Chapter 7 – History of Nyxer — II
Morning arrived like a held breath finally released. Pale sunlight eased through the curtains and found the house unwilling to wake all at once; laughter and high spirits from the previous day had been replaced by a weight that sat at the table like another person. Vaibhav moved through the rooms with a strange quiet—each step felt measured, as if the floor itself might betray what had been told the night before.
Yan'er was at the stove, humming a tune she did not finish. Anika fussed with napkins until the corners were perfect. The others drifted like ghosts about duties that had suddenly become too ordinary for the day. Only Prabhat seemed unchanged, but when Vaibhav met his brother's eyes over the rim of a teacup, he saw something like a fissure: a hard, controlled face and under it a tenderness that looked like grief.
Lin Xuan had taken his place at the head of the table. The morning light painted the lines of his face in soft relief. He folded his hands and watched his family with a look that was neither commanding nor gentle—more like a man who had carried a thing too long and must now hand it to others.
"Yesterday I told you where the name begins," Lin Xuan said simply. "Now you must know what happened next. You must know the man who lit that name again in our age—Arvind Nyxer. And what ended him."
Vaibhav felt the cup tremble in his hands. When Lin Xuan spoke, the household listened not as students to a lesson but as people called to witness a death that shaped their lives.
Arvind had not been a lord, nor a scholar, nor anything the histories would call tidy. He was a storm you could not bargain with—reckless and brilliant, a man who relied on the laws of bones and breath rather than gates or gene contracts. Lin Xuan described him quietly, with a kind of reverence that hid anger.
"He was born into a family that kept its head down," Lin Xuan said. "A small line that carried the old blood like embers in ash. They survived and hid. Yet when Arvind came, the embers flared. From the moment he first struck, the world felt his presence. He fought alone because he refused bargains and despised collars."
Vaibhav imagined his father—more legend than memory—walking through ruined bazaars and ruined temples, arriving at threats like a single lightning bolt.
"Arvind reached something few ever touch," Lin Xuan continued. "He touched Jovaryn Apotheosis—he became an Ebon Ascendant. That title is not a cloak; it's an altar. It marks a man who pushed flesh to a place almost divine. He should have been beyond reach, but greatness draws claws."
A hush sat in the room. Even Prabhat's jaw unclenched a little as if he let the name rest for a heartbeat.
"And then Erik Johnson found him," Lin Xuan said, the last syllable a small, hard sound. "Erik trafficked in beast spirits and would trade souls for advantage. Knowledge of Arvind's deeds reached him. Men like Erik do not care for legend; they care for profit."
"They did not meet in fair combat," Lin Xuan said. "There was an ambush. Fire. Men paid to watch a fall. Arvind died not with a roar of honor but under knives and smoke, taken by betrayal. The world lost him, and we lost a force who might have sealed the fate of many things with a swing of his fist."
Prabhat's face finally betrayed him. Tears broke free—unruly, bright, and immediate. He set his hands over his mouth like a child stifling a sob, but the sound came anyway, a small animal cry in the corners of the kitchen.
Lin Xuan did not turn away from that grief. "Your mother—her name was Ishara—was ill. She breathed her last that night as fires licked their home. Prabhat, at eleven, picked up a child in his arms and ran while their world burned."
The image Lin Xuan painted—of flames, a pale mother, a boy running with a wailing infant tucked to his chest—felt unbearable in the quiet. Vaibhav had remembered flashes before: faces, a lullaby, smoke. Now those flashes had the clarity of a wound exposed.
Prabhat's memory came to him in shards. He saw the bed where Ishara had lain—her hair like ash against the pillow, her hands too light. He remembered her whispering to him, "Prabhat, you must run. Take Vaibhy and run. Always take care of your brother." He had done what she asked. He had become a boy who had to be an iron man for another child.
After he fled, he had watched from a hiding place as a car's headlights cut through the night and a man stepped out—Erik. He had seen the man move with the ease of someone who had spent fortunes on killing, had seen the house burn and felt his heart roll into an ocean of purpose he hadn't yet learned to swim.
"One day I will kill him," the younger Prabhat had whispered to nothing. That vow kept the two of them alive through years that smelled of raw gutter and old rain.
Lin Xuan's voice softened when he turned to that part of the story. "For five years they survived in slums—Prabhat at eleven guarding you like a border of bones. He feared men who would take boys for sport and kept his head low." He paused. "And then I found the two of you."
The memory of that day was a cruel gift. Lin Xuan described walking through alleys with the deliberate slowness of one who never rushed to mercy. He had seen Prabhat's shape before he saw the face—a small, fierce thing that fought with the rawness of survival. When Lin Xuan had spoken, the boy had lunged without caution. He had been struck down with precision, not cruelty—an odd mercy perhaps, for the blow did not break spirit but taught it.
"My name is Lin Xuan," Lin Xuan had said to him then, and the way he told it now, he let a ghost of a smile cross his face. "I told him I was of their bloodline and that I would teach the ways they had forgotten." Prabhat's memory had flinched at that—how could a man so young claim kinship? But then the man's eyes had flared black, and in that flash Prabhat had seen his father—seen the same feral depth—and something in him uncoiled.
"I gave them shelter," Lin Xuan said simply. "I did not do it for sentiment. I did it because my blood runs in your veins. The clan's name did not end on the day it fell. It only changed form."
Prabhat had been made a disciple that day—an apprenticeship in pain, discipline, and purpose. Vaibhav had been given a place to grow under a man who would be both father and sword. He learned to bite down on fear and to forge it into something he could wield.
Lin Xuan looked at Vaibhav with an intensity that warmed with something like compassion and hardened with that same coldness that had steadied him for years. "Arvind is dead," he said plainly, as if the fact itself needed repeating until it settled in bone. "He will not return. You cannot fight him nor make him answer. You must make those who took him answer."
Vaibhav felt the words like iron setting into the shape of his future. The loss that had been a shadow finally had a name and a face and a reason. Grief moved in him, but under it was something sharper—a tidy blade of resolve.
He swallowed. "I will make them answer," he said, and his voice was steady.
Prabhat's hand closed on Vaibhav's across the table. There was no need for words. The promise had been carved into both their bodies years ago, in the ashes of a home and in the small, furious vow of a child.
Outside, the world continued—cars, markets, the endless murmur of United Earth—but inside the house the past had braided itself with the present. Names like Arvind, Erik, Lin Xuan, Ishara were no longer shadows. They were marks on a map Vaibhav would now walk, and he would carry the weight of that map like armor.
Lin Xuan rose then, the lesson complete for the morning. "Train," he said. "And remember: the blood remembers. You must learn to use it, or it will use you."
Vaibhav set his jaw. He had his answer. Now came the work.
Outside, a gull cried and some distant bell rang—small sounds in a world that had no idea how many quiet oaths had been made in a simple kitchen that morning.