For the next three months, I didn't live. I was dying and being born anew.

  But first, there were two weeks of oblivion.

  For two weeks, I y in a regeneration gel capsule. It was like sleeping in the womb of a giant jellyfish. The gel fused tissues, removed burn scars, and restored the uterus that Viktor had literally reassembled from pieces. Adrian’s magic fueled me from the outside, preventing me from fading away. In those days, I felt neither pain nor grief—only a cold, viscous forgetfulness.

  Then, they woke me up.

  “Indicators are normal, tissues have fused. Physiologically, she is healthy,” Viktor’s voice sounded muffled through the capsule’s gss.

  The lid opened with a hiss. I inhaled the air—and it felt prickly.

  “Get up,” Adrian offered me his hand. “Vacation is over.”

  Every day. No weekends. No holidays. No right to weakness.

  Viktor Sergeevich was against it. When he saw the training schedule Adrian had compiled, his hands began to shake.

  “This is madness,” the healer hissed, jabbing a finger at his tablet. “You’ll kill her. She has stitches on her uterus! Her internal organs are held together by magic and a prayer. Any physical strain, and a hemorrhage will begin. She needs bed rest, and you're dragging her to the training grounds!”

  Adrian didn't even look at him. He stood by the window, studying a map of the city.

  “She made a choice,” his voice was as cold as a winter wind. “She wants revenge. Revenge requires strength. If she dies during training, it means she was unworthy of her hatred.”

  He turned to me.

  “Are you ready to croak, Anya?”

  “I’m already dead,” I replied. “All that’s left is to bury the body. Or turn it into a weapon.”

  He nodded.

  “Then welcome to hell.”

  Viktor didn't give up. He forced me to wear a magical corset—a thin mesh of regenerating threads that tightened the stitches and blocked the pain. Every morning he injected me with a dose of metabolic booster. Every evening—a recovery cocktail that made me nauseous to the point of vomiting.

  “This isn't treatment, these are crutches,” he grumbled, checking the sensors on the corset. “You're killing her body faster than I can fix it.”

  But I didn't die. I became stronger.

  ***

  ### MONTH ONE: THE BODY

  My morning began at four AM. Not with coffee. Not even with an arm.

  It began with ice water.

  A bucket of ice water poured over me by a warden droid.

  “Rise and shine, Cadet Belskaya! Time’s wasting!”

  I would jump up, teeth chattering, and five minutes ter, I’d be standing in the courtyard. Dark. Cold. Rain or snow—I didn't care. I wore only a thin tank top and pants. On my feet were gravity shackles. They weighed nothing, but they created a field of magical resistance. To take a step, you didn't just have to strain your muscles; you had to pulse an impulse of will through your legs.

  “Walk,” Adrian commanded. He stood on the porch, sipping hot coffee. “Don't run. Just walk. But if you stop, you start over.”

  I knew where this came from.

  While I y in the gel, Adrian hadn't been idle. The “police operation” had turned into a punitive raid. He had personally led the attack on the spaceport controlled by the Ognevs. He’d simply incinerated the guards and seized the cargo terminal. The blockade was broken by force.

  He hadn't slept those two weeks. Viktor said Adrian appeared in the infirmary only toward morning, his eyes bloodshot from burst vessels, to check the capsule’s readings. He scoured the bases, executed traitors—will and terror had become his left and right hands. He had grayed, grown gaunt, but his grip had only tightened.

  Now, the “Shadows” controlled the supplies to the sector. We had everything: food, medicine, equipment.

  We were feasting on the ruins of their ambitions.

  And I walked.

  Five ps around the “Dead Zone.” Step—concentration—push. Step—concentration—push. It was harder than running. It exhausted the soul, not just the body.

  At first, I fell every ten steps. Concentration would snap, and the shackles would instantly fill with the weight of lead, pinning me to the ground. Magical channels burned with fire; my temples throbbed as if a jackhammer were working inside.

  I’d fall face-first into the mud, gasping for air. I’d vomit bile from the overexertion.

  “Get up!” Adrian’s voice shed through the speakers pced around the perimeter. “If you aren't up in three seconds, I’ll release the hounds.”

