Redacción
The cave fell into a deathly silence.
Nyra remained seated beside the campfire, clutching a small clay cup filled with hot water in both hands. Smoke danced across her face, accentuating the pallor of her skin.
Lusian had asked her who hunted them. The answer seemed simple… but it was anything but.
"More than three hundred years ago," Nyra began in a hoarse voice, "humans didn't live hidden away like this."
Elizabeth raised her gaze, listening intently from the shadows.
"Weren't they native to Zarhama?"
Nyra slowly shook her head.
"We arrived long before everything changed. There were cities. Small ones, but they were ours. We cultivated the land, traded among ourselves, built things. We were weak compared to the beasts of this land… but there were many of us."
She paused deliberately, watching the flame dance in her cup.
"Then the mana came."
It was not a passing storm.
It was not a war between nations.
It was something infinitely worse.
Mana emerged from the depths of the continent's heart and spread throughout Zarhama like an unstoppable plague. Animals began to mutate. Some grew to monstrous proportions. Others developed armor and bodies capable of withstanding devastating magical attacks. Their senses became sharp as blades; their muscles grew denser; their bones became hard as iron.
And some changed even further.
They rose onto two legs.
They learned to speak.
They learned to think.
Nyra raised her eyes and looked directly at Lusian.
"That was when the first demi-humans were born."
Kara frowned, her tails shifting uneasily.
"And they simply became intelligent overnight?"
"No." Nyra slowly shook her head. "They became intelligent… and remained monsters."
The bluntness of her words made the atmosphere inside the cave even colder.
"That was our real problem." Nyra set the cup down on the rock beside her. "Before them, there were beasts. Enormous, dangerous creatures capable of slaughtering an entire battalion. But they still acted on instinct. You could study their habits, avoid their territories, prepare deadly traps."
She glanced toward the fissure leading outside.
"The demi-humans were completely different." Her voice hardened. "They could think. They learned our tactics. They stole our weapons. They studied the weak points of our cities. They formed clans, then tribes… and eventually, armies."
Isabella crossed her arms, pressing her lips together skeptically.
"Armies?"
"Yes." Nyra gave a bitter laugh that never reached her eyes. "Imagine facing a monster strong enough to tear through a stone wall… that also knows how to patiently wait for an ambush."
No one in the group responded.
The weight of her description hung heavily between them.
"A Leontari can be stronger than ten trained human soldiers. A Drakari can fly over a fortress and sow chaos from the skies. Zarkos hunt in perfectly coordinated packs and use the terrain to suffocate their prey." Nyra lowered her gaze toward the ground. "And those are only the species we've had the misfortune of encountering."
Adela absentmindedly stroked the neck of her tiger, which remained lying beside her with its ears perked.
"So they wiped out the humans?"
"Almost." Nyra let out a deep sigh. "Khar-Mereth was the last great fortress we had."
Her expression changed completely, darkened by an old memory passed down from generation to generation.
"It took them only three days to take it."
Emily frowned in disbelief.
"Three days?"
"Three." Nyra raised three trembling fingers. "The humans had impenetrable walls, high-ranking mages, elite battalions, and prepared defenses. They had everything they needed to withstand a siege for years."
She slowly lowered her hand.
"But so did they."
The words fell like a tombstone upon those gathered.
"They didn't attack like mindless beasts. They cut off the supply routes. They attacked night after night without giving us a moment's rest. They allowed the defenders to weaken from exhaustion and hunger. And when we were weak…"
She paused.
"They destroyed the main gates."
Nyra swallowed with difficulty.
"When Khar-Mereth fell, we understood the terrible truth: we were no longer fighting savage creatures. We were fighting actual civilizations. Peoples with greater strength than ours. Greater speed. And far sharper senses."
And above all…
"They knew us."
Nyra clenched her fingers with restrained fury, digging her nails into her palms.
"They knew exactly how to kill us."
Lusian remained impassive, surrounded by an almost absolute silence.
"After the city fell… the hunt began," Nyra continued, her voice trembling beneath the weight of her people's inherited pain. "Humans were driven out of the fortresses. Then the farmlands. Then the main roads. Every refuge we managed to build with blood and sacrifice was eventually discovered and destroyed. The demi-humans didn't even need to exterminate us completely. They used us. Some hunted us purely for food. Others traded us as though we were livestock. Some clans enslaved us in their mines… and others simply enjoyed the sport of hunting us."
Elizabeth lowered her gaze to the stone floor, her jaw tightening.
"And no one tried to stop them?"
Nyra gave a bitter smile devoid of warmth.
"Who?"
The question hung in the air, impossible to answer.
"When a human tribe gathered too many people, it disappeared overnight. When we tried to establish a village, someone would find it and reduce it to ashes. When we tried to organize ourselves and fight back… an even stronger species would appear and crush whatever hope remained."
Nyra turned her eyes toward the worn walls of the cavern, where the firelight cast dancing shadows.
"Over time, we stopped building. We stopped writing our history. We stopped traveling the roads. We learned to disappear. Children began being born believing that living underground, surrounded by dampness and darkness, was normal."
She paused for a long, tragic moment.
"And then something even worse happened."
Kara tilted her ears, attentive to every word.
"What?"
"The demi-humans discovered that they could keep us like this forever. They didn't need to hunt every last human down. They only had to make sure we never raised our heads again."
The old woman with the staff spoke from the shadows at the back, her voice as rough as dry parchment.
"They taught us that humans had always been weak. That this was our natural place."
Nyra nodded sadly.
"And that any attempt to unite or rebel would only bring absolute destruction."
Isabella crossed her arms, frowning with disdain.
"An unfounded superstition?"
"A tool of control," Nyra corrected, raising her gaze. "A lie repeated for generations eventually becomes sacred history."
A dense, suffocating silence settled over the cave.
Lusian, who had listened to every word without making a sound, finally spoke.
"So humans didn't survive because they were strong."
Nyra slowly shook her head.
"We survived because we learned how to become invisible."
Lusian looked at the children huddled fearfully behind their parents, their gaunt faces and wide eyes filled with terror.
"And now?"
Nyra followed his gaze and sighed helplessly.
"Now we do the same thing we've been doing for three hundred years."
A small child's voice interrupted from the darkest corner.
"Until they find us."
Nyra squeezed her eyes shut, crushed beneath the merciless truth of those words.
"Yes."
Lusian rose in one fluid, imposing movement.
Everyone in the cave immediately looked up at him. The faint firelight outlined his figure against the stone, making his presence seem to fill the entire cavern.
"Then we'll stop hiding."
Nyra instantly went pale, her mouth opening in horror.
"You don't understand what you're saying…"
Lusian began walking steadily toward the cave entrance, his cloak billowing behind him.
"Yes, I do."
He stopped just before stepping into the fissure, looking over his shoulder toward Zarhama's dark horizon.
"What I don't understand is why you've been accepting it for three hundred years."