The camp had fallen back asleep too quickly, like a wounded animal feigning calm so it would be left alone. The torches still swayed, stirring pale, tired tongues of flame, weary from fighting the cosmic cold left by the Source-Gate's visit. The earth bore its trace: a film of spiritual frost, a shudder etched into the dust. No one spoke of it, but everyone saw it. Everyone felt it. Even the dead would have shuddered.

Dylan stood on the platform where Martissant had received the entity, arms crossed, his eyes lost on the horizon as if he hoped the dawn would answer an unspoken question. The night, still heavy, clung to the sky with stubborn laziness.

Julius came up behind him, a poorly stifled yawn on his lips.

"You gonna stand here until the stars fall?" he asked, leaning on the wooden railing. "Or do you just want them to see you're sulking?"

Dylan didn't answer. His mind still circled the Source-Gate's icy voice, its intentionless promises, that repeated "little conduit" uttered with quiet certainty. He had stood his ground, yes — but standing up to a cosmic river was like hitting the sea: it let you do it, then came back.

"You keep breathing like a man who just found out he has a secret son," Julius grumbled. "It tires me out just watching you."

"I'm thinking."

"Then stop. It's contagious."

A silence. Then Dylan asked, his voice low:

"Do you think… I can resist for long?"

Julius furrowed a brow, then simply shrugged.

"I think you make enough noise that the Source itself might want to leave you alone just to shut you up."

It was his way of saying: yes, you can.

Or at least: you'll try, and I'll be there if you fall.

Dylan offered a smile, fragile but real.

And it was exactly at that moment that Maggie entered the scene — softly, almost too softly. She ascended the platform steps like someone who doesn't want the wood to creak under their weight. Her face was calm, but a calm too smooth, glass polished by the sea until it became sharp.

"I was looking for you," she said.

Her voice sounded right.

But something in her gaze rang false.

Dylan turned. "Maggie? You should be resting."

"I'm not sleepy."

She approached, her steps measured, a rhythm she'd never had. Maggie usually walked as she lived: step by step, awkwardly, sincerely, like a stone tumbling down a slope. Here, she moved like someone who had learned to count their distances.

Julius straightened up slightly, intrigued, but said nothing.

"I wanted… to check you were alright after… what came," she said. She took a moment to find the word, as if another word — Master — threatened to come out instead.

Dylan nodded. "I'm fine."

"Good," she replied.

But her tone held no warmth.

As if the word had been selected from a list.

The silence that followed was unnatural. Even Julius felt a strange tension, a note too high in the air. Maggie stood still, arms at her sides, eyes fixed on Dylan, and there was something in her breathing — a regular, mechanical rhythm — that sent an icy sensation down Dylan's spine.

"Maggie?" he said, taking a step forward. "Is something wrong?"

She blinked once. Just once. Then her expression changed — more human, softer, too abruptly.

"I… I just wanted to say good night," she said, suddenly finding her normal voice again. "And that… what you did… it was brave."

And then she left.

As if nothing had happened.

Julius watched her until she disappeared among the tents.

"She was… different, wasn't she?" he murmured.

"Yes."

"You think it's because she saw you stand up to a cosmic phenomenon or… something else?"

Dylan didn't answer.

---

By morning, the shadows had settled in.

The sun hadn't yet dared pierce the curtain of mist when a scream tore through the camp's silence.

A sentry, livid, was pointing to where the guard dogs were kept. Two of them were dead. Not throat-slit, not attacked. They had dropped dead, cleanly, as if scythed by an invisible hand.

And according to the guard, Maggie had been the first on the scene.

Too fast.

Way too fast.

She claimed she had heard something.

But no one else had heard a thing.

Valeria arrived, her piercing eyes analyzing every detail, every footprint in the mud, every breath in the air. She questioned Maggie, who answered perfectly calmly, too calmly, except when Valeria asked a specific question:

"Why were you awake at that hour?"

That's when Maggie hesitated.

Hesitated for real.

Her gaze became distant, as if a curtain fell behind her eyes.

Then she replied:

"I… I don't sleep well."

It wasn't a lie.

It wasn't quite the truth either.

The tone sounded like a recitation.

Valeria, however, wasn't fooled. She watched Dylan for a moment, a silent message: something's wrong.

