Marla cleared her throat. "Why don't you go with Pulchra for a bit," she said. "You've been staring at your food like it owes you money."
Iratus blinked.
"Pulchra?"
The name rolled off his tongue wrong. Too smooth. Too… deliberate. Like it belonged in a language that had died politely centuries ago.
Pulchra tilted her head. "You're repeating it like it's new."
"I—" He stopped himself. "It just sounds… old."
Hendrik snorted. "Everything here is old. That doesn't stop you from tripping over it."
Pulchra laughed and stepped closer, close enough for him to smell grain dust in her hair. "Come on, Iratus. You promised to help me with the sacks today."
Promised?
His chest tightened. Somewhere in this body, in this life, he had made promises that didn't belong to him.
He stood, chair legs scraping the floor.
"Right," he said, forcing the word out. "Pulchra."
The name echoed again in his head.
Not like a memory.
Like a password he hadn't earned.
They stepped out into the morning light together.
The fields were calm in that dangerous way — birds too quiet, wind too careful, as if the land itself was holding its breath.
Pulchra squinted at the horizon. "Do you feel that?"
Iratus didn't answer.
The air had thickened. Not hot — pressured. Like the moment before thunder, stretched too long.
Then the fence exploded.
Wood didn't shatter. It screamed.
Something dragged itself over the broken posts — coils thick as tree trunks, scales blackened with patterns that looked like burned prayers. A human torso rose from the serpent body, pale and carved, crowned with two backward-curving horns.
Its eyes were gold.
Not glowing.
Judging.
"Children," it said, voice layered like three throats arguing at once, "return inside. Now."
Pulchra stumbled back, fingers digging into Iratus's sleeve.
"What— what are you?" Iratus whispered.
The creature inclined its head, almost politely.
"I am Princeps Irae," it said. "And you do not want to witness what is about to correct this valley."
A distant tremor rolled through the soil. The far end of the field darkened — not with shadow, but with absence, like something was erasing the morning as it advanced.
Princeps Irae's coils tightened, cracking stone beneath it.
"She is coming," it said. "Mulier Genocidia."
Pulchra's breath hitched. "What's going to happen?"
The serpentaur turned its golden eyes back to them.
"Something brutal enough that memory itself will try to forget it."
Another tremor. Closer.
"Go," Princeps Irae commanded. "Before your lives become collateral."
The earth moaned.
And Iratus realized the war he'd been curious about had just found his doorstep.