Gal was the youngest child in her family, but also the least loved.
Her two older brothers hated her. To them, she was nothing but a thief, an extra mouth that stole from their already meager rations.
Her parents… no, they didn't even hate her. If only they hated her—at least hatred meant recognition, that she existed in their eyes.
Instead, they simply ignored her.
Her brothers always said that Gal was a curse, that she would bring misfortune to the village.
And this wasn't entirely baseless nonsense.
From as far back as she could remember, Gal saw things others could not—things she herself wished she could unsee.
But never once were they beautiful. Never once were they good.
The first time was when she was six. She saw a suffocating miasma rise from the forest, black and oily like smoke from a funeral pyre. She warned her parents. They dismissed her. She told the other children. They laughed and jeered.
Days later, a monster crawled out from that very forest. It slaughtered villagers, tore apart homes, trampled crops into dust.
When whispers spread of Gal's "vision," no one openly accused her. But the eyes they turned toward her grew colder, harder. She felt them like knives in her back.
The second time was when she was nine. A man returned to the village, cradling a crystal-clear stone, beautiful enough to fetch a fortune. But Gal saw it. The faint, ghastly mist spilling from it like poison. She begged him to throw it away. He sneered at her, called her jealous, and locked the stone away.
The next day, the stone vanished, and the man fell gravely ill.
From then, rumors spread that Gal was cursed.
Later, she saw black miasma several more times. But she never spoke of it again.
She only watched in silence as the black mist turned into another monster attack, or into strange diseases that struck villagers.
She believed it: what she saw was bad luck itself. Once she saw the miasma, misfortune would befall others.
Thankfully, it was rare, and as long as she stayed away, she could avoid harm.
Gal always thought she would never be caught by misfortune herself—until that day.
The day a purple-haired woman carrying a giant axe passed through the village.
Gal was weeding in the fields and happened to glance at her.
She froze instantly.
The air turned thick, her lungs heavy. Around the woman swirled darkness unlike any miasma Gal had ever seen. It clung to her like a second skin, deeper than midnight, thicker than tar, endless and crushing. Even from afar, it suffocated her.
That woman must be a demon.
Gal was sure of it.
When the purple-haired woman's gaze fell upon her, Gal's certainty only grew.
Her eyes were purple, but hidden within was a deep crimson, concealed so well that only Gal's cursed vision could perceive it.
And what Gal saw was herself—her throat slit open, blood gushing forth.
She saw herself dismembered, eaten, every drop of blood licked clean from her bones.
Yet, just as Gal thought she would be devoured, the purple-haired woman simply walked past, doing nothing.
But Gal didn't believe nothing had happened.
She spent the whole day terrified—
That woman was a demon.
The demon had set its eyes on her.
Her misfortune had arrived.
And as she expected, the very next day, calamity struck.
"Gal."
Her father didn't look her in the eyes when he called her. Her mother's hands fidgeted nervously at her apron, and the air in the hut was so heavy that Gal felt her chest tightening.
"Yes…?"
Her father cleared his throat. "The chief came by this morning. The Magic Association… they want you to join their academy."
Gal blinked. "Me? Academy?"
"It's five or six years of training. Maybe more. We… we don't want to refuse the chief. But we also can't…" Her mother trailed off.
Her father finally spat it out. "We've… decided to sell you. To Lord Webbes."
Gal's breath caught in her throat. "Sell… me?"
"For two silver coins," her father said, voice flat.
Her mother tried to smile, as if that could soften the cruelty of the words. "You'll live better there. You'll have meat, sugar, even salt every day—"
"Liar," Gal whispered. She had seen Lord Webbes' slaves. She had seen their broken bodies thrown into ditches, their lifeless eyes staring into nothing. Meat and sugar? No, only enough gruel to keep them alive until they dropped.
Still, her parents said nothing more. They hadn't even look at her.
At that moment, Gal realized the truth. The moment she was sold, she was no longer their child. Just a body. Just a price tag.
Two silver coins.
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Lord Webbes' men didn't even look at her as they dragged her away. Her small arms struggled, but it was pointless.
Gal's legs trembled as she crossed the threshold of Webbes' estate. The slaves in the field turned dull, hollow eyes toward her before returning to their endless toil. She shuddered, already seeing her own corpse lying beside theirs.
But her fate changed again before she could even grasp it.
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"She's not worth much," one of Webbes' servants muttered when another figure appeared at the estate. A woman with long purple hair, eyes colder than iron.
Lord Webbes bowed deeply. "My lady, are you sure this child is the one you want? She's scrawny, barely worth feeding—"
"I'll take her."
The voice was soft, but final.
Ten gold coins dropped onto the table. The sound was sharp, echoing like thunder in Gal's ears.
Ten gold coins. Enough to buy a hundred Gals. Enough to buy a farm, a village.
Her fear deepened into despair.
Slavery was hell, yes—but this woman was worse. Just being near her made Gal's skin crawl. To her, it was like hearing the wails of thousands of unseen ghosts, a suffocating black miasma pressing down on her lungs. Why could no one else feel it? Why did they all act as though she were just a woman?
Gal's eyes dulled. She curled into herself in the carriage, straw-like hair falling over her face.
Why was she born different? Why must she suffer torment worse than death?
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"So disgusting~"
Aura cast a disdainful glance at the girl curled in the corner of the carriage. Gal hugged her knees, her straw-like hair draping down.
That innate magical energy was disgusting.
That it belonged to a human was disgusting.
That she had some strange magical sense was disgusting.
But most of all—her posture of submission, that pitiful, lowly stance.
For such a wretched human to possess a magical talent that even many demons could never hope for—Aura almost gagged.
Her instinctive hatred of humans made her sick to her stomach.
"What's your name?"
"…Gal."
Aura crouched before her with a look of disgust. She already knew the girl's name, but a name was the start of communication.
"I'm Aura."
Sensitive to emotion, Gal immediately felt Aura's loathing. She shrank back even further, bracing herself for the storm of malice she expected from this demon-like woman.