**Tearing of the Core**
"When supreme evil was born in a single body, the universes trembled.
And when the Supreme Dragon roared, the worlds split apart."
In a forgotten age, the mightiest sorcerers gathered—from light and darkness, from every corner of the earth—to face a creature not born of nature's womb… but forged from the very essence of chaos itself.
**Supreme ZARC** — the Supreme Dragon, master of the four elements, nightmare of epochs.
They battled him for days beyond counting, losing kingdoms and cities, until they realized no power could destroy him. So they crafted a forbidden spell… and tore his soul into four fragments, each sealed in a different place, far from the others.
They believed they had saved the world…
But they never understood that what was torn apart would forever seek to become whole again.
---
A thousand years later…
On a night without moon, without stars, without even the whisper of wind… a child was born.
**Varek von Reinhar**, the youngest son of the von Reinhar family—the most powerful, most feared, and most secretive dark lineage in existence.
The birth was… unnatural.
When the infant cried for the first time, a raw, suffocating aura of darkness erupted from his tiny body. The candles snuffed out. The midwives choked on their own breath. His mother… bled out without ever being touched.
On his right arm appeared a coiling black mark, shaped like dragon wings, occasionally pulsing with crimson light.
Everyone panicked. Servants fled. His older siblings refused to even look into his eyes.
Only his father…
stood at the doorway in silence.
Watching the child with eyes that showed neither fear nor pity.
Only… anticipation.
"The curse has returned…"
he murmured, then turned and left the room… leaving Varek staring at the shadows on the ceiling—as though they knew him better than anyone ever would.
---
He grew…
But the unease around him never faded—it only deepened into silent dread.
From the moment his birth stole his mother's final breath, he was not merely a son… he was the living reminder of her loss.
No one forgave him.
His father never touched him, as though his very existence was poison. His siblings saw him as the fracture that broke the family.
"She died because of you…" he once overheard whispered behind a door. The words never left him.
In the training yard, his brothers didn't train him—they punished him.
Yet Varek never retaliated.
Because he saw something they could not.
Every night the same dream returned.
Three other children standing with him inside a circle of writhing shadows. Each bore a strange mark on their arm—identical to his own.
They looked at him, their eyes reflecting another world entirely.
Then came the roar…
A roar that shook not the air… but their very cores.
Each of them carried a sleeping beast inside… just like he did.
---
Time passed until Varek turned ten—the age when a person's magic type and strength usually first manifest.
In the von Reinhar family, the official "Shadow Trial" is held at fifteen to reveal the shade of darkness one inherits and determine their rank within the bloodline.
But with Varek… everything was different.
At only ten years old, he was secretly summoned in the dead of night to the trial chamber.
His eldest brother asked in confusion:
"Why are you being tested so early? Mine isn't scheduled for another two years."
No answer came.
Inside the Hall of the Black Mirror, Varek stood alone.
The mirror was activated. The family waited for the color of dark magic to appear…
But no color emerged.
Instead the mirror exploded in cold silver light.
Behind the shattered surface rose the silhouette of a winged silver dragon—not as magic, but as a living entity staring back at them all.
- One of the elders collapsed unconscious
- The eternal black flame—the one that had burned for over a century—extinguished for the first time
Someone whispered:
"He is not merely an heir… he is an omen."
---
From that night onward, the incident was erased from record.
The trial was buried. Varek was left without explanation…
except that the mark on his arm now pulsed every time he looked at the moon.
---
Eight years of exile
After that night, everything changed.
The event in the mirror hall was never spoken of again. Silence was ordered. But the silence fell heavier on Varek than any scream ever could.
He was removed from the heir lessons, relocated to the abandoned eastern wing, and the gazes of the family turned into a toxic mixture of fear and suppressed hatred. No one spoke to him unless absolutely necessary—as though walking across broken glass.
His siblings grew crueler, punishing him for something he himself did not understand. Even the servants avoided passing near him.
For those eight years he lived in isolation inside a palace bursting with life. No visitors. No permission to leave. Only those strange recurring dreams filled his nights—dreams of shadow-children who heard what he heard, who trembled at the same inner roar from a place that did not belong to this world.
And the mark on his arm…
it throbbed harder whenever the moon hung in the sky.