Saga woke with the dawn light filtering through the cracks of the abandoned hut.
The rotten wood of the roof let through thin beams of golden light that danced on the packed dirt floor, creating a changing mosaic of light and shadow. The air smelled of mold and dry grass, that characteristic smell of places that man abandoned long ago and that nature slowly begins to reclaim. Outside, the birds sang with a joy that contrasted violently with the silence of death from which Saga came.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. The earth crunched under his body as he moved, small particles sticking to his sweaty clothes. And then he saw it.
From his right hand, a thin thread of bluish energy—**evergía**—danced between his fingers like a cold flame, like a piece of sky trapped in his palm. It didn't hurt. It didn't burn. It was just there, shining, alive, moving with a hypnotic cadence. The blue was deep, almost transparent at the edges, more intense in the center, where it seemed to beat with its own rhythm.
He didn't know what it was. He didn't know what it was called. He only knew it was there, shining, alive.
The **evergía** —because that's what it was, even though he didn't know it yet— faded when he blinked, as if it had never existed, like a dream that escapes upon waking.
Saga watched his hand for a long time. He turned it. He closed it. He opened it. Nothing. Only skin, only bones, only the hand of a boy who had forgotten his life and with it many things. Then he got up, shook the dust from his clothes, and kept walking.
The path led him to a secluded house, a construction of wood and stone that seemed to rise from the earth itself, with a thatched roof that smoked lazily. There, an old man repaired a mechanical cart pulled by black mules with red eyes, genetically modified pack beasts, with thin wires peeking out from under their fur and small lights blinking on their harnesses. The cart was overturned on its side, its cogged wheels showing the entrails of gears and circuits. The tools scattered around it —wrenches, laser screwdrivers, **evergía** flow meters— shone with a metallic glow under the morning sun.
Saga approached cautiously, his bare feet raising small clouds of dust.
"Excuse me, where am I?"
The old man looked up. He had skin the color of wet earth and small, shrewd eyes, sunk in a face furrowed by wrinkles that told a hundred stories. He looked Saga up and down —the rags, the dirty hands, the lost gaze— and let out a laugh that sounded like the caw of an ancient crow.
"Seriously, kid? You don't know where you are?"
"I lost my memory," Saga said, bluntly, without hesitation. "I don't remember anything."
The old man laughed harder, so much that he had to lean on the cart to keep from falling. His black mules twitched their ears indifferently.
"You're on the ORIENT continent, in the Dioh Empire, in the north, in the most uninhabited zone of the entire region. Is that enough for you, or should I also tell you that we're on the planet Zeral, the only one we have, hahahahaha?"
Saga nodded, processing the information like a computer hungry for data. Orient. Dioh Empire. North. Zeral. Names he stored in his memory like someone saving coins in a bag.
"Thank you. And what is the Raish Shield? Where can I find them?"
The old man, focused on his repair —adjusting a loose wire with pliers that sparked faintly— nodded towards the horizon, where a column of smoke marked the presence of a settlement.
"Go to the town. There are public libraries with basic books. The real ones, paper ones, not that digital crap the rich love so much. Learn something before getting into trouble, kid. Knowledge weighs more than the sharpest sword."
Saga turned to leave, but the old man stopped him with a brusque gesture.
"Hey, wait."
Saga turned around.
The old man narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing him with a new intensity.
"You look like a Neo race boy, like me, but..." he pointed at Saga's hand with a rusty wrench. "I saw that flash. You have **Evergía**. That means you're not a Neo. We Neos don't have powers or **evergía** at that level. Only the Nero races have **Evergía**. Maybe you're a Hibardo."
Saga frowned.
"**Evergía**? Neros? Hibardo?"
The old man laughed again, but this time the laugh was softer, almost kind.
"Go on, get out of here. And take care. Sometimes small **Vacíos** appear around here. Dog-sized, fast as hunger. Enough to kill a kid like you or a village, and there aren't many shields around here. Don't leave the path and don't travel at night."
Saga nodded, thanked him again with a bow of his head, and left, the dust of the road rising behind his steps like a ghost.
The months transformed Saga.
