In the beginning, Atemios lord of the high reigned eternal across the lands. His greatness shone throughout the lands, as life flourished within the lands, creating a golden era. This golden era would last decades before Atemios had a conflict with Lepioth. Lepioth had reigned eternal across the great eclipse to which his greed would creep upon Atemios’ lands. With every clash between the two, plague, and corruption fell upon the world. Life had begun to fade, as many species died within this dark time. Then, with Atemios’ last ditch hope, he decided to sacrifice himself to both kill Lepioth, and give the eternal rule of the lands to the species here today.

  “It may seem sad, but in the end, he saved us all and left us with a final gift, my kids.” a wrinkled old lady spoke, as she sat on a stool upon a hill near the ocean, “The shards across the earth of which we find today are, but his final gift towards us.”

  A frown cracked upon her face, as she looked at all the young adults sitting down looking up at her in the grass, “Sadly, along with his shards, shards of Lepioth fell into our lands, and so we could also gain the evil within him.”

  “Enough with the boring talk granny, can we go ahead and get our shard?” a bald boy with blue eyes coarsely shouted, as he drifted his gaze away from his peers staring at him.

  “Very well Tito.” The lady sighed with disbelief in his audacity, before passing around bateas to each of the forty children of varying ages who looked with excitement at their newly acquired bateas.

  “Follow me, young ones.” The elder said as she jumped off her stool, and made it float in the air following her. Her small feet stomped against the sand of the shore residing beside the hill. The tidal waves clashed against the sand revealing fragments of shells with a few crabs starting to crawl in the sand. The lined-up teenagers continued to follow after the elderly lady, as she stopped dropping the stool from the air into the sand.

  “May Atemios smile upon you,” she said as she sat down again. She brushed her hand through her long hair as her bright, cyan eyes gazed at the children scrambling to look around and sift through the sand with their bateas.

  A loud shout of excitement came from an elven girl who ran back with a small pink shard around fifty millimeters long and 30 millimeters wide. She looked up at the elderly lady with her green eyes and smiled.

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  “Tch. Stupid elf.” Tito quietly said to himself as he continued to sift at the sand.

  The elder slowly grinned, as she took the shard and turned it into a necklace with some string, before placing it around the girl’s neck. “You are free to sift more of these shards, or you can sit and wait with me over here.”

  “Remember my child, Atemios was a fickle being, each shard has a small piece of his personality within them. If you want to unlock it you will need to hope it matches or blends with your personality, to have a chance for you to gain a small shred of his powers. If it does not you will have to find a new shard to unlock.”

  The elven girl looked down at her shard before sitting down beside the elderly lady, who placed a carpet out for the young elven girl. More and more of the children began to eventually sift the sand and find a shard to which they went back to the elder until it reached night.

  “It is time to go,” the elderly woman says as she beckons the young adults to follow her back to the village. As they reached the village, she turned back to them and said, “May Atemios smile upon you.”

  “May Atemios smile upon you!” the kids of all ages shouted before dispersing into the village.

  A brown-haired teenager with imperial purple eyes looked down at his copper-colored shard before walking down a large dirt path. He began to hum a popular tune in his village, as he continued to walk down the dirt path to his family’s house. A scream came from further along the dirt path, as the young boy ran quickly toward it. He huffed for breath as he reached the source, and looked at Tito throwing rocks at the elven girl from earlier. She lie on the ground wrapping her arms around her face to cover her head as much as possible.

  “What are you doing Tito?” he said as he peered into Tito’s eyes.

  “Putting this elf in their place, Litheo,” Tito replied.

  “Why are you doing this?” Litheo yelled, “If the elder finds out, you could have your shard privileges taken away and kicked out of the village.”

  “So what!?” Tito snickered, “It’s not like she’ll say anything anyways. Let’s just kill this elf, how dare they think they can live here, after the cataclysm!”

  “If you do anything else, I’ll have to stop you,” Litheo said as he curled his fingers to form a fist.

  “Then I guess, I’ll just have to kill you too!” Tito laughed as he ran towards Litheo with a sharp rock in his hand.

  Litheo ran headfirst toward Tito as he attempted to slam his fist into Tito’s head, but Tito ducked and slid the rock into Litheo’s abdomen. Litheo fell back a couple of feet as he got up and looked at the gaping hole in his shirt. He reached his hand toward the hole but saw no blood on his hands. A copper hue of light shone in an explosive way around Litheo as looked at the shard begin to fade into the dust. A man with black hair and golden eyes looked at Litheo and cracked a smirk as he faded along with the shard.