One Hundred Years Ago
The sky over the Mardukin lands was no longer blue; it was a bruised purple, choked by the smoke of a dying civilization.
"I am going to protect you."
The voice was a low hum of melody and steel. Elzia stood amidst the ruins, a figure of terrifying beauty. Her massive black wings—iridescent like a raven's feathers in oil—pulsed with a rhythmic, heavy beat. At the center of her forehead, a sharp, geometric chakra glowed with the color of faded azure lace, casting a ghostly light over her pale features.
She was a Metzlian. To the World Government, she was a weapon to be dismantled. To the Mardukin people, she was a God.
"El... Elzia..." the child whimpered.
Elzia pulled the girl against her chest, her wings curling around them like a fortress of silk and iron. Above them, the clouds parted not for ships, but for the Aegis-Class Eradicators—monolithic, floating rail-cannons and autonomous hunter-drones that hummed with a sterile, white noise. They hadn't come for the people, they had come for the Stone of Immortality, the relic the Metzlians guarded with their very souls.
A Metzlian's mind is never lonely. Every holder carries the echoes, the whispers, and the tragedies of every ancestor who came before. It is a bloodline that cannot be abandoned; it is a Will that demands a host.
A shrill, whistling sound pierced the air as the Eradicators locked onto their targets. Then, the world exploded.
The World Government had not come to conquer, they had come to delete. High above the atmosphere, orbital kinetic strikes—"God-Rods" made of tungsten and mana-conductive alloys—were released. They hit the Mardukin capital with the force of a falling star, turning stone and bone into vapor instantly.
It wasn't a battle. It was to expunge.
From her position in the woods, Elzia watched as the homes of her people—the libraries of ancient Metzlian lore, the sacred temples—were erased by beams of concentrated ion-light. Following the strikes came the Purge Units: soldiers in pressurized, white nano-armor equipped with "Silence Fields" that neutralized magical energy. They moved through the outskirts with mechanical precision, using thermal scanners to hunt down every surviving Mardukin, ensuring no record of their existence remained.
By the time the sun began to set, the nation of Mardukin was no longer a place. It was a blackened scar on the map.
"Data scrub complete." a cold, synthesized voice echoed through the Purge Units' comms. "Let the world forget the name Mardukin Let the Metzlians be remembered only as a ghost story from a primitive age."
The forest of whispers
Elzia plummeted through the canopy, her flight jagged and broken. She hit the earth with a bone-deep thud, instinctively twisting her body so her mangled, blood-soaked wings cushioned the child's fall.
The azure glow on her forehead was flickering. It was turning a dull, ashen gray—the color of a dead star. For a Metzlian, the chakra is more vital than the heart; once the light leaves the stone, the soul leaves the world.
"I am going to seal you away," Elzia whispered, her voice trembling like a snapped string. "For the sake of the bloodline. For the sake of the grudge."
She set the wide-eyed girl down against the gnarled roots of an ancient tree. Elzia cupped the girl's cheeks, her palms erupting in a fierce, pblinding luminescence.
"It's okay..." Elzia smiled, though a single black tear—thick and dark as ink—trailed down her cheek. "You are more powerful than any who came before you. Rise well, my little moon."
The ritual began. The air grew heavy, static-charged and smelling of ozone.
"I seal your memories. I seal your name. For now, you will be a ghost among humans, knowing nothing of the wings you once bore. But look to the stars, little one. When the Sun and Moon collide in a silent embrace, and the shadow of the Earth turns the sky into a bruised violet—when the 'Black Sun' weeps for the first time in a century—the seal shall shatter. You will remember the fire. You will remember the blood. And you will hold a grudge against humanity that will never die."
She placed a black sword—heavy and silent—beside the fading girl. "When the light dies and the world is plunged into that false night, this blade will reveal its true power."
As the child began to dissolve into shimmering black particles, she vanished into the roots of the earth, hidden from the sensors of the World Government.
The End of the Metzlian
Left alone in the clearing, the shadow of a hunter-drone passed over Elzia, its red ocular sensor scanning the trees. Her wings were useless weights of lead, her chakra almost entirely gray. She turned to face the treeline as the shadows began to stretch and warp.
An entity emerged—a void given shape, a darkness that felt colder than the vacuum of space. It didn't speak with words, but with a presence that devoured the light.
"I never knew a Metzlian could become so weak after her" the unknown figure hissed, the sound like dry leaves skittering on a grave.
The entity lunged. There was no grand battle—only the sound of tearing silk and a final, defiant scream. The figure watched in triumph as Elzia's light was snuffed out, her essence consumed by his overwhelming shadow.
He let out a menacing, hollow laugh that echoed through the empty, silent forest. He had won the battle. He had helped erase a civilization with the help of man's machines.
But he had missed the seed planted deep in the soil.
The World Government had deleted the data, but they couldn't delete the bloodline. Deep beneath the ash and the white-hot ruins, a girl will rise in the future, by the time she wakes up from the t
ruths she won't just remember her name.
She will remember the fire.