The wind howled outside, rattling the wooden beams of the old house. Inside, the fireplace fought to keep the night’s chill at bay.

  “Okay… let’s get started,” the woman said, her voice rough from too many nights trying to lull someone to sleep. “But if I read this to you, you fall asleep. Deal?”

  The boy sitting next to her on the couch nodded, even though his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

  She opened an old book.

  “A long time ago… darkness ruled the planet Earth. Wars never ended. Death, agony, and famine dominated the world.”

  “Mom,” the boy interrupted.

  “Yes?”

  “My tummy’s making weird noises. It sounds like a frog. Look.”

  He puffed out his stomach and let it go, trying to mimic the sound.

  “That’s because you’re hungry,” she said, turning the page without looking at him. “Famine is that, but multiplied by a thousand sad people.”

  “Oh…” The boy rolled across the couch until his head hung off the edge. “Well, I’ve got famine level one thousand. When’s Dad getting home?”

  She sighed but kept reading, ignoring the complaint.

  “While the powerful lived well, the poor died. Need reached such a point that eating corpses to survive became normal.”

  “Ewww!” The boy stuck out his tongue, making a genuine face of disgust.

  “Hope was about to die out, until one man’s voice rose: Tinevav Countis. And beside him, fourteen people followed…”

  The boy sat up suddenly, forgetting his hunger for a moment.

  “The Great Generals!” he shouted, punching the air.

  “Exactly. The ones who had powers,” his mother said, yawning and speeding through the reading. “‘They represented the 7 virtues and the 7 sins. They brought order and ended inequality.’ The end.”

  She snapped the book shut.

  “I want to be that strong,” the boy said, clenching his fists with comical seriousness.

  “What you need to be is a sleeping boy,” she shot back.

  The sound of the lock turning cut through the fantasy. The door opened, letting in a freezing gust and the sharp smell of burnt fuel and ozone.

  The man who entered didn’t look like a storybook hero; he looked like a building about to collapse.

  “Dad!” The boy ran and crashed into his legs.

  The father staggered slightly but placed a heavy hand on his head, ruffling his hair.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  The woman stood, smoothing her skirt. She gave him a quick, tense kiss on the cheek.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Sensors failing in sector eleven,” he muttered, low enough that his son wouldn’t pay attention. “There’s… noise. Irregularities.”

  The man dropped into a chair and saw the open book on the couch: The Union of the Pangea Empire. A shadow of disgust crossed his face, like he’d smelled sour milk.

  “That story again…” he grumbled.

  “It’s his favorite,” she defended softly. “Kaiden, bedtime. You have school tomorrow.”

  “But Dad just got here!” the boy protested. “And I’m hungry!”

  The father rubbed his eyes with his fingers, trying to erase the images from work. Then he forced a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “We eat, you sleep, and tomorrow I’ll teach you how to tie military boots. Deal?”

  Kaiden didn’t need to think. The smell of soup was coming from the kitchen.

  “Deal!” he shouted, running to the table.

  The woman mimicked a zombie pose behind him.

  “Run, or I’ll eat your brain like in the story!”

  Kaiden laughed, oblivious to the look of absolute terror his parents exchanged behind his back the moment he looked away.

  Dinner passed, and the night vanished in a blink, as it does when you’re a child and sleep deeply.

  The next day, the sun had barely risen when Kaiden was already awake. The sound of drawers opening and closing filled his room. He dressed in a hurry, clumsy with excitement. In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face to finish waking up and looked at himself in the speckled mirror.

  He puffed out his chest, striking the most heroic pose his small body could manage.

  “I’ll be one of the next Great Generals…” he whispered to himself, testing how the words sounded. He liked them. They sounded like a promise.

  “Kaiden! You’re going to be late!” His mother’s shout from the kitchen shattered his moment of glory.

  Kaiden burst out of the bathroom, thundering down the stairs in his boots. He ran toward the door, ready to announce his life decision, but when he stepped into the cool morning air, the words caught in his throat.

  The house was surrounded by tall trees and strange undergrowth—violet and dark green—that rustled in the wind.

  Just as he stepped onto the dirt path and moved a little away from the house, he heard the heavy tread of military boots behind him.

  “I thought you had the day off,” his mother said, stopping to wait for her husband while she adjusted her shawl over her shoulders.

  Kaiden turned and his eyes lit up.

  His father was jogging toward them, impeccable in his officer’s uniform. The golden buttons gleamed, and the gray fabric seemed to absorb some of the light. Admiration hit the boy hard; his father looked indestructible.

