I am [???].

  I have lived a life filled with failures, regrets, and truths I never wished to admit aloud. Even now, as I try to grasp my final moments, I can still feel the weight of everything I once carried. It was despair—slow, crushing, and cold. Yet strangely, I wasn’t entirely unhappy. I had at least given him a chance… my partner, my friend, the writer who walked beside me. I gave him the opportunity to finish the story we started together.

  As a sub?writer, I may have stumbled more times than I stood. I may have been forgotten, unrecognized, or cast aside, but there was one thing I treasured. That single novel we wrote—our quiet dream—was something I touched with my own hands, even if the world never celebrated it. I loved, and I lost. I fought for that love with an untold blade only my heart understood. I traded my eye’s power to revive what should have been gone forever. And in the end, I led a life where I became the villain in someone else’s chapter.

  But even then, I hoped I guided my writer duo... Amahiko to the end of the battle. I hoped he won, even without me beside him.

  Now I feel myself shrinking… sinking… dissolving into a sea of despair and darkness. There is no light. No warmth. Just an endless fall that feels like drowning in ink. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know if my existence still matters. Maybe the world has forgotten me entirely.

  The next moment, I came to know I am not any more [???]. I have become a new person named Noctenion.

  Pain flooded into me before I could even understand the meaning of that name. My body—small, fragile, trembling—felt as though it rejected itself. As if flesh and soul did not belong together. A burning current tore through me like poison fire, twisting my bones, clawing at my spirit.

  Abyssal mana. Endless, dark, suffocating.

  It writhed inside me like a storm searching for something to destroy. My own existence felt like a mistake the world tried to erase. Every breath came with agony, raw and merciless.

  Voices echoed around me—cold, sharp, unfamiliar.

  “Disgusting…”

  “What is that glow…?”

  “Half?spirit. How shameful.”

  Though I was only an infant, unable to speak or lift my head, I felt all of it—their hatred, their fear, their rejection. The Veyraze family… demons draped in nobility, watching me like I was some cursed creature that washed up at their doorstep.

  A faint, dim glow escaped from my skin whenever I cried. A spirit’s blessing—or curse, to them. The demons recoiled as if touched by fire. Their disgust pressed down on me harder than the mana twisting my insides.

  Then he appeared.

  A tall figure stepped forward, his presence suffocating the room like a blade pressed against every throat. His eyes were pits of emotionless void. His aura was sharp enough to kill a normal man instantly. This was Azrail Veyraze—Head of the Veyraze clan. A demon whose reputation soaked the lands in fear.

  My father.

  He stared at me for a long moment. His expression never changed. Not anger. Not sadness. Just cold disappointment carved into stone.

  “So this… is the child,” he said, almost to himself.

  Another demon nervously approached him. “My lord, the newborn carries a spirit’s taint. We… we don’t know how this happened.”

  Azrail’s gaze darkened, shadows twisting behind him like living smoke.

  “A mistake,” he whispered.

  His voice carried no warmth. No hesitation. Only judgment.

  “A cursed mistake.”

  The words landed heavier than any blade. Even as a newborn, even trapped in a body too weak to lift a finger, I felt that judgment carve itself into my soul. It was the first sentence spoken over my new life.

  Noctenion. That was the name I had been reborn into. A name whispered like a threat, spoken like a burden no one wanted to bear. My new body trembled—part infant weakness, part agony from the abyssal mana still gnawing at me. The world was cold, colder than death.

  Yet beneath that pain, another feeling stirred.

  A memory.

  A voice.

  A life I had lost.

  I had once been [???]—writer, fighter, villain, friend. A man who failed countless times but still reached toward something meaningful. And now, reborn into a body that rejected me, surrounded by demons who despised me, I understood something clearly:

  My story was not over.

  I had been given another beginning, even if it came wrapped in suffering. Even if the world looked at me with hatred. Even if my own father wished I hadn’t been born.

  If despair brought me here, then I would rise from it.

  Not as just [???].

  But also as Noctenion—

  The cursed child who would carve his fate from the darkness itself.

