanced toward Papalymo.Papalymo’s expression remained guarded.Y’shtola stepped closer.“Then begin with what we are protecting.”Baal turned her head.Y’shtola gestured toward the Alliance soldiers advancing through the smoke.“The people beyond this barricade.”Then toward the Scions.“Those beside you.”Her turquoise eyes settled upon Baal.“And yourself.”The final answer produced an unfamiliar pressure beneath Baal’s ribs.“My survival is relevant only while I remain useful to the objective.”“That is how Garlemald measured you.”“It is efficient.”“Efficiency is not the same as worth.”Baal did not understand the distinction.The first outer cannon began turning toward the advancing Alliance line.Its barrel glowed.The visor calculated the number of soldiers likely to die.Baal moved.She crossed the open ground before the cannon discharged.Fire entered her right hand.The dagger awakened with a restrained scarlet gleam.Baal leapt onto the reinforced platform, caught the cannon housing with her free hand, and drove Fire through the exposed ceruleum conduit.The energy inside the weapon answered.Not ordinary flame.Not magitek.Something old moved through the blade and entered the machine.Metal screamed.The cannon ruptured from within.Baal landed beyond the blast.Three imperial soldiers turned toward her.The visor searched for their identities.No names appeared.No termination orders.Only weapons raised in her direction.Obstacle.The first soldier fired.Baal moved aside.She struck his wrist with the flat of Fire and shattered the gun mechanism. Her elbow met the side of his helmet.He fell unconscious.The second charged with a sword.Abyss entered Baal’s left hand.She caught the imperial blade between both daggers, twisted, and tore it away.The opening appeared across her vision.TERMINATION PATH AVAILABLE.Fire could cross his throat before his next breath.Baal stopped.The soldier saw the hesitation and reached for a secondary weapon.Baal struck him beneath the breastplate and drove him into the wall hard enough to empty his lungs.He collapsed.Alive.The third soldier retreated toward the inner gate.Baal allowed him to run.No command had authorized retreat.No order had prohibited pursuit.The decision existed only because she had made it.That frightened her more than the cannon fire.Yda reached the platform moments later.“You let him go.”“Yes.”“Why?”Baal looked toward the fleeing soldier.“He no longer obstructed the objective.”Yda gave a faint smile.“That seems reason enough.”Baal did not understand the smile.She looked toward Y’shtola.The Miqo’te had witnessed the exchange from below.Something in Y’shtola’s expression eased.Warmth moved beneath Baal’s ribs.Not anger.Not rage.She turned away before the feeling could distract her.They entered the castrum through the damaged outer gate.Baal moved ahead of them.She recognized Garlean architecture.She knew where hidden firing ports would be placed.She knew which corridors were intended to funnel intruders toward overlapping fields of fire.She knew where secondary detachments waited after the first defensive line appeared to retreat.Garlemald had trained her to enter enemy strongholds.It had never imagined that she would use those lessons to open one from within.A magitek vanguard blocked the next passage.Its weapon arm lowered.Y’shtola began casting.Baal moved before the spell completed.She crossed beneath the first discharge, planted one foot against the machine’s leg, and climbed the armored frame.Abyss struck through the joint beneath its weapon mount.Fire followed into the exposed mechanism.Scarlet-black energy passed between the two blades.The vanguard shuddered.Its arm fell away.The machine twisted violently, attempting to throw her.The visor identified the pilot compartment.A single thrust through the forward plating would kill the operator.It would also disable the machine immediately.Baal raised Fire.Only you can decide whether death is necessary.Y’shtola’s earlier words moved through her thoughts.The machine turned toward the Scions.Baal changed her angle.Abyss entered the control housing.Fire severed the aetheric feed.The vanguard collapsed.The pilot compartment remained intact.Baal dropped to the ground as smoke poured from the broken chassis.Papalymo stared at the machine.“You disabled it without breaching the cockpit.”“Yes.”“That was significantly more difficult.”“Yes.”“Why?”Baal looked toward Y’shtola.Relief passed briefly through the Miqo’te’s eyes.Baal touched the center of her chest.The warmth had returned.“I do not know.”Papalymo opened his mouth.Yda placed one hand against his shoulder.He closed it again.The central defenses activated before the Scions reached the inner courtyard.Warning lights filled the passage.An iron gate fell behind them.Turrets unfolded from the walls.Baal’s visor filled with trajectories.Too many.Y’shtola raised a barrier as the first volley struck.Aether rippled across the corridor.The force drove her backward.The barrier fractured.A second volley began charging.The efficient path was forward.The objective lay beyond the turrets.Continuing would require leaving the others behind the collapsing shield.Baal’s body had already begun moving toward the opening.Then Y’shtola gasped.The sound contained no command.No designation.Only pain.Baal turned.She placed herself between Y’shtola and the turrets.Abyss and Fire crossed before her.The next volley struck.Baal cut through the first bolt.Then the second.The third detonated against her shoulder.Pain tore through her arm.The assassin garments absorbed part of the impact, crimson seams burning beneath the black material.Baal remained standing.Y’shtola’s barrier strengthened behind her.“Baal!”The name reached her differently from Code 000.Garlemald had still given it to her.It still carried the shadow of a dead queen.But Y’shtola spoke it as though Baal were someone who could be lost.Baal drove both daggers into the floor.Scarlet-black force erupted down the corridor.The turrets tore free from the walls.Silence returned.Baal remained between Y’shtola and the destroyed defenses.Her right arm trembled.Y’shtola approached.“You are injured.”“The damage is already repairing.”“That was not what I meant.”Baal looked at her.Y’shtola’s hands hovered near the damaged shoulder without touching.“May I examine it?”Baal did not understand why being asked made the pain feel less severe.“Yes.”Y’shtola carefully placed her fingers against the edge of the armor.Her touch was warm.Controlled.Nothing like the hands of Garlean technicians.“You could have continued forward,” Y’shtola said quietly.“Yes.”“Why did you return?”“You were in danger.”“So were you.”“Yes.”Y’shtola waited.Baal searched for a tactical explanation.None appeared.“I did not want you damaged.”Y’shtola’s fingers became still.Baal noticed a subtle change in her breathing.“Was that incorrect?”“No,” Y’shtola answered.Her voice had softened.“It was not incorrect.”The central courtyard opened ahead.Smoke drifted between iron platforms.At its center waited white magitek armor.Livia sas Junius stood within the open command frame.Her gaze found Baal immediately.Then the visor.“There you are.”Baal stopped.The visor flickered.COMMAND AUTHORITY DETECTED.The words appeared and disappeared beneath static.“Code 000,” Livia said. “Stand down.”The response moved through Baal’s body before conscious thought.Her back straightened.Her daggers lowered.Her head bowed.Livia smiled.“I wondered how long these savages would pretend you were one of them.”Yda raised her weapon.Papalymo began a spell.Y’shtola watched Baal.Livia’s hand moved over the controls.“Come back. Your visor will be repaired. Your conditioning will be restored.”Baal’s fingers loosened around Abyss and Fire.“You were made for obedience,” Livia continued. “Whatever these people placed inside your head is merely another malfunction.”The visor flashed.RETURN TO IMPERIAL AUTHORITY.AWAIT COMMAND.Y’shtola stepped forward.She did not touch Baal.She did not order her to move.“Baal.”Livia’s expression hardened.“Do not call it that.”Y’shtola’s gaze remained on Baal.“You may look at me.”The phrasing broke through the static.Not look at me.Not an order.Permission.Baal slowly raised her head.Turquoise eyes waited across the smoke.No authority seal appeared around them.Livia struck the control panel.