Diplomacy has failed. The confrontation with the Parpaldia Empire now descends into total, unforgiving war. Confident in a thousand years of dominance, the Empire begins its invasion of Russian-allied territories, unleashing a brutal operation codenamed "The Great Cleansing." Its goal is not conquest, but annihilation—a genocidal warning to all who would dare defy them.

  But arrogance is no match for 21st-century warfare. Russia's technological advantage transforms the Empire's punitive campaign into a brutal slaughter. Air superiority fighters striking from beyond reach, hypersonic missiles erasing fleets from existence, and the surgically precise operations of Spetsnaz systematically dismantle Parpaldia's military machine, exposing the lie of its invincibility. One after another, the Empire's proud legions are shattered.

  This crushing military failure ignites a firestorm at home. As the capital descends into chaos with riots and starvation, a plot takes shape in the shadows. The old elites, appalled by the Emperor's suicidal obsession, rise up. Led by the mysterious and brilliant Lord Kaios, they orchestrate a coup to seize control. Yet, Kaios himself is a pawn in a larger game, guided by a force more powerful than he can imagine: Russia's intelligence services. And the secret he carries could redefine not just the war, but the very history of this new world.

  Russian Federation. Saint Petersburg. New World.

  The cold, crystalline light of an alien sun flooded the streets of Saint Petersburg, making the gilded spire of the Admiralty burn with an almost unbearable fire against the unusually pale sky. A year had passed since the Transfer, but this new light, these strange, unfamiliar constellations that ignited over the Neva River at night, were still hard to get used to. After the stunning victory over the Kingdom of Louria and the subsequent stabilization on the continent of Rodenius, life in Russia was slowly, creakingly, returning to a peaceful course. The symbol of this new era was the recently passed State Duma law "On the Regulation of Tourist Activities in the New World"—a document that clearly, almost militarily, divided their newly acquired neighbors into three security zones.

  The Red Zone, where entry for civilians was strictly forbidden, became a sort of "axis of evil." It included the Parpaldia Empire and a number of aggressive states, such as the Sultanate of Buhur-Adi, known for its piracy and slave trade.

  The Yellow Zone, where travel was possible but not recommended due to political instability, included the Kingdom of Topa, barely recovered from the demon invasion, and the proud, samurai-like Kingdom of Fenn. This zone also included the five newly formed duchies that had risen from the ashes of Louria—loyal to Russia, but still teeming with unsubdued rebels and robber bands.

  And finally, the Green Zone, the safest, which had opened the floodgates for the first Russian tourists. It included Russia's very first and most reliable allies: the agrarian and peaceful Principality of Qua-Toyne, the resource-poor but rich-in-potential Kingdom of Quila, and the neutral Thearchy of Gahara.

  In a cozy St. Petersburg apartment on Vasilyevsky Island, where the rich aroma of freshly brewed Ceylon tea hung in the air, a young history grad student named Alexey sat slumped before a shimmering monitor. His chestnut hair, perpetually unruly, stuck out in every direction. The open browser tabs were plastered with offers from the "New Horizon" travel agency, promising "unforgettable experiences in worlds of sword and sorcery."

  "Nastya, I still don't get why we have to go to Fenn," he said, leaning back in his chair with a weary creak. "We just got back from Quila. Sand, rocks, exotic stuff—we've done all that. Just let me rest in civilization for a bit."

  His girlfriend Nastya, a graphic designer and a relentless seeker of beauty, gracefully settled into the chair opposite him. Her long, light-brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and stylish, thin-rimmed glasses were perched on the tip of her nose. Without looking up from her tablet, she scrolled enthusiastically through a photo gallery.

  "Lesh, you just have to look at this texture!" She turned the screen toward him, revealing a stunning panoramic view. "This is from Alena at work. They're on the Flower Trail right now. See the light on these pagodas? And this sakura tree… we could never grow one like this, the biochemistry is different. For my projects, this is an absolute treasure trove!"