---

The strange decisions began.

First, it was innocent: Maggie boiled water for the soldiers, but forgot she'd never cooked in her life without burning half the utensils. Here, everything was perfect. Meticulously perfect.

Maggie, diligent?

Maggie, methodical?

She had never been that kind of woman.

Then she proposed different patrol routes.

"That path is safer."

"That post should be doubled."

"That tent should be moved three meters."

No one understood how she knew.

She herself didn't know how she knew.

But the worst… the real sign… came at noon.

---

The Invisible Break

Marcus had called her to help move some crates of ritual pigments. Maggie agreed with a slightly stiff smile. Nothing abnormal — until she brushed against the glyphs traced on the wood.

The runes briefly glowed.

Just a hint.

Like a light held back out of modesty.

Marcus's eyes widened.

"You… you shouldn't be able to…"

Maggie pulled her hand back, a movement too quick, too precise.

"It was hot," she said simply.

Except the glyphs weren't supposed to be hot.

They weren't supposed to react to someone with no spiritual mastery.

When Marcus asked her to do it again, Maggie had a moment of absence.

Like falling into a black tunnel.

Then she replied:

"No. It gives me a headache."

A banal excuse, but a perfectly delivered lie.

Dylan, summoned by Marcus, felt an icy trickle in his chest seeing her. The world around her seemed slightly blurred, as if a shadow within was breathing behind her eyes.

He approached.

"Maggie… show me your hand."

She hesitated.

A hesitation too long.

Then she held out her closed fist.

He gently opened her fingers.

Her palm was pale.

But in the center, resting like a dark dew, was a tiny trace of black — a microscopic shard, vibrating like a pupil.

"What is that?" she asked, genuinely panicked this time.

Dylan smelled it.

Not a real smell — a smell in the mind.

The scent of Alka.

Julius arrived behind them, taking in the scene in silence before whispering:

"Ah. That… that's bad."

---

What followed was stranger still.

In the afternoon, as the soldiers trained, Maggie watched. She had never shown the slightest interest in martial discipline. But now… her eyes analyzed every posture, every weakness, every opening. Like a machine calibrating itself.

Dylan, at a distance, felt something tighten in the air — not around her, but inside her. A thread, almost invisible, pulled taut within her mind.

When she turned her head towards him, it was no longer Maggie.

Not really.

That gaze belonged to someone else.

To someone who was calculating.

Then, as if a wave passed over her face… Maggie returned.

"Dylan? You're making a strange face."

"Maggie… what did they do to you?"

She took a step back. "Nothing. Nothing at all. I… I was just…"

She brought a hand to her forehead and groaned. A pain. A real pain. A pain placed there by an ancient command.

Don't speak.

Don't say anything.

Don't reveal anything.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"I… I think something's wrong…" she murmured, her voice broken. "I think I… I'm getting lost."

And before she could finish, she collapsed into Dylan's arms.

Her body trembled.

Not from cold.

Not from fear.

But from an internal battle.

As if two rivers flowed within her, one clear, one black, and the second was slowly beginning to invade the first.

---

They carried her to the healer's tent — a small room saturated with medicinal herbs, smoke, and candles. Marcus traced glyphs around her, but some refused to light. As if Maggie was unconsciously repelling their light.

Valeria entered, arms crossed, gaze sharp.

"She won't last long," she said.

"Against what?" asked Dylan, his voice trembling.

Marcus answered, pale:

"Someone left a deep mental imprint in her. A command. An order laid down in her mind. And she's starting to… react."

"React how?"

He swallowed.

"She's going to split. One part of her wants to remain herself. The other… obeys the one who marked her."

Dylan felt a cold rage burn in his stomach.

"Alka…"

Valeria gave a barely perceptible nod.

"Not just Alka. Her general. The one who knows how to touch minds without leaving visible scars."

Silence fell.

Then Dylan took Maggie's hand.

It was hot.

Too hot.

She whispered, her voice lost:

"Dylan… I'm sorry. I think… I think they're still inside me."

And Dylan understood.

Not with his head.

With his soul.

The enemy was no longer just outside.

It had already crossed the threshold.

And Maggie was no longer just Maggie.

She had become the first battlefield.