“Code 000. Terminate the Scions.”Pain flashed through Baal’s temples.Her right hand raised Fire.Yda moved defensively.Papalymo’s spell brightened.Y’shtola did not move.Baal turned toward her.Fire’s edge glowed between them.Y’shtola’s expression contained fear.Baal understood fear as a physical response.Tension in the shoulders.Shortened breath.Aether gathering around the body.But beneath it remained something else.The same thing Baal had seen at the Waking Sands.Concern.Not for herself.For Baal.Livia sent another current through the visor.“Obey!”Baal screamed.Her knees nearly failed.Fire trembled in her hand.Y’shtola remained where she was.She did not tell Baal to resist.She waited.The absence of command created a space.Small.Terrifying.Baal turned Fire away from her.“No.”The word barely carried through the courtyard.Livia became still.“What did you say?”Baal raised Abyss beside Fire.“No.”Livia fired.The courtyard became flame and metal.Baal crossed both daggers.Scarlet-black energy divided the projectile and drove it into the walls on either side.Livia’s armor charged.Baal ran toward it.The first mechanical limb swept through the courtyard.She ducked beneath it.The second struck her side and threw her through a railing.Pain tore across her ribs.She landed hard.Livia advanced.“You were the Emperor’s finest weapon.”Baal forced herself upright.“You could have stood above every common soldier in this fortress.”The armor fired.Baal moved aside.“You could have been perfect.”Baal drove Abyss into one of the machine’s leg joints.Livia twisted the frame and threw her free.“You would surrender everything for these people?”Baal struck the ground, rolled, and rose.She looked toward the Scions.Yda fighting beside Papalymo.Y’shtola maintaining a barrier over the wounded.No one had commanded Baal to protect them.No one had threatened her into remaining.She was still there.“I do not know what I am surrendering,” Baal said.Livia laughed.“Then you understand nothing.”“Yes.”Baal lifted both daggers.“But I chose to remain.”She moved.Abyss cut through the armor’s left conduit.Fire entered the right.Ancient heat surged through the machine.The magitek frame staggered.Livia forced more ceruleum through the damaged systems.Warnings ignited across the armor.Cid shouted from the control platform.“She is overloading the core!”Baal could end it.One thrust through the command frame.Fire through Livia’s heart.Immediate termination.The angle appeared across her visor.TERMINATION PATH AVAILABLE.Baal leapt.Fire stopped against Livia’s throat.The blade did not enter.Livia stared at her.“Do it,” she hissed. “Prove what you are.”Anger moved through Baal.Rage followed.Those feelings were familiar.Those feelings demanded action.For the first time, Baal did not obey them.She withdrew Fire.“Weak,” Livia whispered.“I do not know what this choice is called.”The armor’s core screamed beneath them.“But it is mine.”Baal drove Abyss into the emergency release beside the command frame.The restraints around Livia opened.“Leave the machine.”Livia struck Baal across the face.“I would rather die than be spared by imperial property.”She seized the control lever and forced it forward.The core ruptured.Baal released her and jumped.Y’shtola’s spell caught Baal in midair and pulled her beyond the first wave of flame.The white magitek armor disappeared inside the explosion.Metal tore through the courtyard.The central tower shook.Baal struck the ground beside Y’shtola.For several seconds, neither moved.Then Baal looked toward the burning machine.Livia did not emerge.“I did not kill her.”“No,” Y’shtola said.“She died.”“Yes.”“I chose not to kill her.”“Yes.”“The result did not change.”Y’shtola knelt beside her.“The result was not the only thing your choice changed.”Baal looked at her.“What else?”“You.”The courtyard continued burning.Livia’s death should have ended the command relay.Instead, the visor flickered.EMERGENCY AUTHORITY LOST.ANNIHILATION CONTINGENCY AVAILABLE.A low mechanical vibration moved through the courtyard.Baal felt it beneath her hands.Part of the wall behind the ruined magitek armor divided along a concealed seam.Heavy locks disengaged.A reinforced weapons cradle moved forward from the darkness.Something rested inside.Long.Black.Curved.A massive Magitek scythe lay secured within the cradle.Its crescent blade was dark beneath preserved ceruleum residue. Cables ran from the mounting brackets into the wall, connected to the same control network feeding the visor.Baal stopped breathing.The visor recognized it.SECONDARY ARMAMENT LOCATED.ESTABLISHING WEAPON LINK.Scarlet light moved through the scythe.The weapon lifted from its restraints.Abyss and Fire answered at Baal’s waist.The crystal warmed against her back.Her right hand opened.Her fingers curved as though they already knew the precise shape of the scythe’s shaft.The weapon rose higher.Y’shtola followed Baal’s gaze.“What is it?”Baal could not look away.“Annihilation armament.”The visor pulsed.EQUIP.SUPPRESS ALL HOSTILE SIGNATURES.
The scythe turned toward her.Baal’s arm began to rise.Not through choice.Through memory buried in muscle.The weapon moved to meet her hand.Y’shtola remained beside her.She did not seize Baal’s wrist.She did not order her to stop.“Do you wish to take it?”Wish.Not obey.Not complete.Wish.Baal shook beneath the current.“No.”The visor shocked her.Her knees struck the stone.The scythe continued drifting closer.CODE 000.EQUIP ANNIHILATION ARMAMENT.Baal raised both hands.Not toward the scythe.Toward the fastenings behind her head.The visor detected the movement.UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL.CEASE.Pain tore through her temples.Baal screamed but did not release the clasps.The device had been built to remain attached through battle, unconsciousness, and transformation.It had not been designed to survive its wearer choosing to tear it away.Metal bent.One neural contact pulled free.Blood ran down Baal’s temple.The scythe shuddered in the air.WEAPON LINK UNSTABLE.RETURN TO COMMAND.Baal pulled harder.The final fastening snapped.The visor came free.The world struck her all at once.Smoke.Fire.Steel.The burning remains of Livia’s armor.Y’shtola’s turquoise eyes.No symbols surrounded them.No target lines.No authority.Only people.The scythe’s scarlet light went dark.It fell back into the weapons cradle with a violent crash.Baal stared down at the visor.The cracked inner lens continued flickering.CODE 000.RETURN.She let it fall.It struck the stone beside the scythe.The tower above them groaned.Fire spread through the damaged walls.Cid approached the open cradle.“That weapon was connected directly to the visor.”“Yes.”“Do you know what it was intended to do?”“Annihilation.”The word left Baal without emotion.That frightened her more than rage would have.Cid examined the broken visor from a distance.“We should take both. The machinery may tell us more about what Garlemald did to you.”Baal looked at the visor.RETURN continued flickering faintly behind the cracked glass.Then at the scythe.Its dark blade reflected the courtyard fires.Her hand remembered it.Her mind did not.“No.”Cid looked toward her.“We could dismantle them.”The scythe shifted inside the cradle as the courtyard trembled.Baal recoiled before she could stop herself.Y’shtola saw.“We do not have time to remove them safely,” she said. “And Baal has answered.”Cid hesitated.Then nodded.Part of the upper tower split.Stone and iron fell into the courtyard.Alliance soldiers called from the open passage.Baal secured Abyss and Fire at her waist.The scarlet-black crystal remained against her back.She had not abandoned every weapon Garlemald gave her.She was not ready to.But she turned away from the scythe.She left the visor beside it.Several steps from the passage, Baal looked back.“Will they be destroyed?”Cid looked toward the collapsing wall.“Likely.”Likely was not certainty.Baal did not yet understand how dangerous that distinction could become.The wall collapsed.The weapons cradle disappeared beneath ash, stone, and twisted iron.The visor vanished with it.The scythe vanished beside it.Buried.Not destroyed.Baal followed the Scions from Castrum Meridianum with her eyes uncovered.Smoke burned them.The open sky seemed too large.Every face carried too much information now that no machine reduced it to a designation.Y’shtola walked beside her.Baal looked toward her.Nothing identified the Miqo’te as ally, authority, obstacle, or target.Baal recognized her anyway.“Does it hurt?” Y’shtola asked.“The visor?”“The absence of it.”Baal considered the question.“Yes.”Y’shtola did not tell her the pain would pass.She merely remained beside her.Ahead waited the Praetorium.Baal continued walking.
