In a small village, you can hear the cries of several children, adults, and elderly people begging for mercy as they are attacked by an unknown group.
"Capture every child and woman, kill the rest!" said a man with a burn scar on his face. The man himself grabbed a woman by the hair before hitting her and knocking her unconscious.
The town guards were few in number, and most had never faced an invasion or battle of this magnitude. Each one, regardless of age, was killed or enslaved with collars and handcuffs bearing runes, disabling their power.
While everyone was being kidnapped or killed, some children and adults fled to a river behind the village, which divided a road and was a place frequented by the villagers. When they managed to reach it, arrows killed or left everyone dying, with the aim of leaving no one alive.
Among this group of escapees was a boy named Conan, barely 4 years old. This boy was an orphan, cared for by the village and its inhabitants. The little boy had been hit by an arrow that grazed his eye and made him scream in pain, although it was a better outcome than for the others.
"Conan... Run... Get out of here..." another boy managed to say, with tears in his eyes and spitting blood.
He was only a few years older than Conan. The two had been friends and used to play together, but now he lay on the ground, an arrow piercing his lung and taking his life.
"Well, well... One is still alive," said a man in shiny armor, staring at Conan before walking toward him.
"N-no... Please, leave me alone!" said Conan, holding his bloody eye and crying blood from it, as he crawled away from the man.
The man in the ostentatious armor, seeing the child trying to escape, couldn't help but laugh at how pathetic he was. He was the one who had deliberately shot Conan in the eye, with the aim of seeing him cry and watch his friend die near him.
Without any remorse, he kicked Conan's head, pushing him a few meters away and knocking him unconscious instantly. Just as the man pulled out his knife, determined to kill the boy, someone else stopped him.
"There's no need to kill him. Handcuff him and take him with the rest, Simon," said a woman, grabbing his shoulder and stopping the man in armor.
Simon had no choice but to stop what he was doing and put away his knife. "Yes, my lady," he said in a respectful tone, contrary to the way he had addressed the little boy. As requested, he handcuffed the child and took him away, holding him by his clothes.
Simon now carried Conan, who was unconscious and still bleeding, by his clothes. As if he were a garbage bag, he threw him into a cage where there were more people from the village.
"Everything is ready, there are no survivors," another man with a burned face informed him.
"Very well, all this could have been avoided if that arrogant son of a bitch had given in," he said, looking at a cross where an entire family lay nailed, dead, including the town mayor and his family.
"Of course, he decided to ignore our warnings, and this was his punishment. What could a poor village have done with such an important mine as they had?" said the woman, standing next to the man with the burned face, watching the scene before setting fire to the crosses with a small fire spell.
Both watched the scene for a few minutes before turning around and leading the other captors away from the now-extinct village.
"Now we just have to return to the capital and report to the king about the mission," said the man with the burned face, looking at the woman. "Tell me, what will you do with the reward, Aura?"
"That's none of your concern. Right now, we should focus on what to do with them. Their crying is annoying me!" said Aura before hitting one of the cages with children inside.
This blow further alarmed the children, who looked fearfully at the people around them. They all sought comfort in each other, some even begging for it to be a bad dream or asking some god for help, even though they knew their prayers would not be heard.
"We'll leave them at a market. There's one of the largest slave markets nearby," said the man, looking ahead and ignoring his companion's complaints.
"Even so, I'm thinking of taking some of the women with me," thought the man, watching the women crying and holding the infants in a protective embrace, already forming ideas about what to do with the women he had captured.
They had been traveling for several days, and the caged people and children were now physically and mentally weak, all of them having given up hope. In the early days, some had maintained their hope, making noise whenever they passed near a village, but they all stopped when they were beaten and, in extreme cases, killed in front of the others, which had caused everyone to lose hope of living.
Conan, who had recently awakened, held his right eye, which had been blinded, rendering him largely useless. Like everyone else, he had lost faith in being saved and had resigned himself to accepting his fate.
Suddenly, they all entered a cave and saw the man with the burned face, whom they discovered was named Dante, looking at a rock wall before saying,
"Open up, we have new merchandise," said Dante, looking at the wall.
"He's crazy...?" muttered Conan, who couldn't help but wonder aloud.
Unexpectedly, the entire rock wall disappeared as if it were an illusion, replaced by a large door covered with blue formations and circles. When it opened, he let them pass, overwhelming the senses of those captured with smells, loud sounds, and bright lights, for inside lay a small underground city, one of the main black market locations in the entire world.
"Take them to the stalls and get rid of them," ordered a man under Dante's command.
As ordered, groups were designated, and each took the cages where the villagers were to be sold.
"Mom, help!" a girl screamed as she was torn from her mother's arms.
"No, let her go!" Her mother suffered the same fate, as she was sold to a brothel.
All the villagers were separated from their friends or their few living relatives and sold at brothel auctions or slave farms. Conan ended up in the latter, which was the worst of the three for a child, as slave farms were known for physically and mentally breaking every slave who was taken there.