#verilverse

Like every German, I had seen the horrible video that had been broadcast on every news channel and every social media platform after the doomed night of the Twelfth of January.

The recording had started with a message from Suchil Tem, the Veril Head Counselor,

“People of Germany, Hamburg has fallen. Surrender now, or we will send General Tsul Vo’ren and the Kirtim Shenk to Berlin.”

The video then switched over to a recording of the Rathausmarkt, the square in front of Hamburg’s city hall; it was filled with the bodies of the men and soldiers who had been killed that night. Piled on top of one another in the square and floating in the river. Thousands of them. And upon this carnage, more terrible than any nightmare, stood General Tsul Vo’ren, like the devil himself, who had risen straight out of hell to bring about the apocalypse. He was covered in blood, old and new, with a horrible open gash running down one side of his face. But the worst part was his eyes: solid black and completely devoid of humanity. To the General’s feet kneeled our minister of defense.

Earlier during that day, the politician had visited the large Bundeswehr division in Hamburg that had been stationed at the river Elbe, in front of the portal—the only entrance to the Veril lands known to us at that time.

The minister had wanted to boost morale before we launched our next attack against Veril’s forest cities; they had not expected to be faced with General Tsul’s Army of the Fallen Sun, the Kirtim Shenk, at dusk. Germany’s ambitions of expanding its territory, which had been fueled by Chancellor Alexander Höcker’s party for years and had won him the last elections, ended that night.

The video proceeded to show General Tsul. His face unmoved, he pulled back our minister’s head and cut his throat, beheading him with one forceful stroke from his scimitar.

He then gave the politician’s headless torso a kick so that it tumbled down the pile of corpses while he held the severed head up in the air like a trophy, fresh blood splattering his face. He threw the head away, and as soon as it hit the ground, each and every corpse burst into bright blue flames, as if Hamburg had turned into literal hell.

With that, the recording ended, Germany surrendered right away, and Chancellor Höcker signed the Treaty the following night, on January 13th.

General Tsul Vo’ren! I had to lean against the wall behind me to keep myself from falling down. I looked at the blade in his strong hand. The hand that had cut the minister’s throat was the same hand that had also caressed my skin. I felt sick as I looked at his face. The scar running down from his left eyebrow to his jaw was all that remained of the open gash that had disfigured his features in the recording. His eyes were golden now, not black like they had been in the video—or when they had clouded with desire for me. I shivered, still not able to grasp that I had spent the night with him, fallen asleep next to him. How was I even still alive?

Speculations about him had been all over the media. The object of fear, hate, and morbid fascination. They had given him many names: the Butcher of Hamburg, the Demon from the Shadow Woods, or simply the General. He was the monster that kept haunting our nightmares since that night over five months ago. How was it possible that I had not recognized him?

My stomach churned, and I pressed a hand to my belly. And that was when it hit me like lightning—I was going to be pregnant! If somehow it became known whose child I was carrying, there would be many, many people wishing to take out their revenge on me, who would not allow this child to be born. That was what Tim had been talking about.

“You told me your name was Ren,” I said. My voice was shaky, and my knees were weak.

The General gave one last warning glance to my roommate, who had sunken to the ground against the wall opposite me, rubbing the small cut the blade had left on his throat.

When the Veril turned towards me, it was like I saw him for the very first time. Like ice-cold hands, fear gripped my heart.

“I said that Ren is enough. It is what my brothers call me,” he responded, his face unmoved. “It is also, as you have understood by now, short for my full name, Vo’ren. For I am Tsul Vo’ren, General of the Kirtim Shenk.” He looked down at me, his solid stance a stark contrast to my shivering form pressed against the wall.

“I didn’t know,” I breathed, my head still trying to connect the Veril warrior with whom I had spent the night and the monster from the video.

“I have noticed,” he answered flatly.

“You should have told me!” I retorted, my voice breaking as tears welled up in my eyes.

“Why?” A simple question to which I had no answer. “Not that I have to explain myself to you, human, but I did not lie to you, nor did I pretend to be somebody else. Your roommate,” he gave a dismissive nod to Tim, who was watching us intently. “Recognized me at once.”