Part VI: Without the Visor
The Praetorium opened before Baal in steel, fire, and imperial light.Abyss rested at her left hip.Fire rested at her right.The scarlet-black crystal remained sealed against the small of her back.The Magitek scythe did not follow.Neither did the visor.For the first time since Garlemald had accelerated her infancy into the body of a weapon, nothing stood between Baal’s eyes and the people she might choose to strike.The descent into the imperial fortress was nearly silent.Magitek machinery vibrated behind the walls.Emergency lights washed the corridors in red.The surviving imperial forces had withdrawn deeper into the Praetorium, gathering around Gaius van Baelsar and the weapon restrained beneath the central complex.Baal walked at the front of the Scion formation.Minfilia remained near the center.Yda and Papalymo guarded the rear.Y’shtola stayed near enough that Baal could hear the quiet movement of her robes and the measured rhythm of her breathing.Without the visor, the corridors offered no measurements.No projected firing paths.No structural overlays.No names.No designations.Only shadows.Movement.Sound.Baal stopped before the first sealed junction.“State the targets.”Silence answered.Then she remembered.There would be no list.No red word announcing who should die.Y’shtola stepped beside her.“What do you see?”“Imperial soldiers beyond the gate.”“And?”“Weapons.”“And?”Baal listened.Boots retreating across metal.An injured soldier calling for assistance.Someone dragging a wounded companion away from the fighting.Fear.Confusion.Lives that no machine had reduced to categories.“People,” Baal answered.Y’shtola inclined her head.“Yes.”Baal’s fingers rested against Abyss.“That makes the decision less efficient.”“It was never meant to be efficient.”“What was it meant to be?”Y’shtola looked toward the sealed gate.“Yours.”The mechanism opened.Imperial soldiers filled the chamber beyond.Several raised rifles.Others retreated toward the inner lifts.One immediately dropped his weapon and lifted both hands.Baal moved toward the armed line.Abyss struck the barrel of the first rifle and turned the shot into the ceiling.Fire cut through the second weapon’s ceruleum conduit.She drove her shoulder into the soldier holding it and sent him sprawling across the floor.Another attacker came from her left.No visor warned her.The blade cut across the side of her armor.Baal turned too late.Y’shtola’s spell struck the attacker and hurled him backward.Baal looked toward her.“You saw him.”“Yes.”“I did not.”“No.”“I would have with the visor.”Y’shtola kept her staff raised.“You also would have seen only what the visor permitted.”Another volley crossed the room.Baal moved.This time, she watched the soldiers themselves.The turn of a shoulder before a rifle followed.The shift of weight before a charge.The direction of a soldier’s gaze before he attempted to flee.The visor had taught Baal to trust information placed over the world.Her body had learned more than the machine.She entered the first line.Abyss severed weapon straps.Fire destroyed firing mechanisms.The flats of both blades found gaps in armor.Elbows and knees ended attacks before lethal force became necessary.Soldiers fell.None died.One imperial trooper stumbled backward and lost his rifle.Baal raised Fire.The man covered his face.He held no weapon.He blocked no path.Baal lowered the dagger.“Leave.”He stared at her.“Leave,” she repeated.The soldier fled.No order authorized it.No designation required it.The decision belonged entirely to Baal.The Scions moved deeper into the Praetorium.Baal’s knowledge of Garlean architecture remained useful even without the visor.She recognized concealed firing ports.Emergency lifts.Maintenance passages.She knew which conduits supplied the armored doors and severed them with Fire.Abyss opened mechanical locks by destroying the narrow spaces between their moving parts.The assassin garments responded to her motion.Crimson seams glowed beneath the layered black armor whenever danger drew near.They did not command her.They waited.Baal wondered whether they had always waited.At the center of one passage, they found an imperial engineer trapped beneath fallen metal.The efficient route led around him.The fortress was already destabilizing.Stopping created risk.Baal continued forward.Then she heard the man gasp.She stopped.Y’shtola said nothing.Baal turned back.She placed Abyss and Fire upon the floor, caught the broken support beam, and lifted.Yda dragged the engineer free.The man stared at Baal’s horns.At the assassin garments.At the paired daggers lying within reach.“Why?”Baal did not know how to answer.“You were not obstructing us.”Yda almost laughed.The engineer remained confused.So did Baal.But as they left him beside a marked evacuation route, warmth moved beneath her ribs again.She looked toward Y’shtola.The Miqo’te was watching her.Baal looked away before the feeling became more difficult to understand.They reached the command chamber beneath the central tower.Gaius van Baelsar waited upon the elevated platform.His dark armor reflected the red emergency lights, every plate alive with the low pulse of magitek power.Behind him, immense reinforced doors concealed the depths of the Praetorium.Gaius’s gaze moved across Minfilia, Yda, Papalymo, and Y’shtola.Then it settled upon Baal’s uncovered face.“You removed the visor.”“Yes.”“And you believe that makes you free?”Baal’s hands rested beside Abyss and Fire.“No.”The answer appeared to surprise him.“I removed it because it belonged to Garlemald.”Gaius descended one step.“The garments belong to Garlemald.”Baal glanced down at the black-and-crimson armor.“The blades as well.”“And the strength within them.”The scarlet-black crystal pulsed faintly against her back.“Perhaps.”“You stand clothed in imperial power while aiding those who would destroy the nation that shaped you.”“It did not create me.”Gaius’s expression hardened.“It gave you form.”“It stole the form I should have grown into.”“It gave you purpose.”“It gave me commands.”“And what have these Scions offered in their place?”Baal looked briefly toward Y’shtola.“No answer.”Gaius’s brow tightened.“They ask me to choose one.”“Choice without the will to impose it is meaningless.”Baal drew Abyss and Fire.“Then defend yours.”Gaius moved first.His weapon crossed the chamber with enough force to tear sparks from the metal floor.Yda intercepted the first strike.Papalymo’s spell struck Gaius’s armor from the side, forcing him to shift his stance.Y’shtola raised a barrier before his counterattack could reach them.Baal entered through the opening they created.Abyss found the seam beneath his shoulder plate.Fire severed the conduit feeding power through his right arm.Gaius turned and struck Baal across the ribs.The impact threw her into the central railing.Pain tore through her side.She rose before he reached her.“The Empire taught you every movement you possess,” Gaius said.“Not this one.”Baal raised Fire toward his throat.Gaius moved to intercept the obvious strike.She abandoned it.Her tail swept his legs while Abyss entered the exposed mechanism behind his knee.Gaius dropped to one side.Yda struck his damaged armor.Papalymo shattered the weakened plate.Y’shtola’s aetheric bindings closed around Gaius’s weapon arm.Baal drove Fire through the final power conduit.The armor failed.Gaius fell to one knee.His weapon struck the floor beyond his reach.The Scions surrounded him.Baal stood directly before him.Abyss rested beneath his chin.The killing angle required no visor to identify.One movement would end him.Gaius looked up at her.“Finish it.”Baal remembered Livia.Do it.Prove what you are.Her grip tightened.Then loosened.“No.”Gaius’s expression sharpened.