  Alexey struggled to focus on the vibrant image. "It's beautiful, I'm not arguing. But Nastya, it's a yellow zone. You've read the news: the culture is like medieval Japan. A rigid code of honor, a cult of the sword... One wrong word, one sideways glance, and we'll have a diplomatic incident on our hands. I have a really bad feeling about this."

  Nastya paused for a moment, her enthusiasm dimming slightly. "Do you really think it's that serious?" She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

  "Okay, you win. Your turn to suggest something. Just not Quila, I'm begging you. I'll be shaking sand out of my sneakers for the next six months."

  Alexey laughed, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Yes, ma'am. No Quila."

  He turned back to the computer. "Alright. Let's look at the green list. What about Qua-Toyne? Their rich black soil is all the rage on the gardening forums right now. They say even a stick will bloom in it."

  Nastya leaned over the screen with curiosity, and it immediately filled with bright, lush images. Majestic forests where trees reached for the sky. Harmonious cities where elfin architecture flowed seamlessly into sturdy dwarven structures. Serene landscapes where exotic creatures, resembling a cross between a horse and an antelope, grazed in emerald meadows. She put on her glasses and dove into the details: tourist reviews, prices, tour itineraries...

  A few minutes later, she delivered her verdict, tapping her finger on the desk with mock seriousness. "And so. By the unanimous decision of our family council, I hereby decree: we are going to Qua-Toyne!"

  They laughed again. Without wasting a moment, Alexey entered his card details and paid for the tour, departing in two days.

  From that moment, the apartment descended into organized chaos. Open suitcases on the bed, mountains of clothes, arguments over what to take and what to leave behind.

  "Lesh, did you pack your stuff?" her voice called from the bedroom.

  "Almost! Just putting the first-aid kit together!" he shouted back. "Taking a double supply of activated charcoal. Who knows what their food is like!"

  An hour later, exhausted, they collapsed onto the couch. Alexey closed his eyes, savoring the quiet, while Nastya turned her tablet back on.

  "I hope it's as beautiful as the pictures," she said dreamily.

  "And I hope they have decent Wi-Fi," he muttered back without opening his eyes.

  Nastya chuckled softly and turned off the tablet. Ahead of them lay a journey. A simple, peaceful, tourist's journey. And nothing, it seemed, could possibly go wrong.

  Events at the moment of the Transfer. Russia. May 2027.

  In the first hours and days after the Great Transfer, while the very fabric of reality seemed to tear apart and the country descended into a vortex of chaos, it became clear that Russia was not alone in this unthinkable trap. Locked within Moscow, as if in a gigantic cage, were 78 foreign embassies. The majestic mansions on Arbat and Mosfilmovskaya streets, tiny islands of the global community, remained unharmed, but their soul—their connection to the outside world—had been severed. About 1,200 diplomats, intelligence officers, and their families found themselves in the same absurd situation as the 15,000 foreign tourists whose last joyful social media posts from Russia had become eerie epitaphs.

  The initial reaction from the diplomatic corps was predictable: disbelief followed by frantic attempts to contact their home capitals, adhering to protocols designed for nuclear war but not for a metaphysical catastrophe. In the soundproof bunker of the American embassy on Novinsky Boulevard, communications operators, their faces etched with desperation, ran diagnostics on the ultra-secure satellite terminals over and over. The only response was a deafening, mind-numbing hiss of static.

  "No carrier signal, sir," a pale communications sergeant reported to Ambassador McGregor, a gray-haired veteran of the Cold War. "The geostationary satellites aren't responding. Any of them. It's as if they've just been wiped from the sky. This isn't jamming, sir, it's… a vacuum. A physical void where there should be a link."

  At the PRC embassy on Friendship Street, the military attaché, Colonel Li, tried in vain to break through to Beijing via the "Beidou" military satellite network. Silence. German diplomats on Mosfilmovskaya, pragmatic and meticulous, logged strange optical anomalies in their journals—the sky over Moscow flickered, as if static discharges were running across a giant dome—but their encrypted reports, sent through secure channels, went nowhere. By the evening of April 29th, the horrifying truth had dawned on everyone, from the ambassador to the junior clerk: they were cut off.