  “I was supposed to,” the man replied, catching his breath but never losing his rigid posture. “But the space sector sensors are picking up noise again. They want me to check it.”

  His mother visibly tensed.

  “Let it not be them,” she whispered, so low the phrase was almost a breath in the wind.

  Kaiden, kicking a stone, sharpened his ears at the change in tone. He wanted to ask who “they” were, but his parents—with that telepathic adult skill for hiding fear—changed the subject instantly.

  “We need to paint the front,” his father said, pointing at the house as they resumed walking.

  “Yeah, the wood’s looking old,” she continued.

  Kaiden looked at his house as they walked. It was old, white, with dark wooden beams crossing the exterior walls. It looked like something out of a medieval history book—pretty but fragile compared to steel and concrete.

  His father walked them part of the way, but his mind was clearly elsewhere.

  When they reached the fork leading to the small military base—a simple reinforced-wood structure that clashed with the forest—he stopped.

  He gave them a quick, distracted kiss and headed off to his duty.

  Kaiden and his mother continued toward the village.

  The place was surrounded by a thick log wall, seemingly solid. Inside, life flowed with rural calm that made it hard to believe wars existed anywhere else. People swept their doorways; bakers pulled fresh bread from ovens.

  “Good morning, Elena. Hi, little one,” the neighbors greeted as they passed.

  No one looked at them strangely. The people were good. Under that morning light, the world seemed safe.

  When they reached the school, Kaiden let go of his mother’s hand and ran to the playground.

  “Kaiden!” shouted a girl with delicate features and straight black hair. Irune Dalta. She had a fragile beauty that already turned heads.

  Beside her, more reserved and taller, stood Benjamin Walker, hands in his pockets, waiting.

  “You’re late,” Benjamin said, though he was smiling.

  Irune, Benjamin, and Kaiden. It was always the three of them. Their routine was sacred: play until exhausted, study just enough. The bond between them was so thick that “friends” felt too small a word; they were a brotherhood of scraped knees.

  Life was perfect in that strange village. Charming. Simple.

  At least until night fell.

  DATE: Unknown.

  LOCATION: Some Planet in the Empire.

  It didn’t start with an explosion, but with silence. The crickets stopped singing all at once.

  And then, the first scream.

  It was a cry for help, long and shrill, tearing through the peace of the night like a knife.

  Kaiden woke with a start.

  Outside, the sky wasn’t dark; it was orange. An immense fire burned in the center of the village, brighter than the full moon.

  Explosions rattled the windowpanes, and gunshots sounded dry and rhythmic, countering the noise of nocturnal wildlife fleeing in terror.

  In his parents’ room, the chaos could be heard clearly, as if it were happening inside his own skull.

  His mother had him gripped in one arm, holding him against her chest with a force that hurt. She stood in the middle of the room, trembling, aiming at the door with a strangely designed pistol Kaiden had never seen before.

  “Mom… I’m scared,” Kaiden whimpered, burying his face in her neck, smelling her cold sweat.

  The woman swallowed hard. The sound was audible in the tense silence of the house.

  “Everything will be fine…” Her voice shook, but she tried to remain calm. “Do you… do you want me to finish the story from last night?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yes…” Kaiden whispered, clutching his mother’s blouse with tight fists.

  “After the last great war between humans ended… Tinevav was crowned the first Great Emperor of Pangea, and his fourteen followers were named The Fourteen Great Generals. Shortly after… stellar colonization arrived.”

  BOOM!

  The front door of the house was blown to pieces. It was breached with such brutality that it felt like an explosion.

  The woman stifled a scream, backing away, but her voice didn’t stop, as if the story were a magic shield.

  “Shit…” she hissed through her teeth.

  “They were and will be the first great heroes. Brave… strong… and human. Now, with the resurgence of their legacy… the chosen ones will be next. And you will be one of them, my little one.”

  CRASH!

  Another kick shattered the door of the room where they were hiding.

  This time, instinct beat fear.

  The woman didn’t think. Seeing the door fly open, she pulled the trigger.

  A blue plasma bolt shot from the barrel with an electric hum, leaving a smoking hole that punched through the wall and crossed the entire house.

  “Dammit, Elena…! It’s me!” shouted a familiar voice, dropping to the floor to dodge death by inches.

  Realizing who she had almost killed, Elena dropped the weapon as if it burned. The pistol hit the wooden floor with a thud. Elena covered her mouth with a hand and broke down crying, a sound fractured by shock.