  I didn't believe him. I thought he was bluffing. I thought he wouldn't dare hunt a “valuable asset” with dogs.

  On the third day, I didn't get up. I y in a puddle, pitying myself. *Fine,* I thought, closing my eyes. *Let them eat me. It’s better that way. It’ll end faster.*

  The ctter of gates opening reached me. And a low, guttural growl that made the earth tremble and the hair on my head stand up.

  I turned my head.

  A shadow burst from the kennel. Enormous, bck, with glowing red eyes. A Cerberus. A chimera bred in the Shadow Cn’s bs specifically for hunting mages. A mix of wolf, bear, and nightmare. Its hide was as bck as oil, and its maw was studded with fangs the size of daggers.

  It lunged at me in massive bounds. Saliva dripped from its fangs, and where it fell, the grass began to hiss and yellow. Acid.

  Fear is an amazing stimunt.

  I don't remember how I got up. I don't remember how I ran. Fatigue vanished. Cramps passed. Only animal terror remained. I flew over the two-meter fence of the obstacle course. Not with a leap, but with a shadow lunge that defied gravity. The weights suddenly became weightless.

  Adrian ughed. It was a rare, barking ugh that made me feel uneasy.

  “See?” he said, when I stood before him—shaking, pale, covered in mud. “Your body can do more than you think. The main thing is correct motivation. The fear of death is the best trainer.”

  But the strangest thing happened a week ter.

  I was running again. The Cerberus, whom I’d named Lucifer, was chasing me again. But this time I didn't make it over the ditch. I slipped and tumbled down, twisting my leg.

  Lucifer was over me in a second.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting a bite. Expecting the fangs to tear my throat.

  But instead of pain, I felt warmth. A hot, rough tongue touched my cheek.

  I opened my eyes.

  The massive muzzle hung over me. The red eyes looked not with rage, but with interest. He was sniffing me. Inhaling the scent of my pain, my fear, my transformation.

  “You're not food,” I whispered, reaching out a hand. “You're a brother. A monster just like me.”

  I touched his nose. He snorted but didn't pull away.

  From that day on, he stopped chasing me. He began to run *beside* me. Like a partner. Like a shadow.

  After the run—the gym.

  There, Cain awaited me, the hand-to-hand combat instructor. A silent giant with gray skin and cybernetic impnts instead of eyes. A former gdiator from the Neutral Lands whom Adrian had bought out of debt.

  He didn't teach me “sporting” combat. No bows, no rules, no honor.

  “Your task is to survive,” his mechanical, grinding voice said. “The enemy will be stronger. Faster. Meaner. You have only one advantage: you have nothing to lose.”

  He taught me how to break fingers. How to gouge out eyes. How to throw sand or grit in a face. A strike to the groin. A bite to the artery. The use of improvised means—a pen, a fork, a shard of stone.

  “You're a rat backed into a corner,” he repeated, throwing me onto the mats. I’d fly, hitting my back, ribs, head. “A rat doesn't fight fair. A rat jumps for the throat. A rat survives.”

  I was a poor student. My healer reflexes resisted. I was afraid to cause pain. My subconscious blocked the strikes, making me slow down before contact.

  “You're weak!” Cain bellowed, wrenching my arm until the shoulder crunched. “You pity them? You pity those who killed your child? They wouldn't have pitied you!”

  It acted like a trigger. Motivation went through the roof!

  I remembered Elisa. Her smile. The fireball.

  And rage flooded my consciousness in a crimson wave.

  I twisted away. I bit his arm—until blood came, until flesh tore. I headbutted his nose. I cwed at his impnts with my nails.

  “Good,” the giant nodded, wiping away the blood. “The anger is there. Now add the technique.”

  By evening, I crawled to my room on all fours. I didn't have a single unbruised spot. Bruises yered upon each other, turning my body into a map of a starry sky. Ribs ached, joints burned.

  Viktor Sergeevich came before bed. With a whole arsenal of syringes and ointments.

  “Vitamin cocktail. Tissue regenerator. Muscle growth stimunt. Sedative.”

  He injected me in silence, with pursed lips, condemning everything that was happening.

  Once, he came to stitch a split eyebrow—the result of a failed sparring session with Cain.

