While Sacrifice slept, the camp did not.
The fire crackled low and steady, its light flickering across broken stone and tired faces. Most of the Sarkaz rested where they fell—weapons within reach, instincts half-awake even in sleep.
One man sat near the fire with his eyes closed.
At a glance, he was unremarkable.
A Sarkaz male. Average build. Worn armor. Breathing slow and even, as if he were meditating rather than resting.
He was neither guarding nor sleeping.
He was listening.
Not to the camp.
But to the world.
He was Damazti.
A branch of the Sarkaz, both singular and plural.
There was no Damazti race—only Damazti.
One existence.
One will.
Countless bodies.
Every Damazti was a clone of the original: the Damazti Cluster, the first of their kind, the oldest Sarkaz still extant. Across Terra, fragments of him walked in borrowed faces, imitating individuals so perfectly that even memory itself could be deceived.
Merchants.
Soldiers.
Scholars.
Lords.
And now—
A tired mercenary sitting by a fire.
The clone's eyes remained closed as information flowed upward, passing through layers of consciousness beyond time and distance.
Toward the Cluster.
Toward the court.
Toward judgment.
Or it should have.
Instead—
[Cluster]:…Huh.
The Damazti Cluster stirred—not physically, but conceptually. Thought drifted lazily across an existence that had watched empires rise and rot.
[Cluster]: I really don't feel like reporting this.
A pause.
[Cluster]: I mean, sure. Unknown Diablo-class entity. Extreme regeneration. Non-hostile. Walking medical disaster.
Another pause.
[Cluster]: But she's not from the Punishment Clan… not frothing mad… not trying to burn the continent in righteous agony…
Confusion crept in.
[Cluster]: Wait.
The Cluster leaned closer through the clone's senses.
[Cluster]: Since when are Diablos this… small?
Sacrifice slept beneath the overpass, curled slightly on her side, medical kit clutched loosely against her chest. Her breathing was slow, uneven, and labored with exhaustion. Even unconscious, her body radiated faint warmth—embers under ash.
[Cluster]: …Why is she kind?
The thought carried genuine bewilderment.
[Cluster]: That's wrong. Diablos don't do kind. They do "I will burn the world until it repents."
The Cluster probed deeper, brushing against the strange texture of her existence.
And froze.
[Cluster]: Why does she feel like—
Another pause. Longer this time.
[Cluster]: …a gargoyle?
The sensation was wrong. Layered. Hybrid in a way that made no sense. Diablo heat, yes—but anchored by something ancient and stone-deep like a gargoyle. Sarkaz resonance without lineage. But her lineage is messy, he felt like a pure Diablo, and then a gargoyle, and now.
[Cluster]: Or maybe just a very strange Sarkaz?
The Cluster considered doing something about it.
Telling the court.
Alerting the crown.
Verifying her authenticity.
Any of those would be reasonable.
Any of those would be correct.
[Cluster]:…I need a nap.
The thought was immediate. Final.
I'll sleep first. Then I'll tell the court.
The Damazti clone by the fire did not move.
The flow of information stalled.
And just like that—
The oldest of all Sarkaz,
The most ancient witness of Terra,
The keeper of a thousand secrets—
forgot to tell the court.
Not out of malice.
Not out of ignorance.
Out of laziness.
And because, for once, the future did not feel immediately endangered.
That alone should have terrified someone.
The Damazti had watched entire civilizations burn with less concern.
[Yes, his character is both lazy and annoying,
Beneath the indifference and the endless procrastination lies something far more dangerous than ambition: omniscience paired with patience. Damazti does not rush. He does not posture. He simply waits—and when the moment arrives, he ends things cleanly.
It is one of the unspoken truths of Terra that the Sarkaz still exist largely because of him.
Not through armies.
Not through grand crusades.
But through information.
His clones are everywhere.
In courts and councils.
In mercenary bands and refugee columns.
In laboratories, monasteries, battlefields, and ruins.
They wear borrowed names and believable faces, living entire lives without ever being questioned. When threats rise—true threats, not the usual hatred—the Cluster already knows. And when necessary, those threats simply… disappear.
A general collapses mid-campaign.
A commander never wakes.
A supply line dissolves overnight.
A war ends before it begins.
Decapitation, not confrontation.
This is how the Sarkaz endured Kal'tsit's strikes, survived centuries of coordinated extermination, and outlasted wars designed to erase them from history. Their enemies blamed fate, bad luck, or internal collapse.
They never blamed Damazti.
Because Damazti never announces himself.
He is annoying.
He is infuriating.
He is unbearably lazy.
But he is also one of the reasons the Sarkaz have not gone extinct.
And the day he stops napping—
Terra will learn what it means to be noticed.]
[Chapter end]