“You mistake weakness for virtue.”“I do not know what virtue is.”Baal withdrew Abyss from his throat.“I only know you no longer need to die for us to continue.”For one heartbeat, Gaius remained motionless.Then something cold entered his expression.Not gratitude.Calculation.“You have learned nothing.”His hand struck an emergency control built into the damaged armor.Magitek light erupted across the platform.A barrier rose between Gaius and the Scions.Baal drove Fire against it.Scarlet energy spread across the ceruleum shielding, but the barrier held.The platform beneath Gaius began descending.Cid’s voice burst through the linkpearl.“He has activated the central lift!”Gaius stood within the lowering platform, one hand pressed against his damaged side.“You possessed the opportunity to end this.”The doors beneath him opened.Immense machinery stirred in the depths.“You chose sentiment.”Baal pressed Abyss beside Fire against the barrier.“I chose not to execute someone who could no longer fight.”“And now I can.”Gaius’s voice carried upward as the platform descended.“Remember this moment when the Ultima Weapon grinds your companions into ash.”The lift vanished.The barrier collapsed behind it.Baal stared into the open shaft.Far below, machinery awakened.Aether moved through the fortress like the first breath of something monstrous.Baal stood at the edge.Her hands tightened around Abyss and Fire.“I should have killed him.”Y’shtola approached.“You chose not to execute a defeated man.”“He is no longer defeated.”“That is because he chose to continue.”“I allowed him the opportunity.”“Yes.”Baal turned toward her.“Then this is my fault.”“No.”Y’shtola’s answer was immediate.Baal stared at her.“He warned us what he would do.”“And Gaius remains responsible for doing it.”“I could have prevented it.”“You could also have killed every soldier we passed to ensure none followed us.”“That would have been efficient.”“It would also have made fear the only measure of who deserved to live.”The machinery below grew louder.Baal looked into the depths.“If the Scions die because of my decision—”“Then we will have died because Gaius chose to unleash the Weapon.”Y’shtola stepped closer.“Your restraint did not place him inside that machine. His will did.”Baal’s ears lowered.“I do not know how to choose when every answer creates danger.”“No one does.”“That is not comforting.”“It was not meant to be.”Y’shtola looked toward the descending passage.“You made one choice. Gaius made another.”Her turquoise eyes returned to Baal.“Now we choose what happens next.”Baal looked toward Minfilia.Toward Yda and Papalymo.Then down at Abyss and Fire.“We stop him.”Y’shtola nodded.“Then let us continue.”The Scions descended.The chamber beneath the Praetorium was vast enough to swallow sound.Magitek towers surrounded a central platform.Ceruleum conduits carried stolen aether through the walls in blinding currents.Something moved in the darkness below.Metal rose.The Ultima Weapon emerged from the depths.Its armored body contained powers that did not belong together.Captured primal aether moved beneath its shell, each stolen divinity forced into a structure designed to make conquest inevitable.Gaius’s voice emerged from within it.“Behold what your mercy purchased.”Baal stood before the Weapon.Abyss and Fire brightened in her hands.“I did not give you this machine.”“You gave me time to reach it.”“I chose not to kill you.”“And now others will pay for that choice.”The words struck precisely where he intended.Baal’s grip tightened.The scarlet-black crystal burned against her back.LAST RESORT.Her hand moved toward the pouch.Y’shtola stepped beside her.“Baal.”Gaius’s laughter passed through the chamber.“Yes. Open it.”The crystal pulsed beneath Baal’s fingers.“Cast aside this pathetic imitation of restraint and become the calamity your blood remembers.”Fire moved along the edges of her vision.Wings beneath a crimson sky.Carteneau.A body too vast for thought.Gaius continued.“You spared one enemy and endangered every ally. Correct your mistake.”Failure.Correction.Escalation.Become the weapon.The logic was Garlean even without the visor.Baal’s hand fell away from the crystal.“No.”Gaius’s voice hardened.“You have already witnessed the cost of hesitation.”“Yes.”Baal raised Abyss and Fire.“And I will bear it without becoming what you demand.”The crystal remained sealed.“I chose not to kill you when you were defeated.”Scarlet-black power moved along both daggers.“Now you threaten them again.”Baal lowered herself into a fighting stance.“This choice is different.”The Ultima Weapon attacked.Fire crossed the chamber.Papalymo raised a barrier.The first impact shattered it.Yda caught him and pulled him clear before the second blast struck.Y’shtola answered with a surge of aether that diverted the attack into the upper supports.Baal ran beneath the falling debris.Abyss struck the Weapon’s left leg.The blade found no ordinary joint.The ancient energy inside it reacted instead.Scarlet-black cold spread across the armor.Fire followed.Heat entered the same fracture.The opposing powers met.The outer plate ruptured.The Ultima Weapon turned toward Baal.Gaius’s voice thundered from inside it.“You could have ended this with a single movement.”A beam of gathered aether crossed the chamber.Baal moved aside too slowly.Y’shtola’s barrier appeared between them.It held for less than a heartbeat.Baal caught Y’shtola around the waist and carried them both beyond the blast.They struck the floor together.Y’shtola gasped.Baal remained over her until the light passed.“You are injured?”“Not severely.”Baal’s hand moved toward Y’shtola’s face before she understood why.She stopped herself.Y’shtola noticed.The chamber shook again.“The Weapon,” she reminded her softly.“Yes.”Baal rose and offered her hand.Y’shtola accepted it.The Scions adjusted.Minfilia studied the currents of stolen aether moving through the Weapon and called out each change.“Garuda’s power is gathering around the upper frame!”Papalymo directed his spell toward the exposed currents.Yda struck the supports beneath the Weapon’s right side.Y’shtola disrupted the flow feeding its central core.Baal remained at the center of their strategy.Not because anyone had designated her the strongest.Because the others trusted her to decide where that strength belonged.“Left conduit!” Papalymo shouted.Baal crossed the chamber.Fire entered the conduit and melted its housing.Abyss severed the darkness gathering around it.The stolen power inside the Ultima Weapon recoiled.Gaius turned the machine toward her.“You need them to tell you where to strike.”“They are helping me.”“You have merely exchanged one command structure for another.”“No.”The Weapon’s armored limb swept toward her.Baal caught it against both daggers.The force drove her backward.Her boots carved lines across the floor.“They may speak,” Baal said through clenched teeth.The crimson seams of her garments ignited.“I choose whether to listen.”Something vast stirred beneath her blood.Wings remembered from Carteneau.Fire large enough to consume the fortress.The hidden sovereign inheritance pressed against her smaller form.Gaius felt the shift.“There it is.”The Weapon pushed harder.“The power that made fools call your mother a Warrior of Light.”Baal’s horns began to glow.The title entered her through inherited memory.Baalysia standing before people who praised a strength they did not understand.Baalysia knowing that the light had never made her powerful.The truth had possessed wings.Ancient.Sovereign.Terrible enough that she had chosen surrender rather than release it near those she protected.Gaius’s voice sharpened.“Show me what survived her.”The imagined wings strained to open.Minfilia saw the change.“Baal!”The name reached her.