His body, once thin and fragile as a dry branch, now had the density of someone who has survived through effort and necessity. Muscles had marked themselves under his skin, not those of a trained warrior, but of someone who has worked every day to earn his food. His hands, once soft, were now covered in calluses and small scars. His eyes, gray and deep as a sea in storm, had learned to calculate distances, threats, probabilities. He could look at a man and know if he lied. He could observe a street and know which way to flee.
And his mind... his mind was a sponge that absorbed knowledge at an impossible speed, while he worked washing dishes in dirty taverns or helping with harvests to earn a living. The farm owners looked at him with distrust at first, but soon learned that the quiet boy worked for two and never complained.
At night, while others slept, Saga read.
He learned from the basic books of each village, worn-out scrolls and moth-eaten volumes that no one else wanted. He learned about where he was, even about which planet he was on. Zeral. The only world they knew. The largest planet in the solar system, a giant of rock and life floating alone in the immensity of space.
The numbers fascinated him: a surface area of approximately 61.4 billion square kilometers, with vast seas covering sixty percent and continents stretching like green and brown scars over the blue. Oceans so deep they had never been fully explored. Mountains so high their peaks scraped the edge of the atmosphere.
Also about the population: 130 billion humans, a number his mind could barely comprehend. People. Crowds. Oceans of people living, dying, loving, hating, fighting. All on the same world. All under the same sky.
The human population was divided into two main races.
The Neos: common humans without powers, with **evergía** only to live, to keep the heart beating and the lungs breathing. They were almost 80% of the world population. The base. Those who built, planted, traded, died. People like the old man with the cart. People like those who had died in his village.
Then the 20% of the world population: the Neros. The superior race. Most were born with level 1 **evergía**, although only a few million reached higher levels. The Neros were divided into 9 main races, although some texts mentioned a tenth, a legend, a curse.
Saga memorized each one with the devotion of a hermit praying:
The Hibardos, similar in appearance to Neos, almost indistinguishable at first glance, the most common race among the Neros, his race or the one the old man told him about.
The High Elves and Dark Elves, with pointed ears and angular faces, beautiful as nightmares, the Dark Ones with dark, blue, and white skin and the High Ones with hair that shone like molten gold.
The Orcs, with a physical structure similar to Neos and Hibardos, but more robust and taller, with prominent jaws and fangs that peeked out from thick lips.
The Ogrets, even more robust in body, true masses of flesh and muscle, with skin that could stop knives and strength to break rocks.
The Reptilians, with scales and slit eyes, cold blood running through ancient veins, the quietest, the most patient.
The Furrios, with humanoid animal features —feline ears, canine snouts, tails that betrayed emotions—, fast, instinctive, dangerous, a variety of them.
The Dwarves, short but wide as barrels, with beards they combed with pride and hands capable of forging anything, from a needle to a ship.
The Embrys, similar to elves, but with different skin colors and more beautiful and more dark, Galáctica's race.
The Strayders, the most powerful race on Zeral. Similar to Neos and Hibardos in appearance, but more beautiful, more perfect, as if someone had taken the idea of "common human" and polished it to the extreme. Their eyes had impossible colors —violet, silver, golden— and their bodies emanated an almost imperceptible aura of power. Strayders were born with levels of **evergía** that other Neros took decades to reach.
And then, the Sombríos. The cursed race. The one that disappeared 5,000 years ago. The texts barely mentioned them, always in footnotes, always with warnings. "It is believed that..." "According to legends..." "The few records indicate..." No one really knew what they looked like. No one knew what happened to them. Only that one day they ceased to exist.
He learned the basics of his world, but he also found another book, smaller, more worn, hidden on a forgotten shelf.
He learned about the fifth shield: a worldwide organization that hunted **Vacíos** and maintained order, or at least tried to. He learned about ranks and missions and payments. He learned about the Trinet Empire, the most powerful in the world, owner of the currency everyone used —green bills with images of the world, copper, silver and gold coins, called "gato", that weighed in the hand like small promises.
And every night, the nightmares returned.
Each time they lasted longer.
