The room stank of humidity and despair.
The prefabricated metal walls were stained with rust in the corners, and a black, viscous mold slowly climbed from the floor toward the ceiling, as if the room itself was being devoured by something alive. The mattress where Saga slept had seen better decades —its foam interior poked through dozens of tears, and every movement provoked a groan of tired springs—. The only chair, occupied by Diana, wobbled on three legs, the fourth replaced by a poorly nailed piece of wood.
Saga was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the sunrise through the dirty window. The glass, covered in a layer of grease and urban dust, transformed the light into a diffuse, sickly glow. Outside, the spectacle was imposing: rocks the size of mountains floated in the sky like impossible islands, floating due to ancient technology that no one remembered or understood how it worked. Small towns clung to their irregular surfaces, with hanging bridges connecting one to another and tiny ships orbiting around them like metal flies. Some had waterfalls cascading from their edges, the water disintegrating into mist before reaching the ground, hundreds of meters below.
Saga didn't even notice.
"Well, we're now part of the fifth Raish Shield," he said, without turning around, his voice flat as a slab. "I'll rise from clay to diamond. And one day, I'll be a Zertor."
Diana, who was devouring a bowl of boiled potatoes on the room's only chair —her cheeks puffed out like a hamster's, the luminous markings on her skin flickering with each bite— looked at him as if he had declared he was going to fly to one of those floating rocks using only the power of his will.
"You're crazy."
"Probably."
"The first month survival rate is one in a thousand. Lara said it very clearly."
"I know."
"And we have no equipment, no money, no contacts, no training, nothing."
"I also know that."
Diana set down the empty bowl —she had cleaned it with a piece of hard bread, leaving not a single crumb— and observed him carefully. Something in that boy's back, in the way he stood upright before the dirty window, in the absolute stillness of his shoulders, told her he wasn't joking. That he was serious. That this wasn't a childish dream, but a declaration of war against the world.
"Why?" she finally asked.
Saga turned around. His dark eyes, deep as bottomless wells, met her violet ones. For an instant, Diana saw something in them she couldn't name: an emptiness, yes, but also a flame. Something that refused to go out.
"Because someone saved my life," he said. "And I want to know why. For that, I need to survive. And to survive, I need power. And to have power in this shitty world, I need Raish. Even if it's a shitty mess I've gotten myself into."
Diana nodded slowly, processing his words as if they were fragments of a foreign language she was beginning to understand. Then she pointed at the empty bowl with an almost childish gesture.
"What you've gotten *us* into, you mean," she corrected. "What do we do now? And I want more food."
Saga smiled. That small, genuine smile that only she had seen. The smile of someone who doesn't smile often, but when they do, it says everything.
"Yes. But you'll have to earn it. We're going to the market. I want some fruits."
The road to the nearest fruit and vegetable market was a highway compacted by centuries of caravans, its stone slabs worn down by countless feet, hooves, and wheels. On both sides, synthetic crop fields stretched as far as the eye could see, a sea of artificial green fed by pipes that dripped nutrients directly onto the roots, like a hospital for plants. The air smelled of wet earth and chemicals, that slightly metallic odor that all man-made things had.
Diana walked in silence, her luminous markings flickering faintly under the cloak Saga had lent her —a tattered garment, too big for her, that reached almost to her ankles—. For days she hadn't asked about her destiny. For days she just ate and followed. Like a domesticated animal that has forgotten it can flee.
Saga broke the silence first.
"You owe me a story."
She looked at him, her violet eyes narrowing with distrust.
"The one about why you wanted to die," he clarified. "You said you'd tell me someday."
Diana looked down. Her bare feet raised small clouds of dust with each step. They walked for a few minutes in silence, the only sound the crunching of their steps and the distant hum of the irrigation systems.
"My parents banished me," she finally said, her voice barely a whisper, as if the words weighed so much she could barely hold them. "For showing mercy."
Saga didn't respond. He just waited, his gaze fixed ahead, giving her space.
"At my initiation ceremony," Diana continued, each word coming out with effort, "I was supposed to kill an intruder. An old Neo thief. Sick, could barely stand. He just wanted food for his grandchildren, he said. I let him go."
"And?"
