The Revazkerio family—imperial rulers of Feltogora—had long been revered across nations, feared for their unmatched bloodline of magic. It was said that to be born a royal was to be born blessed. Magic was not a gift but a certainty.
The firstborn, Prince Matthew, inherited their father's fire—the Emperor's blazing, destructive flame that could reduce armies to cinders. He was hailed as the Empire's future.
The third prince, Zejidiah, was thought to have inherited only their mother's magic, soft and subtle, much like Aquila. But even that, though underestimated, was still seen as proof of divine blood.
But the second prince—Prince Althurd—when he reached the sacred age when his powers should manifest… nothing came.
The hall that day had fallen into whispers, venom wrapped in false politeness.
"What is this?"
"The second prince… has no power?"
"Impossible."
"Stop speaking nonsense—he could awaken later."
"Later or not, is this not a stain upon the Revazkerio name?"
The words were daggers, and Althurd—only twelve—heard every blade pierce. He clenched his small fists at his sides until his nails dug blood, but still he stood there, powerless before their scorn.
That was the beginning. The seed of shame. The moment insecurity wrapped its claws around his heart.
He trained obsessively after that, long after the torches in the palace halls burned out. His hands blistered from sword grips too heavy for him, his knees bled against marble floors where he collapsed but refused to stop. The echo of his wooden blade against dummies resounded through the silent nights, a rhythm of desperation.
Yet no flame answered him. No spark of magic rose. His body strained, but the silence inside him remained.
His mother often came to him in those hours, her hands soft on his shoulders, her voice gentle. "Althurd… enough, my son. You are fine as you are. You are still my child."
But those words, meant as comfort, only festered in him. To him, they were pity. Pity, from his mother who was strong. Pity, from the only one who still looked at him with softness. It curdled into something bitter in his chest.
And the Emperor… the man who was supposed to raise him to be strong… turned his face away. From that day, Althurd was no longer spoken of with pride. His father's indifference was sharper than any insult, heavier than any lash. He was not punished, not scolded—just ignored, as if his existence did not matter.
Althurd's chambers grew darker with each passing season. He stared at his hands night after night, trembling, willing something—anything—to spark within him. But there was nothing. Always nothing.
The shame carved him hollow. The whispers of the court fed the pit.
Then came the day when Althurd's world truly cracked.
He had been wandering the long corridors of the palace, listless after another failed attempt at awakening magic, when the sound of voices drifted from the council chamber. His father's deep, commanding tone was unmistakable, and his mother's voice, trembling but determined, answered him.
Althurd stopped, pressing his back against the cold wall, the door left slightly ajar. He listened.
The Emperor: "Enough is enough. He is twelve—twelve! By this age, Matthew had already burned half the training grounds. Zejidiah had already summoned the first traces of his mother's light. But Althurd? He is nothing but a disgrace."
The Empress: "Do not speak of him so cruelly! He is your son!"
The Emperor: "A son without power is not a son of mine. The Revazkerio line is built on strength, on magic, on blood that commands nations. And he carries none of it. If word continues to spread, the nobles will lose faith, and with them, the people. Do you not see how dangerous this is? A powerless prince is a weakness, a liability."
The Empress: "He is still young. Perhaps his power is only delayed—"
The Emperor: [cutting her off] "Do not delude yourself. I have seen hundreds of awakenings. If power does not appear by twelve, it never will. He is defective."
The Empress: "Defective?!" [her voice broke, pain laced in it] "That is our child you speak of. The boy who carries your blood, who looks at you with nothing but longing for your approval! Would you throw him away as if he were a piece of furniture that does not please you?"
The Emperor: [voice cold as steel] "Better a discarded branch than a rotten root that poisons the tree. I will not allow weakness to stain our name. I will have the ministers draw up the documents. Althurd will be stripped of title and sent away from the palace. Perhaps to a monastery, or exiled quietly before word spreads further."
The Empress: [desperate] "No! Please, Maximiliam, I beg you! Do not do this to him. He tries—every day, he tries harder than any of his brothers. Do you not see the bruises on his hands? The blood on his training clothes? He drives himself to exhaustion because he only wishes to make you proud. You cannot abandon him for something he cannot control!"
The Emperor: [a pause, then softer but still cruel] "Pity is useless, my queen. If you coddle him further, you will only make his failure heavier. He is no prince of mine."
Althurd's breath caught. His vision blurred. He could not hear anymore—his heart pounded too loudly in his ears.
His own father, the man he revered, the man whose approval he craved above all else—wanted him gone. Wanted him erased, forgotten.
He staggered back, nearly tripping, and fled down the corridors. He did not care if the guards saw him, did not care if his footsteps echoed through the halls. He ran until he crashed into the door of his chamber, slamming it shut, locking himself inside.
And then the dam broke.
