I woke to the gray light of dawn filtering through the curtains. For a moment, the room seemed calm: the distant murmur of the city, Velka’s steady breathing beside me, the warm brush of the sheets against my skin. I could almost fool myself into believing it was an ordinary day.

  But the nightmare lingered, anchored behind my eyes. The sword, the crimson blade rising from my belly, the cold weight of having to pull it free with my own hands. My body was intact, yet the memory clung to me like an invisible scar.

  I turned toward Velka. She was still asleep, her face serene, strands of hair falling over her forehead. For a second I thought of waking her, confessing what I had seen, what I had felt. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to drag her into that abyss with me.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to sit up slowly. The chill of the floor greeted me as my feet touched it, reminding me that I was awake, that there was no blood, that the nightmare was only that… at least for now.

  I approached the window and pulled the curtain slightly aside. Outside, the city of Eiswacht stirred with its habitual order: spotless streets, electric trams gliding along their tracks, citizens walking with precise steps as if following some unseen choreography. A world where everything seemed calculated… except me.

  Behind me, Velka murmured in her sleep and stretched out an empty arm, reaching for me in the bed. I smiled faintly, with a tenderness that surprised me, and slipped back beside her. She nestled against me at once, without opening her eyes, as if she knew exactly where she belonged.

  I closed mine too, though I knew rest would not return. The nightmare still haunted me, like an echo I couldn’t silence. And that day, more than ever, I felt that something was about to break.

  Velka stirred beneath the sheets, opening her eyes slowly. Her voice was rough, still heavy with sleep.

  —Another nightmare?

  I stayed silent for a moment before giving a slight nod. I didn’t need to explain; somehow, she knew.

  —It will pass —she said, leaning closer to brush her lips against my cheek. A simple gesture, almost automatic, yet it held me more than I could ever admit.

  I forced a faint smile.

  —We don’t have much time. They’ll be here any moment.

  Velka sat up, stretching with a sigh, her perfect hair falling out of place.

  —Then at least, coffee and bread —she replied with that quiet certainty of hers that made even the ordinary feel like strategy.

  We went downstairs to the kitchen. The silence of the house was absolute, as if even the clocks feared to break it. As I set the coffee pot in motion, Velka came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, burying her face against my neck.

  —Remember —she murmured—, today we are them. Nothing else matters.

  Her steady hands brought me back to the present. I covered her fingers with mine, breathing deeply.

  —I know.

  The scent of coffee began to fill the air. We grabbed a couple of slices of bread, just enough to feign normalcy. For a moment, we looked at each other in silence, heavy with things we could not say.

  A soft knock on the door made us both flinch. The time had come.

  The work consumed us the moment we crossed the turnstiles. The fingerprint reader accepted my finger on the first try, and the modulator adhered to my throat vibrated for an instant, tuning Caroline’s voice until it was identical to the one stored in the system. The door slid open with a dry hiss. The laboratory smelled of solvent-washed metal and reheated coffee; a row of terminals blinked with amber alerts and task lists that seemed to multiply by the hour, not the minute.

  Doctor Herzmann greeted us with a swift gesture—a flick of the wrist that said no time—and dropped two folders into our hands. Priority II Assignments, Passive Containment, Band Lock Adjustments. Words Caroline would have chewed effortlessly. To me, they scraped across my tongue like river stones.

  —Doctor Schulz, I need your revisions on the leakage coefficients and the Chevalier table adapted to the Eis-9 protocol —Herzmann said—. Before thirteen hundred.

  —Of course —I answered with the flawless tone that was not mine.

  Velka—Susanne—was already at a workbench, sleeve rolled up, discreet smile in place, listening to an engineer who spoke too quickly. She jotted notes in short strokes, nodded in the right places. I watched her for two seconds and she returned a spark: I’ve got it. I sat down, opened the folder… and the world turned into numbers and diagrams that refused to match my breathing.

  Midway across the room, someone adjusted the gain on a panel and the hum of the coils shifted, like a choir moving from D to C without warning. I felt the change stab behind my eyes. Not pain: weight. A pressure at the edge of memory, as if an invisible hand flipped through pages and, just as suddenly, closed them before I could read. I swallowed.

  —Module temperature? —someone asked.