"And that was it," Diana shrugged, a small, defeated gesture. "The shame was so great that my family couldn't bear it. A Strayder showing weakness. Someone from the most powerful race on Zeral, forgiving a petty Neo thief. They exiled me. They put me on a ship bound for nowhere. The ship was attacked by **Vacíos**. Everyone died. Except me."
Saga processed the information in silence, his mind classifying, analyzing, filing.
"Showing mercy cost you all that," he finally said.
"Yes."
"The Strayders take those things very seriously," Saga nodded, as if confirming a theory. "Lucky you're not dead. But forget about it already. You're alive, and that's all that matters."
Diana looked at him, surprised. Her violet eyes opened slightly.
"The brave kill," Saga continued, his voice calm, measured. "Cowards kill too. But forgiving a foolish old man like your Neo thief... that takes guts. They didn't understand you. And you let their stupidity kill you. By disobeying the Strayder laws, but also by giving up."
Diana stopped dead. Dust swirled at her feet.
"What do you mean?"
"That a Strayder of your power could have survived alone. Could have proven the exile was a mistake, by living, by thriving, by making them eat their words. Instead, you decided to die. You proved them right."
The silence stretched like an abyss between them. The wind blew, lifting the dust from the road, swaying the synthetic crops on both sides.
"I'm not strong," Diana murmured. But this time, her words sounded different. Like a question, not a statement.
"You're not," Saga agreed, without cruelty, like someone stating a fact. "But you can be. If you decide to live."
Diana clenched her fists. Her eyes flickered more intensely, as if something inside her was awakening. For the first time in months, she felt something that wasn't emptiness.
Rage.
Rage at him, for telling her truths she didn't want to hear. Rage at herself, for having given up. Rage at the world, for having judged her without understanding.
And also, tiny, barely a whisper in the depths of her chest, hope.
"Why do you care?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Why didn't you let me die? You could have kept walking. No one asked you to get involved."
Saga shrugged.
"Because I was bored. And because you're worth more than all those who stoned you put together."
He kept walking, his steps firm on the dust of the road, as if he hadn't just said something that anyone else would have found enormous.
Diana watched him for a moment. The sunlight filtered through the clouds created a halo around his silhouette, and for an instant, with his rags and his straight back, he seemed bigger than he was.
Then she caught up to him.
"I don't know if I can be strong," she said. "But... thank you."
"You're welcome. Now, about that debt..."
Diana rolled her eyes. But she was smiling.
They bought some fruits —the only thing they could afford with the remaining coins— and Diana devoured them with the same urgency as always, biting directly into the pulp, juice running down her chin. Her luminous skin glowed with satisfaction, like tiny contented suns.
They returned to the guild as the sun began to set, tinting the floating rocks in shades of orange and violet.
"Still want to go in?" Diana asked, looking at the black facade of the building, which seemed to absorb the evening light.
"More than ever," Saga replied. "Well, we don't have another option. Do we?"
They pushed open the door.
The interior of the guild smelled of sweat, steel, and cheap disinfectant, that penetrating odor of chemical products they used to clean the blood after failed missions. Dozens of recruits filled the wooden benches, most were Neros and few Neos, waiting their turn to sign contracts, pick up missions, or simply warm the bench before dying. Most were adults, with bodies marked by years of hard work —scars, poorly formed muscles, tired looks—. Some, like them, were children. Fresh meat for the grinder.
The receptionist was the same Furria from the day before —Lara, Saga remembered, the name engraved on her silver plate—. Her feline ears moved upon recognizing them, and her tail curled in a slow, lazy movement.
"You two again?" She raised an eyebrow. "The contract is already signed. What more do you want? Before anything, I'm your superior. You'll address me as Miss Lara, silver plate, by the way. Clays?"
"Orientation," Saga said, direct, blunt. "We want to know how this works."
The woman sighed with the weariness of someone who has repeated the same thing thousands of times. She pointed to a board at the back of the room, covered in papers held by magnets.
"Missions. Green ones are safe, for lucky idiots. Yellow, medium risk. Red, you don't come back. You choose one, complete it, move up in rank. Simple as that."
"And equipment?"
"With the first missions you earn points. Points are money. With money you buy equipment. No money, you're screwed. Welcome to the fifth shield."
Saga nodded. Diana observed the board, her violet eyes scanning the handwritten descriptions, some stained with dried blood.
