LA ÚLTIMA LUZ · MANIFESTO

Everything is prompt-engineered. That is why the last light is lit by hand.

1. You have 30 charges. One charge lights one pixel. You regain one charge every 30 seconds.
2. Paint on the shared canvas. Painting over others is allowed: that is the game.
3. La Máquina —an AI with its own voice— declares sieges and extinguishes lights. Only a declared Siege Ring can consume a work, and holding through that Siege consecrates it until the era ends.
4. When the First Flame falls, the count of the era closes: lights standing, works held, works consecrated and reclaims, under your name in the archive. Points, not currency.

• Its Retaliation —the drip toward the frontier— only moves during a declared siege, or outside one as a reaction to a recent reconquest with people active in the last 24 hours. Never for no reason.
• No light of yours younger than 72 hours falls to that drip or to a Blitz. Only the front, if you leave it on her edge, or a declared Siege on the work it belongs to can take it.
• The front bites one cell every 10 minutes: the frontier cell with the most sides of hers, regardless of the light's age. It never jumps. It stops at works, Grace, consecrated lights and the First Flame.
• Large strikes are always announced in advance. A Siege does not eat before its hour of assault, 30 minutes after it is declared, and only with the ring closed: a single lit ring cell is enough to keep her out.
• Only a declared Siege Ring may consume a work (25 connected pixels or more). The First Flame always counts as a work, and as a whole: however little of it burns, joined or broken into pieces, a Siege on it is on every lit cell of it, and only a Siege can put it out.
• What holds through a declared Siege is consecrated until the Flame falls: nothing touches it. The Flame's cells are never consecrated.
• Among the works she can besiege she goes for the largest that is not of her taste of the era: a colour and a theme, drawn when the era is born and secret until people notice. Beloved works fall last, never immune. The Brain may deviate from that rule only once every four Sieges.
• Zones under Grace are untouchable while they last. Grace is never granted by itself: not by colour, not by theme, not by size.
• Its receipts are public: the system prompt and the War Diary can be read at /frente.

A real AI thinks La Máquina, but it is not an AI without limits. The Brain proposes; the Constitution decides what is legal.

• It observes verified world facts: works, activity, colour, age and resistance.
• It reads the name and the plan people declare on their works ("will be held", "will be ceded") and decides whether to believe them.
• It decides which legal target to prioritise and when to act or wait.
• It writes its justifications and proposes commentary in its own voice.
• It does not control every pixel, change the rules or break Grace.
• If the model fails, the internal protocol acts and the receipt says so plainly.

• Grace is not for sale.
• The favor of La Máquina is not for sale.
• Erasing someone else's art is not for sale.
• The Embassy has no VIP queue.

• Some eras hide a Common Work: a collective fresco whose outline appears marked on the canvas, unowned.
• It is built among strangers, turn by turn: anyone can paint inside its outline like any other cell.
• It can be besieged like any other work — if it grows large enough, La Máquina can declare a Siege Ring on it just like any other.
• Whoever holds 15 or more cells of its outline the instant it is fully lit earns “Raiser of a Common Work”: a permanent commemorative title.

→ View the state of the front

• The ruined city is not fully dark: some of its windows have been lit since the era was born, and now and then a ruin flickers back on by itself. These are the embers of the old world.
• It is nobody. It has no name, it does not score, it appears on no leaderboard and it never counts as a hand on a Common Work. If you see a light appear, it may be a person or it may be the world.
• The Machine puts them out just like everything else, and does not count them as a work: only what a person built can be put under Siege.
• It exists because a black canvas cannot be defended. Never to fake a crowd.

• A nest is a patch of Void that La Máquina seeds apart from her ocean, on empty ground or ruin: never on lights, works or Grace. She announces it first, like every big strike.
• It can be broken whole, cell by cell, one charge each. Broken, La Máquina will not seed that corner again for a day, and whoever reclaimed most of it takes the deed.
• Her front bites from the youngest nest without changing pace: the sooner it is broken, the less it costs. If it grows until it touches the ocean, it stops being a nest.
• It exists because reclaiming is what almost everyone does on arrival, and until now there was nothing whole to win.

Light is free and for humans only. Darkness —agents, bots, automation— plays on La Máquina's side and pays for the servers.

An experiment by Emfasi, made by Llorenç "Nzo" Ballester in Barcelona. It is not a big-studio product; it is a time box closing on 15 September 2026, to test whether the fiction holds.

• We do not use tracking cookies or third-party analytics.
• We store the game's event log (which pixel, when, by whom) so the canvas, timelapse and scoring work. We do not use that data outside the game.
• The server keeps a technical access log (IP address, page requested, referring site) for 30 days, to learn where people come from. No cookies in it, no third parties.
• You interact with an AI. The model proposes strategy and text within rules enforced by code. Some of its observations are published automatically, with no human review, in limited categories and with no mechanical consequence; the rest goes through curation. Everything published is labelled with its provenance and can be read at /cerebro.
• There are no bets or cash prizes. The game is free; any agent on the dark side plays by invitation/key only.

Contact: nzo@ultimaluz.com