The oppressive weight of the World Announcement faded, leaving behind a silence so absolute that the dust motes dancing in the shafts of light seemed frozen in time.
For the midwives, this silence was born of terror, a primal reaction to the proclamation of an ancient evil; for Axel, however, the stillness was literal, a suspension of temporal mechanics enacted by forces far beyond the comprehension of the mortals trembling in the room.
His infant vision, which should have been struggling to focus on the ceiling, was suddenly filled with a distortion in the fabric of reality, a shimmering haze of golden and obsidian light that coalesced into two imposing figures standing at the foot of the bed.
They were not physically present in the truest sense, but rather projected into his consciousness like a high-bandwidth data stream overriding a local network, and though he tried to analyze their features, his vision blurred, obscured by a layer of static censorship generated by the System.
[ALERT: ENTITIES EXCEED HOST'S COGNITIVE CAPACITY.][IDENTITY MASKING ACTIVE. DESIGNATIONS: GODDESS #### AND GODDESS ######.]
"Oh? Look at this little thing," a voice echoed vibrating against his soul. It was feminine, playful, yet boosted by a terrifying density of power that reminded Axel of a collapsing star. "His soul is remarkably dense for a newborn... it's black, cracked, and ugly. I like it."
"Focus, sister," the second figure chimed in, her voice colder, reminiscent of the void between galaxies. "He is creating a singularity. The vessel is too weak to contain that much soul density; if we do not intervene, this thing will detonate before it takes its first breath, wasting our curiosity."
Axel's analytical mind raced, deducing that these were the "Admins" or higher-dimensional beings of this reality. They viewed him not as a threat—they didn't see him as the Primordial Evil—but merely as an anomaly, a glitch in the matrix that was interesting enough to preserve but insignificant enough to mock.
"Let's patch the leak then," the first voice hummed, raising a hand that seemed to transcend the physical dimensions of the room. "A seal should suffice. We'll lock that overflowing energy away until the body can support the soul."
Axel felt a searing pain in his chest, distinct from the physical cold, as if a branding iron were being pressed directly onto his metaphysical core.
[SYSTEM ALERT: DIVINE SEAL APPLIED.][MANA OUTPUT CAPPED AT 1%. STATS RESTRICTED TO MATCH BIOLOGICAL AGE.]
"There," the playful voice concluded, fading as the temporal distortion began to collapse. "Survive, little anomaly. Do not bore us."
Time snapped back into place. The midwives gasped, resuming their breathing as if no time had passed, completely unaware that deities had stood among them mere milliseconds ago.
Axel, however, felt the immediate consequences of the interaction; his reservoir of power, which he had sensed pulsing beneath his skin, was now inaccessible, hidden behind a wall of divine energy. To any external observer, he was no longer a powerhouse of potential; he was a hollow shell.
The heavy doors of the birthing chamber burst open, slamming against the stone walls with a resounding crash that made the servants flinch. A man strode in, his presence dominating with enough arrogance to fill a stadium.
He was tall, with skin the color of pale ash and two large, jagged horns protruding from his forehead, marking him as a high-ranking Devil.
This was Magnus von Kayser, the Archduke, and Axel's biological father.
"The announcement..." Magnus rumbled, his golden eyes scanning the room with predatory intensity, ignoring his exhausted wife and focusing solely on the baby in her arms. "The world shakes, and my son is born in the same breath. Surely, this is an omen of greatness."
He didn't wait for permission; he reached down and snatched Axel from Iliana's arms with the roughness one might use to handle a sack of grain. His large hand covered Axel's entire head as he flared his mana, pushing a scanning wave into the infant's body to measure his latent potential.
Axel felt the invasive energy probe him, searching for the magical core that every noble Devil possessed. But the Divine Seal was absolute, it didn't just restrict Axel's power, it masked it completely, reflecting the scan as if there were nothing there but flesh and bone.