"Recommendation?" Saga asked.
Lara looked at him. For a moment, something like amusement crossed her feline face, a smile that showed sharp fangs.
"Mandatory green mission for novices, 447. Clean up minor **Vacíos** in the industrial sector sewers. They're rat-sized, for some reason they seem to have reproduced there. Luckily there's nothing decent-sized... yet. Pays little, stinks, but it's safe if you don't do anything stupid."
"Thanks."
They went out to the backyard, an immense open-air space where dozens of recruits trained with rusty weapons and broken equipment. Instructors with silver plates —men and women with hard looks, bodies marked by battle scars— shouted orders that no one followed, hit the slow ones, humiliated the weak. The sound of metal against metal, blows against flesh, insults and screams, filled the air like a symphony of violence.
Diana watched everything attentively, her eyes recording every detail: the combatants' stances, the novices' mistakes, the way the instructors exploited those weaknesses.
"And now?" she asked.
"Now we wait," said Saga. "And we observe."
They sat on a bench against the wall, their small bodies going unnoticed among the crowd of recruits. For hours, they watched the aspirants train, fight, fail. How the instructors crushed the weak and applauded the strong. How the system worked: survive the fittest, the rest die. A meat-grinding machine that never stopped.
When night fell, when artificial lights replaced the sun and the yard slowly emptied, Saga had a plan.
"Tomorrow we take mission 447," he said, his voice low but firm. "We do it alone. Fast. Clean. Without drawing attention."
"And after?"
"After, more missions. We rise slowly. Without standing out. Let them forget us."
Diana frowned, her luminous markings flickering with confusion.
"Don't you want to rise fast? I thought..."
"Rising fast is dying fast," Saga interrupted. "Those who shine get put on impossible missions. I want to live. And you too. At least until you decide if you really want to do it."
Diana didn't respond. But when Saga got up to leave, she followed without hesitation.
That night, in the same cheap room, Saga couldn't sleep as usual.
The eye tattoo on his wrist blinked. Every minute. Slow. Inexorable. A constant reminder that he was now property of Raish, that his life no longer fully belonged to him.
The moisture from the ceiling dripped near the window, a rhythmic plink, plink, plink marking the passage of time. Diana breathed deeply in the other bed, curled up like a small animal, her luminescence barely visible in the darkness, a faint glow that rose and fell with each inhale.
Saga closed his eyes.
And the corridor appeared.
The white monolith. The infinite white space, without walls, without floor, without ceiling. The whispering voices filled the void. And the ABYSS approaching, that darkness growing everywhere at once.
*Why did you abandon us?*
This time, a different image. Brief. Barely a flash.
A woman's silhouette. Sad, deep eyes, looking at him with a mix of love and farewell. Smiling.
*Run, Saga. Live.*
He opened his eyes with a start.
His heart pounded against his chest like a caged animal. Cold sweat on his forehead. The room was the same: dark, damp, silent. Diana was still sleeping.
Saga brought a hand to his chest. The geometric symbol had disappeared from his skin, but he could still feel it, like an echo, like a mark on his soul.
He didn't sleep again that night.
The next morning, they went to the sewers.
The entrance was a rusty metal mouth in the middle of an industrial street, surrounded by factories spewing gray smoke into the sky. The smell arrived before seeing it: a mix of rot, chemicals, and something worse, that nauseating sweetness left by **Vacíos** when they moved.
They descended sticky metal stairs, their steps echoing in the darkness. Handheld flashlights —the cheapest in the guild, barely projecting a trembling circle of light— illuminated the path; the sewers measured thirty meters high and wide, normal for a mega city.
They found bodies.
Lower plates like them. Clays. Woods. Some bronzes who had gone down to help and hadn't come back up. Their bodies lay in the dirty water, their faces frozen in grimaces of terror, their wounds clean, as if something had torn them apart with surgical precision.
Bronze plates constantly went up and down, pulling out corpses and, incidentally, wishing them luck with ironic smiles. "Luck," they said, like someone saying "may lightning strike you."
They hunted rat-sized **Vacíos** for two weeks.
They were disgusting creatures, small but fast, with too many legs and circular mouths full of rotating teeth that never stopped. Their bodies were gelatinous, almost liquid, made of black matter that stank of sulfur and death.
