"Boy get back here and bring me a beer!!!!" A man screamed, chasing after the boy
"Elias, where the hell are you??!!!."
"Ah, I found you!! Thought you could hide from your father for that long huh??" He said, pulling the boy from under the table.
"Well now, let's just teach you a lesson in respect!!" He said, pulling him into the living room and out the house.
He kicked his son in the back, making him fall onto the hard ground. The boy tried to run, but his father chased after him.
He beat him up badly, he picked him up and took him to the old furnace behind the house.
"This will teach you to respect your father." He said, placing both his arms into the furnace.
He lit it up, the boy screamed and begged but the father didn't listen, he just pushed him further inside.
The boy went in and out of consciousness as his arms turned a pure black, the skin peeling and burning off.
The boy was permanently scarred since then, he hated his father from that day, but never tried to run again, maybe out of fear, maybe love. He didn't really know.
A few years later...
An older Elias is by his fathers bedside, he watches him as he suffers from an illness, brought on by the years of drinking and poor health choices.
His father looked at him, seeing the hate and disgust on his son's face, he smiled. "W-(cough) well, well, well if i guessed any better, you don't want to be here, neither do i..." he said.
"What, don't look at me with that pathetic excuse of a face, damn it!! Just like your mother, always so hateful. What did I ever do wrong?" He asked, laughing slightly.
Elias gripped his bandaged arm tightly, resisting the urge to squeeze his fathers neck and end him right here.
He looked at his father, his father looked back, no words were said. His father grabbed a medicine bottle from the stand and threw it at him.
A trail of blood left Elias's nose but he didn't flinch, he had gotten used to this treatment.
"Get out of here and grab me a bottle of ale.. Now!!!!." He ordered his son, voice harsh even unwell.
Elias just watched, he gripped his arm harder, tearing the skin under his bandages as he bled.
Elias didn't say anything and just got up and left, his father laid back, breathing heavily.
Elias came back with the bottle in hand, he placed it on the table beside the bed. His father was facing the other way, so he was shocked him.
"Father, your ale...." but nothing, he tried again, but still nothing, "Father?..." he said, placing his ear on his chest. But nothing.
Elias leaned back and looked, he didn't cry, didn't feel pity. He just smiled, a big smile he hasn't had in years.
Two days later.....
There wasn't a funeral, just a shallow grave by the tree he would mostly be found when drunk.
It was mid winter so the ground was hard and frozen.
Elias dug the grave by hand, he had lost all feeling in them since he was 9 years old, he broke his nails but kept on digging.
He covered him in a blanket, and buried him, no prayer, no ceremony, just silence. The debt collectors had already arrived and taken most of the belongings.
Elias was only left with one thing, a small old and rusted key attached to a note his father had written before he died.
It was small and old, ale stained but readable ;"The old road north. Third fork past the black oak. You'll know it when you see how much I hated the place." He read to himself.
Elias sighed as he started moving north, he didn't know where he was going but there wasn't another option.
"I really hate you Father..." he muttered to himself.
He followed the notes directions(if you could call them that) to the letter, he found the old oak tree, black to the roots.
"Strange..." he said, walking past it. He found himself wandering through the forest, the cold winter night blowing harshly.
He shivered as the snow thickened, he dragged himself further until he found a clearing.
"Shit, I'm freezing, what the hell am I even looking for anyway?" He asked himself, his lungs cold and burning.
As he was about to give up and turn back, he saw an old building in the distance. "Finally, some shelter..." he said, rushing to the building as the storm increased.
The building appeared like a bruise against the white.
Sagging timbers, roof half-caved in snow, windows boarded crookedly like broken teeth. "Wonderful..." he said.
*The Forgotten Hearth*, according to the faded sign still clinging to one nail. It looked more like a corpse someone forgot to bury properly.
He tried to push the doors open but they stayed shut. Then he remembered the key.
He fished it out the key from his pocket, an old iron thing that barely looked functional, blackened by years of neglect.
He sighed as he looked at it, "Alright, lets get this over with already." He exclaimed.
He jammed it into the lock and turned it with a soft click, surprised it actually worked.
The key dissolved into silver mist that stung worse than frostbite. Elias flinched, throwing an arm up to shield his face.
Bright, too bright in fact.
He squeezed his eyes shut, palms pressed hard against lids until spots danced behind the dark.
Then the voice came, not from the wind, not from the creaking wood but straight into his skull, cool and faintly amused, like someone who'd watched him suffer for years.
[Legacy Inn System Activated!!.]
Welcome, Elias Winchester Jr.
He slapped both hands over his ears, trying to block it out, but pointless. The words were inside his head.
[Bearer: Elias Winchester Jr.]
Age: Twenty-four winters
Mana Resonance: Scarred. Stubborn. Fire-touched.
The Hearth's State: Dying. Barely breathing.
Structural Essence: 20/100. The stones remember fire.
Mana Vein Below: Dormant. Pulse weak. Enough to keep the rats from freezing to death.
Inherited Debt: Forty-seven gold crowns. Interest accrues like rot.
[First Binding Oath]
Task: Survive this night. Mend what you can. Feed the hearth, even if only with spite.
Boon: Cleansing Ember. Ten Mana Shards. Fragment of the Innkeeper's Mark.
Failure: The Hearth claims another grave. You will not be the first.
A whisper from the stones: Most run screaming by now, boy. Prove you're different.
Or join the ghosts in the rafters.
The glow faded like amber leaking from floorboard cracks, like the building had exhaled after holding its breath too long.
Elias lowered his hands slowly and stared at the faint shimmer on his bandaged palms.
Blinked once, twice then a third time.
"What the actual fuck," he muttered, voice cracking from disuse.
Silence answered. Just wind rattling loose shingles and the distant howl of something hungry in the woods.
He stepped and pushed the doors open, not wanting to meet whatever was lurking out there.
One of the doors fell off the hinge, missing his face by an inch. He leaned back against the wall, and saw the state of his inheritance.