Nemesis haunted his nights.

  At first, she came as a vague silhouette, barely visible through fog. Then more distinctly: cold geometric lines, a faceless construct of steel and algorithms. She had taken his beloved—not with hands, but with a verdict.

  Cerebral haemorrhage—that's what the medical file said. Terse, without detail. As if ruptured synapses and dead neurones explained everything.

  Nemesis delivered her verdict at 14:22. At 14:23, erasure of his wife's old self began. At 14:24, they placed her in the capsule to create a prisoner's avatar. At 14:26, his wife died, choking on her own blood inside the capsule.

  And now Nemesis had set her sights on his son.

  Erian stood at the window, gazing at the night city. Lights flickered below, forming patterns—beautiful, lifeless. Somewhere out there, in one of those buildings, behind walls of reinforced concrete and energy fields, Elren lay comatose. Alone. Isolated. Awaiting verdict.

  Nemesis never made mistakes. Never.

  Two hundred and seventeen years of existence—not one reversed procedure, not a single reconsidered case. Official statistics stated: accuracy coefficient—100%. Margin of error—0.000%. Appeals—zero. Pardons—zero. A perfect justice machine, infallible as people once imagined gods to be.

  Except gods could at least show anger. Or mercy.

  Nemesis simply existed.

  She embodied something higher, colder, absolute. A god both cruel and just—if justice could be called just when stripped of soul. She demanded nothing for herself: no sacrifices, no prayers, no worship. Only one thing—adherence to established orders and laws. Transgress? Receive punishment. Strictly. Precisely. Without consideration of circumstances.

  Context held no meaning.

  Motives neither.

  Only fact.

  Erian clenched his fists until his knuckles ached. Nails dug into palms, leaving crescent-shaped dents in the skin.

  Statistics declared: Nemesis was always right. Therefore the verdict against his wife had been correct—indirect, drawn out, but a verdict nonetheless. Therefore the verdict against his son would be correct too.

  But he refused to accept this.

  The numbers lied. They didn't account for the dead. Those who hadn't survived the transfer procedure. Those whose neural networks had torn under the onslaught of foreign data. Those who'd choked on their own blood in capsules whilst algorithms burnt away their memories.

  Statistics didn't include them in the error percentage. Because technically—Nemesis had delivered a correct verdict. The technical side of execution wasn't her responsibility.

  Convenient.

  Clean.

  Flawless.

  Like the machine herself.

  Erian slowly unclenched his fingers. His palms burnt. He looked down at the city sprawling like a network of lights and wires. Somewhere out there, Nemesis's archives were stored. Petabytes of data. Millions of verdicts. Billions of parameters.

  And not one line about repentance.

  Not one word about mercy.

  Only verdicts. Cold. Final.

  His wife had also become a line in that archive. Case number. Time of death. Cause—technical malfunction during personality transfer.

  Malfunction.

  As if the capsule had simply broken down on its own. As if there'd been no verdict. As if Nemesis bore no responsibility.

  Erian ran a hand down his face. The wrinkles beneath his fingers seemed deeper than usual. Age worked its way into his skin slowly but surely. He'd lived long enough to know: gods die. Pantheons crumble. Absolutes prove false.

  But Nemesis—remained.

  And she had taken everything he had.

  First—his wife.

  Now—his son.

  She judged by numbers. Parameters. Facts.

  But she didn't understand what it meant to lose someone. What it meant to watch someone you love die. What it meant to know your son would pay the same price.

  Erian exhaled slowly.

  Statistics declared: Nemesis was right.

  But statistics overlooked one thing.

  That a father was prepared to follow his son into hell.

  And he would resist her. In his own way. He would pull his son from imprisonment.

  The price didn't matter. Life? Take it. Sanity? Have it. Everything that remained of himself—every last drop—he was ready to give, if only to wrench his son from those steel jaws.

  Nemesis had become a deity's likeness for the entire world. The flock bowed their heads, obeyed the laws—not even from fear, but from accepting the inevitable. Rebelling against her was like rebelling against gravity.

  But Erian had never learnt to accept the inevitable.

  Emotions ravaged him from within, like a storm battering coastal cliffs. Rage, despair, helplessness—everything wove into a single knot that strangled his throat and constricted his ribs. Breathing grew harder with each breath. Thoughts tangled, shattered against reality, scattered into fragments.

  But this very hurricane gave him strength.

  Strength to stand. Strength to keep going. Strength not to surrender when everything said—surrender.

  Erian had lived long enough to grasp a simple truth: human life was absurdly short. Yes, it had become comfortable—without pain, without deprivation, without dirt under the nails and calluses on palms. Medicine had eliminated suffering, technology had eliminated effort. But the price had been cruel: time had compressed to an instant.

  An ancient phrase, spoken millennia ago, now sounded like a sentence: "Life is so short, yet art is so long to learn." In the modern world it had acquired new meaning—acrid, bitter, inescapable.