  —Stable —another voice replied—. But the cover illusion field spikes every fifteen minutes. Must be the network.

  The hallway vibrated as a troop of technicians rolled in black containers marked Resonance—Selene. They rang hollow. Each bore a red seal. I didn’t look too closely.

  I worked. Revised coefficients. Adjusted a table I understood just enough not to expose myself, and just little enough not to break anything. The wall clock marked eleven with the cold precision of a scalpel. To my left, an analyst dropped a stapler; the thud echoed like a muffled gunshot. Velka slipped behind me, set a cup down without looking.

  —For the pace —she said, neutral.

  —Thanks —I murmured.

  The first announcement came through the loudspeakers with chilling courtesy: Personnel of Ring Three, prepare stations for cross-verification. General rehearsal in one hundred and twenty minutes. The word rehearsal hung heavy. It wasn’t on any schedule we’d been shown.

  —Rehearsal? —I muttered, too low, to no one in particular.

  —Last-minute programming —Herzmann interjected from another table without looking up—. Miss Weisshaupt wants a live run of the Aurora subsystem. Test environment only. Nothing operational… yet.

  The name pierced the back of my neck like an ice splinter. Klara. I remembered her standing, sovereign of gravity, and the air pressed down again.

  I rose to fetch a document supposedly filed in the physical archive. The corridor was colder than the lab. Passing a door labeled Authorized Personnel Only — Containment Core, my skin prickled without permission. The handle didn’t even move at my touch. Just being half a meter away made the voice modulator at my clavicle buzz, as if trying to retune itself. A metallic taste filled my mouth. And for a heartbeat, the light changed: a white glow, religiously white, bleeding through the seam of the door as if an altar had been lit inside. I blinked, and the hallway was once again gray, mundane. I heard myself breathing.

  Two steps back. No touch. I moved on. The archive lay at the end. I opened drawers, found what I needed, returned to my station with an offbeat pulse. Velka’s gaze was too casual.

  —All right? —she asked, as if about the weather.

  —Network spikes every fifteen minutes —I said, echoing the earlier phrase. It was enough for a fraction of tension in her posture to ease.

  At twelve-forty, Elsa Vogt—Caelia—crossed the lab with two supervisors. She didn’t stop. One glance, a slight tilt of her head—facade approval—and gone. But as she passed me, her fingers tapped her folder twice: attention. Received.

  The room began to fill with a stifled murmur. Engineers spoke quieter, security doubled as if sprouting from the walls, and someone brought a tray of paper cups no one touched. Herzmann reappeared with a stack of forms.

  —Sign in duplicate, please. Declaration of no use of emotional channels during the run. Confirmation of physiological stability required.

  The paper weighed heavy. I signed “Caroline Schulz” in the memorized hand. Felt the modulator press into my skin. Velka signed beside me with crystalline calm.

  At twelve fifty-five, the loudspeakers cleared their throat.

  Attention. General rehearsal of component Aurora—M6 will commence in ten minutes. Please maintain positions. Repeat: ten minutes.

  The hum of the coils stretched into a too-thin thread. A young woman dropped a pen and stooped to retrieve it with a visible tremor. At the back, two soldiers swapped places without a word. For the first time since we’d entered, the laboratory admitted fear.

  Klara appeared in the doorway without sound. She didn’t need to enter: her shadow straightened every spine by half a centimeter. Her eyes swept the room like a commander reviewing a battalion. They lingered on me a beat longer than the rest. Then on Velka. She smiled politely. It was a smile engineered to soothe… those who wanted to believe.

  —Doctor Weisshaupt —Herzmann greeted.

  —Doctor —she replied, curt—. Personnel ready.

  Nods. No one said yes. No one had a voice left.

  Five minutes —the loudspeaker announced.

  Velka brushed the back of her hand against my wrist, as if sweeping invisible crumbs. That smallest contact grounded me. I swallowed. Opened my assigned panel. Screens: flows, thresholds, thresholds of thresholds. A diagram of Module 6, saying nothing, meaning everything.

  Two minutes.

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  The air thickened absurdly. Not just tension. Density. As though the room had dropped a floor without moving. The white glow—the altar behind the door—flashed across my memory like lightning without thunder, and with it, a word I did not know yet felt mine: credo. I drowned it.

