This chapter is told from a first-person POV. Chapters like this will be posted intermittently between the normal chapters, mainly to shed some light on the past and reveal more about the story.
Thanks for reading. Please don't forget to drop a review. It encourages me to write more.
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SERA'S POV
The early years of my life had been beautiful.
I had been born to amazing parents, wonderful in their entirety. My memories of those six years spent with them were faint, drowned out by the unforgiving currents of time, but a few of them still lingered.
Remembering them made me warm.
My mum occasionally fixed my hair while talking about her day back at the Coffee Cafe where she worked as a waitress.
She would rant about some insufferable customer, complain about her boss, or just chit-chat about the annoying, strange neighbor next door who never returned her greeting.
She would kiss my forehead before I went to sleep, singing me a song until the moment I shut my eyes.
Moments spent with her were like a dream to me now. Like a past that felt unreal, but was real all the same.
I suppose that's because she loved me too much. So much that remembering her hurts, hurts so badly that it feels as though my heart is burning.
My father was no different.
He loved me in his own strict, affectionate way. He would come home from the mines, his pockets filled with packets of my favorite chocolates.
I frequently remembered picking food from his plate during dinner, only for him to grumble while secretly giving me more.
During the evenings, the two of us would take a quiet walk across the street, and if the air was chilly with snow, his jacket was always wrapped around me, even when I was wearing mine.
But these moments never lasted. After all, if it did, recalling won't leave behind a hollow, heart wrenching ache in my chest.
Everything was all set in motion due to a particular weakness of this father of mine.
His obsession. His obsession with his principles.
Arrogance, he despised. He loathed it like a drowning man loathes water.
As a result, he never got along with the officials from the Fymore Barony that constantly supervised the town mines where he worked as one of the excavators.
Frequently, he bickered with them, constantly irritated by the way they put on airs, carrying themselves as though they were above the rest.
"All humans are equal," he would say.
"They bleed, they hurt, they all eventually die."
I suppose his skills was crucial to the workings of the mines, so the officials hesitated to fire him from work despite his insolence.
They paid dearly for that decision.
Because it made him popular among the commoners of the town, most of whom began to view him as the symbol of defiance and the spark of an uprising.
And I was proud. I was proud of seeing my father so loved. So adored by everyone.
It made me believe that perhaps he was right. Perhaps all humans are equal.
But despite all of that, hatred still festered, much to my ignorance. After all, I was young and my view of the world was far too narrow to understand the true horrors that lay beneath the surface.
One of which was the fact that Dad was also despised, mostly by the authorities of that very town. After all, he was a rot, a scourge to their power and a threat to their interests.
But I suppose by then it was far too late to dispose of him. He had become a beacon of admiration, so any move against him would ignite severe public outrage, the kind that made them wary enough to withstand his existence.
But that didn't mean that they weren't waiting for a chance. A means to get rid of him without inviting trouble for themselves.
They didn't have to wait long.
It all happened on a cursed day. A day when the true cruelty of this world was laid bare before my bright eyes, coloring it in shades of crimson.
"MAMA!!!!"
The monster held her by the throat, letting out roars of chittering cries.
🎵DAAAREEEEEE🎶
Ahhh…
Back then, its vile song had been maddening, so maddening that it had felt like my head was about to explode.
I watched my mum let out maddened shrieks, her eyes rolling backwards to reveal their whites, now colored by red tints of blood.
Her voice broke me.
I remembered sitting curled against the curtains, my little body shaking with terror.
Dad was just as frightened as me, but not in the same helpless, terrified mess I was.
"Leave her alone! Get away from her!"
Holding the handle of a wooden bat, he constantly swung it against the head of the creature, only for it to flicker and the bat to miss its mark.
By the sixth swing, tears had begun to flow down his face in merciless torrents.
By the tenth swing, he was wailing, his voice a loud, broken sound.
The moment Mum stopped screaming, the moment laughter began to tear out from her throat like she had gone deranged, that was when he fell to his knees, letting out anguished cries.
I had never seen my father cry.
He had always seemed so tall, so strong, like absolutely nothing could faze him.