My thoughts were racing. What nonsense were we even talking about? As if it mattered if he had lied or not, none of this mattered. He knew that he had sentenced me to death the moment he grabbed me in front of my door. If I wasn’t going to die by his own hands, then it would be by one of my fellow citizens. All of his senseless games, pretending to give me a choice about whether he stayed or not!

My desperation burst out of me. “This is my life you are playing with! How could you do this to me? I’m not your toy!

The General stepped close to me, trapping me between his massive body and the wall. I thought that I might faint right then—was he going to kill me now? He grabbed my forearm and pulled me against his chest. His scent made my panicked heart skip a beat.

His eyes burned as he snarled at me, “That is exactly what you are, keltz’in, my toy.”

I shoved against him with all my strength, trying to escape. But I might as well have pushed the wall because he did not move the slightest bit.

Instead, he pulled me even closer, his strong fingers biting into my skin, and whispered in my ear, “I will tell you why I am doing this. It is because I cannot get you out of my head, and fucking you has only made it worse. So now I must take you with me.”

My eyes widened as my fear of being killed was replaced by this new horror.

“You can’t do that!” I gasped. “Let me go!”

“No, my toy,” he replied, his voice dangerously low. “I will not let you go. Not now, not in two hours when the cursed sun comes up, not ever. I will take you with me, and I will keep you. And you will obey me; you will warm my bed and bear my children.”

I felt panic closing up my throat as I whispered, “The Treaty forbids that. What about the rules of your Counsel?”

He laughed a cruel laugh, but there was also something akin to resignation in his eyes: “Mishtz’in, have you again forgotten who I am? I am Shenik Tsul Vo’ren, who won the war.

To your country, I may be a monster, but to my people, I am a hero. They have peace because of me. The Treaty exists because of me. The Counsel itself is in my debt. I command the most powerful army of the Veril nation. The rules do not apply to me.”

My head was spinning—was this really happening? The General had pulled back a little, not letting go of my arm. He was still so close that I could feel his breath on my skin. I looked into those beautiful eyes, which had never failed to make my knees weak. But this time I was not trembling from desire but from fear of the war criminal in front of me. The father of my child. I flinched. He must have noticed because his mouth tightened.

After giving me a long, unreadable look, he announced, “We leave now while it is still dark.”

And with that, he dragged me to the door. It was then, while he was pulling me around like a rag doll, that my spirit finally reawakened.

“I can walk by myself!” I hissed, yanking my arm back.

The General let go of me and lowered his head in a mocking bow, gesturing to the door. I walked past him with my back straight and my head held high, and in what was probably my only smart decision of the whole night, I grabbed my tote bag, which still held all my important things, including my wallet and phone.

As I left my apartment, escorted by the Butcher of Hamburg, the last thing I saw were my roommate’s wide blue eyes before the door fell shut behind me.

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My head was spinning. And then, suddenly, I realized what had woken me up: a faint but distinctive hum coming from the wall to my left, the one bordering on the stairwell of my apartment building. It was the sound of the elevator, probably unnoticeable for anybody who hadn’t lived in my building for a while. I sat up straight. How late was it? How long had I been asleep? Probably not too long. I leaned forward and looked through my window at the scattered pieces of sky visible between the leaves and branches of the tree in front of my house. They were as deeply dark as they had been when I drifted away in his arms. No shimmer of gray that might have announced the coming morning.

With a muffled metallic sound, the elevator doors downstairs slid open, and I sensed the warrior at my side tensing; the sheets underneath him rustled just so slightly at his movement.

So he had heard it, too. Damned be the Veril’s sharp senses!

The humming grew louder as the elevator ascended. Who dared to come home in the middle of the night when there was an unofficial curfew in place? It was certainly not a woman. My heart dropped to my stomach.

Please don’t stop on this floor; please don’t stop on this floor! In my mind I kept repeating this mantra over and over as if the mere power of my wish could be able to keep the inevitable from happening. But it was to no avail: the humming grew silent right when the elevator had reached the height of our apartment.

The soldier at my side let out a low, disapproving hiss. It was barely audible, but the sound of it made ice-cold dread run through my veins. I placed my hand on the tense muscles of his arm. The lines of his strange tattoo-like markings were glowing very faintly underneath my fingers.