They weren't dreams. They were visits to that white place, that infinite space without walls or floor or ceiling, where light was everything and nothing at the same time. There he was, standing on a colossal white monolith floating towards nowhere, while voices whispered things he didn't understand in languages he had never learned. He woke up agitated, sweating cold, his heart pounding against his chest like a caged bird, not fully remembering what he had seen, only the sensation of vertigo, of falling, of abandonment.
But he kept going.
He had decided his path.
Enlist in Raish. Rise up. And one day, find Galáctica to thank her. And ask her, also, what she had seen in him that day among the ashes, when the world burned and she looked at him as if he were more than just a peasant boy. He wouldn't waste that opportunity. This new life.
The dusty path smelled of dry earth and distant death, that barely perceptible odor that battles leave on the horizon, as if the wind dragged the sighs of the fallen.
Saga walked without haste, his dark cloak —almost a rag, more holes than fabric— covering him from the implacable sun that fell like a hammer on his head. He carried nothing of value —only a rusty knife he had found in a ditch and a few green bills and coins he had earned washing dishes— but his gaze scanned the horizon with the efficiency of a predator. Every shadow, every sound, every movement was evaluated, cataloged, filed.
The screams came first.
Blows. Curses. The sound of stones against flesh, that wet, dull noise an impact makes when it finds its target.
Saga quickened his pace.
On a bend in the road, a mob swirled like a single organism of hatred and fear. Twenty, perhaps thirty people. Neos, mostly, in peasant clothes and faces distorted by hatred, that easy hatred born of fear of the unknown. In the center, a girl received the impacts without defending herself, without even raising her arms to protect herself.
Saga saw her.
Pale skin with luminous markings that blinked faintly, like dying fireflies. Dull violet eyes, like dying stars, as if there was no longer light behind them. Black, red, and silver hair disheveled and dirty, matted with blood and earth. A Strayder. The most powerful race on Zeral. And she was letting herself be stoned.
"Damned demon, you must be a Sombrío!" shouted a woman, throwing a stone with all the fury of her fears. "Because of you the **Vacíos** came! Because of you my son died!"
The girl didn't respond. She didn't move. She just closed her eyes when the stone hit her temple with a dry thud, opening a small wound from which thick, violet blood flowed.
Saga calculated.
Twenty against one. Low odds. Rusty knife against hands and stones. But if he didn't do something, that girl would die. And something inside him —perhaps the memory of Galáctica looking at him among the ashes, perhaps just the stupidity born of having already lost everything— propelled him to act.
"Stop!" he shouted, pushing his way through the crowd with his elbows, feeling the hot, sweaty bodies against his. "What are you doing? She's not a demon!"
The mob turned, surprised by the appearance of a boy with a cold gaze and traveler's clothes, a ghost risen from the dust of the road.
An old man with an eye patch spat on the ground, a thick gob that mixed with the earth.
"She came on a slave ship that ran aground to the south. Everyone died because of her, because of her shitty skin. Everyone except her, she survived. Why? Huh? Why did she survive and the others die? She's a demon. Or worse, a Sombrío. One of that cursed race."
Saga observed the girl. Violet blood slid down her cheek, forming a thick thread that fell onto her torn clothes. But her eyes remained open. Empty. As if she was no longer there. As if she had abandoned her body long ago and only this shell remained, waiting to be destroyed, waiting to die.
"First," said Saga, calmly, with that cold and measured voice he had learned to use in the months of solitude, "the Sombríos went extinct thousands of years ago, idiots. And no one knows what they look like. They could have blue skin and three eyes, what do you know? Second, she's not a demon. She's a Strayder. The most powerful race on Zeral."
He paused, letting his words sink into the crowd.
"That's why they don't kill her, right? Because deep down you know that if she wanted to, if she awakened even a little of her power, she could kill you all before you could blink. And what I don't understand is... why doesn't she kill you?"
The question landed like a punch in the stomach of the crowd. The mob murmured, uncomfortable, their feet shifting weight from side to side, their glances avoiding each other.
"We... we didn't know," said someone from behind, a female voice, young, scared.
"She's a Strayder," repeated another, as if the word explained everything.
Saga smiled. A cold, calculated smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Leave her to me."