  “I’ll apply a local anesthetic now,” he said, filling a syringe.

  “No,” I intercepted his hand.

  “Anya, it will be painful. A deep cut.”

  “Stitch it as is,” I commanded. “Without anesthesia.”

  “But why? Why endure the pain if you can...”

  “To remember,” I interrupted. “Pain reminds me I’m alive. Pain keeps me in focus.”

  He looked at me with horror. As if I were insane.

  But he set the syringe aside.

  When the needle pierced the skin, I didn't blink. I looked into the mirror and saw how my face was changing. How the features were sharpening, how the gaze was becoming heavy, leaden. In that moment, I realized: Anya Belskaya was dead. All that remained was the avenger—Anna THE MERCILESS!

  ***

  Before the start of the second month, Adrian entered my room. He silently handed me the familiar chain with the bck stone.

  “I restored the accumutor in the pendant,” he said as I touched the artifact’s cool surface. “The old structure was burned to the ground; I had to rebuild it from scratch using a more durable Shadow Steel crystal. Now it will withstand a more powerful discharge, but don't count on it forever. Any limit can be crossed.”

  I put the amulet around my neck. Its weight on my colrbones was comforting. It was the only thing that reminded me I still held meaning for this man. Not as a woman. As a tool he was carefully repairing and sharpening.

  ***

  ### MONTH TWO: THE MIND

  The physical torture receded into the background. The body had grown used to the loads. Muscles filled with strength; skin toughened, becoming like cured dragon hide. Metabolism accelerated so much that I ate triple portions of meat and still lost weight, turning into a wiry, fast predator.

  Now Adrian took on my head.

  We spent hours in the Obsidian Library. A massive, grim hall filled with ancient tomes bound in human skin and holographic projectors.

  “Magic is not miracles,” Adrian expined, pacing between the stacks. “And not a gift from the gods. This is physics. Higher physics of multi-dimensional space. Energy, will, vector. And the price.”

  He taught me to see the “weaving.” The true structure of spells hidden behind the visual effects.

  “Look,” he created a complex geometric figure of pure darkness in the air. “This is the ‘Aegis Shield.’ The standard protection of the Ognev Cn officers. See the nodes?”

  I squinted, trying to switch my vision to the magical spectrum. At first, I saw only a blurry spot that made my eyes water. But then... the lines emerged. Gold, red, violet threads woven into a complex pattern.

  “I see them. Here and here.”

  “Those are stress points,” he nodded. “Those are the ‘locks.’ If you hit here with a ‘sledgehammer’—that is, with brute force—the shield will hold. It’s designed to disperse frontal damage. It will absorb the impact energy and might even return it. But if you hit with a ‘needle’ precisely into a node...”

  He snapped his fingers. A thin, barely noticeable trickle of darkness struck the intersection of lines.

  The figure trembled and shattered into thousands of shards with a chime.

  “Understood? Not force defeats force. Precision defeats force. Knowledge of architecture defeats rage. You must become a surgeon, Anya. A surgeon who cuts out life.”

  We studied anatomy. Not as doctors, but as killers.

  Where the main magical channels pass. Where the core of mana concentration is located. Where to strike to paralyze the outflow of energy. How to trigger a “magical backsh” in an opponent, making their own power explode them from within.

  “Elisa is a pyromancer,” Adrian said, projecting a hologram of Ogneva. “Fire is an element of expansion. It is greedy. It wants to devour space. Its weakness is in its insatiability. If you deprive it of air... or fuel... or disrupt the burning rhythm...”

  I absorbed knowledge like a sponge. My brain, accustomed to schemes of treatment and diagnostics, easily reconfigured to schemes of destruction. It turned out that killing a person is much easier than healing them. It is enough to break just one thread, press one point.

  But the hardest part were the meditations.

  Adrian forced me to descend into the dungeons, to the very Source of Darkness of the Obsidian Pace.

  “Sit,” he ordered, pointing to a bck stone at the edge of the Abyss. “Close your eyes. Feel Her.”

  The Darkness was alive. It wasn't just the absence of light. It was a dense, heavy substance. It breathed, whispered in a thousand dead nguages, touched the skin with cold, sticky tentacles. It called.

