Does the MTK preloader reside in the same flash as system or data?

I was just curious as I don't understand the MTK preloader that much. Considering if a wrong one is flashed, then you are left with unrecoverable brick (correct me if I'm wrong). So, it seemed odd to me that it would be kept in the same flash as other partitions like system, data, cache, etc. I have tried checking some partitions directly from the phone which seem to indicate that it might be sharing the same flash memory as other partitions, but the scatter files that I have seem to indicate otherwise. I also did some search on XDA Developers, but it left me even more confused. Any help will be appreciated.