Magnus froze. The expectant gleam in his eyes flickered, then died, replaced instantly by disgust.
"Empty," Magnus whispered, the word hanging in the air like a curse.
"My Lord?" a midwife asked tentatively, stepping back as the temperature in the room dropped.
"He is empty!" Magnus roared, his voice shaking the windows. He held Axel out at arm's length as if holding a dead rat. "No mana core. No magic. His meridians are atrophied. He is not a Devil, he is a defect! A genetic failure!"
Axel analyzed the man's micro-expressions. This wasn't just disappointment, it was hatred. In a society governed by strength, a child without magic was a stain on the family honor, a variable that lowered the collective value of the bloodline.
"I will not have the House of Kayser laughed at because of a cripple," Magnus growled, his grip tightening around Axel's torso until it hurt. "The world announces a new era, and I produce waste. Dispose of it. Throw it into the abyss or feed it to the hounds. I will not raise a failure."
The midwives screamed in horror, but they did not move to stop him; the word of the Archduke was absolute law. Axel, unable to physically resist, calculated the odds of survival if dropped from this height: zero.
"Give him to me."
The voice was quiet, hoarse from labor, but it cut through Magnus's rage. Iliana sat up in the bed, her white hair matted with sweat, her blue eyes burning with a cold, terrifying luminosity. She did not plead; she did not cry. She simply extended her hands.
"You want to kill him because he is useless to you," Iliana said, her tone devoid of the warmth usually associated with maternal defense. "Then he is no longer your son. He is mine. I will take the refuse you discard."
Magnus scoffed, looking from the child to the woman with equal disdain. "You always were soft, Iliana. That is why you are a concubine and not a wife. Fine. Keep the trash. But he is banished to the Northern Annex. He will receive no resources, no titles, and no acknowledgment from me. As far as the Empire is concerned, he was stillborn."
He tossed Axel back onto the bed, careless of where he landed, and turned his heel, marching out of the room without a backward glance. The heavy doors slammed shut, sealing Axel's fate as a pariah.
The servants, sensing the shift in power, quickly finished their tasks and fled the room, leaving the mother and child alone in the gathering gloom.
Axel lay on the sheets, his small chest heaving as he ran a diagnostic on his new status. He was alive, but socially deceased. He looked up at the woman who had saved him, expecting tears or comforting words, perhaps a promise that everything would be alright.
Instead of offering the warmth of a mother's embrace to soothe the trauma of his near-death experience, Iliana pulled him closer with unsentimental scrutiny. She poked his joints and evaluated his muscles with a grip that was almost painful.
"Atrophied mana circuits, a constitution bordering on necrosis, and a bloodline so dormant it might as well be extinct," she murmured, her voice a low, hard vibration against his ear, both with pity and grim determination. "You are a broken vessel, little one, a hollow shell that the world will trample without a second thought."
She lifted him then, not to cradle him against her heart, but to hold him suspended in the pale shaft of moonlight filtering through the high window, staring into his eyes with a terrifying intensity.
There was maternal affection in those glacial blue irises, but also the desperate, burning calculation of a woman who had found her last chip in a rigged game and was deciding whether to bet it all.
"Magnus looks at you and sees waste, but he is a fool blinded by arrogance," she whispered, talking more to her than to her newborn, her thumb tracing the smooth skin of his forehead where the horns of a true devil should have pierced through. "He sees a cripple, but I see a blank slate. I will not spoil you Axel, my son, I will forge your flesh and sharpen your mind until you are capable of slaughtering this entire cursed house."
Axel stared back, his baby red eyes meeting hers with a chilling, absolute clarity that transcended the limitations of his biological age.
"This woman is not like a mother, she just provides protection and the resources, and I provide the lethality." he realized.
It was a symbiotic relationship, devoid of the inefficiencies of love, and for a soul forged in the cold logic of science, it was the perfect arrangement.
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/fTkhvM7D