He approached the girl and offered her his hand.
She didn't take it. She stayed there, lying on the ground, curled up in the dust and stones, as if she wanted to die. As if there was nothing left for her in the world. As if death were a friend waiting.
Saga didn't hesitate. He grabbed her by the hair —dirty, tangled, but soft despite everything— and dragged her out of the circle of hatred.
"You'll be my assistant!" he announced, his voice clear as a bell in the afternoon. "And later, when I no longer need you, you'll have my permission to die!"
The girl tried to squirm free, a weak struggle that was nothing, and couldn't. The mob fell silent, bewildered, processing what had just happened. By the time they reacted, Saga had already disappeared with his "property" down a side path, swallowed by the undergrowth and the lengthening shadows of dusk.
The tavern was called "The Broken Barrel" and smelled of sweat, stale beer, and lies. The floor was sticky underfoot, covered in decades of spilled drinks and broken dreams. On the dark wooden walls hung stuffed heads of beasts no one could identify, with glass eyes that seemed to follow the customers. Lamps hung from the ceiling, casting dancing shadows on the tables occupied by silent drinkers who didn't want trouble.
Saga ordered food for two without consulting. The bartender —a huge man, with arms like logs and a scar crossing his face from ear to chin— looked at them distrustfully, but nodded when the copper coins clinked on the counter.
The Strayder girl, sitting across from him in a dark corner, watched the plate as if she didn't know what to do with it. As if food were a strange, forgotten concept.
"Eat," Saga ordered.
She obeyed.
She devoured it. As if she had gone days without food. As if her body remembered hunger even though her mind had forgotten how to fill it. The cheap, tough meat, the bread hard as stone, the thick, greasy stew... everything disappeared in minutes, gulped down with an almost animal urgency. Her damaged skin strengthened slightly, like stars remembering how to shine.
Saga waited for her to finish, observing every movement, every expression that crossed her face.
"Name?" he asked.
She looked at him. Her violet eyes had a spark of life now, though minimal, like embers of a bonfire that refuses to go out completely.
"Diana."
"Good, Diana. You owe me a debt."
She blinked.
"Debt?"
"I saved your life. Well, I bought it. The mob would have killed you if I hadn't intervened. So now you belong to me until you pay it back."
Diana should have protested. She should have hit him, spat on him, threatened him with that latent power that every Strayder carried in their blood. Instead, she bowed her head, submissive, defeated.
"I didn't ask you to save me," she murmured, her voice barely a whisper, the sound of someone who has forgotten how to speak loudly. "I wanted to..."
"Die?" Saga interrupted, laughing. A strange laugh, neither cruel nor kind. "A Strayder wanting to die? Hahahaha. Now that's something I hadn't read in any book."
Diana looked at him, and for an instant, something like fury crossed her violet eyes. A flash. A spark. But it went out quickly, like a match in the wind.
Saga observed her. Something about her didn't add up. A Strayder, the proudest race on Zeral, accepting submission without resistance. It was like seeing a lion crawl before a dog. It made no sense.
"Why did you want to die?" he asked directly, without beating around the bush, without delicacy.
Diana looked up. For a moment, her eyes filled with something that could have been pain. Or relief. Or both.
"I can't talk about it," she said. "But... thanks for the food."
Saga nodded.
"You don't want to live, but you love food," he noted. "And you eat a lot. I guess it's your Strayder metabolism. The books say they need ten times more calories than a normal human. Even more if they use their **evergía**."
Diana didn't respond. She just lowered her gaze, fixing it on the empty plate as if it still contained answers.
Saga took a deep breath. The tavern air smelled of smoke and despair. Outside, night was beginning to fall.
"Listen. My name is Saga. I'm of the Neros race, like you. Well, I think. A Hibardo sub-race, an old man said somewhere. Help me reach the top of the Raish Shield. Be my assistant. In exchange, I'll give you lots of food. I already saw that you people eat a lot. And when I reach a good position... you can die if you want. Or better yet, I'll help you take revenge on whoever did this to you. If you tell me someday."