  And then the chaos that was boiling on the streets of Moscow spilled over to them. Thousands of tourists with useless credit cards and dead phones rushed to their embassies as the last bastions of civilization. A mob raged at the gates of the American diplomatic mission. People waved passports, demanding evacuation, answers, anything.

  "We're American citizens! You have to protect us! Get us home!" a woman screamed, clutching a crying child to her chest.

  The young Marine security guards, bewildered and scared, could only repeat a memorized phrase: "Please remain calm. We don't have any information at this time."

  The Chinese embassy, acting with discipline, sheltered its citizens in the gym, but the consul knew with alarm that their supplies would only last a few days. The Japanese consul on Grokholsky Lane manually recorded the details of terrified tourists in a ledger, patiently promising help he could not provide. At the French embassy on Bolshaya Yakimanka Street, the situation spun out of control. A desperate crowd nearly tore down the wrought-iron fence, and the ambassador, with a heavy heart, gave the order to barricade the gates.

  It was at this moment that the Russian government, itself on the brink of collapse, showed surprising foresight. The Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) swiftly offered assistance to all foreigners: food, medical supplies, and accommodation in hastily deployed humanitarian camps. Most diplomatic missions accepted with relief. The Americans and the Chinese held out until May 1st, their pride not allowing them to accept aid from a potential adversary. They waited for a miracle—for their aircraft carrier groups to break through… whatever this was. But the miracle never came.

  The fate of ordinary tourists caught far from Moscow was even more tragic. Emily Jones, a blogger from Texas, was in the middle of an enthusiastic live stream from Palace Square when the anomaly hit St. Petersburg. "You guys won't believe how beautiful it is here, but there's something weird happening in the sky, like the air itself is trembling, like…" her voice cut out, and the screen froze. Wang Zheng, a businessman from Shanghai, sent his wife one last photo from the Altai Mountains. When the Transfer began, he was high in the mountains, and the ground gave way beneath him, the familiar peaks on the horizon blurring as if in a nightmare. It was only when units of the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) entered the cities that an organized roundup of foreigners began. The soldiers, often not speaking English, simply pointed to the MChS patches on their uniforms and gestured towards the buses. And so, terrified, confused, and often injured in the street riots, they were transported to the camps.

  For ordinary Russians, the realization that thousands of foreigners had been dragged into the unknown with them became one of the most surreal details of the collective madness. In St. Petersburg, Anna Petrovna, a cashier whose husband from the MChS hadn't been home for days setting up the camps, said to her coworker with a heavy sigh, "They just came here to see the ships. And now what? Stuck here with us. The poor things." Her husband Sergey, a bus driver, was more pragmatic when he returned home: "What are we supposed to do with them? It's not like we asked for this. There's no return ticket. So, if that's how it is, they can work. They've got hands and feet, and it's a big country."

  When the initial shock subsided and the government, through interpreters, announced the terrible truth about the Transfer to another world, the camps erupted in despair. People screamed, cried, and threw themselves at the soldiers. But Russia, itself cut off from Earth, could do nothing. Gradually, desperation gave way to resignation. And then the Russian government, realizing that among these 15,000 trapped foreigners were invaluable specialists, offered unprecedented terms: the status of "temporarily displaced persons with the right to work," housing in new developments, and a simplified path to citizenship.

  And many agreed, seeing in this tragedy an incredible opportunity. The taxi driver, Igor Nikolaevich, chuckled as he drove Emily Jones to her new studio apartment in New Moscow, "Well, welcome to the new world, cowgirl. We're not exactly thrilled to be here either, you know, but we're making it work." In Novosibirsk, a student named Masha showed her parents a post by a German photographer, Karl Schmidt, with a picture of their train station and a caption in broken Russian: "Even in another world, architecture remains eternal." Her father, an engineer at an aircraft factory, put down his newspaper and grumbled, "They'll get used to it. There's plenty of work for everyone now. As long as they don't cause trouble."