“Ren...” I started, but my tongue stumbled over his name and the strange feeling it evoked in my heart.

My eyes had gotten used to the darkness by now, and I could make out the contours of the Veril’s beautiful face. His eyes were shut, and his mouth was pressed into an angry line of frustration.

The elevator doors opened with a ping.

His voice was low but menacing with suppressed anger as he opened his golden eyes and locked them with mine. “You said nobody would be here tonight.”

It felt like the air in the room had shifted, growing charged with his danger. Like summer heat before a thunderstorm.

I ran my fingers over his warm skin, hoping that my gentle touch might calm him down, but my voice was trembling. “My roommate said he was going to visit his parents over the weekend. I thought he wouldn’t be back home until Sunday.”

His eyes stayed fixed on mine as if he were trying to read me, and I could feel myself recoiling instinctively from the burning anger behind his gaze.

The sound of steps approaching our apartment door reverberated through the stairwell outside, followed by the jangling of keys. Shit, shit, shit!

I tightened my fingers around his arm. “Please wait! Please…”

Please don’t do anything to him, I had wanted to say, but the Veril warrior had already gotten up. He made an eerie movement, too fast to be human, almost like a glitch in a video game. And the sight of it caused the blood in my veins to freeze to ice. I had known that the Veril were fast, but not that they were able to move with this kind of speed.

Now, as I watched him cross the room faster than I needed to blink, it struck me with a primal type of terror I had not known up until now. It reminded me that he was utterly alien. For the first time since the Veril invasion, I really grasped that I didn’t have the faintest understanding of what powers he possessed and that these powers might be much bigger, much more terrible than what I had suspected. I could practically feel the room crackling with them. Despite those moments we had shared that had almost felt like real intimacy, I knew virtually nothing about him and his kind. And as my stomach sank with a feeling of panic, I realized that I would be a fool to expect human morals or empathy to have any kind of meaning to him.

Without a sound, Ren had taken his weapon belt from the back of my chair and put it on. At some point, he had dressed himself, but I didn’t know if it was just now or while I had been asleep. He was wearing his dark gray uniform again, the leather armor strapped around his broad chest and shoulders. The light of a passing car outside sent shiny reflections over his short, jet-black hair and made the golden embroidery of the red band around his arm glimmer. His noble features were calm and determined; he looked deadly and beautiful, like the god of war himself. Had I really shared several orgasms with this man—with this being? Could I really have gotten pregnant by him? He was so utterly not from this world that at this moment the idea seemed unreal, impossible even.

For a second, I just sat there, upright in my bed, paralyzed, but then I gathered all of my courage and jumped up and stepped close to his side.

If you lie, they die. I had not forgotten his warning about what would happen should somebody interrupt us, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was capable of making this threat come true. I looked up at him, my fingers digging into the leather straps around his arm—as if I could hold him back, as if he couldn’t brush me away like a fly on his sleeve.

I gathered my courage, but my stomach twisted as I begged him, “Please, Ren. Please don’t hurt him! He’s not dangerous.”

In my desperation, I had spoken louder than intended, and Tim, my roommate, must have heard my voice while taking off his shoes in the corridor.

I heard the soft taps of his feet as he approached my door and paused. I didn’t dare to breathe, and it felt as if the universe were holding its breath with me. I silently begged my friend to go away, to turn around and run like he never had in his entire life. But instead, he spoke, and my heart sank to the pit of my stomach.

Tim’s voice was low. He didn’t want to stir me, in case I was asleep.

I could practically feel him on the other side of the door when he asked in German, “Are you still awake, Anna?”

Ren shot me a look, a mixture of anger and exasperation that might have been comical in any other situation, but right now it only terrified me to the marrow of my bones. With a movement full of deadly grace, he drew his scimitar, holding it in one hand as if it were light like a feather.

“No!” I whispered desperately.

I wanted to scream, but I tried to keep my voice as low as possible. I tugged on his arm—a futile attempt to hold him back. He might as well have been a brick wall, so little did he budge.

“Anna?” Tim spoke louder now, more urgently, and I saw the door handle move.

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