  Thirty seconds.

  Klara spoke without raising her voice.

  —Remember: if you feel anything… it’s mass psychology. Rest your eyes. Continue your task.

  If you feel anything. I wanted to laugh and cry at once. I wanted to look at Velka. I didn’t.

  Begin.

  The lab didn’t move. But everything did. First came a void, sudden, as though my shadow had been stripped away. Then a sharp tug behind my sternum. The screen flickered; my fists clenched over the keyboard. The modulator bit into me and, beneath it, the magic—my magic—that wasn’t supposed to be there, couldn’t be there, clawed to be heard like an animal scratching from the other side of glass. It cut out. The void deepened. Someone exhaled like surfacing from water.

  —Stability at 82% —a voice called—. Compensating. 87… 90… 94.

  The coil’s hum was no longer hum: it was a flat prayer. There is nothing, there is nothing, there is nothing. The edge of my vision filled with lights that didn’t exist. Another metallic taste bled across my tongue. And, unbidden, an image both mine and not mine: columns, stained glass, symbols tangled around a figure bleeding light from its palms. No. I blinked hard. The screen was a screen again.

  —Anomaly in sideband —someone reported. Silence. Five breaths. —Resolved.

  Velka clenched her teeth. I didn’t look; I saw the muscle tighten in her cheek from the corner of my eye. She held her finger steady on the panel, faithful to her role.

  —First pulse complete —the loudspeaker intoned—. Preparing second.

  I didn’t want to know how the second would feel. It came all the same, deeper, more orderly, as though absence had learned to absent itself better. This time there were no lights. There was… confusion. For a fleeting instant, the line of my life tilted half a degree: my name wanted to be another, my home another, my hand on the keyboard wanted to be holding something that didn’t belong in a lab. Cor—. The rest slipped away.

  —Stability at 96. Good work —someone said, almost cheerful.

  The loudspeaker breathed with us all.

  End of rehearsal. Personnel, maintain positions until further notice.

  My chest grew heavy in its familiar way again. My shadow returned. The modulator stopped buzzing. I realized my palms bore crescent marks from my nails. Velka exhaled slowly through her nose and stayed very still. Herzmann said something about “promising” and “minor adjustments.” Soldiers lowered rifles by half a degree. Life pretended to return.

  Klara did not. She lingered at the door three seconds longer, watching us as one watches the surface of a lake, waiting to see if it reflects the same mountain. When the mountain satisfied her, she inclined her head and left.

  My jaw ached. I packed the folder, lifted the coffee cup—cold—and set it down again. A technician passed by and gave us a professional smile, the kind sewn into the uniform.

  —Feedback in one hour —Herzmann announced—. Rest your eyes. No one leaves Ring Three without authorization.

  Rest your eyes. I closed mine for three seconds. In the dark, the word I had refused brushed me again. Not credo. Older. More stubborn. I opened my eyes before it could form.

  Velka approached without approaching.

  —Temperature?

  —Stable —I said.

  —Good.

  The clock read two ten. Outside, Eiswacht’s world would still be geometry and discipline. In here, they had shut off something that should never be shut off. And yet, in the hollow it left behind, a vibration remained that belonged to no one… or to all of us equally.

  We worked the next hour as though nothing had happened. The reports filled with reassuring phrases. The forms, with flawless signatures. When the loudspeaker finally permitted a recess, my legs trembled as I stood. No one said I’m afraid. No one said I felt my name erased. No one said the white door is praying.

  The recess came like a forced sigh. As soon as the metallic voice from the loudspeakers gave the order, chairs scraped, keyboards fell silent, and the murmur of footsteps filled the laboratory. But there were no laughs, no relief, no looseness of people ending a shift. Only bodies moving in silence, as if everyone carried something invisible.

  I stood up too quickly. The world tilted for a moment; I had to grip the edge of the table to keep from losing balance. A cold hollow still sat beneath my sternum, as if something was still pulling at my shadow from within.

  Beside me, Velka leaned against the workbench. Her face remained perfectly neutral, as Susanne’s should. But I saw her knuckles white, clutching the metal edge. The skin of her neck was beaded with sweat.

  —Are you alright? —I murmured, barely moving my lips.

