Princess Jayna closed her eyes for a moment, seeking refuge in a darkness that had never truly belonged to her. She was fed up. Exasperated. She hated every fiber of her hybrid being, that power that had been forced upon her at birth from the union between the Sha and Hyra the Untamed, goddess of the winds.

  The wind never fell silent. It whispered in her veins, roared in her dreams, and worst of all: it showed her fragments of futures she would rather never see.

  She had watched friends —the few who had dared approach the daughter of a Sha and a goddess— die in horrible ways. Murdered in nighttime ambushes, wiped out in battles that had not yet happened, destroyed by a fearsome force rising on the horizon like a black storm. A shadow shaped like an army, with banners she did not recognize, but that reeked of blood and hot iron.

  She let herself fall onto the silk cushions of the divan in her private chamber, high up in the imperial palace tower. The wind entered through the open latticework, stirring the translucent curtains and bringing the scent of jasmine and incense smoke from the gardens below. It was not a kind wind; it was the same one her mother ruled —capricious and cruel.

  “Not again…” she murmured, clenching her fists until her nails dug into her palms. “I don’t want to see any more.”

  But the gift did not obey. It never did. Tears fell as she watched the future.

  A blink, and the world twisted. She saw a banquet hall lit by torches, laughter turning into screams, blood splashing across lapis lazuli mosaics. Familiar faces, people crying, armies pouring in from every side, the dead and the undead together, the city falling as thousands of enemies breached the walls.

  The vision dissolved like smoke, leaving her gasping, heart pounding in her throat.

  Jayna sat up abruptly. Her long hair, dawn-blonde with divine shimmers, cascaded over her bare shoulders. She wore a light sky-blue gauze tunic embroidered with silver threads that mimicked swirling winds. Her eyes, stormy sky-blue, shone with a light that was not entirely human.

  “I will not allow this to happen,” she said quietly, more to herself than to the wind that listened. “I won’t let them destroy everything… but how do I make them listen—everything they said about the future was met with smiles and treated like a joke.”

  She stood and walked to the balcony. The city stretched out beneath her: illuminated minarets, bazaars still active despite the late hour, the river winding like a silver vein under the moon. But in her mind, she already saw it all burning.

  The gift of clairvoyance was not a blessing. It was a curse. Her mother, in a fit of divine jealousy, had blessed—or cursed—her with it at birth, so that Jayna could never escape the truth. So she would always know what was coming, but never be able to fully change it.

  And yet… something had changed. Before, she had seen the empire die of starvation, without water, and without mercy from the divine rukh.

  For the past few days the visions were no longer just echoes of inevitable tragedies.

  Now they arrived like gusts of hot wind that smelled of molten iron, ozone after lightning, fresh blood… and something else… something that tightened her chest in a way that wasn’t only fear… could it be… courage, future, hope?

  In those first new nights she still couldn’t see them all. Only fragments. Flashes. As if the veil of the future were slowly tearing, allowing only three silhouettes to pass through before closing again.

  The first always appeared standing on a field of still-smoking corpses. A tall warrior, broad-shouldered, but it wasn’t his size that struck her. It was the gauntlet covering his right arm. Not just any gauntlet. It was a living thing of black-bluish metal, with five curved, scythe-sharp claws that seemed to drink in light around them. When he closed his fist, the air rippled as if reality itself winced in pain. In one vision she saw him raise that arm and cleave in two the armored head of a colossal enemy warlord as if it were rotten wood. The impact shook the ground. And when the dust settled, he was still standing, breathing heavily, eyes fixed on the horizon as though already searching for the next foe. She felt, without knowing why, that this man did not fight for glory. He fought because someone had to. And he was always the one who ended up doing it. His back seemed to carry the future itself.

  The second appeared in a different vision, under rain that seemed to fall in slow motion. Long silver hair soaked, clinging to his face and neck. A long, slender spear in his right hand, its tip still dripping something dark that wasn’t exactly blood. He was smiling. Even amid the chaos, even when surrounded by enemies, he smiled and lifted the spirits of his men. It wasn’t arrogance. It was… pure charisma. As if his mere presence made the men around him raise their heads and remember why they kept fighting. When he spun the spear in a perfect arc, the movement was so clean it seemed to slice the very sound of the storm. Dozens of enemies fell at once without anyone fully understanding what had happened. And then he simply turned his face to the side, as if he had sensed someone watching from very far away. Straight toward her. For a second their eyes met across time. And his smile softened just a little. As if telling her, without words: Relax. We’re coming. And he turned… a cloak bearing a rukh.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  The third… The third was different. The first time she saw him, she didn’t understand why her heart lurched so violently. An immense figure. Colossal armor, not quite metal, but polished obsidian crossed with veins of golden and crimson light that pulsed like arteries. The armor was so massive it seemed impossible anyone could move inside it… and yet it moved with terrifying precision. Every step shook the earth. Every swing of its arm sent shockwaves that shattered entire enemy formations. But it wasn’t just brute force. There was something… intimate. When the vision drew closer, when she approached the slit of the helm, it opened and a young man, a boy, smiled at her… and said things about them… Not like to a stranger. Like to someone who had been there before. Someone who had shared something important. Something painful to remember. And when the armor slowly turned toward her, extending a gigantic hand as if trying to reach her across centuries, she woke with a choked scream and tears already streaming down her cheeks without knowing exactly why she was crying.

