The Birth of Nullen
The night Nullen was born, the Azure household did not sleep.
Winter pressed hard against the palace walls, its cold seeping into stone and bone alike. Within the grand birthing chamber, silence reigned—an unnatural silence, thick enough to suffocate. Even the wind beyond the stained-glass windows seemed to hesitate, as though the world itself feared to intrude.
The midwives worked with pale faces and trembling hands. No songs were sung. No prayers were whispered. Shadows gathered in the corners of the room, stretching longer than they should have, clinging to the ceiling like living things.
Then the child cried.
The sound tore through the chamber—sharp, raw, and wrong. It did not carry the warmth of life, nor the promise of continuation. It rang instead like a bell of warning, echoing through the palace halls as though announcing a calamity yet to unfold.
At that very moment, the Recognition Flame flickered.
For centuries, it had burned without fail—an eternal fire that acknowledged blood, legitimacy, and fate. But as the newborn's cry rose, the flame shuddered violently… and went out.
One by one, every torch and brazier in the chamber followed suit.
Darkness swallowed the room.
A collective gasp escaped the midwives as the chamber was plunged into a dim, suffocating gloom. No one spoke. No one dared move. They knew—something had gone terribly wrong.
The heavy doors creaked open.
The head of the Azure Palace entered, his footsteps slow and deliberate, his presence alone enough to bend the room to silence. Authority clung to him like a crown he never removed. His eyes swept across the darkened chamber, sharp and calculating.
Every midwife dropped to her knees.
"Where," he asked, his voice low and edged with steel, "is the child?"
One of the women, hands shaking violently, rose just enough to present the infant. The man took the child into his arms—and froze.
His brow furrowed.
"This…" he murmured, disbelief thick in his voice. "This is my child?"
The Azure bloodline was unmistakable. Red hair like living flame. Crimson eyes that burned with inherited power. Even the most distant offshoots bore the mark.
But this child had none of it.
No scarlet strands crowned his head. No fire burned in his gaze. His eyes were dull, unreadable—almost empty, as if they reflected nothing at all.
The head of the household looked away from the child, surveying the room.
"Why," he asked slowly, "is this chamber dark?"
"Sire," a guard replied, voice tight, "every flame extinguished itself at the moment of birth. All at once."
Silence followed.
Then the man spoke again, colder than before.
"…Bring the Lineage Flame."
A knight departed at once, returning with the Fiery Touch—the sacred torch kindled in the age of the first Azure patriarch. It had judged emperors and prodigies alike, never once failing to burn brighter in the presence of true blood.
"Test him," the head said flatly, thrusting the child back toward the midwives.
One of them caught Nullen just in time, clutching him close as though instinctively shielding him from what was to come.
A razor flashed.
A single drop of blood welled from the infant's hand and fell into the flame.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
The Fiery Touch guttered.
Its light collapsed inward, shrinking rapidly, as if consumed by the blood itself.
And before anyone could scream—
The flame died.
Not flickered.
Not dimmed.
Died.
A horror unlike any before seized the chamber.
The Lineage Flame—eternal, unquestioned, absolute—had been extinguished by the blood of a newborn.
In that moment, the Azure household did not merely witness the birth of a child.
They witnessed the arrival of something that should not exist
Gasps rippled through the chamber like a breaking wave.
The head of the Azure household stared at the dead flame, his pupils shrinking as though he were witnessing an impossibility forcing itself into existence. For the first time since entering, the iron mask on his face cracked. Not into fear—into disbelief.
The midwives stood frozen, their bodies rigid, breaths shallow. Some trembled openly. Others clasped trembling hands over their mouths, as though afraid the act of breathing alone might invite punishment from the heavens.
Even the child's mother could not move.
She sat upright on the bloodstained sheets, her arms limp at her sides, eyes locked onto the infant she had carried for months. Her lips parted, but no sound came at first. What stared back at her did not feel like her child anymore—it felt foreign, distant, wrong.
The flame had judged him.
And the judgment was absolute.
Her throat tightened. Her chest burned. And before she could stop herself, the word slipped out—soft, broken, and soaked in terror.
"Monster…"
The word fell into the chamber like a curse.
Several midwives flinched as if struck. One began to sob quietly. Another dropped to her knees, forehead pressed to the cold floor, whispering prayers to gods long proven indifferent.
The head of the household slowly turned away from the extinguished torch. His gaze fell upon the child one last time—not with hatred, nor pity—but with something far colder.
Dismissal.
"This useless one's name," he said at last, his voice hollow and stripped of warmth, "is Nullen."
No blessing followed.
No declaration of kinship.
No acknowledgment of blood.
Just a name—heavy, final, condemning.
With that, he turned.
His cloak swept across the floor as he strode toward the doors, his footsteps steady, unhurried, as though nothing of consequence had occurred. As though an eternal flame had not died behind him. As though destiny itself had not been shattered.
"Wait—!"
The mother's voice broke as she surged forward, pain screaming through her body as she nearly collapsed from the effort. She clutched the edge of the bed, forcing herself upright.
"Please," she cried, tears spilling freely now, her voice raw and desperate. "Please—he's your child. He's ours. You can't—please—!"
Her hands reached out toward his retreating back.
He did not stop.
He did not turn.
He did not even slow his pace.
The doors closed behind him with a heavy, echoing thud, sealing her words—and her child—away from him forever.
Silence followed.
Then her restraint broke.
Her scream tore through the palace, a sound of anguish so deep it seemed to claw at the very walls. It echoed down corridors and through empty halls, louder than the newborn's cries, sharper than the dying flame, heavier than the judgment passed moments before.
She collapsed beside the bed, sobbing uncontrollably, her body shaking as though it might tear itself apart.
The child cried softly in the arms of a trembling midwife.
Small.
Unknowing.
Already condemned.
That night, the Azure Palace remembered two sounds above all others:
The wailing of a mother who had lost everything—
And the silence that followed, where a flame once burned.