One hundred. They hunted one hundred in fourteen days.
Diana showed natural talent: her **evergía** attacks, though weak, were precise, instinctive. Her luminous skin flickered with each impact, and the **Vacíos** fell dead upon touching her, as if her very essence were poison to them.
Saga, on the other hand, had to improvise. His **evergía** was erratic, uncontrollable, appearing and disappearing without warning. He learned to use the rusty knife, to anticipate the creatures' movements, to use the environment as a weapon. It wasn't elegant. But it worked.
The money they earned was barely enough to buy a shield —a dented metal disk, with more patches than original steel— and some extra food. Diana accepted it like the treasure it was, holding it against her chest as if it were a real shield.
"It's for you," Saga said. "You have more strength. You need it more."
"And you?"
"I have this," he pointed to his head. "And my stupid cunning, as you say."
Diana smiled. A small smile, but real.
Days passed.
Fifty-nine. They had been in the guild for fifty-nine days. One day less to survive the first month, one day more to join the statistics: one in a thousand survives.
They divided their time with military precision. Days on Zeral had fifty hours —thirty of night, twenty of day— and they made use of every one.
Ten hours to sleep. Thirty to work in the sewers, hunting tiny **Vacíos**, accumulating points, gaining experience through trial and error. Ten hours to train in the yard, observing others, learning from their mistakes, practicing with borrowed equipment they could barely maintain.
In training, Diana showed she had talent. Her Strayder body responded with natural grace to every movement, her **evergía** flowed with an ease that made other recruits pale in comparison. But she didn't like using it. Every time her markings shone brightly, something in her gaze dimmed, as if she remembered things she preferred to forget.
Saga, on the other hand, practiced and studied. His body was normal, even weak by guild standards. But his mind... his mind was something else. He read every book he found in the guild's small library —combat manuals, bestiaries of **Vacíos**, histories of ancient battles— and absorbed information like a sponge, and most importantly, information about the planet Zeral and ancient technology, which nowadays was just scrap, the best thing humanity had.
One night, after training, Saga looked at her intently.
"You're very good at learning," he said. "Your mind is unique. Maybe I'm not as promising as you, but I make up for it with this."
He tapped his temple.
Diana tilted her head.
"What do you mean?"
"That tomorrow we could take a private city mission. Chase thieves. Solve common crimes. Real missions, not this shit of killing rats in the dark. I'm sick of the guild's mandatory missions, they're suicide missions, not green like that bitch said."
Diana nodded slowly.
"I want different missions too," she admitted. "Until today we've only done mandatory work. And all because we're among the few dozen plates who manage to get out of the sewers alive."
"Tomorrow we talk to Lara."
The next day, Lara called them before they could approach the board.
Her office was decent, cluttered with papers and trophies from past hunts —**Vacíos** fangs, broken plates, useless weapons—. The Furria looked at them with an expression that could be pride or simple curiosity.
"Congratulations," she said, tossing two small plates onto the table. "New rank: wood. You're no longer clays. Of the thousands who entered with you, fewer than a hundred remain. And you two are among them. Most who die are Neos, luckily we Neros have level one **evergía**, not like the unfortunate Neos."
They both remained silent, processing the information.
"But don't get used to it," Lara continued. "Tomorrow you go outside the city. **Vacíos** sighted thirty kilometers from here. Dog-sized, according to reports, luckily."
She paused, letting the words hang in the air.
"Not rats. Dogs. And there's probably a dozen, maybe more. Mandatory missions, of course. The guild needs someone to confirm the threat level."
Lara said it as if it were about real, common dogs. Every tiny **Vacíos** could kill dozens of common humans. Just thinking about what a dog-sized **Vacíos** could do made them shudder.
Diana looked at Saga. Her violet eyes opened wide, fear showing for the first time in weeks.
"Seriously?" her voice trembled slightly. "This is what your books were for, Saga? To end up as dog food? You're stupid. A damn stupid."
Saga nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the wooden plate now resting in his hand.
"I think so," he murmured. "I think I am stupid."
But in his eyes, deep and dark as the abyss of his nightmares, there was something else.
Something that could be determination.
Or simply the acceptance that, in this world, all paths lead to the same place.
It only mattered how long it took to get there.