Not Code 000.Not False Queen.Baal.Y’shtola’s voice followed.“Stay with us.”Urgent.Not commanding.Baal clenched her teeth.“No.”She did not speak to Y’shtola.She spoke to the power beneath her blood.“Not like this.”The glow around her horns receded.The vast wings folded.Gaius drove the Weapon forward.“You refuse the only power capable of saving them.”“My mother refused power when using it would destroy those she meant to protect.”Baal redirected the pressure through Abyss and Fire.Scarlet-black energy tore through the Weapon’s arm.The limb broke away.Baal fell to one knee.Y’shtola reached her first.“You restrained it.”“I did not become it.”“No.”Pride entered Y’shtola’s voice.“You chose not to.”Baal looked toward the damaged Ultima Weapon.The truth inside her inheritance remained beyond clear understanding.But one certainty had survived.Her mother’s strength had never come from a title.And restraint had not made Baalysia weak.The Weapon charged again.Yda struck the damaged leg from one side.Papalymo’s magic exposed the central armor.Y’shtola tore apart the aetheric protections surrounding the core.Minfilia called out as the stolen primal energies shifted.“Now!”Baal moved.Abyss entered first.The blade drank the darkness around the central housing.Fire followed.Ancient scarlet heat flooded the fracture.Baal crossed both weapons inside the core.For one instant, the Ultima Weapon contained forces that refused to coexist.Stolen primal aether.The cold of Abyss.The burning power within Fire.The machinery screamed.Gaius forced the Weapon to remain standing.“You believe destroying this machine absolves you?”“No.”Baal pulled the blades apart.“I do not require absolution from you.”The central armor split.Power erupted through the chamber.Y’shtola’s barrier closed around the Scions.Baal was thrown clear.She struck the floor and rolled until the ruined railing stopped her.The Ultima Weapon staggered.Its stolen powers began separating.One by one, the captive aetheric signatures broke free.The Weapon fell.For several breaths, nothing moved.Then metal groaned.The command shell opened.Gaius fell from within it.His armor was shattered.Smoke rose from the remaining plates.Baal forced herself upright.Fire remained in her hand.Gaius attempted to rise.He failed.Baal approached.The others followed at a distance.Gaius’s gaze found the blade.“Will you spare me again?”Baal stopped.“I did not fight to spare you.”His expression tightened.“Then finish what you lacked the courage to finish before.”“I fought to stop the Weapon.”Baal looked toward the fractured machine.“It is stopped.”“And I remain.”“Yes.”“Then your work is incomplete.”Garlemald had trained her to believe that a living enemy meant an unfinished mission.No designation appeared over Gaius.No command required his death.The man before her was wounded.Disarmed.Unable to return to the machine.Baal lowered Fire.“My purpose is not yours to define.”Gaius stared at her.“You would risk this happening again?”“I cannot kill everyone who may choose cruelty later.”“You could begin with me.”“No.”Baal secured Fire at her waist.“You wanted my mercy to become another chain.”Her hand left the hilt.“It will not.”Before Gaius could answer, the light inside the chamber bent inward.Darkness entered the Praetorium.A figure emerged above the ruined platform.Lahabrea.The Ascian looked upon the fallen Ultima Weapon with disdain.Then his attention moved to Baal.Her horns.The black-and-crimson garments.Abyss and Fire.Finally, the sealed scarlet-black crystal against her back.His gaze lingered.“So,” he murmured. “The sovereign’s daughter survives.”Baal moved between him and the Scions.“You knew my mother.”“I knew what lesser minds mistook her for.”His attention shifted briefly toward the wounded Gaius.“A Warrior of Light.”The title carried contempt.Baal tightened her grip on Abyss.“My mother’s power did not come from that title.”“No.”Lahabrea’s amusement deepened.“It came from something far older than the praise of mortals.”Y’shtola raised her staff.“What do you know of Baalysia?”“More than the Empire ever learned.”His gaze moved to the crimson seams of Baal’s garments.Then to the two daggers.“And you carry the Emperor’s borrowed relics as though they were merely weapons.”“Solus.”The name felt dangerous in the chamber.Lahabrea smiled.“You have yet to understand how many faces may clothe a single purpose.”Baal did not understand the implication.Y’shtola did.At least enough to recognize the threat within it.“We will not permit you to restore the Ultima Weapon,” she said.Lahabrea glanced toward the ruined machine.“I have no interest in restoring failure.”Darkness spread beneath his feet.“I require only what remains inside it.”The fallen Ultima Weapon convulsed.Aether gathered around its ruined core.Lahabrea raised one hand.Ultima erupted.The Praetorium came apart.Metal folded.Platforms shattered.Fire raced through the corridors.Baal moved before the first wave reached the Scions.Abyss and Fire crossed.The garments answered.Scarlet-black power spread outward into a narrow barrier.It could not save the fortress.Only those immediately behind her.The impact struck.Baal’s boots tore through the floor.The barrier began fracturing.Y’shtola placed both hands against Baal’s back and fed aether into the defense.Papalymo joined her.Then Yda.Minfilia added what strength she could from behind them.No command.No hierarchy.Support.The distinction mattered.Baal’s arms shook.The sovereign shape beneath her blood strained to emerge again.She refused it.Not because the power disgusted her.Because she understood what its release inside the collapsing Praetorium would do.Her mother had once made the same calculation.Power did not exist merely to be unleashed.Sometimes its greatest expression was restraint.The barrier held.Lahabrea descended through the fire.Shadow became blades around him.Baal broke from the barrier and met the first strike with Abyss.Yda entered from the side.Papalymo’s magic shattered one construct before it reached Minfilia.Y’shtola bound another within bands of aether.The Ascian moved faster than any ordinary enemy.Baal fought without a visor.Without designations.Without knowing every angle before it arrived.Abyss turned darkness aside.Fire burned through the space Lahabrea attempted to occupy.The Scions struck whenever Baal forced an opening.Together, they drove him backward.Lahabrea’s gaze sharpened.“You gather around a weapon and mistake yourselves for companions.”Baal blocked another strike.“They chose to stand beside me.”“And you imagine that makes you less useful?”“No.”Baal drove Fire through the Ascian’s defense.“It makes usefulness my choice.”Y’shtola’s spell struck the fracture.Papalymo’s followed.Yda drove Lahabrea into the center of the failing platform.Minfilia raised her hands.Light gathered around the Scions.Not the power of a single chosen champion.Not a Warrior of Light standing above everyone else.Trust.Purpose.Many wills acting together.Baal crossed Abyss and Fire.The power within the garments surged through her.The Scions added their strength.Light and scarlet-black flame struck Lahabrea together.His form fractured.The darkness around him tore apart.“This is not an ending,” his voice warned.Then he vanished.The fortress continued collapsing.“Move!” Y’shtola shouted.Urgency.Not ownership.Baal allowed herself to be pulled.They ran.Baal held one passage open while the others crossed.She carried an injured Scion through falling debris.She returned for Papalymo after part of the ceiling divided them.She lifted Minfilia across a shattered platform.Yda remained beside her during the final ascent.Y’shtola was the last to cross the outer passage.The floor gave way beneath her.Baal caught her wrist.For one terrible second, Y’shtola hung above the burning depths.Baal’s injured arm trembled.“Release me if the structure fails,” Y’shtola said.“No.”“Baal—”“No.”The word carried no fear of authority now.Only refusal.Yda seized Y’shtola’s other arm.Together, they pulled her onto the platform.The corridor collapsed behind them.The Scions emerged beneath the open night.The Praetorium burned behind them.Baal stepped onto the darkened ground wearing scorched black-and-crimson armor.Abyss and Fire remained at her waist.The scarlet-black crystal remained sealed against her back.The visor did not return.The scythe remained buried beneath Castrum Meridianum.Baal was still Baal.Still carrying a name Garlemald had placed upon her.Still unable to understand most of what moved inside her heart.But she had confronted Gaius without executing a defeated man.She had faced the consequence of that restraint without allowing him to turn it into shame.She had stopped the Ultima Weapon without opening the crystal.She had restrained the vast inheritance beneath her blood rather than allowing it to consume everyone around her.And she had fought beside the Scions.Not ahead of them as their weapon.Not behind them as someone they merely protected.Beside them.Y’shtola approached.Blood marked one side of her face.Baal reached toward it.Her hand stopped before touching.“May I?”Y’shtola’s expression softened.“Yes.”Baal brushed the blood away with her thumb.The gesture was careful.Unpracticed.Y’shtola remained still.“I allowed Gaius to reach the Weapon,” Baal said.“You allowed a defeated man to live.”“He used that life to hurt us.”“Yes.”Baal’s hand lowered.“Would you make the same choice?”Y’shtola considered the question.“I do not know.”Baal looked at her.The honesty hurt less than false certainty would have.Y’shtola continued.“But his actions do not make your choice belong to him.”Baal glanced toward the burning fortress.“I chose again when he entered the Weapon.”“Yes.”“And again when it fell.”“Yes.”“None of the choices erased the others.”“No.”Baal’s gaze returned to her.“Then perhaps that is what freedom is.”“What?”“Having to choose more than once.”Y’shtola’s expression warmed.“That is part of it.”Y’shtola lifted one hand slowly.Waiting.Baal stepped closer.The Miqo’te’s fingers settled against the side of her face, avoiding the wounds where the visor’s contacts had torn free.Baal did not move away.“What is this?” she asked.“Relief.”“Because we survived?”“Yes.”Baal looked toward Minfilia.Toward Yda and Papalymo.Then back at Y’shtola.“I feel it.”Y’shtola’s thumb moved gently against her cheek.“Then it belongs to you.”No command marked the path ahead.No Warrior of Light had appeared to carry the burden in Baal’s place.Baal and the Scions had entered the Praetorium together.They had defeated Gaius and the Ultima Weapon together.They had faced Lahabrea together.And beneath the open night, they walked away together.