Diana looked at him for a long time. Her violet eyes scrutinized his, looking for lies, looking for traps, looking for something. Then she nodded, while continuing to eat —the bartender had brought another plate without anyone asking, hypnotized by that girl's capacity to devour food—.
Twenty plates later, she was full.
"Let's go," Saga said, jumping up suddenly. "Before the bartender finds out I don't have money to pay for all this."
They ran out amid shouts and threats, the bartender's boots thundering behind them like thunder. They reached a cliff, the night wind lashing their faces, the abyss opening before them like a dark mouth. Without hesitating, without thinking, Saga jumped.
Diana, by pure instinct, by that survival reflex that not even desired death can completely extinguish, followed him.
The waterfall water hit them like a fist, cold and violent, dragging them downstream in a whirlwind of bubbles and darkness. When they emerged, coughing and laughing —she with a grimace that was almost, almost a smile, of happiness for the first time in who knows how long— they looked at each other.
Soaked. Alive. Together.
Water ran through their hair, over their faces, washing away the blood and dirt, revealing clean skin and eyes that saw each other for the first time.
"Where are we going?" asked Diana, her voice stronger now, more present.
"To enlist in the fifth shield of Raish, to the city," Saga replied, as if it were obvious, as if there were no other option in the world. "To rise up. To survive."
Diana looked at him. A boy. Like her. But with a determination she had lost long ago, a flame that hadn't gone out despite everything.
"Is food included?" she asked.
Saga smiled. A genuine smile, small, but real. The first real smile he'd had in months.
"Honestly, I don't know much," he admitted. "You could say I'm just now learning where I am. But don't worry. I'm very intelligent and clever."
He was boasting, but there was truth in his words. And Diana, for some reason, believed him.
They walked together toward the horizon, two small silhouettes against a sky that was beginning to lighten. They arrived at a larger town, a transport station where ground and air cars came and went like metal insects. They had no money for the fast ones, for the vehicles that gracefully sailed the air, so they waited for a mechanical centipede, a train hundreds of meters long that slid on magnetic rails with a deep, constant hum. Its cars were old, rusty, full of poor people traveling standing up, crowded like cattle.
They boarded it as stowaways, hiding among boxes and bundles, feeling the vibrations of the journey in their bones.
They arrived at Megar, the second largest city of the Dioh Empire.
The impact was overwhelming.
Ships of all sizes sailed the skies like flocks of metal birds, from small personal craft that shone like jewels to enormous freighters that blocked the sun as they passed. Thousands of vehicles —from smoking junkers to luxury hover limousines— entered and exited the mega city like blood from a giant heart.
One hundred million inhabitants. The number danced in Saga's mind, impossible to fully process. Mega skyscrapers from a hundred meters to a kilometer high scratched the sky, their black glass and metal facades reflecting light in a million flashes. A metropolis that housed as many Neros as Neos —though always more Neos, as everywhere on Zeral—. Indifferent. Roaring. Alive.
Two children admiring the place as if it were the first time they had seen anything like it. And it was. For them, this was more impressive than any wonder in the books. They were just two more children in a world of desperate people, two drops in an ocean of humanity.
No one paid them attention when they entered the dirty white building of the fifth Raish Shield, the poorest one, the one for the disposable. A mass of white stone that seemed to absorb light, for some reason, located in the nearest district they found, among smoking factories and housing blocks falling apart.
"You want to enlist?"
The receptionist was a woman of the Neros race, a feline Furria with pointed ears that moved independently and a long tail that coiled around the chair leg. A leather collar from which hung a silver plate adorned her neck, and her yellow eyes, with vertical pupils, barely looked up from the counter.
"No money, no equipment. No equipment, first mission = death. Sure?"
Saga placed the copper coins on the counter, a few pieces that barely made a sound as they fell.
"It's all we have."
The woman looked at them. For a moment, something like pity crossed her feline eyes. Then it disappeared, swallowed by years of seeing kids like them enter and not come out again.
"Don't worry, I was joking. We give you some basics once you sign. Fourth-hand weapons, patched-up armor. Enough to die with dignity."
The contract was simple. A yellowish paper, a few lines of small text, a space for the signature. But when the marker ink touched the parchment, the words ignited.
