The betrayal did not begin with a silent strike, but with the terrifying discharge of Arcabuces Sanguinos [Sanguine Arquebuses]. In the grand plaza of El Refugio de Dios, the air turned cold as Beltrán and his cabal of traitors leveled their darkened weapons at those they deemed inferior. These were the Débiles [The Weak]—citizens who, though of the First Race, possessed only a thin, flickering spark of the gods' power.
Under the sacred laws of Lucas, their life was to be protected by the strong. Under the Malicia [Malice] of Beltrán, they were merely "munición" [ammunition].
"¡Cosechad la paja! [Harvest the straw!]" Beltrán roared.
The horror was instantaneous. Those who were Débiles—the common laborers and the fragile—could not resist the pull of the forbidden conduits. Because their internal power was small, their spirits were easily overwhelmed. Their entire essence was ripped from their bodies in a violent, glowing mist, flowing directly into the glass chambers of the traitors' firearms. The weapons hissed as they filled with a sick, stolen radiance, fully reloaded without the traitors spending a single drop of their own health.
"¡Traición! [Treason!]" cried the Captain of the Guard, leading the Guardia Real into the plaza. "¡Fuego! [Fire!]"
The battle was a nightmare of attrition. The Royal Guard were the Fuertes [The Strong], warriors whose veins hummed with a massive, disciplined reservoir of vitality. Against these men, Beltrán's forbidden absorption was useless; their spirits were too potent, their blood too tethered to their iron will. The traitors could not "harvest" a strong man while he stood defiant.
To reload, the traitors had to batter the guards down, waiting for the moment a soldier's strength failed him. Only when a hero fell to one knee, wounded and exhausted—becoming Debilitado [Weakened]—did his resistance crumble. Only then could the traitors point their weapons and suck the remaining life from his pores to fuel their next shot.
Inside the royal chambers, the doors burst open. Beltrán strode in, his skin bulging with a bloated, unstable radiance. He was gorged on the stolen lives of a thousand Débiles and Debilitados.
"Entregadme al niño [Give me the child]," the tyrant demanded, his voice a distorted chorus of stolen souls. "Su sangre es el último sello [His blood is the last seal]."
The King and Queen Isabel stood before the Cápsula de Oro [Golden Container], their own Arcabuces Reales [Royal Arquebuses] raised. Unlike Beltrán, who was struggling to contain a chaotic sea of stolen energy he could not fully command, the King and Queen were at their Máximo Potencial [Maximum Potential]. They used their own pure, concentrated essence—a power that was stable, focused, and absolute.
"Tú no eres un dios, Beltrán [You are not a god, Beltrán]," the King spat, his veins glowing with a steady, golden light. "Solo eres un parásito que se ahoga en lo que ha robado [You are only a parasite drowning in what you have stolen]."
The final duel was a thundering display of power. Beltrán fired massive, erratic blasts of stolen crimson energy, but he could not harness the full potential of the souls he had devoured; the stolen power was foreign and volatile. The King and Queen, channeling their own pure life force, moved with surgical precision. Their shots were faster and far more lethal because the energy belonged to them.
With a final, coordinated discharge, the King and Queen overwhelmed the tyrant. Their pure golden beams pierced through Beltrán's chaotic red aura.
"¡No! [No!]" Beltrán screamed as the stolen energy, no longer held by his will, turned inward.
The resulting shockwave of freed energy began to collapse the palace. The King and Queen, exhausted and dying from the massive expenditure of their own essence, slumped against the golden capsule. They had won, but the cost was their lives. With their final breaths, they activated the last seal, sending Mateo and the Anima Sanguis [Blood Soul] into a deep, protected slumber beneath the rising rubble.
******
Centuries turned into millennia. The world forgot the name of Lucas, and the white marble of El Refugio de Dios disappeared beneath a shroud of creeping frost and ancient, gnarled pines. Since the Conjunction of the Spheres, the North had been a wasteland of monsters—a place where the new humans dared not tread.
But for the non-humans, the south had become a cage of prejudice and war. A great coalition of Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings pushed into the frozen unclaimed territories, seeking a haven where they could live in peace.
They expected to find nothing but ice and claws. Instead, they found a ghost.
"By the ancestors, what is this stone?" a Dwarf captain grunted, brushing snow from a half-buried pillar. "It's not carved. It looks... grown. Like bone turned to marble."
The Gnomes, led by a master delver, and the Elves followed a faint, rhythmic hum deep into the subterranean bowels of what appeared to be a ruined palace. Even the Halflings, usually the first to turn back from dark holes, felt a strange, warm pull toward the center of the ruin. They bypassed corridors of crystallized red glass until they reached the heart of the sanctuary.
"Look at this," a Gnome whispered, wiping soot from his goggles. "It is pure gold, but it isn't cast. It is woven, like thread."
In the center of the dust-choked chamber sat a Golden Container. It glowed with a soft, pulsing warmth that defied the freezing air of the vault. Beside it, half-buried in the silt of ages, lay a perfectly clear glass sphere—an artifact that seemed to hold a swirling, liquid light within.
"Is it a tomb?" a Halfling asked, clutching his cloak.
"No," the Elven mage replied, her hand hovering over the golden surface. "It's a cradle. I can hear a heartbeat."
The Gnomes worked the intricate seals with trembling hands. As the lid hissed open, a cloud of preserved, sweet-smelling air escaped. Inside, wrapped in a blanket of silk and silver thread, lay a human baby. He did not look like the humans from the ships; his skin was a deep, healthy hue, and his chest rose and fell in a slow, enchanted rhythm.
"A human child?" the Dwarf spat in confusion. "How? There hasn't been a living soul in these ruins for ages. This architecture... it predates the first human landing by thousands of years."
"He is warm," the Elven mage whispered, lifting the child. "And look at this."
She pointed to the glass sphere. As soon as the child was moved, the sphere flared to life. It didn't speak, but it projected a shimmering torrent of light—a complex, swirling data bank of symbols and blueprints that none of them could read.
"We can't leave him here," the Halfling said firmly. "Human or not, he's a babe. And this sphere... it belongs to him."
The four races looked at each other, standing in the ruins of a civilization they could not name, holding a child who shouldn't exist. They decided then to bring him back to their hidden settlement. They would raise him as one of their own, unaware that they were holding the last spark of a race that once commanded the very marrow of the world.