  From the moment I opened my eyes in this new life, the world around me felt sharp. Cold. Every sound carried judgment. Every breath carried tension. Even as an infant, I felt it deeply—the stares, the whispers, the fear they tried to hide behind their cruel words.

  My siblings were the first to show their disgust.

  “Look at him,” one of the older boys sneered, leaning close enough that his shadow fell over my cradle. “His skin is almost white. Like he’s sick.”

  Another flicked his finger toward me as if afraid to touch. “No… it’s glowing. See? When he cries, there’s light. Spirits. He’s tainted.”

  They laughed at me, mocking my pale skin and the faint silver glow that shimmered whenever I moved. Even though their language was still difficult to fully understand, I knew the tone. I knew the ridicule. Some things are universal—pain, contempt, isolation. They cut the same, no matter the world.

  I listened quietly, absorbing every insult. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t speak. But my soul—my old soul—understood.

  I remembered another world.

  Another life.

  Another name.

  Their words didn’t break me, but they shaped me. They carved reminders into the corners of my mind: You are different. You are unwanted. You do not belong.

  The servants were no better. Whenever they passed near me, their voices dipped to a whisper. They acted as though I couldn’t hear them, as though infants were deaf to cruelty.

  “Spirits have tainted the Veyraze bloodline,” one muttered while sweeping the hall.

  “First the mother… now him.” Another shook her head. “This family is cursed.”

  Mother.

  The word pulled something inside my chest—something small, warm, and trembling.

  I didn’t know her.

  I had never seen her.

  But whenever they whispered that word, a strange warmth stirred in me, like a flickering flame that refused to die.

  Rumors began to swirl through the mansion like smoke from a dying fire.

  “They say his mother was half-spirit.”

  “That’s why she glowed… and why the baby does, too.”

  “She was executed, wasn’t she? For weakening the bloodline?”

  “Azrail himself ordered it.”

  The first time I heard this whispered, I didn’t fully understand their words. But my soul reacted anyway. A soft ache. A curious pull. A warmth that felt like an embrace I had forgotten.

  A memory tried to surface—something faint, distant, like a voice underwater. A melody. A gentle hand. Warm eyes.

  But I couldn’t grasp it.

  Azrail, however, ensured those whispers died quickly.

  The day he heard a servant speak my mother’s name—just a fragment of it—his presence erupted through the hall like a storm. Shadows twisted behind him, suffocating the air.

  “Her name,” he said slowly, each syllable colder than steel, “will never be spoken again.”

  The servant instantly dropped to her knees, trembling. No one dared speak after that. No one even dared breathe too loudly. My father’s aura swallowed the room whole.

  My mother’s name vanished from the mansion.

  But the warmth inside me did not.

  Whenever someone slipped and made the slightest reference to her—a gesture, a look, an old habit—I felt it again. A soft thrum in my heart. A presence I couldn’t explain.

  As the days passed, something strange began happening. Whenever I closed my eyes and let the world fade, I felt as if someone was reaching for me. Not with hands, but with warmth. A memory that wasn’t mine but felt like it belonged in the empty spaces of my soul.

  My siblings’ insults continued.

  “He doesn’t even look like us.”

  “He’s weak.”

  “He’s cursed.”

  Sometimes they stood around me, pointing and laughing as though my suffering were a game.

  But I listened in silence.

  I observed.

  I remembered.

  Because even though my body was small and helpless, my soul was ancient—filled with echoes of another world, another life, another version of me who had already walked through despair before.

  One evening, while the sky outside bled into dusk, I heard two servants whispering behind a door crack.

  “…if the mother had lived, the clan would have been ruined.”

  “She defied the bloodline. Loved something she shouldn’t have.”

  “Azrail couldn’t allow it.”

  Something inside me tightened.

  Loved something she shouldn’t have.

  Was I that “something”?

  Or someone else?

  As the servants hurried away, I lay in my crib staring at the dark ceiling. The silver glow seeped faintly from my skin, softening the shadows around me. It felt like the warmth of someone brushing my cheek. Someone kind. Someone gone.