  And so, the former tourists and diplomats, victims and witnesses of the greatest anomaly in history, began to become part of a new Russia. Emily Jones became a star of the "new Russian internet," streaming from the markets of Qua-Toyne. Wang Zheng established a trade in rare-earth metals between Quila and Russian factories. Karl Schmidt became famous for his photo exhibitions of otherworldly landscapes. And the ambassadors, representing countries that no longer existed in this world, became the informal leaders of their diasporas, helping their compatriots adapt. From a shared calamity, a unique cultural fusion was being born—a new civilization, preparing to face whatever challenges this unexplored world had in store.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Year 00001 from Transfer. Month 6.

  A year and a half had passed since their world had irrevocably changed. For some, it had become a testing ground for corporate wars; for others, a launchpad for the conquest of space. But for Alexey, it was just another morning, all too similar to hundreds of others. From the television, turned down to its lowest volume, came the impassive, monotonous voice of the announcer from the federal channel "Zvezda," which had become a familiar backdrop for millions of Russians.

  "…In the Kubonomiyaki Free Economic Zone, in the north of the Kingdom of Fenn, the situation remains tense. In the territories blockaded by the army of Sword King Shihan, private military companies representing the interests of the transcontinental corporations RosZemNauchSoyuzNovTekh, VosEkonSoyuz, and TerraRosgroup have intensified their activities. The Ministry of Defense of Fenn and the Russian MID have so far refrained from official comment…" The announcer's voice took on a more solemn tone for a moment. "Today at 06:45 Moscow time, the first orbital power station OES 'Orion-0,' produced by the corporation RosZemNauchSoyuzNovTekh, successfully entered the geosynchronous orbit of our planet. According to preliminary calculations, this solar power station will fully pay for itself within twenty years, providing energy to industrial facilities on the Rodenius continent…"

  Alexey stretched sleepily and, fumbling for the remote, turned off the television. The room fell into a silence where the peaceful breathing of Nastya, wrapped in a blanket, could now be heard. Her face was serene. Alexey quietly got up, trying not to make the bed creak, and headed for the shower, stretching his stiff muscles along the way.

  Warm water streamed over him, washing away the fog of sleep but not the weight of memories that pulled him back with an icy tide to that terrible April of 2027. Back then, a history grad student, he had been working on his dissertation about the consequences of the Cold War, and those abstract horrors of the past seemed far more real to him than the absurdity that was unfolding outside his window. He remembered everything. The Anomaly, born over the icy wastelands of Novaya Zemlya. Its first, almost harmless signs—static on the radio, GPS malfunctions. And then—the sky. Shimmering, trembling, like the heat haze over hot asphalt, it spread across the country, strictly following the contours of the borders, as if a gigantic, invisible cage was descending upon all of Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.

  He had felt it here, in St. Petersburg: a strange, low-frequency hum that made his teeth ache, as if the air itself was holding its breath before something terrible. At first, the news mumbled about equipment failures and "unique atmospheric phenomena." And then the anchors' voices began to tremble. He remembered watching the broadcast from Ostankino, how President Mikhail Viktorovich, his face gray from sleepless nights but his resolve like steel, promised to sort things out and find answers that the Anomaly itself seemed to mock.

  And then everything went dark. The internet, communications, television—Russia was plunged into an information vacuum. And the chaos began. He saw it with his own eyes: fights at gas stations for the last drops of fuel, looted supermarkets, crazed preachers on the corners of Nevsky Prospekt. And that fear, sticky and primal, that hung in the air. He remembered how he and Nastya had barricaded the door with an old dresser, listening as someone below screamed and tried to break into the main entrance of their building. And he remembered the relief when he heard the rumble of armored vehicles and the sharp, short bursts of automatic fire—the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) was restoring order.

  It was then, in that moment of absolute hopelessness, that they first felt that they weren't just trapped. They were together. And this sense of unity, born from a shared fear, proved stronger than any panic.

