The Veil of Ranks: VOR, was no longer some abstract word floating in their heads; Naya made it real with every syllable.

"Whenever a Waithraite, especially the dreaded Soulnexers, who carry out most of the assaults, comes too close to the VOR," she explained, her voice slicing through the whispers in the hall,

"it triggers an alert. That alert feeds us precise information about the intruder; their rank, their number, their distance. Then we dispatch the right team of Azrens with the right rank to intercept before they even breathe on our forcefield."

Her eyes swept the rows of recruits, each gaze pinning them like lantern light catching moths. No one blinked. Everyone hung on her words.

"I chose to reveal this myself," she said, voice cutting through the air like a clean blade.

"Normally it would be the duty of an Alpha to guide you through this briefing, but as we speak, they are already in the VOR layer. The alarm sounded earlier, it turned out to be rank-C demons who ventured dangerously close to the VOR."

That answered Simma's earlier question when he had noticed that the Alpha table was empty upon entering the great hall.

Naya continued, her tone never faltering.

"After the Fluxborn are initiated, they are sent into the VOR. There, captured Soulnexers of the lowest rank are released, not merely for spectacle, but to test your might, to prepare you for worse days and worse nights." She paused a bit and went on.

"We could have released these creatures directly in the training center and let you spar against them safely. But that would teach you nothing. The VOR itself is part of the lesson. The ground is unstable, an unfaithful friend. Stand in one place longer than half a minute, and it will shift beneath you."

At that revelation, a ripple of voices surged through the hall, echoes bouncing from wall to wall like restless birds.

"Why didn't they just make it stable?" one voice shouted, tinged with irritation. "I mean, we've got the tech!"

Heads turned toward Kira; the red-haired, plump girl who never seemed to mind blurting the obvious.

Naya waved the comment away, her expression flat. "I am not open to questions now, Kira," she said crisply. "When I am, you'll know."

The murmurs didn't vanish entirely but dulled to a low hum, like bees dissatisfied but wary of the beekeeper. Once calm had returned, Naya drew a measured breath and went on.

"The Veil of Ranks is not a floor to stand upon. It is a thin, sensitive layer woven with electromagnetic waves and inner-core z-rays. Those waves locate and pinpoint Waithraites who dare stray too close, while inner-core z-rays determine the rank of the demon. We battle up there, away from the city below, because we will not risk lives nor plunge the great city into panic."

Her eyes scanned the crowd. They had quieted, finally understanding the weight of her explanation. Satisfied, she nodded; both at them and, faintly, at herself, before striding to the projected screen hovering in the air.

She swiped a hand upward, and the grand image of the Citadel shrank and closed. With both hands she drew apart the display, splitting it neatly into two hovering panes.

"Lexy, bring up a Soulnexer image," she ordered.

"On it," Lexy's voice replied. At once, the second screen on the left flickered alive, displaying four different angles: front view, side view, a grim close-up of the face, and a far-ranged shot of the entire skeletal frame.

The recruits weren't shocked, they had seen these creatures during their tournament. Perhaps all except Simma, who had stumbled into the wrong place that day. Yet, in truth, he knew them better than anyone here. In his past lives, he had slain more Soulnexers than he cared to count.

The image was grotesque. Soulnexers always appeared as though born of smoke and nightmare, skeletal figures cloaked in oily black haze, like the fumes rising from burning tires. Their frames were thin, fragile-looking, but misleading; the higher the rank, the more arms they bore.

Two arms for the Grievers. Four arms for the Sorrowlings. Six arms for the Mireborn, and subsequently. An insectile progression that made them all the more horrifying.

Their faces were the worst. If "face" could even be used. A Soulnexer possessed a pair of thick, jaundiced yellow eyes, glowing with a predatory hunger. Below, instead of a mouth, stretched a warped cavity, an endless black hole, ever-gaping, through which they sucked the very soul from their victims.