  Three. Only three out of seven. But it was already enough for fear to change shape.

  It was no longer just terror at the end of the world. Now there was also urgency. And a strange, almost painful certainty:

  Those three were already walking.

  .

  .

  Past life.

  All the guards lay on the ground like broken puppets. Some still had their eyes open, faces frozen in disbelief and pain. Blood spread in irregular pools reflecting the trembling light of fallen torches.

  The princess was on her knees, wearing red jeweled lingerie with delicate adornments, her skin now stained with dirt and dark red. Her breathing was rapid, shallow, like a cornered animal. She didn’t scream. She no longer had the strength. She only looked up, toward the thing towering before her.

  The four-armed giant smiled with a mouth that looked like it had been slit open with a knife. Each of his four fists gripped a different weapon: a serrated axe, a spiked chain, a nailed club, and a bare claw dripping something viscous and black. He stood easily four meters tall. His skin was a nauseating mix of greenish-gray and irregular bony plates, as if his body had tried to become armor and failed halfway. The stench he gave off was physical —something between rotting flesh and hot sulfur.

  “What a pretty little princess,” he said in a voice that seemed to come from several throats at once. “It’s going to be fun repopulating a new race from a demigoddess.”

  He extended one arm toward her. Slowly. Savoring every second of the terror he saw growing in her eyes.

  She crawled backward, back against the overturned carriage wall. There was no escape. She knew it. And in that instant, one of the visions that had tormented her for years materialized in front of her: the same scene, the same monster, the same despair… and in the end, always the same darkness.

  But then…

  A scream tore through the air.

  It wasn’t a scream of fear. It was a scream of pure, almost animal fury.

  “Let her go!” — Zoyrod, that foolish young man who was so kind

  “Zoyrod ruuuun!!!” thundered like dry lightning.

  From the shadows across the clearing appeared a figure walking with deliberately slow steps. He wasn’t running. He wasn’t in a hurry. Each step crunched the gravel beneath his boots.

  It was him.

  His father wasn’t there —that two-meter metallic being who always protected him had been attacked by the giant the moment he arrived and sent flying. And he had survived with only a tattered cloak, dark trousers, and a torn shirt. But his eyes… his eyes already burned with that same faint glow she had seen behind the helm in her dreams.

  The four-armed giant turned his head, amused.

  “And who the fuck are you, runt?”

  Zoyrod didn’t answer with words.

  He stopped about fifteen meters away. Planted his feet. And then, with a voice that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart, he spoke two words:

  “Activate… armor.”

  In that instant, the overturned carriage behind him… exploded outward.

  It wasn’t an explosion of fire. It was an impossible burst of motion.

  Hundreds of metal fragments shot out as if the carriage had been a chrysalis that had just broken open. Plates, curved pieces, gears, tubes, glowing cores, claws, pauldrons, greaves —everything flew in an ordered storm, spinning in the air with surgical precision.

  The pieces didn’t collide with each other. They sought each other.

  The first to arrive was the central breastplate: a massive plate with a furious crimson core beating like an angry heart. It slammed into Zoyrod’s chest with such force that the impact raised a perfect circle of dust around him. He didn’t even stagger.

  Then came the angular pauldrons, black with veins of bloody light. Clack. Clack. They locked with a sound that made teeth vibrate.

  The greaves climbed his legs like living metal serpents. The arms were covered in a spiral. In moments he was already three meters tall —a metallic warrior.

  The helmet was last.

  It shot out from the back of the carriage like a projectile, spinning violently, leaving a trail of red sparks. It crashed into his face with a boom that made even the four-armed giant take several steps back.

  Silence.

  One heartbeat.

  Two.

  And then the armor’s eyes ignited: two vertical slits of incandescent red.

  The princess, still on the ground, stopped breathing for a second.

  The giant let out a nervous laugh.

  “You think some pretty toy is gonna—?”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. A beam from the center of the armor launched him into the air.

  Zoyrod slowly raised his head.

  “Don’t worry… I’ve got this.”

  The fallen giant rose, growled, and raised all four weapons at once.

  Zoyrod took one step.

  The ground shook.

  And the princess, for the first time since it all began, felt something other than absolute terror.

  She felt… hope.

  Because the vision that had always ended in darkness… this time had a twist.

  And the twist had just arrived.