Part VII: The Overseas Anomaly
The Garlean dossier reached Fontaine through a chain of hands that had never seen the nation whose secrets they carried.A copied laboratory report left the imperial capital beneath false shipping records.A compromised archivist passed selected pages to an embedded Fatui observer.Encrypted fragments crossed the ocean aboard merchant vessels, diplomatic shipments, and maritime couriers who knew only the next name in the relay.By the time the assembled file reached Hotel Bouffes d’été, several years had passed since the earliest reports had been written.Peruere had killed Crucabena.She had inherited the House of the Hearth.She had taken the dead woman’s place as the Fourth of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers.And she had accepted the name attached to that station.Arlecchino.The Knave.Father.Rain moved softly against the tall windows of the Hotel.The sound carried through halls that had not yet entirely forgotten the woman who ruled them before.Some of Crucabena’s regulations remained written inside old ledgers.Some of her punishments survived in the reflexes of children who stiffened whenever footsteps stopped outside their rooms.Some doors still possessed locks Arlecchino had ordered removed.Some cabinets still contained medicines whose intended use no one wished to explain.Arlecchino had spent the years since Crucabena’s death cutting those remnants from the House one piece at a time.The children still trained.They still studied deception, observation, combat, diplomacy, and the quieter disciplines required to survive within the Fatui.They still received missions.Arlecchino did not pretend the world beyond the Hotel was gentle.But the children ate before they trained.They received treatment when injured.They were permitted names, preferences, friendships, rivalries, and ambitions that did not originate in an operational ledger.They were not disposable.That distinction mattered.It did not mean they were free from discipline.It did not mean they were beyond being shaped.It meant that no one would damage what belonged to the House merely to satisfy curiosity.Arlecchino sat behind the desk in her private office.The room still felt newer than the title attached to it.Crucabena’s personal decorations had been removed.Her curtains had been burned.The old family portraits had been taken down.In their place stood maps of Fontaine, mission schedules, educational reports, supply requests, and carefully organized records concerning every child presently under Arlecchino’s authority.A sealed intelligence packet rested before her.The cover bore several classifications.FOREIGN IMPERIAL ASSETFALSE QUEEN PROJECTSUBJECT BAALCODE 000PROJECT DALAMUD — PARTIAL RECORDWAKING SANDS SUPPLEMENTCASTRUM MERIDIANUM SUPPLEMENTPRAETORIUM SUPPLEMENTArlecchino broke the seal.The first section concerned the Dragon Queen of Lapis Manalis.BAALYSIA.Foreign sovereign.Unregistered draconic entity.Captured after voluntarily surrendering to Garlean forces.Transferred to restricted imperial custody.Subjected to aetheric extraction, neurological examination, forced resonance testing, and experiments connected to the artificial Red Moon known as Dalamud.The report noted that Baalysia had been pregnant when captured.Her condition had initially been concealed from most personnel.Once discovered, the pregnancy had become part of the project.The child had been removed surgically.Transferred to an artificial womb.Observed separately from the mother.Baalysia’s health deteriorated over the following months.She survived long enough to witness the birth.Then she died.Arlecchino’s expression did not change.One blackened fingertip rested beside the final line.The next record identified the infant without ambiguity.BIOLOGICAL DAUGHTER OF BAALYSIA.The operational documents that followed used different language.CLONE.FALSE QUEEN.IMPERIAL PROPERTY.Arlecchino turned back one page.Then forward again.The contradiction was deliberate.A preserved directive explained the alteration.For operational stability, all personnel outside restricted research channels are to refer to the subject as a clone of Baalysia.This designation will reduce attachment to origin, discourage identity formation, and reinforce the subject’s understanding that continued existence is dependent upon imperial authority.Arlecchino read it twice.Not because the words were difficult.Because their purpose was not.A daughter could mourn her mother.A daughter could ask who she had been before the laboratory.A daughter might eventually decide that the people who killed her mother possessed no right to command her.A manufactured object could be taught that it had no origin beyond those who claimed to have assembled it.Garlemald had not merely falsified the record for outsiders.It had constructed the lie for the child herself.Arlecchino’s eyes narrowed.“Crude.”The word carried no sympathy.Only contempt.Crucabena had hidden cruelty beneath the language of motherhood.Garlemald had removed even that disguise.It had attempted to erase the premise that the infant had ever been a child at all.A portrait had been attached to the personnel section.The girl possessed long pale hair, horns, a dragon’s tail, and an expression emptied of everything except attention.A specialized visor covered her eyes.The accompanying assessment listed her apparent age.It matched Arlecchino’s own.The equality existed only on paper.Arlecchino had lived every year written beside her name.She remembered childhood.She remembered hunger.She remembered Crucabena.She remembered Clervie.She remembered the years required to become strong enough to kill the woman who controlled the House.Baal had been taken from infancy and forced into the body of an adolescent within two months.Her frame had aged.Her mind had not been permitted to develop alongside it.The years that followed had taught her missions rather than life.The report could place the same number beside both of them.It did not make their histories equal.Arlecchino studied the portrait.Not with tenderness.With assessment.A child denied development would not become an adult merely because the body had been made tall enough to carry a weapon.It would become dependent upon whatever structure replaced childhood.Commands.Punishments.Designations.Approval.The Garleans had created a vacancy and filled it with obedience.The scientific records described an anomaly detected within the unborn child.Absent from Baalysia.Present before delivery.Dormant after birth.Aulus mal Asina had failed to classify it.Emperor Solus had recognized the associated terminology immediately.EMBER OF TWO WORLDS’ FLAMES.Arlecchino paused.She read the phrase again.A distant emperor should not have possessed knowledge unavailable to the scientist directing the project.She wrote in the margin.SOURCE OF TERMINOLOGY UNCONFIRMED.POSSIBLE PRE-GARLEAN PROVENANCE.The report offered no explanation.Only that Solus had appeared amused rather than surprised.That interested her.Not enough to justify intervention.Enough to remember.The accelerated maturation records followed.Two months from infancy to the approximate body of a fifteen-year-old.Repeated skeletal damage.Muscular tearing.Neurological overload.Aetheric instability.Internal rupture followed by immediate draconic regeneration.The subject survived because her body repaired itself faster than the process could destroy it.Then came the education and training restrictions.CODE 000.Mission-relevant language only.No unsupervised historical material.No personal correspondence.No access to information concerning Baalysia beyond the approved clone narrative.No uncontrolled social attachment.No unfiltered sensory environment.The specialized visor regulated:— visual and auditory input;— target recognition;— command authorization;— pain delivery;— sensory restriction;— memory filtration;— and behavioral correction.Arlecchino rested one finger beside the final category.Behavioral correction.An elegant phrase for forcing pain into a child’s skull until thought and obedience became indistinguishable.Arlecchino understood discipline.She understood restricted information.She understood teaching a child to conceal weakness before enemies learned