Long before the first cracks bled into the Veil, and long before betrayal soured both blood and kinship, Kassimir had stood beside them, a figure cloaked not in hatred, but in promise.
Esme still remembered.
She could almost hear the echo of it in the ancient halls of the Aesvaran strongholds, where the stone walls whispered of oaths made in the golden light of a more innocent age. Kassimir had been one of them then.
He was a warrior touched by celestial blood, wielding his power with immense pride and ambition, but also with laughter. He had been brilliant. Too brilliant, perhaps, because within that brilliance, the first seeds of envy took root.
Back then, Zaire had always stood just a little taller, and Esme had always burned just a little brighter. Where Kassimir summoned storms, Esme commanded galaxies; where Kassimir bent the flame, Zaire walked through it unburned.
In the beginning, it was all camaraderie and healthy rivalry. But somewhere in the cracked places of his soul, Kassimir began to wonder: Why not me? Why always them?
The resentment festered slowly, invisible at first. He began to imagine tiny slights, a glance he deemed too pitying, praise he thought too faint.
Then came the real, undeniable moments: the day Esme was chosen over him to lead the siege against the Fallen Houses, and the moment Zaire, not Kassimir, was entrusted with the ancient keys to the Veil's locks.
He had smiled through it all. He had congratulated them. But a hollow echo had settled deep inside him afterwards, and the gods, ever cruel in their silence, offered no comfort.
It wasn't hatred that consumed him first; it was grief. A profound grief for a destiny he believed had been stolen from him.
His first step toward ruin hadn't been taken in anger, but in despair. And despair, as Kassimir eventually learned, was a door, a door that opened to much darker things.
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