  She shook her head almost imperceptibly. She took one step, then another… and slipped through the side door to the restrooms. I waited a beat before following.

  The bathroom was empty. The echo of the door still lingered when I heard the sharp sound of something falling: a paper cup, toppled over. Velka was on her knees, clinging to the stall divider, her body convulsing with dry heaves. She vomited once, then again, with the same contained violence she had in combat.

  I knelt beside her without touching.

  —Shhh… —I whispered, uselessly.

  She spat, drew a ragged breath, and let herself slump against the cold wall. Her eyes found mine. There was fury in them, but not at me.

  —That wasn’t a rehearsal —she whispered. Even through the voice modulator, her voice trembled.

  I nodded. I could still feel the device vibrating against my collarbone, as if it wanted to reset itself every second. It wasn’t just a tool: it was a lock. And for a moment, it had almost broken.

  —It was… like they ripped out what we are —I said, hoarse.

  Velka closed her eyes. Her breathing steadied, though her hands still shook.

  —Aurora isn’t an energy project —she said at last, in a calm, icy tone—. It’s a weapon. One that silences magic. All magic.

  The word hung between us, obscene. I shivered.

  —If they can use it in a lab… —I began.

  —…they can use it on entire cities —she finished, opening her eyes. Her gaze was a shard of glass—. And Seravenn would have nothing. No army. No defense.

  The silence between us became unbearable. Outside, footsteps echoed distantly, as if no one else had felt anything. But they had. We had seen it in the averted eyes, the rigid bodies filing out before us. Everyone had felt it. And yet, no one spoke it aloud.

  Velka pushed herself upright slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She rinsed with water, took a steadying breath. She stared into the mirror: Susanne, perfect, serious, impeccable. No one would guess what had just happened.

  —We have to pretend nothing happened —she said—. But we mustn’t forget. Ever.

  I looked at her reflection beside mine. “Caroline” looked back: tired eyes, pale skin. Behind the glass, I thought I could still see that white glow bleeding from the sealed door.

  —And if Aurora is already complete? —I asked in a whisper.

  Velka turned to me.

  —Then Seravenn is doomed.

  There was nothing else to say. We left the restroom into the corridor, wearing the faces of those who had never felt a tremor in their soul. Voices murmured routine reports. Herzmann barked orders as if nothing had happened. And Klara… Klara was still somewhere in the ring, watching.

  The air smelled of solvents and reheated coffee. But beneath it, what we were breathing was fear.

  We weren’t the only ones. Back in the hallway, technicians leaned against the walls—one blotting a bloody nose with a crumpled handkerchief, another with eyes so red it looked like he’d been crying. No one raised their voice. The murmur was nothing but restrained breaths, trembling hands pretending at composure.

  And Klara was there. Standing, yes. Firm, yes. But not untouched. Her jaw was locked tight, her face frozen in a mask of command, and yet her fingers clutched the edge of a file cabinet as if she needed it to keep from buckling. Someone tried to hand her a glass of water. She refused it with a brusque, almost vicious motion. The “no” hung in the air like a blade.

  It was the first time I understood that even she was suffering.

  Later, taking advantage of a shift change, Velka and I intercepted Caelia and Neyra in a side corridor. Caelia looked as ever—composed, unshaken, disciplined. Neyra, more restless, eyed us suspiciously the moment we closed the door behind us.

  —What the hell is going on? —Neyra demanded.

  Velka wiped her still-damp mouth. I spoke for both of us:

  —Aurora isn’t just a technical test. It’s a weapon. One that shuts magic down… not just around you, but inside you.

  —We didn’t feel anything —Caelia countered.

  —Because your covers blocked the pulse, —I said, my voice rasping. —But what we felt… what we saw… it was like having your shadow ripped out of your chest. Velka could barely stand. And the technicians too. Even Klara.

  That made Neyra straighten instantly.

  —Even her?

  I nodded. Velka did too, weak but certain.

  Caelia exhaled through her nose, though the sharp glint in her eyes betrayed her.

  —Then there’s no doubt, —she said. —Aurora is further along than we thought. And if they manage to stabilize it, Seravenn loses everything.

  Neyra stepped toward us, her jaw clenched.

  —There’s no time. Not a single day more. This has to be stopped now.