  And then, when the Anomaly had passed and the deafening silence of a severed connection with the rest of the world became an undeniable fact, the President announced the truth. Russia was on another planet. This statement, broadcast on all surviving channels, became the spark that ignited a country already saturated with fear and panic. Alexey remembered that feeling—not shock, but a strange, surreal weightlessness, as if the ground had vanished from under his feet, and he, along with two hundred million other people, he was in free fall into the abyss.

  Then came the full-scale chaos. Not just fights over food, but a systemic collapse. City after city descended into the abyss of anarchy. The long-smoldering embers of separatism, now fueled by apocalyptic sentiments, flared up. In Izhevsk, his hometown, local nationalists, sensing the weakness of the central government, attempted to proclaim an independent Udmurt Republic. The attempt was as absurd as it was tragic, but it became a catalyst. On television, in news bulletins interrupted by static, it was drily reported that Internal Troops had been sent into the city to "restore constitutional order."

  Alexey still remembered that phone call with his mother. The connection was terrible, cutting out every minute, but through the crackling and hissing, he heard not only her frightened voice but also a chilling background noise: distant, rolling bursts of automatic fire, the wail of sirens, and desperate screams.

  "Lesh, it's a nightmare here," she cried into the phone. "Those… separatists… they're just an excuse. As soon as the shooting started, gangsters crawled out of the woodwork. They're looting stores, pharmacies, even schools! They say last night they hit the humanitarian aid warehouse… They don't touch the police stations—they're afraid. But on the streets, it's pure hell. People have gone savage… Don't go outside, son! Do you hear me?! Stay home!"

  But he had already made his decision. That same night, while Nastya slept peacefully, he packed a backpack. He left her a note on the kitchen table: "I'm sorry. I couldn't do otherwise. Mom and Dad are there. I'll be back as soon as I can." After kissing her on the temple, he stepped out into the cold, anxious St. Petersburg night.

  The journey to Izhevsk, which in the old world would have taken a day and a half, turned into a four-day ordeal through a country under martial law. The M-11 highway was clogged not with civilian cars, but with endless columns of military trucks with black license plates, BTRs, and "Tigr" armored cars, all moving east. There were checkpoints at the entrance to every region. National Guard soldiers in full combat gear, with tired but hard faces, inspected every vehicle. They made him pull his old Hyundai Solaris to the side several times, checking his documents, his trunk, asking the same questions: "Where are you going? Why?"

  As he approached Izhevsk, it became clear that the situation was far worse than he had imagined. The city was surrounded by a veritable fortified zone. A massive checkpoint with concrete blocks, sandbags, and watchtowers blocked the highway. On one of the towers, he spotted the silhouette of a heavy "Kord" machine gun.

  "Approach the barrier, get out of the vehicle, hands on the hood," a voice grated from a loudspeaker.

  Alexey complied. His heart pounded in his throat as two soldiers in "Sfera" helmets and body armor approached, their assault rifles at the ready. The inspection was quick but humiliating. Fortunately, they didn't go to extremes—the seats in his car were not slashed.

  "Relatives in the city? Report to the MChS operational headquarters. Here's the address. You'll get information there and, if you're lucky, a pass to the humanitarian camp," an officer informed him dryly, returning his documents.

  At the headquarters, set up in a surviving school building, it smelled of bleach and anxiety. Approaching a tired-looking man at the registration desk, Alexey, with a sinking heart, gave his parents' names. The MChS employee scrolled through lists on the computer for a long time, then nodded. "Kuznetsov, Sergei Viktorovich and Irina Pavlovna. Yes, they're here. Registered at Camp 'Zvezda,' Sector B. All alive."

  The relief he felt in that moment was almost physical. It was as if a huge stone he had been carrying on his shoulders all these days had simply vanished.

  Half an hour later, he was at the camp's checkpoint, set up on the territory of an old pioneer camp. Showing his pass, he entered. His heart hammered in his chest as he made his way through crowds of people with dazed, exhausted faces.

  And then, finally, he saw them. His father, mother, and younger brother and sister were sitting on a bench near an old wooden stage. They looked tired, but they were whole. Tears of joy blurred his vision as he stumbled towards them. The three long years of separation he had spent in grad school in St. Petersburg seemed to dissolve in that embrace. They cried, they laughed, interrupting each other, telling him how they had hidden in the cellar during the worst of the shootouts.

