# The Inheritance of Chaos
Dear reader, before proceeding, let me ask you a question: when you think of the word "legacy," what comes to mind? Inherited wealth, perhaps? A name left in history? Well, prepare to redefine the concept. Because the legacy of the war against demons was not made of monuments or victories carved in marble. No, what they left us was something much more enduring: a world transformed, mutated at such a deep level that we still bear its scars today. And yes, I'm talking about the "Children of Chaos."
This, dear reader, is not a simple digression. It is the heart of our story. You cannot truly understand the present without comprehending how we arrived here. The demonic invasions did not merely devastate cities or mow down armies. Oh no. That was only the surface. The real change happened slowly, invisible to those too busy surviving. A transformation that began with small, almost imperceptible signs.
It was a biting day, under a surprisingly gentle sun, when the Council of Scholars of Lyris gathered to discuss the first anomalies. An ambiguous, almost reassuring term, don't you think? "Anomalies." As if those reports were curiosities to be noted on a parchment and then forgotten. Children born with strange marks on their skin, miners who could see in the dark, wizards who did not age. Nothing to worry about, right? "Residual effects of the war," the sages said with a satisfied smile. "They will stabilize over time."
But the truth, dear reader, is that demonic corruption is not a simple disorder to be reorganized. It is a poison that spreads, that transforms, that rewrites the rules of reality. And this is how everything began.
The first to mutate were the wizards. The architects of our destiny, those who had bent mana to their will to stop the demonic advance, began to change. Their ears elongated, their features became sharper, and their eyes, once human, began to shine with an unsettling light. But this was not what made us comprehend the scale of the change. No, it was when their children began to be born.
The elves, as we call them today, were as beautiful as they were different. Every movement seemed a dance, every word a melody. They were born already immersed in mana, with an innate understanding of magic that the greatest human scholars could only envy. But there was an intrinsic cruelty in their rarity: for every hundred human children, barely one of elven blood was born. And that beauty, that perfection, served only to remind us how far we had strayed from our humanity.
While the elves rose toward a new kind of greatness, a different but equally extraordinary evolution was occurring in the depths of Kalthar. The miners, those who had spent generations digging in the earth's viscera, began to change. Their eyes, accustomed to darkness, adapted completely, allowing them to see even in the deepest black. Their bodies became robust, compact, almost sculpted from stone itself. And then came the "song of stone."
At first, no one believed it. A young miner swore he could hear the mountain "whispering," guiding him toward veins of precious mineral. Of course, he was ridiculed. But then others began to hear that song, a deep and mysterious echo that seemed to speak directly to their soul. Thus were born the dwarves, the guardians of the mountains, bound to the earth with a connection that no one else could understand.
Not all transformations, however, were so... poetic. In the lands most contaminated by corruption, the Damned were born. Men and women marked by mutations that defied comprehension: horns sprouting from the skull, scales covering the skin, eyes burning like embers. And with these mutations came the nightmares. Visions of the demonic world that haunted them even when awake. It was a curse, certainly. But from that curse, a strength was born. The Damned discovered they could manipulate shadows, perceive dark energies, communicate through thought. And, as often happens, they found refuge in the only thing that accepted them: chaos itself.
But the demons were not content to leave mutations to chance. In their last, desperate experiments, they created vampires and werewolves. Two sides of the same coin. The first, creatures of blood and seduction, eternally young and immortal, but bound to an insatiable hunger. The latter, perfect warriors, animals and men merged into a single, terrible curse. Both were created to be weapons but rebelled against their destiny, finding a way to survive... and prosper.
And so the world changed. Cities adapted to these new realities, while old laws crumbled like sandcastles. How could you govern a world where some races lived for centuries while others burned out in a few decades? Where shadows could be manipulated, and death itself challenged? The answer, obviously, is that you could not. And the tensions that followed were as inevitable as they were necessary.
Today, walking through the streets of Lyris, it is normal to see an elf arguing with a dwarf, while a Damned observes everything from the shadow of an alley and a vampire plots his intrigues behind the curtains of his palace. Coexistence is not perfect – it never will be – but we survived. And, considering how much we have changed, that is already a miracle.
However, do not delude yourself. The mutations have not stopped. Every now and then, one hears of new children born with powers never seen before.