Chapter 1: Veghill
Do humans still have hope, or are they already condemned?
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In Veghill, hope is a luxury. We don't have that here. All we have is violence, dust, and fear. It's a forgotten town between the borders of Colombia and Venezuela, where life is measured in bullets and the supernaturals are both gods and demons.
They didn't come from fairy tales or strange experiments; they just appeared. Years ago, they changed this continent forever. Now, Sector 3-my home-is their kingdom. They're called "perfect tools" for chaos: drug traffickers, hitmen, and pawns of mafias like Los Marruecos.
In the 1990s, the supernaturals emerged-humans with powers, and creatures, mostly all from South America or Latin America. Their appearance caused the continent to be divided into three sectors:
Sector 1: Formed by safe countries, protected by the first world.
Sector 2: Countries used mostly to trade products with the first world.
Sector 3: Countries forgotten by God-the most dangerous sector on the continent. Mafias, human trafficking, and cartels rule over everything here, even more so with the highest number of these beings we call "The Supernaturals," who are used to expand faster. Every day, over 80 people die-counting those kidnapped or sold.
I'm Dillon. I'm 17 years old and a nobody. Orphaned by my mother and with a father who's more dead than alive. My family is falling apart, but at least I still have my sisters, Ana and Hiena. They're the only thing that still makes me feel human.
One afternoon, I was playing hide and seek with my sisters, Hiena and Ana. I saw them happy, their innocent smiles, playing around-even Ana with that little toy car made out of a plastic bottle.
That night before going to sleep, Ana drew a family on the wall-us. There was Dad, Hiena, me, and Ana. But beside us, there was another figure. It said "Mom." Ana told me she missed her mother, or at least wanted to feel motherly love just once. I understood. The two of them had spent so much time with me that they never got to experience a mother's love. Ana curled up next to me, still staring at the drawing. Sometimes I wondered... why were these two angels born into a cruel world like this? Or worse-why into such a dangerous sector?
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1. The Bridge and the Disappointment
When I left school that day, I wasn't expecting anything new. The routine is always the same: ignore the teachers, put up with my classmates, and walk back home. But as I crossed the bridge, I saw him again-my father, Rodolfo.
He was there, lying as always, bottle in hand. I spoke, more out of habit than hope.
"Dad, time to come home. Leave the bottle, will you?"
He opened a swollen eye and let out a bitter laugh.
"Go back to what? That pigsty? You and your sisters should leave, like your mother did."
His voice was a knife, but it didn't hurt anymore. I didn't bother replying. I just kept walking home.
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2. Disappearance
When I got there, Hiena was waiting at the door. Her face was full of fear.
"Ana's not here, Dillon. She left early and never came back."
The ground vanished beneath my feet. Ana-my little sister, my light in this hole of a world-gone. I didn't want to believe it. I ran through the streets, shouting, asking if anyone had seen her. Nobody knew anything. Some laughed. Others yelled at me to leave.
I didn't want to give up, but I didn't want to accept the truth either. Ana, my sweet little sister, was gone. Why? I still remember her words, her dream of being a teacher for orphans like us, her wish to be a mother. Her sweet voice, her look, her laughter-they still echoed in my head.
In the end, I fell to my knees in the middle of the dirt road, tears burning my face. Here in Sector 3, little girls don't just disappear by accident.
That night, after putting Hiena to bed, my father stumbled into the house. His alcohol stench filled the room. When I told him about Ana, he just looked at me with glassy eyes and said:
"She disappeared? Good. One less mouth to feed."
That was the moment something inside me died.
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3. The Dilemma
The next day, Ray came up to me during recess. He had a new backpack and a kind of confidence I'd never seen in him before.
"How you doin', Dillon?" he asked with a smile I didn't trust.
I looked him up and down.
"What happened to you? You used to be as miserable as me."
Ray shrugged, his grin widening.
"I joined Los Marruecos. Small-time trafficking, nothing big. You know how much I make a month? 15,000."
15,000. More than my dad sees in a year.
"So I'm telling you, Dillon-join or die," he said, before someone called him away and he had to leave.
That night, Dillon was holding Hiena in his arms. He didn't want to let go, and Ana's voice still echoed in his mind. As the scene pulls away, we see Ana's drawing on the wall... then the streets of Veghill, with gunfire ringing out. A wounded man crawls on the ground while a supernatural being with the form of a deformed dog slowly devours him.
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