  After making sure everyone was safe and sound, Alexey took them with him. The journey back to St. Petersburg was different. He drove slowly, carefully, without the previous haste. In his car sat his entire family, saved and alive. Everything was alright now, and there was no longer any need to rush. He was taking them to a new life. To a new, strange, but now shared, reality.

  A week later, once Alexey's family had finally settled into his spacious St. Petersburg three-room apartment, and the initial shock of the move had given way to timid attempts to build a new life, Russia finally accepted its new reality. The streets, social media, the humming subway cars—everything was filled with discussions of the recent events. The panic had subsided, replaced by a business-like, grim determination to survive. Life, albeit in a completely different world, went on.

  One of the most striking symbols of this new reality was the first official footage from the Rodenius continent. Alexey, like millions of other Russians, watched a live broadcast from Moscow on television with bated breath: in the Catherine Hall of the Kremlin, the President received the first diplomatic delegation from the Principality of Qua-Toyne. Elves. Real, living elves. Tall, graceful figures. They carried themselves with innate, almost aristocratic dignity, dressed in their exotic outfits, and this contrast with the harsh Kremlin officiousness was so striking that it seemed like a dream.

  Seeing these images, memories flooded back to Alexey. After the chaos of the first few months, he, like many others, had faced unemployment—his graduate studies in the history of the "old world" had become useless. Desperate for money to support his relocated family, he hadn't hesitated to sign a six-month contract with one of the newly formed private military companies. And so, just yesterday a historian, he found himself in the Kingdom of Quila, guarding a team of geologists and oil workers from Rosneft.

  That country had stunned him with its primal, wild beauty and its incredible contrasts. Endless, sun-scorched deserts where the air shimmered with heat, and amidst them, teeming oasis-cities. He had seen with his own eyes how Russian technology was transforming this land. Drilling rigs, greedily biting into the earth, extracted not only oil but also water, turning arid patches of desert into blooming gardens. In place of temporary work settlements, entire cities were springing up like mushrooms after the rain. A railroad, laid by Russian construction battalions from the allied Qua-Toyne, had brought life here like a steel artery. Trains carrying food, equipment, and building materials flowed into Quila. And back—tank cars of crude oil and flatbeds of rare-earth metals, vital for Russian industry.

  The work had turned out to be surprisingly calm. After hearing stories from guys who had been in Louria, where they had to "catch arrows with their asses" (a Russian military slang expression meaning to be under constant fire), service in Quila felt almost like a vacation. The beastmen, having lived in poverty and isolation for centuries, welcomed the Russians as god-like saviors. Their hospitality was sincere and boundless. Alexey and his colleagues were constantly invited to their homes, treated to exotic dishes, and questioned with childlike wonder about the "great northern empire." For them, Russia had become a symbol of hope and prosperity.

  Alexey remembered this time with a warmth that had nothing to do with the romance of war. He had watched as a backward feudal kingdom, thanks to a pragmatic and mutually beneficial alliance, began to transform into a modern state. And he was proud to have been a part of that process. Returning to St. Petersburg, he no longer saw just a "picture" on the news. He saw how his country, having survived the greatest catastrophe, had not just endured. It had begun to change this new world, bringing not only weapons and fear, but also progress, order, and hope.

  "Lesh! Are you planning on living in that bathroom? My hair dryer's getting cold out here!" Nastya's bright, slightly teasing voice from behind the door pulled Alexey from his dark memories.

  "Coming out now, Nastya, just hold on," he called back, turning off the water.

  He quickly dried himself with a rough towel, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a cloud of steam. Nastya stood in the hallway, bundled in a fluffy white robe, trying to fashion a turban out of a towel on her head. Droplets of water glistened on her eyelashes. Alexey walked over, gently kissed her damp cheek, and headed to his makeshift workspace in the corner of the living room.