  Her husband didn’t scold her for the shot. The fear in her eyes erased any trace of anger. He threw himself at them, wrapping them in a desperate hug, a collision of trembling bodies. But the comfort lasted barely a breath.

  He pulled away abruptly.

  “There’s no time, Elena. They’re here.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked between sobs, clinging to his jacket like a castaway.

  “We can only hide him.”

  The father looked at his son. In his eyes was an infinite, heavy sadness. He hesitated for an instant, paralyzed by the indecision of whether to fight a losing battle or accept fate.

  Then, the sound arrived.

  Zzzzzzt…

  A mechanical hum, deep and vibrating, began to be heard in the distance. It shook the window glass. Not insects; turbines. War machines approaching.

  That noise made the decision.

  Without wasting another second, the man ran to an old oak cabinet. He rummaged frantically through the drawers until he pulled out a syringe loaded with a peculiar liquid, thick and amber-colored.

  Elena saw the needle and understood the plan instantly. Without hesitating, she hugged her son with brute force, pinning him against her chest.

  “Mom, you’re hurting me!” the boy tried to protest.

  His father approached and, without ceremony, plunged the needle into his neck.

  Kaiden felt only a cold pinch, followed by a burning sensation that spread quickly through his veins.

  As soon as the syringe was empty, Elena lifted her son’s face, planted a wet, trembling kiss on his forehead, and dragged him to a corner of the room. She pulled up some loose floorboards, revealing a dark, narrow hole: a tiny crawlspace, barely a burrow in the earth.

  “I love you with all my being,” she said, pushing him into the darkness with urgent hands.

  Kaiden’s world began to warp. Lights stretched, sounds became distant and cottony. His legs failed him, and he fell sitting onto the cold dirt of the crawlspace. Unconsciousness came fast, like a black tide.

  His father crouched at the entrance of the hole, stopping Elena so she would leave him there. He grabbed Kaiden by the shoulders, shaking him slightly so his glassy eyes would focus on him one last time.

  “Listen to me well, Kaiden,” the man hissed, gripping his shoulder violently. “Do not come out. Do not scream. If you make a single sound, they kill us all.”

  “Dad…” the boy moaned.

  Kaiden blinked, fighting to keep his eyes open. His father’s image was blurring.

  “The world is a cruel shit, son. Survive it,” the father sentenced.

  It was the last thing Kaiden managed to hear before darkness swallowed him completely and his mind shut down.

  For him, the night didn’t exist. It was a black blink, a cut in the tape of his memory.

  When he woke, reality hit him before sight did. He was in a dark, tight place that smelled strongly of damp earth. The fear was instant, a bucket of ice water.

  He screamed. He cried. His wails bounced off the narrow walls of the hole, but above there was only silence. A solid, heavy silence that scared him more than any noise.

  Driven by pure survival instinct, he began to feel through the blackness with trembling hands.

  His fingers brushed splintered wood: the stairs. He started to crawl up, heart hammering against his ribs, until his head bumped the floorboards. He pushed.

  The trapdoor gave way.

  Kaiden poked his head out and emerged onto the surface.

  His parents’ room was unrecognizable. The bed was overturned, the wardrobe open with clothes spilled across the floor like fabric guts, and there were black scorch marks on the walls.

  “Dad? Mom?” he called again. His voice sounded small amidst the disaster.

  No one answered.

  Kaiden bit his lower lip, feeling a pang of childish guilt.

  “They’re going to scold me for the mess,” he thought, assuming that somehow he was responsible or that the chaos was a prank gone wrong.

  He left the room and reached the living room. There, the destruction was greater.

  A massive, jagged, smoking hole had torn away a piece of the outer wall. The forest could be seen through it. The morning wind entered freely, moving the torn curtains.

  Kaiden stood still, staring at the hole. His mind sought a quick explanation, something that made sense in his world of fairy tales and forests.

  An animal.

  It had to be a giant animal. A bear-sized Pratox, or maybe something worse, had broken in through the wall, and his parents, brave as they were, had gone out to hunt it in revenge.

  That idea gave him immediate peace. It solved everything: the mess, the hole, and why he was alone. And then, a second idea, much more urgent, crossed his mind.

  His stomach roared, reminding him he hadn’t eaten dinner.

  “Did they go to eat the animal in the village…?” he whispered, and then indignation rose in his throat. “Without me?!”

  He drew his conclusions fast and felt betrayed. They had left him sleeping so they wouldn’t have to share!

