***Cadiz***
Sleep had abandoned me entirely.
I lay in the vast bed, staring at the ceiling while the wind howled through the mountain passes beyond my window, each gust rattling the ancient shutters like restless spirits demanding entry. The conversation I had overheard two nights before played endlessly in my mind, each word carved into my memory with the precision of a blade cutting stone.
Null omega.
The phrase held weight I could not yet understand, but it resonated through my bones like a tuning fork struck against marble. Lord Eamon had said in the darkness: "Unstable but valuable. Such a thing has not appeared in generations."
The way he had spoken those words, not with the dismissive contempt I was accustomed to hearing when people discussed my failures, but with something that might have been reverence, or hunger, or both.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to organize the chaos of thoughts that refused to settle into any coherent pattern. All my life, I had been told I was defective, a failed omega who brought shame to his bloodline through his very existence.
My lack of scent, my absence of the holy powers that manifested so brilliantly in Cassius, my inability to fulfill even the most basic expectations of my secondary gender, all of it had been catalogued as evidence of my fundamental inadequacy.
But now, lying in the pre-dawn darkness of Ravenshollow, I found myself wondering if the truth was something entirely different.
If the strange incidents that had been following me with increasing frequency, the devices that responded to my touch, the way I had unknowingly created a barrier, were not random occurrences but symptoms of something I had never been taught to recognize.
The thought filled me with an emotion so complex I could barely name it. Hope warred with skepticism, excitement battled against the deep-rooted certainty that I was not meant for anything significant.
For twenty years, I had accepted my place as the disappointing son, the afterthought, the mistake that families endured rather than celebrated. The possibility that I might be something else entirely, something perhaps valuable in its own right, was almost too overwhelming to contemplate.
As the first pale light of dawn began to filter through the heavy curtains, I made a decision that felt both inevitable and terrifying. If no one would tell me the truth about what I was, then I would discover it myself.
The Ashforde library keeps diverse kinds of books, ancient and long lost books. Maybe I could find something related to Null Omegas. Perhaps it held more secrets, more answers to questions I was only now learning how to ask.
I rose and dressed with care, choosing somber colors that would help me blend into the shadows of the great house. The corridors of Ravenshollow were still largely empty at this hour, with only the earliest servants beginning their daily routines. I moved through the familiar passages like a ghost, my soft-soled boots making no sound against the ancient stones.
The library welcomed me with its usual mixture of mystery and promise. Dust motes danced in the shafts of morning light that penetrated the tall windows, and the air carried that particular scent of old leather and aged parchment that had become as familiar to me as breathing.
But today, the space felt different, charged with possibility, as if the very books could sense my new purpose and were eager to reveal their secrets.
I began my search systematically, starting with the sections I knew best and gradually venturing into areas I had previously ignored.
The library's organization followed no logic I could discern. Volumes on agricultural techniques sat beside treatises on military strategy, while works of poetry shared shelves with detailed accounts of diplomatic negotiations.
It was as if the generations of Ashforde lords had simply placed books wherever they found convenient, creating a maze of knowledge that defied conventional cataloguing.
For the first hour, my efforts yielded nothing. I pulled volume after volume from their resting places, scanning indices and chapter headings for any mention of the terms I sought. Null omega. Anomalous bloodlines. Magical deviations.
Each search proved fruitless, leaving me with growing frustration and the nagging suspicion that I was approaching this entirely wrong.
The morning stretched endlessly as I continued my search. I examined treatises on bloodline genetics that spoke only of traditional alpha and omega classifications.
I pored over historical accounts that mentioned various magical anomalies but nothing that matched what I was looking for. Ancient texts on omega abilities discussed scent variations, fertility cycles, and holy powers, all things I lacked entirely.
Medical journals from centuries past catalogued various "defects" and "failures," none of which described anything remotely like what Lord Eamon had spoken of with such intensity.
By the time the breakfast bell chimed through the corridors, my hands were grimy with dust and my eyes strained from squinting at faded text. I had found nothing, not a single reference to null omegas, not even a footnote that might shed light on what I truly was. The knowledge I sought remained as elusive as morning mist, dissolving the moment I thought I might grasp it.
I returned the final volume to its place on the shelf with perhaps more force than necessary, frustration coiling in my chest like a living thing.
The books that had once felt welcoming now seemed to mock me with their secrets, their leather spines turned away as if they're purposely rejecting my desperate seeking…