  *“Surrender...”* it whispered in my head. *“Forget the pain... Become part of eternity... There is no suffering here... There is only peace...”*

  I had to hold a mental barrier. Not let it inside, but draw strength from it. Bance on a knife’s edge over the abyss of madness.

  Once, I snapped.

  I remembered the cradle. The empty one. The ash. Elisa’s face.

  Grief submerged me, shattering my concentration. The barriers colpsed.

  The Darkness flooded in.

  I felt an icy cold in my veins. My heart slowed to one beat per minute. My breathing stopped. I felt good. Peaceful. The pain was gone. I wanted to stay there forever. Dissolve.

  A sp across the face knocked me back into reality.

  Adrian was shaking me by the shoulders. His eyes bzed with rage, and his face was whiter than chalk.

  “Don't you dare!” he bellowed into my face. “Don't you dare give up! The Darkness will swallow you and not even blink! You must be the mistress, not the fodder!”

  I coughed, spitting out bck slime that had clogged my lungs.

  “I can't...” I rasped, grabbing his shirt. “It’s so quiet there... It doesn't hurt...”

  “It’s quiet in the grave too!” he snapped. “You want to be with your son? Fine, I can arrange it! I’ll snap your neck right now, and you’ll meet!”

  He pulled out a knife. He pressed the bde to my throat. I felt the cold of the steel.

  “Choose! Death or the fight! Right now!”

  I looked at the bde. Then into his eyes.

  And the anger returned. A hot, mean spark of life.

  “To hell with you...” I whispered. “I’ll kill her. I’m not leaving until I kill her.”

  He put the knife away. He smirked. Hard. Without humor.

  “The right answer.”

  ***

  ### MONTH THREE: THE SPARK

  This was the most terrifying. And the most beautiful.

  My gift had mutated completely. The white healing light had vanished without a trace. In its pce, in the energy channels, pulsed a bck clump of concentrated destruction.

  “The Spark of Destruction,” Adrian examined my aura through a spectrum analyzer. “A unique phenomenon. Pority inversion of the core. You no longer radiate life. You annihite matter. Your magic works as antimatter.”

  “And it kills the host,” he added, touching my neck with a finger. The veins there had bckened, protruding through the skin like the roots of a poisonous tree. “Every time you release the power, it tries to erase you too. Nosebleeds, cracks in the bones, tissue necrosis. That is the price, Anya.”

  We trained on a closed range in the bunker.

  “Hit it!” Adrian shouted from behind a protective barrier.

  I’d thrust out my hand. A bck bolt would tear from my fingers.

  It was unstable. Wild. It went where it wasn't supposed to. It curved, obeying my emotions rather than my thoughts. It exploded in the air. It burned my hands, leaving deep radiation burns.

  Once, I accidentally hit a supporting column of the hangar. A meter-thick reinforced concrete pilr simply vanished. It dissolved into thin air, leaving not so much as a piece of debris. The roof began to fall. Adrian barely managed to throw up a force dome, saving us from the colpse. Tons of concrete crashed onto our heads, fttening against the invisible shield.

  We stood in a cloud of dust, coughing.

  “Damn it, Belskaya!” he was in a rage. “You’ll bury us! Control! I told you: imagine it’s a scalpel! Not a bomb, a scalpel! A narrow beam!”

  I tried.

  I cried from helplessness. I screamed from pain. I burned my skin, clothes, hair. My hands were covered in a crust of blisters that wouldn't heal even under Viktor’s regenerators.

  But gradually, I began to understand it.

  The Spark.

  It wasn't just energy. It had a character. Capricious, greedy, mean. It was like that Cerberus from the first month. It couldn't be forced. It had to be tamed. Trained. Fed with my rage, but held on a short leash of will.

  “Quiet...” I whispered, looking at the bck fme with a violet halo dancing on my palm. “Quiet, little one. Don't bite mama. Eat this...”

  I directed it at a mannequin. Carefully. Along a thread.

  The Spark obeyed. It reluctantly tore from my hand and bit into the target. It didn't explode. It corroded. Armor, flesh, bone—everything turned into gray vapor. Quietly. Without noise. Simply turning matter into nothing.

