Looking at Mirelle’s finger pointed towards her was like seeing a gun in her face. To think that the one who warmsly welcomed her were now the one blowing up her cover.

  Vierna’s stomach turned; her hands went numb, and the world narrowed to Mirelle’s pointing finger.

  “Why Mirelle…” Vierna said weakly from where she stood.

  She should’ve known better, yes Mirelle welcomed her, even joked a few times about Korrn, slandering him behind his back. But besides of that, she essentially knew nothing about the person. Vierna gazed towards Lina. Her mouth gaped open. It appears that she was also surprised by betrayal from someone who arrange a welcoming party for them.

  Murmur started to forming like a wind gathered into a tornado. Vierna heard them, someone muttered about punishment, another feared reprisals from Korrn.

  “You ungrateful shits!” Korrn bellowed. “I give you a good job, and this is how you repay me?!”

  He glared at them, eyes bloodshot with crimson fury. Veins bulged across his forehead, his hands clenched so tight it looked as if he could crush iron with a squeeze.

  “SOLDIERS, PREPARE THE SHACKLING POST!” he roared. The militia obeyed without hesitation—his fury made resistance unthinkable.

  From the wagon, a soldier hauled out a short wooden post fitted with iron cuffs to bind hands. They planted it upright and, with a touch of geomancy, drove it deep into the ground.

  Vierna watched as Korrn conjured a whip. The strand formed out of darkened light, twisting into a cord that writhed like something alive. At its tip gleamed a hooked barb, small but wickedly curved, the kind forged to catch skin and rip it away in long, merciless strips. The whip flexed once in his hand with a low, predatory hiss, eager to be used.

  “Now, you two are going to pa—”

  “It was my idea!”

  Vierna turned. Lina was beside her, lying for her. “No… Lin…” The words slipped out before she could stop them. Lina’s hand closed around Vierna’s sleeve for a brief moment, a silent signal to keep up the disguise.

  “It was because you groped me the other day, you filthy shit!” Lina shouted, her voice cracking across the square. “And this village doesn’t deserve you as their tax master. So go on, do your worst, you swine!”

  Vierna’s chest lurched. When she’d pressed Lina in the office, Lina said it was okay. She had not named what Korrn did. The idea that the filthy pig had laid hands on her burned like acid; every sane, obedient part of Vierna wanted to throw the mission away and tear Korrn apart.

  Lina met her eyes. Clean, fierce, controlled. Stay your hands, the look ordered.

  “Oh, you fucking bitch… Fine.” Korrn snarled. “You want to take responsibility? You’ve got it. I won’t touch your girlfriend — I’ll double your punishment.” He cracked the whip; the crack split the square like thunder. “I’ll enjoy this.”

  The villagers stared in terror, fists clenched, trembling—yet none dared move.

  Tears spilled down Vierna’s cheeks. This was my fault. My mistake that dragged Lina into this. “LINA, STOP!” she cried, no longer caring who heard.

  “Crysta, remember why we’re here!” Lina shouted as the militia seized her. “And my name is Aline not Lina, it was just a stupid joke you make so stop calling me that!”

  Vierna slapped her own face, forcing a calm. She had to steel herself for what was to come. If she didn’t, everything would collapse. Robert, Henry, and now Lina’s sacrifice would mean nothing if she let emotion dictate her next move.

  They stripped Lina’s upper clothes. Her pale skin, framed by the sweep of her blonde hair, lay exposed to everyone. She tried to cover her body with her arms, but the guards forced her hands into the iron cuffs and kicked her knees until she dropped to the ground. Vierna bit her lip as the scene unfolded. It wasn’t Lina’s real body, but seeing her girlfriend humiliated like this stoked a red-hot rage. She slapped her face again.

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  ‘Vierna… please help Lina.’ Moony’s voice whispered inside her, resigned and weary.

  You know I can’t, Moony. Lina wouldn’t want it.

  ‘But look at her… she’s being humiliated in front of us!’

  I know, Moony! Vierna’s thoughts cracked like a snarl in her head. I want to kill them all—cut them down with our sword—but we can’t.”

  ‘I don’t care about the mission!’ Moony’s voice rose in her mind, raw and trembling with fury.

  Vierna clutched her head as a stabbing pain flared at the base of her skull. But the migraine was nothing compared to the deeper agony—watching Lina before her, heart breaking as if shattered into a thousand shards.

  Then they'll return us as guinea pigs, Vierna screamed inside her head. We will lose our future, everything—our goal turns to shit if we act now. You want that, Moony?

  'I just don't want Lina to be hurt,' Moony whispered, trying to steady herself.

  You know I don't want that either. But Lina told us to endure—she's enduring what's coming. Can we trust Lina, Moony? Can we follow what she told us?

