Some monsters are not born. They are bled into shape.
The ground was soaked in blood. The house—once dim but safe—was now a grave.
And standing in the poisoned field where his siblings had died…
Was no longer just a boy.
It was Ithariel.
But not.
His flesh moved, but his will did not.
His soul watched, caged inside a storm wearing his face.
His eyes opened—
Glowing red.
Not the red of rage.
Not grief.
The red of death—death that had learned to speak.
The soil cracked beneath him.
Black lightning burst from the shattered earth, not as a bolt but as a living pulse—writhing tendrils that danced along Ithariel's arms and spine like the heartbeat of some forgotten god. It crackled around him, jagged and divine, lacing his skin with veins of shadow and light that twisted over his skull like twin serpents made of war and silence.
The two yellow serpents reared back, their tongues flicking the air—but they tasted no fear, no despair.
Only ruin.
Their expressions curled, forked mouths parting not to strike but to stutter—to gawk at what stood before them. Confusion. Disbelief. Fear. Not from Ithariel. From them.
Because the boy they mocked—the child they had poisoned, laughed at as he broke—was no longer there.
What stood in his place wore the hollow, desperate look of someone who had nothing left to lose. Not anger. Not madness. Just that aching, broken void that came after. The kind of silence that follows a scream too long choked down.
They saw it in his eyes. And they knew it.
Because it was the look they themselves had worn since birth: the predator's glare that found joy in watching others suffer, the twisted hunger that could only feel alive through killing.
His gaze screamed one word, louder than thunder:
Death.
Not a promise.
A fact.
They saw it and knew—there would be no running now. No clever venom. No escape through the cracks.
The look of a being with nothing left to lose.
The look of a soul crushed into a weapon.
"What are you?" one hissed, its voice thinning.
A smile formed—but it wasn't Ithariel's. It peeled across his lips like something crawling out of the grave.
And then the voice spoke from inside him:
[𝘖𝘩, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘮𝘦?]
[𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘍𝘢𝘭𝘭. 𝘐 𝘴𝘢𝘸 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.]
[𝘐'𝘮 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮.]
[𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘦—𝘩𝘦'𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩.]
The serpents recoiled. Memory moved behind their slitted eyes. Memory of a war older than cities, older than poison.
Ithariel—his body no longer his own—took one step forward. The earth buckled.
He opened his hand.
And from behind the ruined house… An axe came flying.
Wooden-handled. Blade dull and chipped. A pathetic tool.
But when he caught it—
The world screamed.
A blur—A flash of wind that howled black.
A soundless scream as air collapsed inward.
Then—
Silence.
One of the yellow serpents stood motionless.
Then looked down.
Its body slid in two halves—clean, from crown to coil. Black blood gushed like oil from an old god's wound.
The cut had come too fast to register.
Reality itself had stuttered to keep up.
The second serpent howled. Its tail thrashed in blind disbelief. The wind itself recoiled from the sound.
Serpents were creatures of instinct, carved from silence and venom, born in shadows to wait and strike.
Their law was ancient:
If it moves, bite.
If it fights, poison.
If it survives, flee.
But Ithariel—
No.
What wore his skin now—Had become the end of that law.
He walked like winter's last breath.
Quiet.
Inevitable.
Final.
The last serpent felt it. Not in its eyes, not in its mind—but in its venom. In the marrow of its fangs. In the slow deathcurl of its spine.
This one…Cannot be devoured.
The Weeping Eclipse still hung in the air—dense, yellow, suffocating. Enough to made a hundred men mad.
It did nothing to him.
Not because the poison had failed.
It worked—oh, it worked. It shattered minds. Drove the others to raving madness.
But Ithariel… no. It didn't touch him.
Not because it failed.
Because it was ignored.
He had sliced through his own comrade with a rust-worn axe—too fast to see, too merciless to comprehend. And in that instant, the serpent understood:
The boy they once mocked was gone.
This wasn't someone they could tease. Or laugh at. Or throw away. Or devour.
He wasn't prey anymore.
He had become a predator—one that wanted to devour them. To flay their skin and wear their ruin.
And then a thought slithered into the serpent's mind—old and instinctive:
Run. Flee.
They were shameless creatures, these snakes. They'd won their war through poison, not valor. They fed the land their own kind to spread their venom. They didn't die with pride. They survived with betrayal.
The voice inside Ithariel's body spoke again. Calm. Cold.
He pointed the axe.
[One left] it said. [Should I paint the field with you too?]
The serpent didn't answer.
It turned. Slithered. Coiled backward, fast and desperate, its massive body crushing trees as it fled.
Then—
Laughter.
Not Ithariel's.
The voice.
Laughing like a god tasting meaning for the first time in centuries.
Then—
He kicked the ground.
It shattered.
And he appeared behind the fleeing serpent like fate given form.
The serpent turned.
Saw nothing but shadow and axe.
"Where do you think you're going?" The voice asked—like a curse.
The serpent tried to scream—
Then a slash.
And silence.
Its head hit the ground, wide-eyed.
Its tongue twitching in death.
Two serpents.
Two monsters.
Two gods in scales.
Gone.
Slain by a boy whose soul had shattered.