  Adrian watched from afar. In his eyes, I saw fear. And a strange, twisted admiration.

  “You're becoming dangerous, Anya,” he said once, looking at a hole in a steel pte. “Even for me. Your potential is higher than mine. If you master this... you could kill gods.”

  “Afraid?” I asked, pying with the fire between my fingers.

  “Apprehensive. A Doomsday weapon in the hands of a woman with a broken heart is a bad omen for the universe.”

  ***

  ### EXAM

  Three months of hellish bor ended.

  Outside the windows of the training hall, the seasons changed. When I began, rain was falling behind the gss. Then came the first frosts. Snow fell in the middle of the second month. And by the end of the third, the first spring thaws were beginning.

  Adrian woke me up at five AM. He threw a bck uniform onto the bed.

  “Get dressed. Today you’ll show what you've learned. Not on mannequins.”

  He led me to an old, abandoned hangar on the outskirts of the estate’s “dead zone.”

  Gloom. The smell of fuel oil, dampness, and rust. Through holes in the roof fell beams of gray morning light in which dust danced.

  Three men were waiting for me in the center of the hangar.

  These weren't random drifters or street mercenaries. These were professionals. “The Cleaners.” An elite squad of mercenaries who ask no questions and do any job. In full tactical armor of the “Centurion” css, with tactical visors, with magical suppressors on their belts.

  “Your task is to survive,” Adrian said, climbing to the observation bridge under the ceiling. “They have orders to kill you. No games. If you die, then so be it.”

  I stood in the center. I was in my new suit. A bck “second skin” made of dragon polymer—light, durable, not restricting movement, but capable of stopping a pistol bullet. In the sleeves—throwing knives. On the belt—smoke grenades and stimunt ampoules.

  But the main weapon was inside me.

  The three fighters moved on me. Harmoniously. Tactically expert. Without extra words.

  One—a “tank” with a full-length energy shield and a shock baton—went head-on, diverting attention. Two—shooters with sniper magic rifles—spread out to the fnks, taking positions behind concrete blocks and rusty containers.

  “Let’s go!” one of the shooters shouted.

  A shot.

  I didn't hear the sound. I felt the disturbance of the air. A pressure wave hit my eardrums.

  The body reacted faster than the thought. Instincts hammered in by Cain through pain and blood kicked in. I went into a roll to the right, behind a rusty container. The bullet—explosive, with a liquid silver filler for hunting monsters—hit the spot where my head had been a second ago, tearing out a piece of concrete half the size of a fist.

  “She’s fast!” the “tank” shouted, accelerating. His heavy boots thudded loudly against the concrete.

  He was close. His shield glowed with a blue suppression field. This was a problem. A standard magical strike would simply disperse.

  I couldn't hit with magic head-on.

  Must think. “Magic is physics.” “A rat fights dirty.”

  I yanked the pin of a smoke grenade and threw it not at them, but under the “tank’s” feet.

  A click. Thick, oily gray smoke instantly filled the space before him.

  The “tank” hesitated, losing visual contact. I heard him turn on the thermal imager—the characteristic whine of the helmet’s drives. But the magical smoke screened the heat. He was blind.

  This was my chance.

  I was behind him. Emerged from the shadow like a ghost.

  A jump.

  I didn't strike with a knife. I touched him.

  My palm, shrouded in a barely noticeable crimson haze, y on the shield generator on his back. The battery pack.

  “Bite,” I whispered to the Spark.

  A crimson impulse. Short. Precise. A needle.

  The generator didn't explode. It simply vanished. Turned into metallic dust along with a piece of armor, clothing, and... spine.

  The “tank” colpsed like an undercut sack of potatoes. He didn't even cry out—the impulse burned through the neural column faster than the pain signal reached the brain.

  One down.

  The shooters opened heavy fire. Bullets whistled all around, sparks flying from the container I’d hidden behind. They were panicking. They’d seen their indestructible comrade fall and didn't understand what had happened.

  I crawled. Low, pressing to the floor, merging with the trash and shadows.

  I saw their auras through the metal of the containers. Blue spots, pulsing with adrenaline and fear. Left. Right.