Even as I lay curled up with fright, even as my body trembled with dread—
Hatred. I felt scalding hatred light up my veins. Hatred at the monster, for making my father cry. For hurting my mother…
When the monster eventually got to my father, wrapping its claws around his neck, he didn't resist. His eyes were still fixed on Mother, who was now pulling at her hair, her scalp smeared with wounds.
But this time around, I could no longer stay still. I burst away from the curtains, hurling myself at the creature.
"Get away from Papa!!"
I tried. I hit at the monster with every effort my pitiful strength could allow. I tried to tug away its hand gripping Dad by the neck, again and again and again…
But it was useless, because it kept flickering away.
"No! No! Not Papa too! Not Papa!"
When it began to let out those chittering cries, my dad turned to me with difficulty, his voice hoarse as though he was trying not to scream.
"R-run, Sera…!"
I shook my head, the monster's warped cries making me dizzy.
"N-no…"
I didn't remember what happened after that. Perhaps the fear had made me surrender to unconsciousness, or its song must have shattered my mind into slumber.
But when my eyes drifted open again, the first thing I saw was the monster beneath the feet of a man, his face twisted by a sneer.
Even as the monster thrashed beneath him, he held it down, as though it was trash.
"Are you watching, Kyleen Myllen?" he addressed my father, who sat with his back against the wall, his face smeared with blood and his eyes barely fluttering open.
He looked half dead, as though he was barely holding his consciousness together. I crawled towards him, trying to reach for his arms.
"P-papa…"
The man snarled.
"Remember this lesson every second of breath you have left, Kyleen."
Raising his leg, he struck it against the disjointed knee of the monster.
It let out a shriek, the sound of its bones snapping rending the air. The sound frightened me, making me jerk my head in the direction of the man, my trembling knees curling up to myself as I backed against the wall.
"Do you see the difference, Kyleen? Do you understand it now?"
He raised the monster by the neck, gouging out one of its eyes. Green blood splattered on his face, but he ignored it, his hands already moving to gouge out its other eye.
Even as the display frightened me, I couldn't deny the glee I felt light up in my chest. The sight of the monster suffering, of it getting torn apart…
I wanted it gone! It had hurt Mama! Hurt Papa! I wanted it to die, screaming!
I wanted… I wanted…
The man's voice echoed across the thrashed sitting room, filled with contempt.
"Equality among humans… what a fool! Some are born stronger than others. Some are born wiser than others. Some are born more noble than others. Life ain't fair, you misguided scum."
The man's muscles bulged now, his palm tightening around the neck of the creature.
"Damn stray barged into your house, yet what do you do? Huh, coward! Can't even get your daughter to safety but freeze up like the bitch you are!"
He let out a derisive scoff.
"We aren't equals, Kyleen. I can hurt this creature. I can kill it. And that's because I am a better man than you."
He snapped its neck, the creature going limp in his arms. Puncturing his hand into the chest of the monster, he pulled out a glimmering purple fragment, the corpse now dissolving into drifting green moths of light.
By that time, my eyes had begun to drift closed, the world going dark one blink at a time.
Even at that, my eyes still stung with tears, and my chest was hurting. Maybe it was because of the faint realization that when I woke up, the world I remembered would never be the same.
The last I heard was the voice of the strange man, glinting with cruelty.
"Baron Fasha sends his regards, Kyleen. He wishes you safe travels on your journey to Averyn—the dimension of wandering souls."
I didn't remember the rest, because the darkness claimed me, leaving behind a gnawing hatred that I never stopped feeling deep in my bones.
Stranger was the fact that this moment in my life was merely a beginning to more unforgettable events, a prelude, if I must say. If there was any difference with my life right after my parents surrendered to the embrace of death, it was the fact that I died.
Not in the concise, literal way that people imagine.
Speaking, laughing, smiling—I had forgotten how to do any of those. Thinking had become impossible too, not when all I could remember was my mum shrieking, my dad on his knees, letting out cries…
Perhaps it would have remained so if I hadn't met that boy six months later, in the very courtyard of the orphanage.
Elias Verdan… was his name.