A cold, blue flame, like the one Saga had seen come from his hand, consumed the document in seconds, leaving no ashes, leaving no trace. And when the fire went out, a tattoo shone on their wrists, freshly engraved on the skin.
Saga looked at his: an image of an eye that blinked slowly, once every minute, its eyelid closing and opening over a pupil that seemed to look directly at him.
Diana looked at hers: a broken chain, the links separated as if something had split them from within.
The receptionist launched into an effusive speech, clearly rehearsed, clearly repeated thousands of times:
"Welcome to the fifth Raish Shield," said the woman, in a monotonous voice, like an actor who has forgotten the meaning of his words. "We are one of the five protective shields of planet Zeral. We fight against the five swords, against the **Vacíos**, and against the injustices of the world... sometimes."
She pointed to a board on the wall, full of plates hierarchically ordered, each with a different symbol, a different shine.
"These are the ranks: clay, wood, bronze, iron, steel, silver, gold, sapphire, orichalcum, diamond. If you manage to reach diamond, maybe someday you'll be Zertors. And under your command you can have tens of thousands of plates, superiors and inferiors. The top. Every recruit's dream."
She paused, letting the words hang in the air.
"If you serve twenty years in the fifth shield, you will be granted citizenship in the Trinet Empire, the most powerful and richest and safest in the world, where all races live. Of course, if you manage to survive. Only a few dozen of the thousands who enlist survive the first month. The rest... well, the rest feed the **Vacíos**. You get paid for each **Vacíos** you hunt, according to their level. And there are three mandatory missions under the command of a superior plate or a Zertor. The other days you can use as you please. To train, to rest, to spend your earnings on whatever you want."
Saga nodded, processing everything, storing every piece of data in his mind like treasure.
"If you desert," added the woman, without looking at them, her eyes fixed on some point on the wall, "the Zertors will hunt you. They always find you. They always bring you back. There are always consequences. Death. No matter where you flee, they find you and kill you. In any Raish guild in any city in the world. No hiding place. No forgiveness. No second chance."
Diana looked at Saga, her violet eyes wide open, fear showing on her face for the first time since they found her.
"I thought you were clever?" she whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "What have you gotten us into?"
Saga was stunned. Processing. Calculating. His mind worked at maximum speed, evaluating angles, probabilities, escape options. But a part of him, a small but firm part, knew there was no turning back.
They left the building without speaking, to sit on the steps and process what they had gotten themselves into.
That night, in the guild, in a small dirty bed and room —walls stained with moisture, cold metal floor, a single window overlooking a dark alley— Saga watched his wrist. The eye blinked every minute, slow, inexorable. A reminder: now they were property of Raish. Cannon fodder. Numbers on a list. Diana's feet bothered him but it was the only bed to sleep in.
Diana was already asleep, in the same bed but in a different position, curled up like a small animal, exhausted by the journey, by the food, by the hope of more food newly discovered. Her breathing was deep, regular, almost childlike.
Saga closed his eyes.
And then, the voices returned.
The colossal white monolith. The infinite white space. The whispers that filled the void.
*Why did you abandon us?*
The question echoed in his mind, again and again, like an echo that finds no end.
In the infinite whiteness of the place, something was slowly approaching. Something black, blurry, growing everywhere at once, a darkness that advanced without moving, like an ABYSS.
He opened his eyes with a start. Cold sweat on his forehead. His heart pounding against his chest like a caged animal.
Diana was still sleeping, unaware.
Outside, the lights of Megar flickered in the night, a sea of neon and shadows stretching to the horizon. Skyscrapers touching the clouds. Vehicles sailing the sky like fireflies. A city that never slept, that was always hungry, that always devoured.
And on his chest, the geometric symbol shone faintly, just for an instant. A spiral of luminous lines of **evergía** that pulsed with its own beat, like a heart that wasn't his, like a promise, like a curse, and then went out, leaving only intact skin and the darkness of the room.
Saga lay back slowly, his eyes fixed on the moisture-stained ceiling, listening to Diana's breathing, the distant murmur of the city, the beating of his own heart.
Tomorrow it would all begin.
Tomorrow his ascent would begin.
Or his death.