  Moony didn’t reply, but Vierna could felt her frustration. Deep down, Moony knew she was right: the success of this mission would favor them in what came next. Both of them believed the Reich was kind — but they also knew that such kindness was never given freely. It had to be earned, proven again and again.

  It might offer them a place, yet it was still the same place that sent children into battle and sanctioned experiments on them. Its kindness could vanish the moment they faltered. If they wanted to matter, they had to keep proving themselves, no matter the cost.

  Vierna looked toward Mirelle, who watched from behind a wagon. This had all happened because of her.

  We will pay her back, I promise! she thought, fury flaring as her eyes flicked to Korrn, who cracked his whip behind Lina.

  'Along with that miserable swine,' Moony muttered inside her. Vierna didn’t hear a full reply, but she felt Moony’s rage — and her agreement. Vierna’s jaw tightened, their hatred hardened into a promise.

  “Ready to beg for your life, bitch?” Korrn taunted Lina.

  “HAHA…” Lina laughed, brittle and defiant, trying to deny him the satisfaction of her fear. “Do your worst, you overweight pig! HA-”

  Her laugh was cut short by the whip’s deafening crack. For an instant Vierna flinched forward, muscles coiling—then forced herself to stay rooted. The space held, and then the world split. The barbed lash ripped the vermilion dye from beneath her soft, porcelain skin like a blade through painted cloth. Blood spurted, staining the square and turning the moonlight a sick, red wash. The smell of iron mingled with blood hit Vierna like a wall; it was too close, as if someone had spilled the inside of their mouth into the night.

  “HMMPHH!!!” Lina choked, forcing the scream back into a strangled sound—each breath a battle to keep Korrn from hearing her break.

  CRACK!

  The next strike sent a chunk of flesh flying from Lina’s arm, torn free by the merciless barb. Blood sprayed across the falling stygian leaves; black and red coalesced in the air, struck the dirt, and were whisked away by the uncaring wind, as if Lina’s agony meant nothing to the heavens.

  Vierna cried as she looked at Lina, now bathed in red—her innocent blood spilling at the hands of that corrupt pig. A migraine returned; Moony raged inside her head, urging her again and again: 'Move. Catch the barbed whip. Shoot Korrn between the eyes.'

  But Vierna clenched her teeth and held herself back. She knew restraining her rage was a lesser pain than what Lina endured. Sometimes Lina met her eyes not with a plea but with a command—to calm down, to let it happen, to waste not a single drop of blood. It was as if Lina were telling Vierna the mission must continue; the mission took precedence.

  The villagers could only watch the atrocity. They wanted to act—truly wanted to—but any resistance risked being branded rebels, and the Reich was merciless to rebels.

  Vierna wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She needed to brand this into her memory so that, when the time came, she would not hesitate to bury Korrn—and Mirelle—in the coffins they deserved after they’d paid for it in pain.

  “Ha… ha… ha.” Lina laughed again, the sound warping the air and startling everyone around her. “Are you brushing my skin? I didn’t even feel it. Maybe you should work out first, you pig.”

  “You little shi—” Korrn swung his whip again, tearing another wound across Lina’s back.

  It went on. The whip fell and rose in a cruel, steady rhythm, an engine of pain that measured out the night. After each strike the red ribbon in Lina’s braid trembled; at first it only picked up a speck of blood, then a thread, then a thin dark line that ran along the silk. By the fifth lash the ribbon clung to her shoulder like a small, accusing flag; by the tenth it hung heavy and soaked, a tiny, terrible banner of what they were doing to her.

  Lina’s voice changed as the blows accumulated—less the shout of a challenge, more a ragged defiance stitched between gasps. She spat at Korrn once, the sound a wet, small thing that surprised the square into a hush. Blood foamed at her lip; when she laughed it came out wet and sodden, the sound fraying at the edges.

  Between strikes she blinked and hunted Vierna’s face, searching not for rescue but for the one look that kept her steady. At one moment her mouth shaped a single word without sound—endure—and the look that followed was softer than the insults had been, a tiny order not to ruin what Lina had bought.

  Korrn’s smirk widened with each impact; he moved like a man enjoying a private festival, savoring the sound of the crack and the scatter of blood on the cobbles. Around them the crowd drew tighter into itself: a woman pressed a cloth to her mouth; a dog whimpered and skulked away. The air filled with the metallic smell of blood and the iron taste of fear; it settled in Vierna’s throat like smoke.

  Still Lina kept speaking between the lashes—short, spiteful lines that clawed for control. They were a challenge and a lullaby both: to the villagers, proof that she would not break; to Vierna, a quiet tether that bound the mission and the sacrifice together. Each insult was thinner than the last, but the ribbon darkened, and the silence that followed every crack grew heavier, as if the night itself had learned how to listen.

  By the twentieth stroke, Lina stayed still.