Ramiel walked with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his worn-out jacket. He stepped around a puddle of dirty water without looking up. It wasn't worth it. The sky, as always, was gray.
As always. Since before he was born. The old folks in the neighborhood said it used to be blue. That the clouds were white. They said it with tears in their eyes, like they were talking about a dead relative.
Ramiel never quite believed them. Blue? Impossible. The sky was this: a slab of concrete over their heads, spitting fine ash that seeped into their lungs and tasted like metal.
"Ramiel!"
He stopped. A familiar voice. Too familiar.
"What do you want, Marcos?"
The councilman's son approached with that smile Ramiel had learned to hate. He wore clean clothes. Shoes without patches. An Inverciox helmet hung from his shoulder, the latest model, its blue lights blinking like a mockery.
"Just saying hi. How's the warehouse job? Twelve hours, right? Must be... educational."
Ramiel clenched his jaw. The crumpled paper in his pocket burned. Exam results. Passed. High enough for Digital Resource Engineering. The career that could lift his family out of poverty.
Marcos's seat. Bought. Like everything.
"Nothing to say?" Marcos shrugged. "Well, your loss. I'm going into Sword Soul. My dad got me a special permit. You know what that is, right? Of course you do. But you... well, you can watch from the outside. Someone's got to move the boxes."
He walked away laughing.
Ramiel kept walking. Words were useless. The poor had no voice. Only hands for working.
The air tasted like iron. Always.
—
The warehouse was an immense building, poorly lit, with shelves rising until they disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. The twelve hours passed slowly, so slowly, as if time itself was tired too.
Ramiel stacked boxes. One after another. His arms burned. His back ached. Beside him, other men and women did the same, in silence, with empty stares. No one spoke. Speaking wasted energy they didn't have.
During the meal break—fifteen minutes, sitting on the cold floor—an older coworker pulled out a broken phone and showed him the screen.
"Look at this."
It was a video. A man jumping from a cliff. But he didn't fall. He flew. Over a digital forest, with glowing trees and a river of blue light.
"Sword Soul," the man said. "My nephew went in last month. Already sent two energy crystals home. Two. That's six months without paying for electricity."
Ramiel watched the video. The man flew. The sky was blue. Truly blue.
"How much does a helmet cost?"
The man laughed. A joyless laugh.
"For that, you need to ask your next life."
Ramiel went back to the boxes. But the image wouldn't leave. The blue sky. The river of light.
And Marcos's face with his new helmet.
—
He got home when the clock struck nine. The neighborhood was dark, as always. The streetlights hadn't worked for years. People used old flashlights or simply learned to move in the gloom.
Ramiel's building was a concrete block, with cracks in the walls and a musty smell in the elevator—when it worked. Tonight it didn't. He climbed six floors in darkness, counting the steps from memory.
—
When he opened the door, the smell of food hit him. A little, but warm. His mother, Tora, was in the kitchen, stirring a pot of water and herbs. Thirty-seven years, very tired. The work, the lack of sleep, the constant worry.
"Sit down," she said without looking at him. "Lomi, set the table."
Lomi, seven years old, the youngest, put down her old tablet—the screen cracked, the keyboard half-dead—and ran to set the plates. There were four. Cheap ceramic, some chipped.
Chami, fourteen, was already seated. The smart one. The one who studied in secret when everyone else was asleep. She looked at Ramiel with those eyes that saw everything. That knew more than they said.
"How was it today?" she asked.
"Fine."
A lie. Chami knew it. But she said nothing.
Tora served. A plate of rice. One egg. For four.
She divided the egg into four equal parts. No one complained. It had always been like this.
Lomi nibbled her portion as if it were a treasure.
"Ramiel, did you see anything pretty at work today?"
The question disarmed him. Only Lomi could ask something like that in the middle of such misery.
"Yeah," he said, surprised to realize it was true. "I saw a cloud."
"A cloud? Really?"
"Small. Almost white."
"Almost white? Not gray?"
"Almost white. Like before, the old folks say."
Lomi smiled with her mouth full. For a second, the tiny kitchen, the peeling walls, the musty smell, everything disappeared. There was only Lomi's smile.
Chami looked down at her plate.
"You want me to go look for work tomorrow?"
"No. You study."
"But—"
"Study, Chami. You're going to get out of here. You will."
Not me.
He didn't say it. But Chami heard it anyway.
Tora placed a hand over Ramiel's. Calloused. Warm.
"You'll get out too, son."
Ramiel didn't look at her.
"I already got out. To work."
Silence. Only the sound of forks against plates.
—
After dinner, Chami helped Lomi with homework. The tablet barely worked; you had to tap it gently for the touchscreen to respond. They did it in the dark, saving electricity.
"Three plus three," Lomi said.
"Six. Come on, you can do it."
"What about eight plus eight?"
"Sixteen. Think. Use your fingers."
Lomi counted on her fingers. Nodded. Happy.
Ramiel watched them from the doorway. Then he felt his mother's hand on his shoulder.
"Come. To my room."
—
Tora's room was small. A bed, a table with a candle, a crucifix on the wall. The only place in the house that smelled like her: like cheap soap, like exhaustion, like something close to peace.