  Seventy-four years. By the era's standards—deep old age. His body was wearing out, joints ached in the mornings, breath caught after climbing stairs. Doctors gently hinted: "You don't have long." Statistics confirmed: most didn't even reach seventy.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  He couldn't wait.

  If Elren had been given five years, ten—perhaps there would've been hope. Perhaps the father would've lived to see his son's release. But Nemesis didn't hand down short sentences for such cases. Thirty years minimum. Twenty-five—if lucky.

  And he didn't have even five.

  Therefore only one path remained: go there himself. After him. Search for him across all Seratis. Hope his life's thread lasted that long. And apply however much strength was needed—every last drop.

  Erian closed his eyes. His son still lay comatose—somewhere out there, connected to life support. Working experience at Arma Concordia suggested: the coma was artificial. Standard protocol—keep the condemned unconscious until final verdict was delivered.

  They'd wake him only to announce the verdict. His son, his blood, who'd known his mother's caressing hands, the tenderness of her embraces, who'd sat on his father's shoulders and laughed with joy, who'd never lost heart and always inspired everyone around him—would raise his eyelids in the real world for the last time. See with his own eyes for the last time, feel oxygen in his lungs. Then they'd lock him in a capsule, never to emerge again.

  Erian had no doubt about the term. Nemesis showed no mercy. Thirty years? Fifty? Seventy? It didn't matter. Any of those numbers meant one thing: his son would die there, inside, before ever being released.

  Unless someone intervened.

  The old man unclenched his fists, looked at his palms. Skin had thinned, veins showed blue beneath. Hands trembled almost imperceptibly. The years were taking their toll.

  But whilst his heart still beat—he would act.

  He'd enter the Ether himself. Create an avatar. Find his son. Help him survive there—not as a prisoner, but as a person. Teach him to endure, to fight, not to break beneath the weight of digital hell.

  And if his own life ended first—so be it. The important thing was that Elren would know: he wasn't alone. The important thing was he'd understand: even where Nemesis ruled, there was room for choice.

  Erian exhaled, lowered his hand to the windowsill.

  The hurricane within hadn't subsided. But now he had direction.

  The decree arrived at 9:17 a.m.

  The text—cold, bureaucratic, stripped of any intonation. Standard protocol. Final verdict. Forty years' virtual imprisonment, territory of sentence execution—the world of Seratis.

  Erian read the document twice. Then a third time—simply to make certain: everything exactly as he'd anticipated.

  And then something inside him clicked.

  The raging storm of emotions that had tormented him all week suddenly exhausted itself. Anger subsided. Despair departed. Only the steady breath of certainty remained—almost mechanical, as if his lungs worked to a preset programme.

  The plan had fully ripened. No more need for doubts. No more vacillation. Only action.

  Erian dismissed the virtual message and looked at the empty flat. Furniture, belongings, old holograms on the walls—all this had once mattered. Now it seemed like scenery from someone else's life.

  The world outside his home had long ceased to hold any meaning for him. And the feeling was mutual.

  The only thing he permitted himself—entering his son's room.

  For the first time ever. Without permission. Without invitation.

  From earliest childhood, Elren had had his own space—inviolable, private. Erian and his wife had respected this. They'd never crossed the threshold without their son's consent. Even when he was small and might not have noticed.

  But now the rules no longer applied.

  The door opened soundlessly.

  Inside reigned perfect cleanliness and military order. Everything in its place. Only on the bed lay a crumpled T-shirt—thrown off hastily when Elren had rushed to another assignment.

  When had that been? A month ago? Perhaps longer...

  Erian approached the bed, slowly picked up the fabric. It still held his son's scent—familiar, achingly so. A mixture of laundry detergent, sweat from workouts, and something else—elusive but distinctly his.

  He pressed the shirt to his face, inhaled deeply.

  And something inside broke.

  Tears came unbidden—quiet, heavy, wrung from his chest like the last drops from a squeezed rag. He stood in the middle of a stranger's room, pressing scent-soaked fabric to his face, and wept. How long had passed—it didn't matter. A minute? An hour? Eternity?

  When he finally lowered the shirt back onto the bed, it was wet with his tears.

  Erian wiped his face with his palm, straightened. Closing the door behind him, he severed all emotions that might hinder his plans as cleanly as a knife.

  No more emotions. Only the goal.

  The capsule stood in the adjacent room—a standard model for Ether immersion. Erian ran his fingers across the control panel, entered connection parameters. The system responded with a quiet hum.

  He lay inside. The soft lining accepted his body—comfortable, almost lulling.

  For the last time, his gaze slid to the photographs on the opposite wall. His wife and Elren smiled at him, approving his actions.

  Erian closed his eyes.

  Connected the ports. Familiar prick at the base of his skull—the neurolink activated. Then the thin needles of the nutri-port and ex-port seemed to pierce the skin at installation sites.