  I chose the left one. He was reloading.

  I stepped out from cover and stood full height five meters from him.

  “Hey,” I said. Loudly.

  He jerked, snapping the rifle up. In his eyes behind the visor, I saw terror.

  I thrust out my hand. A formed charge was already burning in my palm.

  Not a “scalpel.” A “whip.”

  A long, flexible sh of crimson fire sshed the air with the hum of a high-voltage wire. It wrapped around his rifle, his arms, his neck.

  I yanked. Sharply.

  Metal, Kevr, flesh, bone—everything was sliced like butter with a red-hot knife.

  Two down. The head and half the torso hit the floor with a dull thud.

  The third was left alone.

  He’d seen what I did. And he broke. A professional, a killer, a veteran of wars—he simply broke in the face of an incomprehensible, monstrous power.

  He dropped the rifle. It cttered against the concrete. He fell to his knees. Tore off the helmet, revealing a sweaty face distorted with fear. Raised his hands.

  “I surrender!” he bellowed, his voice cracking. “Don't kill! I surrender! By the rules of the Mercenary Guild, I demand parley! Ransom! I’ll pay any amount!”

  I stepped out of the shadow. Slowly. Calmly. Inside me, there was no pity, no triumph, no malice. Only cold, machine calcution. And the Spark’s hunger.

  “The rules have changed,” I said, approaching him. My footsteps echoed off the walls.

  “No... please... I have a family... children...”

  I stopped a step from him. In my hand pulsed the sphere of the Spark, like a small, evil sun.

  “I had a family too,” I said. “And children.”

  And I extinguished the sphere against his face.

  There was no scream. The air simply colpsed with a sharp sound into the space of the evaporated matter.

  The body fell backward. Headless.

  I stood over the three corpses. The hangar smelled of burning, blood, electrified air, and death. My hands were trembling. But not from fear. From an excess of energy. The Spark demanded more. It had developed a taste.

  Slow, measured cpping came from above.

  Adrian was descending the iron stairs. His cloak billowed as he walked.

  He approached me. Surveyed the battlefield, his gaze lingering on the headless body.

  “Clean. Effective. Ruthless. Not a single wasted drop of energy.”

  He looked into my eyes.

  “You passed.”

  I exhaled. The adrenaline began to recede, and my knees buckled. I would have fallen, but Adrian caught me, not letting me touch the dirty floor.

  He pulled me to him. Harshly. Possessively. One hand on my waist, the other buried in the hair at the back of my head.

  “You are magnificent,” he whispered into my ear. “You have become a perfect weapon. My masterpiece.”

  I raised my head. Our faces were millimeters apart.

  In his eyes, I saw... my own reflection. And the darkness. We were the same. Two monsters standing on the ruins of morality, among corpses, bound by blood and death.

  “Did I become like this for you?” I asked quietly, looking into his violet abyss.

  “No,” he shook his head. “For yourself. For revenge.”

  He leaned in.

  I didn't pull away. I reached forward.

  His lips covered mine. It wasn't a lovers’ kiss. There was no tenderness, no romance, no promises in it.

  It was a kiss on the edge of the abyss. Crude, demanding, desperate. The taste of burning and salt. The taste of death. He kissed me as if he wanted to drink my soul, take my pain for himself, and I kissed him to fill the icy void inside me with his darkness.

  I clung to him like a beast, like a drowning soul.

  We froze among the corpses, in a stinking abandoned hangar, and kissed, sealing a bloody pact of war against the whole world.

  When we pulled away from each other, our breathing was ragged, lips swollen and red.

  “Tomorrow,” Adrian said hoarsely, looking at me with darkened, wild eyes. “Tomorrow Elisa is hosting the annual Artifact Auction. She’ll be there. Along with the whole Cn Elite. The entire upper echelon.”

  “Are we going there?” I asked, licking my dry lips.

  “We aren't going there as guests. We're going as an execution. As the wrath of God.”

  “Fine,” I smiled. And that smile, reflected in his dited pupils, was more terrifying than any animal snarl. “I’m ready to be your executioner, Adrian.”

  My eyes fred with crimson fire.

  “Let’s burn them all. To the ground.”