to exploit it.She understood reinforcement, correction, and the deliberate shaping of instinct.The failure was not that Garlemald had attempted to construct obedience.The failure was that it had mistaken damage for loyalty.Pain had been delivered without comfort.Identity had been removed without replacing it with belonging.The child had been emptied and anchored only to machinery, mission parameters, and fear.A mind could not remain stable around an absence forever.Remove enough of a person, and the resulting void would search for something to hold.A voice.A hand.A familiar presence repeated often enough to become the foundation beneath every other thought.Garlemald had understood how to create emptiness.It had failed to give that emptiness a living anchor.Machines broke.Command structures changed.Pain created compliance.It did not necessarily create devotion.Arlecchino’s fingertip remained beside the visor specifications.The distinction interested her more than it should have.She took up her pen.Beside the medical classifications, she wrote:UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS SUBJECT TO BE TRANSFERRED TO AN INDEPENDENT FATUI RESEARCH DIVISION.She continued beneath it.IF CODE 000 ENTERS FATUI TERRITORY OR CUSTODY, REFER DIRECTLY TO THE FOURTH HARBINGER.ALL MEDICAL, AETHERIC, PSYCHOLOGICAL, OR COGNITIVE INTERVENTION REQUIRES THE FOURTH HARBINGER’S PERSONAL AUTHORIZATION.NO RETURN TO GARLEAN AUTHORITY.IF LONG-TERM CUSTODY BECOMES NECESSARY, THE HOUSE OF THE HEARTH WILL ASSUME EXCLUSIVE RESPONSIBILITY.She paused.The order did not constitute rescue.Baal had already escaped Garlean control.She remained across the ocean beneath the protection of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.There was no reason to spend Fatui lives, vessels, or political influence retrieving a foreign combatant who was no longer imprisoned.The restriction established something simpler.If Baal ever entered Arlecchino’s reach, no outsider would decide what happened to her.No laboratory would inherit her.No researcher would claim authority through curiosity.Any alteration would occur only because Arlecchino had chosen it.Practical.Controlled.Nothing more.The equipment inventory followed.RESTRICTED ASSASSIN GARMENT SETBlack layered armor with internal crimson seams.Fitted under direct imperial authority.Material origin unavailable.Sampling prohibited.Dismantling prohibited.Duplication prohibited.PAIRED PERSONAL ARMAMENTSABYSS.FIRE.Maker unlisted.Forge unlisted.Pre-assignment chain of custody sealed.Both weapons demonstrated unusual aetheric conductivity and biometric responsiveness.SCARLET-BLACK CRYSTALStored in reinforced pouch against the subject’s back.Designated by the subject as LAST RESORT.Composition unavailable.Activation method unavailable.Effect unavailable.MAGITEK ANNIHILATION SCYTHEHeavy suppression weapon paired with the Code 000 neural visor.Stored at Castrum Meridianum.Activation dependent upon biometric confirmation and active neural link.Maximum operational scale omitted.Arlecchino reviewed the entries.No maker.No origin.No reason why Solus had personally prohibited the dismantling of the garments and paired blades.No description of what the crystal contained.No clarification of how many deaths the word annihilation was intended to encompass.The omissions were deliberate.Someone within Garlemald had known precisely what had been placed around Baal.Most of the Empire had not.Arlecchino added another notation.RECOVER EQUIPMENT PROVENANCE IF CONVENIENT.NO IMMEDIATE EXPENDITURE AUTHORIZED.The Project Dalamud record came next.Code 000 assigned to an imperial relay during the Battle of Carteneau.Relay activated.Subject’s ordinary draconic signature disappeared.A catastrophic entity manifested above the battlefield.Regional communications identified the entity as Bahamut.Code 000 later recovered near the destroyed relay.Severe injuries.Visor damaged.Direct telemetry lost.The surviving report concluded:RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CODE 000 AND CARTENEAU MANIFESTATION UNCONFIRMED.FURTHER ANALYSIS UNAVAILABLE.Arlecchino turned the page.No continuation followed.The analytical annex had been lost or misrouted somewhere between the overseas observation cell, the maritime relay network, and the central Fatui archives.One half of the incident had been filed beneath personnel.The other beneath battlefield entities.No archivist had reunited them.Arlecchino marked the missing section.RECOVER CARTENEAU ANALYSIS IF CONVENIENT.The word Bahamut did not appear anywhere else in the dossier.The Waking Sands supplement followed.Code 000 had participated in the Garlean assault upon the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.The casualty assessment drew Arlecchino’s attention.CONFIRMED FATALITIES CAUSED BY CODE 000: ZERO.The report immediately clarified:Absence of fatalities is not assessed as evidence of mercy, hesitation, or resistance to conditioning.No Waking Sands personnel were assigned termination designations.All named subjects were marked for capture.Code 000 followed mission parameters precisely.Available behavioral evidence indicates that the subject would have killed any individual immediately had a termination designation been issued.Arlecchino accepted the assessment.The girl had not exercised mercy.She had obeyed classification.Capture remained alive.Terminate did not.
The report continued.Urianger Augurelt and Tataru Taru used as leverage.Minfilia Warde surrendered.Echo contact initiated severe neurological and aetheric destabilization.Suppressed memories surfaced.Two Garlean soldiers injured.No fatalities.Visor damaged.Subject returned to Castrum Centri for containment and repair.Members of the Scions later removed her from imperial custody.The first fracture had not come from moral awakening.It had come from forbidden truth entering a system constructed entirely around controlled perception.Garlemald had built obedience by determining what the child was allowed to know.Once knowledge escaped its control, the obedience could not remain intact.The Castrum Meridianum supplement documented what followed.CODE 000 PARTICIPATED IN ALLIANCE ASSAULT.EQUIPMENT RETAINED:— assassin garment set;— Abyss;— Fire;— scarlet-black crystal;— damaged neural visor.OBSERVED DEVIATIONS:— selective incapacitation of imperial personnel;— interruption of tactical objective to protect Y’shtola Rhul;— refusal of direct termination command issued by Livia sas Junius;— defeat of Livia’s magitek frame without confirmed execution.Livia sas Junius died during the subsequent destruction of her own armor.Following loss of recognized command authority, the visor initiated an emergency Annihilation Contingency.The Magitek scythe was released from secured storage.Code 000 rejected the link command.Subject forcibly removed the visor.Scythe activation ceased.Both visor and scythe were abandoned during the collapse of Castrum Meridianum.Destruction unconfirmed.Presumed buried beneath the central structure.Arlecchino paused upon one line.SUBJECT FORCIBLY REMOVED THE VISOR.The device had not merely malfunctioned.The girl had recognized the mechanism controlling her and torn it from her own face.Arlecchino looked again at the attached portrait.The same apparent age.Two young women turned into weapons through different forms of cruelty.One had killed the woman holding her chain.The other had ripped the chain from her own body.There was no kinship between them.Arlecchino did not know Baal.Similarity did not create attachment.Still, the corner of the page bent beneath the pressure of her fingertip before she released it.The final Praetorium supplement was longer.Code 000 entered the imperial stronghold without the visor.No sensory filtration.No command delivery.No target classifications.No recognized Garlean authority.She retained the assassin garments, Abyss, Fire, and the sealed scarlet-black crystal.Baal and the Scions defeated Gaius van Baelsar in direct combat.Code 000 declined to execute him after he had been disarmed.Gaius activated an emergency barrier and escaped through the central lift.He entered the Ultima Weapon.Several intercepted statements had been preserved.BEHOLD WHAT YOUR MERCY PURCHASED.YOU GAVE