  Turning on his computer, he habitually opened his corporate PMC email. Among the routine reports and security briefs, one new email marked "High Priority" stood out. Alexey's heart skipped a beat. He clicked on it and began to read:

  Subject: Approval of travel request. Objective "Fenn".

  "Dear Alexey Borisovich. We are writing to inform you that your report requesting a transfer to the operational group in the Kingdom of Fenn has been reviewed and approved by the security service and the personnel department. We request that you report to the head office of the TerraRosgroup company (St. Petersburg, Liteyny Prospekt, 4) within three business days to undergo a briefing and sign the contract. Please bring with you: your Russian Federation passport, military ID, the original letter of recommendation from the command of military unit 54321, and a valid certificate of completion of your annual medical examination. Sincerely, Head of Personnel, A.I. Nakhimov."

  Alexey slowly leaned back in his creaky chair and exhaled loudly. He had been waiting a week for this reply, having mentally already resigned himself to a rejection. And here it was. Fenn. Formally, it was a simple task: guarding the cargo ships and infrastructure of TerraRosgroup from pirates and local gangs. Compared to the stories from the guys who had returned from tours in the crumbling Louria Kingdom, this was almost a cushy gig.

  He remembered their stories, told in quiet, hollow voices in St. Petersburg bars. Stories of patrolling the ruins of former colonies where everyone was an enemy—the local warlords, the fanatical rebels, and just desperate people. Of pandemics of unknown diseases that wiped out entire villages, and how they had to burn the bodies. He listened and understood that the chaos he had seen in Izhevsk was just kindergarten compared to the real hell of civil war where mercenaries were now being recruited for big money.

  "Screw that," he muttered to himself, looking out the window at the peaceful St. Petersburg courtyard. "Better to bow to samurai than to stew in that pot."

  "What are you muttering about over there, strategist?" Nastya, now dressed, with her damp hair down, peeked into the room.

  "Oh, just saying I'm hungry as a wolf," Alexey lied, turning to her with a smile. "Any ideas on how to treat your hero?"

  "And what does His Majesty desire for breakfast at this late hour?" she played along, leaning against the doorframe.

  "Hmm… Plov!" (A Central Asian rice pilaf dish, popular in Russia)

  "Whoa! Order received. But only if His Majesty helps me with the hair dryer," she smiled slyly, disappearing into the bedroom.

  They cooked breakfast together, and the tension of the last few days slowly receded to the accompaniment of sizzling onions, laughter, and light kisses. And that evening, after Alexey told her the news, they walked for a long time along Nevsky Prospekt, picking out little things for their home and gifts for their farewell vacation, which was now so necessary.

  Two days later, they were in Qua-Toyne. Here, amidst the fairytale landscapes, far from the troubling news and the smell of gunpowder, Alexey finally made up his mind. During a walk through an ancient elven forest, where the air was thick with the scent of unknown flowers and sunbeams pierced through the canopies of ancient trees, he stopped Nastya by an old, moss-covered stone. He got down on one knee and held out a small velvet box.

  "Nastya…" he began, and his voice, so confident on the battlefield, betrayed him with a tremor.

  Nastya gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. In the box, on a cushion of moss, lay a delicate ring. It was forged from tarnished silver in the shape of two dragons encircling a large, fiery ruby that seemed to glow with its own inner light.

  "Lesha… Are you serious?"

  "Anastasia Igorevna, will you marry me?"

  "Yes!" she breathed out and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him so tightly that he almost lost his balance.

  This ring was not just a piece of jewelry. During his service in Quila, Alexey and his unit had saved the caravan of an elder from the Mountain Stream dwarven clan from a raid by desert marauders. As a token of gratitude, the old dwarf had given him the ring—an ancient artifact that, according to legend, protected its wearer from evil. Now, it had found a new, far more important meaning.

  They spent the evening in a small tavern built right into the trunk of a giant tree, enjoying the quiet, the delicious food, and dreaming of the future. Of a simple, human future, where there would be no wars, no deployments, and no bad feelings. And so, one chapter of their lives closed, giving way to a new one, full of hope and love, on the cusp of yet another, unknown trial.