  Determined and frowning with displeasure, he left the house hopping over debris and headed for the dirt path leading to the village.

  As he ran, his short legs kicking up dust, his imagination soared. He could already smell the roasted meat in his mind. He imagined the creature cooking in the square and, worse still, he imagined Irune and Benjamin with their mouths full, laughing and eating without him.

  That didn’t please him at all. He quickened his pace, running with all his might.

  “They’ll see who eats the most,” he told himself, panting.

  A huge smile painted itself on his face, and his eyes shone with pure, almost painful hope.

  As he got closer to the village, he saw columns of black smoke rising into the sky. His stomach roared and his hopes grew.

  “They made a giant bonfire!” he thought.

  But as he crossed the threshold of the entrance, the smile died on his mouth. The illusions evaporated without a trace, replaced by a cold that froze his blood.

  The boy braked hard, eyes wide with horror.

  Hanging from the wooden arch, swaying gently in the wind, was a body. It was a man. His legs were missing from the knees down, stumps exposed, and his skin showed signs of atrocious torture.

  “Dad…?” Kaiden swallowed hard. The lump in his throat tasted like bile.

  He looked down sharply, refusing to accept the image. He squeezed his eyelids shut.

  “I’m dreaming,” he thought forcefully. “It’s a nightmare. Wake up.”

  But the smell of blood and iron was too real. When he looked up again and confirmed the corpse, his body reacted before his mind. He bent at the waist and vomited violently onto the dirt. He fell to his knees, trembling, shaking his head over and over to deny what he saw.

  Tears began to flow uncontrollably, countless, and inside him a sharp pain began to stab his chest, a physical pain that wouldn’t let him breathe. He didn’t have time to process it.

  “Kaiden,” said a weak voice.

  It sounded right next to his ear. It was a whisper that, for no reason, calmed him instantly, even though the fright made his skin crawl as he turned and saw no one beside him.

  Without overthinking it, his mind clung to the only possible explanation: it was his mother. She was shouting to him from afar. It had to be her.

  He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, got up through his tears, and kept walking into the village. He kept his head down, staring at his own feet so he wouldn’t have to see his father hanging.

  Upon entering, reality slapped him. The village was a disaster.

  There was no party. There were incinerated houses, smoking black beams, dead people on the ground, and heart-wrenching cries everywhere. Panic invaded him. Where could he look in the middle of this hell?

  “Kaiden,” the weak voice resonated again, floating over the screams.

  “Mom…?” his voice cracked. “Mom?! Where are you?!”

  Kaiden spun around, searching desperately.

  The voice, though weak, was strong enough to cut through the noise of the massacre. It became his guide, an invisible thread pulling him through the chaos, giving him the only dangerous thing in that moment: hope.

  The voice dragged him to the school where he studied.

  There, the chaos was absolute. There was a crowd of people huddled together, crying and cursing the sky, forming a human wall that blocked his view and path. But the decision to see his mother was stronger than any crowd.

  Kaiden made himself small, slipped between the adults’ legs, elbowing and shoving his way through.

  “Mommy, I’m coming… Mommy, I’m coming…” he repeated endlessly, like a desperate prayer.

  He managed to break the barrier of people and came out to the front.

  “Mommy, you have to come help my dad…!” he shouted, but the sentence died in his throat and his eyes flooded with tears again. “Mommy…?”

  Outside the school, there were no teachers or recess.

  The only thing he saw was a row of stakes driven into the earth. On the ground, bodies showing signs of brutal abuse lay like broken dolls. And above, impaled on the wooden tips, the heads of several people stared into the void.

  Next to them was Elena’s.

  Kaiden went into shock.

  This time there was no denial. He was consumed by a wave of feelings so violent it tore a long scream from him, followed by crying that seemed to have no end.

  But inside his being, deep in his chest, there was only a great silence. And in the middle of that silence, the only thing heard was a crisp sound: the cracking of something inside him.

  Crack.

  As if a vital glass had broken forever.

  Nothing interfered with his agony. The villagers, who were also mourning, stopped their own wailing for a second, moved more by the boy’s raw pain than by their own losses.

  Minutes later, the air changed.

  The deep hum of several magnetic propulsion helicopters, classified as ZH ships, vibrated in everyone’s chest. The machines descended into the village, kicking up dust and ash, but without catching the attention of Kaiden, who was still lost in his abyss.

  The villagers, however, reacted by animal instinct. Seeing the ships, fear overcame grief and they ran to take shelter and hide wherever they could.