They fed not on flesh, but on agony, sorrow, despair, the ugliest ingredients of existence until nothing was left but an empty shell.

Naya turned towards the recruits as she went over the screen with the images of the Soulnexers, though the other screen was still empty.

"Soulnexers are the main source which the umbrax entity uses to fuel itself. They go around looking for souls to graze"

Her voice dropped to something very heavy and dark.

"The only way a Soulnexer can be pushed away from taking your soul, is fighting its attempt with good memories... cheerful ones. And know this; whenever fighting a Nexer you must do so without anger, or rage, or sorrow in you, other wise it will face you with your worse moments and then suck you dry.... and all soul taken by the Nexers are all fed to the umbrax"

A full heavy silence followed her voice and lingered longer that she ever expected, as though she had turned on a horror movie.

She gestured toward the floating images. "Do you know why the hint to your tournament was to carry the weapon of your Azrax with you?"

The hall fell utterly silent. That silence was its own answer: none of them knew.

"It is because," she said slowly, letting the weight of each word settle, "Unlike the other Waithraites.... Soulnexers cannot be slain by weapons."

Gasps and murmurs swelled again, this time laced with fear.

She lifted a hand, smiling faintly. "I meant... By... No ordinary weapon. Guns, mini-guns, revolvers, thumpers, rocket launchers... name it. They are like ghosts, like dementors, fractured souls stitched to torment. And as you know, souls cannot be killed. Yet because they exist in torment and in partial solidity, there are two ways to end them. Only two."

She paused, letting them linger in suspense.

"The Yiriana's Bow," she declared, "and the weapon of your Azrax... summoned in its pure state, never in rage."

When the crowd heard "the Yiriana's bow," they all got confused. Simma, meanwhile, glared towards Draco; their eyes met, and Draco quickly looked away.

Though the crowds were confused, it was because they thought that the Yiriana's bow didn't cause harm. So also Simma thought, but the Yiriana's bow is not just about making blue, spirity arrows. Those ones are harmless. But there were many more arrows, and one of them was the one Draco had used on him when he attacked him at the tournament.

Although then Simma didn't know that the bow could do such, now that he got his memories back, he remembered Yiriana teaching him how to wield the bow while he was in Gregor Swamwood. Since they were lovers then, she had taught him everything about that bow.

Well, if the bow was so harmless, how then did it make history?

"The Yiriana's Bow," she repeated, "is not the trinket most of you imagine. It is ancient, dangerous, immensely powerful. Since Yiriana's death, none have wielded it as she once did."

Simma almost chuckled. If only she knew.

Naya gestured again, on the second screen filled with the bow's image. Beneath it shimmered the likeness of Yiriana herself, bow in hand.

But not a single bow; seven layered bows radiated around her as if they had minds of their own, each stringing five golden-shimmering arrows. The air seemed to hum with their brilliance, even in mere image.

Simma stared at that image with utter interest. 'Oh Yiriana.... how I have missed you'. Her elegance was still very lively in his eyes. and those white sentinel robes made her more perfect in the image.

"I believe you all recognize her," Naya said to them.

"Yiriana, the first female Sentinel to rise as Head, the highest-ranked Sentinel in our history. This image shows only one of her feats: multiplying her bow and unleashing hundreds of arrows in an instant. One moment, a battlefield is crowded with Nexers. The next, silence, and nothing. This is only one example of what her bow could do."

Faces throughout the hall glowed with awe, their fear momentarily replaced with fascination.

She smiled. "Why wouldn't it? At one shot, she could release hundreds of arrows and kill hundreds of Nexers and demons. But any demon higher than C rank, though, can't be killed with her bow."

Her voice was still flowing when a faint chime came from her wristwatch. She glanced down, frowning at the urgent notification pulsing there. After a moment, she raised her head.

"That will be enough for today," she said briskly. "An urgent matter calls for me. We'll continue another time."

Without waiting for questions, she turned sharply and strode out of the hall, leaving the recruits buzzing with unease and wonder.

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