  The four of us stood in that narrow hallway, the distant hum of the laboratory vibrating through the walls, and the single, brutal certainty pressing down on us: the countdown had begun.

  At the same time

  The laboratory had emptied of voices, but not of echoes. After the trial, the corridors of ring three felt longer, heavier, as if the very architecture had retained the absence of magic and was returning it in cold waves.

  Klara Weisshaupt walked alone through the hall, folder under her arm. Her step was firm, impeccable, but every so often, her pulse reminded her of human frailty. The test had taken its toll on everyone: tremors, fainting, vomiting. She herself had felt her stomach twist, a dizziness she had barely concealed behind her usual rigid mask. She had mitigated it, yes, but she had not overcome it. And that was intolerable.

  She stopped in front of an auxiliary room. A pair of technicians whispered:

  —Doctor Schulz vomited as soon as the pulse ended.

  —And Susanne… it wasn’t vomiting, but she almost collapsed. Herzmann noticed.

  —That’s not normal.

  Klara silenced them with a single gesture of her hand. Both fell quiet, tense. She entered, took the reports directly from the table without asking. Her eyes moved over the lines with surgical precision: physiological anomalies, inconsistencies in the suppression thresholds, resistance to the shutdown beyond the expected range.

  The name Caroline. The name Susanne.

  Klara closed the folder slowly. The gesture was simple, but in it lay a sentence.

  It wasn’t the first time she had noticed. From the very first day, she had felt an odd pull toward both of them: the way her gaze lingered one second too long, the unease sparked by their smallest gestures. She had disguised it as curiosity, even professional sympathy. But it wasn’t. Now she understood what that vibration had been all along, that invisible magnetism. Power. Power disguised as flesh.

  Not doctors. Not mere infiltrators.

  Witches.

  Magical Girls who had dared to walk her laboratory under borrowed names.

  Her jaw tightened. A spark of emotion broke through her chest: not rage, not yet, but a feverish anticipation. The certainty of having caught the lie.

  Sometime later...

  On the lower level of the complex, the sensors would not be silent. The trial had ended hours ago, yet the Containment Core still vibrated.

  The guards exchanged uneasy glances, pretending not to hear the hum rising from the walls: a deep, irregular sound, like the breathing of something asleep that had begun to dream.

  Inside the chamber, the Resonance—Selene containers pulsed. The extracted magic, liquid and red like a sick ocean, struck against the reinforced glass at shorter and shorter intervals. One of the cylinders showed microfractures. Minor alarms lit up on the panel. Herzmann arrived within seconds, sweating, demanding reports.

  —What’s happening? —he barked.

  —A residual spike, doctor. Nothing compromising the structure.

  But the screen did not lie: the energy residue had begun to synchronize on its own. It wasn’t inertia, it was coherence. The algorithm traced waves that aligned as if seeking a shared heartbeat.

  And then it happened.

  From the central core —the tank sealed for months, fed with every prior extraction— came a white radiance, streaked with veins of red. The light bled through the metal joints like water that recognized no dam. The very air seemed to burn and freeze at once.

  One technician fell to his knees, clutching his ears. Another screamed he was hearing a chant, though no one else heard it. The security cameras shut down, one after another, leaving only the intermittent alarms.

  Herzmann tried to impose calm, but his hands shook as he typed in commands. The system did not obey.

  The Dominus was answering. It was not a project, not an artifact: it was breathing.

  Klara was in her office, alone. Outside, the corridor lights flickered weakly. The report lay open in front of her, alongside the Core’s data logs. Two documents that should never cross, and yet on her desk they did so with perverse ease.

  Caroline. Susanne.

  Physiological anomalies.

  Resonance spikes.

  The sum required no algebra.

  —Witches —she whispered, barely audible.

  Her fist closed over the desk with a force that made the wood creak. At that instant, from the foundations of the laboratory, the hum of the Dominus rose through the concrete and entered her office like a heartbeat. Heavy. Inescapable.

  The lamp above the desk flickered. The shadows moved without moving.

  Klara raised her head.

  For a fleeting instant, she swore she could hear something else within that pulse. Not just vibration. A murmur. A new voice.

  She smiled. Not tenderly. Hungrily.

  The Dominus had awakened, and the world had yet to know it.