Tears streamed down his face, hot and unrelenting. His chest heaved as sobs tore from his throat, raw and strangled. He cursed—cursed the world, cursed the bloodline he had been born into, cursed the gods who had abandoned him.
His trembling hands reached for whatever they could grasp—the vase on his table, the stack of books, the chair by his desk—and hurled them against the walls. Shards shattered, pages scattered, wood splintered. His chamber became a storm of ruin, chaos born of his despair.
"Why… why me?!" he screamed, voice hoarse. "Why give me this cursed name, this cursed blood, only to make me nothing?! I tried—I tried! And still… nothing… nothing!!"
He fell to his knees amidst the wreckage, fists pounding the cold marble floor until his skin split and bled.
The boy who had once dreamed of being his father's pride now sat in the ruins of his chamber, broken, devastated, his heart consumed by an anger he could no longer tame.
And in that darkness, something inside him began to whisper—soft, cruel, and patient.
Then, as the wreckage settled around him and the bitter thought of ending it all curled cold in his chest, a voice slipped into the hollow of his mind.
"Hey, you."
It was not a word spoken aloud; it was a silk thread threaded directly into his skull—close, intimate, patient. Althurd's breath hitched. He looked around the ruined chamber as if someone stood in the doorway, but there was only broken porcelain and strewn books. The voice spoke again, softer, amused.
"You shouldn't cry like that. It makes the darkness messy."
Althurd's fist twitched. "Who—who are you?" he croaked.
A gentle chuckle, as if the thing inside him found his confusion entertaining. "Someone who knows what it is to be empty. Someone who can give you something to fill that hollow."
Cold, fevered hope flared, and with it a terrible wariness. "What do you want?" he asked, voice raw.
"Only a place to stay," the voice said. "A little bargain. I will teach you power—true, sharp, glorious power. In return… a small favor later. A breath for a life, a name for a moment." It tasted like smoke and old salt and ink.
Althurd's heart pounded so loud he could scarcely hear the voice, but dread and hunger braided inside him—hunger louder. He stood up unsteadily, palms slick, and staggered toward the gilt mirror that hung above his dressing table. The glass was cracked where a vase had smashed, a web of fractures reflecting his ashen face in a dozen shards.
"Look." The voice urged, warm now. "Look at yourself. See what the world sees."
He stumbled to the mirror. His reflection stared back: eyes bloodshot, cheeks tracked with tears, the hollowed look of a boy who had been betrayed by his own blood. For a breath he saw only himself—small, empty, worthless—then the voice bent closer like warmth to frost.
"Repeat after me," it instructed. "Say the words."
Althurd's mouth moved before his mind could weigh the cost. He croaked the foreign syllables the thing taught him—words that felt wrong in his mouth, alien and ancient, curling like serpents on his tongue. Each phrase was a small fracture in his sense of self; each cadence a key turning in a lock he did not remember building.
At first, the room hummed faintly. Then the air thickened, as if honey had been poured through the hall. The candles guttered though no draft stirred, and the reflected shards in the mirror seemed to pulse faintly with an inner light that was not light at all.
Pain struck like a hand closing on his skull. It was not a single sensation but a cascade: teeth-rattling vertigo, a white-hot flare behind his eyes, his lungs constricting as if invisible hands squeezed them closed. He fell to his knees, fingers digging into the carved floor, nails cracking against marble. The voice whispered, now right at the edge of hearing and yet as loud as a shout: "Welcome home."
Something cold and living moved beneath his skin—an ache that contracted and expanded like oceanic pressure. Muscles spasmed as if drawn by unseen strings. He tasted metal and ozone; the mirror's glass fogged with breath that was not entirely his. For a terrifying instant he felt two hearts: his own rapid, terrified thud, and beneath it a slow, patient beat that belonged to the thing that had keyed itself to him.
It demanded a shape. It pressed into the cracks of bone and memory, filling every hollow with the sharp, selfish logic of a parasite. Althurd's mind tried to recoil, to slam doors on that intruder, but the voice was already threading itself through his memories—rewriting, whispering, ordering.
"Tell me your name," it coaxed.
He could not form words that felt whole. Instead, he was forced to watch from a distance as the presence braided itself to his blood, a sensation of cold flames licking down his spine. Every fiber of his body screamed. Time thinned to a pinprick. The candlelight snapped, and he heard a faraway rush—wind through a cave, the breaking of waves. Pain became the only language left.
Then, with a last ragged gasp that tore from his ruined chest, Althurd's vision rolled upward to the broken mirror. The voice—now threaded through his marrow—said, amused and intimate: "Now we begin."
His knees gave. He slumped forward, and darkness swallowed him whole.
When he blacked out, the chamber was silent except for the shallow rattle of a body learning to host a stranger—and, far behind the closed eyes of the prince, a new, patient intelligence unfurling like a shadow.