Slain by a will that had made itself into a blade.
Ithariel stood over the serpent's corpse. Bathed in black blood. Encased in silent lightning.
The voice inside him did not speak. Not once.
It had given him power. It had taken his pity.
But it did not take the weight. That stayed.
Both serpents were dead. No one left to crawl. No witness left to whisper.
But maybe…
That was the tale.
Because for the first time since the Serpentfall—
A snake killer was born.
And not a chosen. Not a god. Not a blade-dancer or dungeonborn.
Not a mage
Not a superhuman
A boy.
A broken axe. A house of ash. Eyes voided by sorrow.
And nothing left to lose.
The wind turned. Ash rolled across the poisoned soil like breath from the world's lungs. Flow limped to his side—his fur bloodstained, one eye swollen shut.
Ithariel dropped to one knee.
His fingers, still stained from war and grief, settled against Flow's head.
"It's over," he said.
Flow whined. Not a bark. Not a growl. A sound like a question, like a wound still open.
His eyes searched the field. Where Yuna and Jon once stood, only their legs remained.
Ithariel followed the gaze. His breath hitched. He looked away.
"I know," he whispered. "We… we need to bury them."
His hand trembled—not from fear. From the effort of not collapsing. From the weight of staying human for one more hour.
"Ahh—" he gasped, curling forward.
"I don't want to. If I do… I'll lose them forever."
He cried .Not like a child. Not like a warrior.
Like something breaking without sound.
Flow closed his eyes. His flank rose and fell with ragged calm. Ithariel touched him again, checked his fur, his breath. No poison.
None.
It didn't make sense. The Weeping Eclipse should have twisted him, shattered his mind.
But perhaps...
Perhaps a loyal dog has no mind to twist. Only a heart to serve.
That day—
That day was the saddest day the boy would ever live.
No sunrise came. No hope.
Just smoke, just silence, just the iron-grey sky, as if even the heavens were too ashamed to look down.
He stood in the back yard. Behind the crooked fence. In the patch of soil where the grass never grew right.
Where Yuna once planted wilted flowers. Where Jon buried broken toys with solemn pride.
Now it would be their grave.
His hands, blistered and cracked, gripped an old rusted shovel.
It wasn't sharp enough. The dirt was too hard. The ground refused.
But he dug anyway.
One stroke. Then another .No power. No divine lightning. No voice.
Just a boy. Just a brother.
Digging into a world that had already taken everything.
He didn't cry. Not like others cry.
His tears had dried somewhere between his sister's last breath and his brother's blank smile.
But his chest heaved. His mouth shook. His soul leaked out quietly, through every swing of the shovel.
Every time he hit a root—He paused.
Not from pain. But because it felt like the world itself refused to let them go.
He placed their things in first:
A ribbon from Yuna's hair.
Jon's tiny wooden dagger—"for protecting his sister," he once said.
An apple candle—half-melted, never finished.
Then their clothes, still holding their scent, wrapped in the old tattered blanket.
No bodies remained. Only what the serpents hadn't devoured.
Only what the boy could pretend was still whole.
He knelt. His forehead touched the dirt.
"Yuna. Jon."
He whispered their names like a prayer. Like a song he didn't know how to stop humming.
"You were everything."
"You were all I had. All the reason I had to keep going. Because of you—"
"But to keep you here… I wasn't enough."
Flow lay beside the grave.
Silent. Ears flat. But he did not howl.
He understood. Even beasts understood this kind of silence.
And when the final mound of dirt was padded down by a shaking hand—
Something inside Ithariel didn't break.
It ended.
He sat back. Staring at the graves.
No tombstones. No names.
Just stones.
One with a circle carved by a stick. The other with a crescent.
Their favorite shapes. Their childish symbols. Now their only epitaphs.
The wind moved. Not to comfort. Just to exist.
He didn't wipe his eyes. Didn't whisper prayers.
Only the stillness heard him when he said:
"I will never leave you."
His voice was ash. Hoarse. Hollow. Human.
"But I have to go."
Because they were still out there. The ones who poisoned this world. The ones who watched it rot. The ones who smiled while the innocent screamed.
The Serpents.
"I'm going to learn their names."
His hands clenched. The skin tore open again. It didn't matter.
"I'm going to burn them."
"I'll make them curse every god who let them be born."
"I'll make them beg for hell."
"And I'll be the one they see when they get there."
He didn't shout. He didn't weep.
He spoke like someone who had already buried the last pieces of mercy in his soul. Here. In this dirt.
The wind stirred. The trees swayed. No one answered.
Only the grave listened. Only the sky watched. Only the dog remained.
Flow sat beside him. Wounded. Silent. Loyal.
They both stared at the earth.
And Ithariel knew—
His childhood hadn't ended today. It ended the day he was born and drew in poison with his first breath. The day his mother went still. The day his sister forgot how to smile, and his brother stopped daring to dream.
But now…
Now it was buried.
No prayers were said. No gods were listening. No stars blinked through the clouds.
But still—The world understood.
Somewhere deep beneath the poisoned soil,in the cold veins of a sky that hadn't wept in years—
The world knew.
It had created something that should never have existed.