  Upon touching the ground, the sliding doors of the ships opened to the sides with a hydraulic hiss.

  From them descended men covered in black-medieval style armor, imposing and anachronistic, faces hidden behind opaque crystal helmets. Above all, they wore a red hood-cape that billowed in the turbine wind, accentuating their grim appearance.

  One of the many men who disembarked raised a hand and pointed. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.

  The gesture was enough for the others to begin their work with mechanical efficiency: they surrounded the area and began rounding people up, forcibly separating adults from children.

  When one of the soldiers put a hand on Kaiden’s shoulder to gather him with the herd, he reacted like a wounded animal.

  “Don’t touch me!” he shouted, slapping the man’s hand away and standing up to face him, even though the soldier towered two heads over him.

  The soldier didn’t flinch. With a quick movement, he placed a cold device on his forehead, looking like a medical scanner.

  The artifact buzzed. Blizzed white… then black… and finally stopped on an intense red. A red that shone like an ember in the dark.

  Seeing the result, the soldier stopped dead. The boy’s “bravery” ceased to matter; the red color was the only thing that counted. He immediately looked at the figure who seemed to be in command.

  The Leader noticed the signal. He made a gesture of confirmation and approached.

  As he walked toward them, he removed his hood and undid the helmet seals. Air hissed as it depressurized. removing the helmet revealed an old face, weathered like leather and crossed by ancient combat scars. He had gray hair and eyes that had seen too much death.

  He looked at the scanner. Red.

  Then he looked at Kaiden sideways. He nodded with authority, without saying a word.

  The soldier, receiving the second confirmation, tried to grab Kaiden by the arm to take him away.

  Slap!

  Kaiden hit the man’s hands again. He refused to be dragged.

  The Leader raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised by the little one’s character.

  Kaiden kept silent, clenching his teeth, gaze downcast.

  “What are you going to do…?” the man continued, driving the words into him like needles. “Are you going to let them live without any punishment?”

  Kaiden didn’t answer. The silence weighed heavy.

  “You hid,” the man said. It wasn’t a question; it was a reading of data. “Your parents died fighting. You survived.”

  Kaiden clenched his fists, trembling.

  “That’s not bravery,” the Leader went on, bored. “It’s cockroach instinct.”

  “SHUT UP…!” Kaiden exploded, tears of rage in his eyes. “I don’t need your help!”

  The Leader observed the heads impaled on the stakes.

  “Look at them,” he said without emotion. “They can’t do anything anymore.”

  Kaiden clenched his teeth harder. He didn’t answer.

  The Leader scoffed, a sarcastic and cruel grimace. He turned his back and started walking toward his ship without looking back.

  “Fine. Stay. Crying to those sticks won’t fill your belly. On my ship, there is food for those who serve. The useless stay here.”

  The words hit him harder than any bullet. They filled him with a black, viscous feeling, because it was true. He had “hidden.” If he hadn’t been useless, he could have saved his parents and the village.

  The silence weighed like lead.

  “You are weak.”

  Kaiden trembled.

  “If only I were one of them,” he thought, remembering the strength in the story of the 14 Great Generals.

  “What… what must I do?” he asked with a broken voice, but he lifted his face to stare fixedly at the man’s back.

  The Leader stopped with one foot on the ship’s ramp. He turned his head and, with a small satisfied smile, said:

  “Welcome to the Red Cradle.”

  A flash of light blinded Kaiden. The emblem on the ships and on that man’s cape shone with intensity.

  By instinct, or perhaps because he had no soul left to lose, when he regained his sight he walked toward the man. The soldier who had bothered him and another one escorted him, flanking him like Praetorian guards.

  He was about to board when the weak voice resonated again.

  “Kaiden?”

  Out of curiosity, or inertia, he turned.

  He saw Irune, covered in blood and dust, standing next to Benjamin. Both looked at him with infinite sadness.

  “Will we see each other again?” she asked, voice broken.

  Kaiden looked at her. But he didn’t see her. His eyes were empty.

  Without saying anything, he ignored the question. He lowered his head once more and boarded the ship, leaving his life behind.

  The sliding doors closed with a hermetic thud and the ZH took off, kicking up a cloud of dust that covered the survivors.

  Irune’s cries came after, upon understanding that one of the two people she had left was gone forever.

  Benjamin, seeing her suffer, grabbed her shoulder tightly. He watched the trail of Kaiden’s ship disappearing into the sky.

  But in his eyes, there was no sadness.

  There was hatred.