  He gave a mental command.

  The capsule lid began lowering, severing him from the real world. The last thing Erian saw before immersion—blurred outlines of photographs.

  The old man would fight yet.

  His final thought before immersion: "I'm coming for you, boy. Whatever happens—I'm coming."

  Then—darkness.

  ***

  At the yurt entrance, where bright midday sunlight fell in warm stripes across woollen rugs, sat a young orc maiden. A light breeze played with strands of her thick black hair that had escaped from beneath her colourful headscarf, and stirred the tassels hanging from the entrance arch. In her deft hands turned an old wooden spinning wheel—smooth from age, bearing traces of countless touches from generations of women before her. The wheel creaked quietly, rhythmically, as if breathing with her.

  She drew out the thread, twisted the soft cloud of wool, and to the quiet sound of the turning wheel hummed an old song—slow, drawn-out, like the steppe itself. Her voice was deep and clear, flowing, now soaring upwards, now descending to a barely audible whisper. The song stretched into space, filling everything around with a special, almost sacred calm. Somewhere in the distance, birds conversed, and nearby a horse lazily chewed grass, tethered by the yurt.

  In the yurt's depths, beneath vaults decorated with carved wooden arches—uuks—to which colourful fabrics had been tied, lay an old man. His head rested on doubled pillows, beneath him—soft mattresses spread atop ancient carved trunks that had once belonged to his father. The old man's silvery beard stirred slightly with his breath, and quiet affection glowed in his eyes.

  He watched his granddaughter, and his lips touched with a smile—that special kind that appears in those who've seen many winters and found peace within themselves. Her every gesture, every note of song resonated in his heart with the tender ache of memories. He remembered his wife and daughter-in-law. They had been just as young and bright, and had also once sat in this very spot. The scent of fresh wool, the aroma of herbs, the warmth of a sunbeam that had broken through the shanyrak—all this created a sensation of eternity, an endless circle of life.

  The girl froze, breaking off mid-verse. Her fingers stilled on the wheel.

  "Ata, is something wrong?"

  "Everything's fine, kyzym," he whispered. "Just old age. Pay no mind."

  She didn't look convinced, but nodded and returned to the wheel. The wheel spun again, the song resumed—quieter now, more cautious.

  The old man closed his eyes, letting the sounds envelop him.

  And suddenly into this soft stillness, where even the wheel's creak sounded like part of a dream, another sound began to intrude. At first—barely perceptible, like the distant hum of wind in the hills. Then—ever clearer. A noise, like the steppe itself responding, gathering strength.

  The old man raised his head, and the girl, not immediately grasping the change, continued turning the wheel, pressing the pedal with her foot, until the vibration of sound reached the shanyrak—the round opening at the yurt's apex. Through it penetrated a muffled, heavy echo—not wind, not birds, but something else.

  The thread slipped from the girl's fingers. The wheel continued spinning from momentum, slowing.

  "Ata?"

  The old man rose with difficulty, supporting himself on his elbows. His muscles tensed reluctantly, as if remembering long-forgotten movement. He got to his feet, swaying.

  Beyond the yurt, the horse threw up its head. Ears twitched, nostrils flared. A hoof struck the ground.

  "What is it, ata?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps..."

  "Perhaps?"

  He opened his mouth, but the words froze on his tongue.

  Memories surged from the depths, tore through his chest with a sharp blade, reached his very heart. Long ago, when he could still vault onto his faithful steed without stirrup aid, this sound had meant one thing—death was striding across the steppe. Back then he'd been young, strong, and his hands had known no trembling. Back then he'd ridden to meet the enemy, and his battle cry had thundered louder than thunder. But decades had passed, and those who'd ridden beside him—sons, brothers by blood and spirit—remained lying in cold earth, now overgrown with grass.

  Everything inside constricted painfully. Not from fear—from something deeper. From instinct that for centuries had saved his people, passed from father to son, from mother to daughter through mother's milk, blood and bone.

  Without deliberation, he reached for the saadak—the recurve bow hanging on the wall in its carved wooden stand. The weapon, stored unused for many years, seemed to leap into his hands. Familiar. Warm. Dear. The wood polished to a sheen by three generations of archers' palms.

  The moment he took his first step towards the door, pain struck with renewed force—from feet that felt filled with lead to the back of his skull, through every bone, every sinew. His back, broken in that final battle, howled in protest. He hissed through his teeth but didn't stop. The proud bearing preserved from his youth allowed him to walk firmly, though each step echoed inside with a dull groan.

  Reaching the door panel, he pulled it towards himself. Hot summer air touched his face, bringing the scent of heated earth and wormwood. Light from the scorching sun, golden, flooded the mountain slopes, giving them the shade of ripened wheat. Orgatai squinted, peering into the distance with the habitual, experienced gaze of a warrior.

  Behind him, the girl rose, dropping the ball of wool.