ME TIME TO REACH IT.CORRECT YOUR MISTAKE.Arlecchino’s gaze hardened.The tactic was familiar.Take an independent choice.Exploit its consequences.Reframe freedom as failure.Then present obedience as the only protection against guilt.Crucabena had used softer words.The structure remained the same.The report continued.Code 000 refused to activate the scarlet-black crystal despite the Ultima Weapon’s catastrophic threat classification.Subject stated that she would use only what she could control.Code 000 and Scion personnel defeated the Ultima Weapon together.Gaius van Baelsar survived the destruction of the machine.When he again demanded execution, Code 000 refused.During the battle, Code 000 exhibited severe draconic escalation.Transformation suppressed voluntarily.No separate combatant identified as the Warrior of Light was present.Regional records had previously applied that title to Dragon Queen Baalysia because of the scale of her combat strength.True source of Baalysia’s power remained unidentified within available Garlean and Fatui documentation.The entity designated Lahabrea subsequently appeared.Code 000 and the Scions engaged the entity together.Praetorium destruction followed.All listed Scion personnel escaped.Final assessment:ORIGINAL OBEDIENCE CONDITIONING HAS SUFFERED TERMINAL FAILURE.CODE 000 NO LONGER FUNCTIONS AS A GARLEAN ASSET.CURRENT AFFILIATION:SCIONS OF THE SEVENTH DAWN.CURRENT PERSONAL IDENTITY:UNRESOLVED.CURRENT LOCATION:UNCONFIRMED.Arlecchino leaned back.The corridor beyond her office had grown quieter.Most of the younger children had retired.Somewhere farther down the hall, two voices whispered before falling silent as an older child reminded them that others were trying to sleep.Arlecchino looked down at the final assessment.Baal remained dangerous.Her upper limit was unknown.Her draconic power had reached catastrophic levels once, though the connection to the Carteneau entity remained unproven.She carried artifacts of unidentified origin.She had survived artificial maturation, imperial conditioning, neurological control, and the collapse of two Garlean strongholds.Potentially useful.Potentially unstable.Far beyond Fontaine.Already protected by another organization.No strategic reason justified intervention.Arlecchino did not confuse contempt for what had been done with personal concern for the person who had survived it.She did not know Baal’s voice.She did not know what expression crossed the girl’s face when someone spoke without issuing an order.She did not know why Baal had turned back to protect Y’shtola Rhul.She did not know whether removing the visor had brought relief or merely exposed an emptiness the machine had previously concealed.Those questions were irrelevant.For now.Arlecchino reached for the Harbinger review sheet.CONTINUE PASSIVE OBSERVATION.NO DIRECT FATUI ACTION AUTHORIZED.UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS CODE 000 TO BE TRANSFERRED TO AN INDEPENDENT FATUI RESEARCH DIVISION.IF SUBJECT ENTERS FATUI TERRITORY OR CUSTODY, REFER DIRECTLY TO THE FOURTH HARBINGER.ALL MEDICAL, AETHERIC, PSYCHOLOGICAL, OR COGNITIVE INTERVENTION REQUIRES THE FOURTH HARBINGER’S PERSONAL AUTHORIZATION.NO RETURN TO GARLEAN AUTHORITY.IF LONG-TERM CUSTODY BECOMES NECESSARY, THE HOUSE OF THE HEARTH WILL ASSUME EXCLUSIVE RESPONSIBILITY.RECOVER MISSING CARTENEAU ANALYSIS IF CONVENIENT.RECOVER EQUIPMENT PROVENANCE IF CONVENIENT.She signed beneath the order.Arlecchino.The name was still newer than the instincts behind it.The title Father newer still.A quiet knock sounded against the office door.Arlecchino’s pen stopped.“Enter.”The door opened only partway.Elara stood beyond it.She was still in her teenage years, not yet carrying the full severity she would one day possess, but its foundation was already visible.Her posture was disciplined without becoming rigid.Her gaze moved first across the office.The untouched evening tray.The dying fire.The scattered notes.The sealed packet beneath Arlecchino’s hand.Only then did she look directly at Father.“Is everything all right?”Arlecchino placed the pen beside the review sheet.“What makes you believe otherwise?”“You did not answer when the evening meal was announced.”“I was occupied.”“Yes.”Elara’s eyes shifted briefly toward the cold tray.“That is why I waited before asking.”Arlecchino studied her.Most children would have assumed Father required solitude.Others might have entered immediately out of worry.Elara had observed.Waited.Then approached only when the silence lasted long enough to become unusual.“Everything is under control,” Arlecchino said.Elara remained in the doorway.It was not disbelief.Only recognition that Father had selected the extent of the answer she intended to give.“Very well.”She began to withdraw.“Elara.”The girl stopped immediately.“Yes, Father?”Arlecchino slid the dossier into its black intelligence envelope and pressed the Harbinger’s seal across the fastening.“Come here.”Elara entered.Arlecchino held out the packet.“Place this in the secured dispatch cabinet. It is to leave with the first authorized maritime courier tomorrow morning.”Elara accepted it with both hands.“No one opens it,” Arlecchino continued. “No one changes its routing. No one outside the approved chain is to know that it passed through this office.”Elara glanced once at the Harbinger’s seal.Not at the classifications beneath it.“I understand.”“If anyone asks what you are carrying?”“A routine intelligence transfer awaiting archival return.”“And if they continue asking?”“I will tell them that Father has already answered the question.”The faintest change touched Arlecchino’s expression.Not quite a smile.Approval, perhaps.“You learn quickly.”Elara lowered her gaze respectfully.“I try.”“No.”Arlecchino leaned back.“You observe.”Elara looked up again.The distinction seemed to matter to her.Arlecchino gestured toward the door.“Go.”“Yes, Father.”Elara reached the threshold.Then stopped.She did not turn around immediately.“If everything stops being all right,” she said carefully, “you may call for me.”The offer was presumptuous.It was also sincere.Elara glanced back, expecting correction.Arlecchino gave none.“I will remember that.”Elara nodded once.Then left, carrying the sealed dossier securely against her side.The door closed.Arlecchino remained alone.For several moments, her gaze rested upon the place where Elara had stood.The girl had not asked what troubled her.She had not attempted to read the file.She had noticed, offered assistance, accepted instruction, and left without mistaking trust for permission.Useful qualities.Rare ones.Arlecchino turned toward the remaining House reports.The file concerning Baal would return to the Fatui archives by morning.It would become one distant anomaly among hundreds.Arlecchino would send no vessel across the ocean.She would issue no order to retrieve the girl.Baal had already escaped Garlemald.The Scions had given her shelter.Direct intervention would cost resources, expose the Fontaine operation, and replace one unwanted authority with another.So Arlecchino moved on.But the restrictions remained attached to the file.No independent laboratory.No researcher acting without her permission.No return to Garlemald.If Baal ever entered Fatui custody, the Fourth Harbinger alone would decide what followed.Arlecchino’s objection was not to the shaping of a mind.It was to careless hands.Divided control.Experiments conducted without purpose beyond curiosity.Garlemald had created a void and chained it to machinery.A living anchor would have been stronger.A familiar voice.A hand associated with safety.A presence the emptied mind sought before it understood why.The observation remained somewhere behind Arlecchino’s thoughts.Unexamined.Unneeded.Baal was too distant to matter.The girl was not part of the House.She was not Arlecchino’s responsibility.She was not Arlecchino’s possession.Arlecchino closed the remaining reports.Outside, Elara’s footsteps faded through the halls of Hotel Bouffes d’été.The rain continued falling over Fontaine.And far across the ocean, the subject recorded as Baal walked beneath another sky, unaware that her name had briefly rested upon the desk of the Fourth Harbinger.
Pre-Endwalker
Endwalker/Dawntrail