"Sit down."
Ramiel obeyed. Tora opened the wardrobe. From the back, behind some old blankets, she pulled out a cardboard box. It was worn at the edges, as if it had been opened and closed many times.
"What's that?"
Tora didn't answer. She placed the box on the bed. Opened it.
Inside, an Inverciox helmet.
Ramiel couldn't breathe.
The helmet was used. Scratched. The left strap, mended with gray duct tape. The small lights on the sides flickered weakly, but they flickered. It worked.
"Mom... how...?"
"I saved. Two years. Since they stole your university spot."
His mother's words were spoken without resentment. As if it were just another fact of life. Like the gray sky.
Ramiel couldn't speak. He touched the helmet with his fingertips. The duct tape. The scratches. The effort. Two years. His mother had been saving for two years.
"Mom... this is too much. You could have bought food, clothes for Lomi, medicine..."
"And I did. With what was left over."
"What leftovers? There's nothing left."
Tora smiled. A sad and proud smile at the same time.
"There's always something left when you know what you're saving for."
Ramiel felt a lump in his throat.
"What if I fail?"
"You won't fail."
"But if I lose my lives, if they send me to the White World, if—"
Tora interrupted him. She placed both hands over his. The calloused, rough hands that had worked her whole life so he could be here.
"Listen to me, Ramiel. You were the best in the neighborhood tournaments. As a kid, with those old consoles people threw away, you beat everyone. Everyone. The kids with new helmets, with expensive gear, you crushed them with a broken screen and a controller without triggers."
Ramiel remembered. The tournaments in the plaza. People watching. His fingers flying over the buttons.
"That was just playing," he whispered.
"And this is playing too. But with this, son... with this you can really help."
Ramiel looked at the helmet. Then he looked at his mother. Her eyes glistened with tears that didn't fall. She never let them fall. Never.
"I don't want you to end up like me," Tora said. "Working until you die for nothing. I want you to fight. To enter that world. To get something. Even if it's just one small crystal. Even if it's just one month of electricity."
"What if I don't come back?"
"You'll come back. Because you're my son. And Tora's sons don't fail."
Ramiel hugged her. For the first time in months, he cried. He cried like when he was a child and fell and she picked him up. He cried all the anger, all the rage, all the hope he had kept inside.
Tora held him. She didn't say anything. She just held him.
Outside, the sky was still gray. But inside that small room, smelling of cheap soap and mother, there was something that couldn't be bought with anything.
—
That night, Ramiel didn't sleep.
He stayed in his corner of the living room, separated from the rest by a tattered curtain. The helmet was on his lap. He read the instructions over and over. He memorized the buttons by heart. Power. Synchronization. Access to Sword Soul.
In the bed next to his, separated by the curtain, Lomi breathed deeply, asleep. Chami, on the top bunk, wasn't sleeping either. He knew it. He could feel her moving restlessly.
"Ramiel," Chami whispered.
"What?"
"Be careful. That world... people say things. That it's dangerous. That there are places you don't come back from."
"I know."
"But they also say it's beautiful. That there are animals that glow and rivers of light."
Silence.
"If you see something pretty... will you tell me about it?"
Ramiel smiled in the dark.
"I'll tell you."
"What about Lomi?"
"Her too."
Chami turned over in the bunk. A few minutes later, her breathing also evened out.
When the clock struck 3 in the morning, when the whole world was asleep, Ramiel made a decision.
He put on the helmet.
He adjusted the broken strap. The duct tape held. For now.
He closed his eyes.
Activate.
The world disappeared.
For a moment, only darkness. Then, a blinding light. White. Pure. And a voice. It wasn't human. It was cold, mechanical, but with a hint of something ancient. Something that had been waiting.
WELCOME TO SWORD SOUL.
Ramiel opened his eyes.
—
He was on an infinite plain.
The sky was blue. Truly blue. Like in old photos, like in the old folks' stories, but more. More real. More alive. The sun warmed his skin. The wind moved the grass, green and soft grass he had never seen in his world.
He took a deep breath.
He didn't cough.
The air didn't taste like metal. It tasted like... what? He didn't know. Clean. Fresh. Alive.
"Where...?"
DETECTING NEW USER. GENERATING PERSONAL INVENTORY... CREATING COTTAGE...
In front of him, the air shimmered. A small structure began to form, made of wood and light. A tiny, humble house, with a door and a window. His.
WELCOME TO YOUR HOME IN SWORD SOUL. HERE YOU WILL STORE YOUR TREASURES, YOUR RESOURCES... AND YOUR CREATURES.
Ramiel took a step toward the house. Then another. Then he stopped.
Something shone in the distance.
A mountain. Enormous. Imposing. So tall it seemed to touch the blue sky. And carved into its summit, with letters that softly glowed, a name:
SWORD SOUL
Ramiel felt something he hadn't felt in years. Something he thought was dead.
Hope.
"I'm going to make it, Mom," he whispered. "I swear."
The wind blew. The grass moved like a green sea. And at the edge of the nearby forest, among the shadows of the trees that glowed with their own light, three pairs of eyes watched him.
Small. Scared. Wounded.
Waiting.