I waited for the Xeranto to show me the way — walking a few steps behind him while observing everything around me. The interior of the ship was so clean it looked like it had never been used. But it wasn't just the cleanliness: there were no decorations, no screens, no pulsating lights, no buttons — nothing that suggested any kind of mechanism.

  It felt like walking inside a living organism.

  We crossed paths with two other Xerantos. They bowed their heads slightly as they passed me — a subtle gesture, but clearly respectful. For a moment, I felt a spark of pride... and another of unease.

  If they greeted me this way, then the reason for my presence was already clear: I had been summoned by the Sekvens. And no one is summoned by them without a reason.

  My hands trembled slightly as I tried to breathe calmly. I knew I would not meet just one — a Sekven is never alone. They live, feel, and exist together.

  "Where there is one Sekven, there is another." "A Sekven alone is a dead Sekven." "A Sekven's desire is law."

  Phrases repeated in their records — almost mantras — and still not fully understood by us.

  Even so, I was not prepared for what I saw when the door opened.

  The room was wide, its floor made of a soft material that yielded underfoot like warm sand. And at the center, sitting on the ground with the serenity typical of immortals, were they:three figures so beautiful that for a second I forgot how to breathe.

  Melissa, Sacha, and Kane. A Sekven triad. The first born in Antéia.

  A knot rose in my throat, and I had to blink quickly to keep tears from falling. Enchantment and envy — a bitter mix — struck my chest at the same time.

  The Sekvens were similar to us, yes, but they carried something we could not name. Eternal youth.Unreachable beauty. A presence that shaped the air around them.

  Ancient stories say that God chose the most beautiful young humans ever born on Earth and transformed them into Sekvens. And in that moment, I would have believed any of those stories.

  Standing before them — the same beings whose faces were carved into mosaics across the walls of the Sekven Castle — was overwhelming. More than that: they were the authors of the novels that shaped my youth.

  They were also the silent saviors of our species.

  Melissa lifted her face, met my eyes, and smiled. A simple smile.A complete command.

  My body obeyed before I even understood: the anxiety vanished as if it had never existed. The shift was gentle but intrusive — a soft invasion. Suddenly, I felt well, safe, welcomed. As if I had always known them. As if they were my family.

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  I laughed quietly. What was happening to me was the same thing that had happened to everyone who ever stood before them.

  I then remembered the words of one of the greatest leaders of the Known Universe, in a famous account:

  "She came in the shape of an angel and bypassed all our defenses with a single smile. No one imagined that such a sweet, fragile-looking creature would strip us of our freedom of choice. She subdued billions — and the most powerful people among us did not resist — not because they couldn't, but because they simply didn't want to."

  The Angel of Farol had a name: Milena Liebe. It was said she held, alone, the combined power of her entire species. Sekvens functioned as a multiple organism — many and one at the same time.

  How had a people of barely two hundred thousand individuals built an empire over three hundred billion beings, ruling twenty-two planets without spilling a single drop of blood?

  Smiling.

  I, a scholar of so many stories, had always thought it absurd when I read that they were driven by the force of love. Their love... was something else. Something beyond our understanding.

  With a subtle gesture from Kane, I sat on the floor before them. They allowed me to look at them, but prevented — almost imperceptibly — that I locked eyes with them for too long. Exactly as the books described.

  Angels.Angels who changed the universe... and who, in that instant, were changing my life too.

  I tried to speak, but no voice came out.

  Melissa, Sacha, and Kane were born almost at the same time and had been united even before birth. Eternal partners. Four thousand years of life shared.

  And everything had started with Milena: the first evolution, emerging from a species feared and violent — the same species rejected by the association that united the intelligences of the Known Universe. Sheltered by them, Milena grew without understanding human feelings like violence, greed, jealousy, cruelty.

  "Recounting all our history?" Sacha asked with a soft smile. I smiled awkwardly.

  "I... didn't know you could read my mind."

  "I can't," she laughed — and the sound made my skin shiver. "We can only access the mind of another Sekven. But by the movement of your iris, your temperature, your heartbeat... and the situation, darling... it's easy to guess."

  "I... I'm really happy to meet you."

  "We know," Melissa replied. "You are very transparent."

  She stood up and left the room. She returned moments later with a large tray of fruits and nuts. She sat beside me — so close that I nearly forgot how to breathe.

  "I'll stay here," she said. "But don't touch me. We want you conscious."

  The love of the Sekvens — the energy they share among themselves — is so intense it can stop a human heart. They say the sensation is so extraordinary that it's worth a life. For them, love is nourishment. It is air. It is necessary.

  I took an apple, trying to control my breathing, and waited.

  Melissa, with her mouth stained by an unknown fruit, wiped her hands on her clothes like a mischievous child, as if she had no idea of her own power. Then she smiled — a beautiful and terrifying smile.

  "I want you, William."

  I froze. Petrified.

  Those words were more than an invitation: they were a sentence.

  They meant that from that moment on, I would belong to them. My life would no longer be mine. My choices neither.

  I would live under their bond — love, obey, and exist under their will. For humans, that had another name: slavery.

  And although it wasn't the end of the world — we are slaves to so many things, including what we love — fear overcame any romantic notion. Stories said that all who were "claimed" by them considered it the best thing that ever happened to them.

  But I knew too much. I understood too much. And in that moment, I couldn't smile.

  Fear took over my whole chest.