  A strange longing filled me—heavy, yet gentle. A longing for a past I had never lived. For a woman whose face I couldn’t remember. For a name no one dared speak.

  I didn’t know who she was.

  I didn’t know why she died.

  But I knew this:

  The warmth I felt every time someone mentioned her…

  Was real.

  And one day, I would uncover the truth behind the mother whose memory even the darkness feared.

  My world became a small, silent corner of the Veyraze manor. I grew up far from the lively halls where my siblings trained and studied. Far from the grand chambers where demons of power and pride walked with their cold confidence. Instead, they placed me in the back chambers—rooms no one visited unless forced to.

  Isolation became my earliest companion.

  The household avoided me like a plague. Servants would leave food at the door rather than come inside. They would place my clothes on a chair and flee before I could even look up. Even the demons who were fearless in battle refused to walk near the hall where my room lay.

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  “Don’t go there,” they whispered.

  “That is where the cursed child lives.”

  “The half-spirit’s glow brings misfortune.”

  I heard it all. Every whisper. Every shaken breath. Every hurried step.

  The silence around me felt poisoned—not peaceful, not gentle, but the kind born from fear.

  My body did little to ease their fears. I remained fragile, weaker than any demon child should be. Some days breathing felt like lifting a mountain. My limbs trembled without reason. My chest tightened until I curled into myself, gasping quietly. Mana poured through me like stormwater through cracked glass. It leaked, twisted, tore, and tried to devour me from within.

  The instability never stopped.

  Abyssal mana struck like lightning.

  Spirit mana pulsed like warm waves.

  The two forces clashed inside me.

  I didn’t remember agreeing to host this storm, yet it lived in me, breaking me in every heartbeat.

  Some days I thought the mansion walls would collapse from the pressure inside my small body. My faint silver glow flickered uncontrollably—bright when the pain came, dim when exhaustion took over. My hands sometimes sparkled with spirit light; other times shadowed smoke seeped from my fingers.

  I understood why they feared me.

  But understanding didn’t make the loneliness easier.

  Even so, while my body failed me again and again… my eyes did not.

  They saw clearly—too clearly.

  From my window, I watched everything.

  The way the manor’s halls shifted with the emotions of those who lived in it. Shadows bending when Azrail walked through. Servants bowing so low they seemed to kneel on broken glass. My siblings proudly training in open courtyards, their mana sharp and controlled, everything I lacked.

  I observed their movements, their faces, their cruelty hidden beneath noble robes.

  I even saw things I wasn’t meant to notice.

  A servant trembling as she hid bruises.

  My eldest brother sharpening a blade coated with forbidden poison.

  Azrail receiving letters from unknown kingdoms—letters that burned to ash the moment he opened them.

  These small details collected in my mind like pieces of a puzzle, forming pictures no one else bothered to see. Though my body was weak, my awareness was wide and strangely sharp.

  It was as though my soul—old, reborn, remembering another life—refused to be blind.

  I soon learned the routines of everyone in the house. When the head maid avoided my hallway. When my siblings passed by to mock me through the door. When Azrail’s cold aura approached and the air froze before he even appeared.

  I learned where shadows moved unnaturally.

  Where the mana in the manor pulsed with secrets.

  Where people hid truths in their eyes.

  In my isolation, the world became clearer than daylight.

  But clarity didn’t stop the pain.

  One night, the mana inside me erupted again. My vision blurred. My breath shattered. Abyssal energy tore at me, spirit energy desperately trying to soothe the wounds. I bit my lip to keep from crying out—crying only made the glow brighter, and the brighter I glowed, the more terrified they became.

  I curled on the cold floor, shaking violently.

  You will break.

  That thought drifted through my mind more than once. Perhaps it was my own voice. Or perhaps it came from some old whisper left inside my soul from the time when I was still Nion.

  But I did not break.

  Even when the shadows pulsed like living creatures around me.

  Even when the spirit glow flickered like dying light.

  Even when my body screamed with the force of conflicting mana.

  I held on.

  When the wave of pain finally passed, I lay there quietly, panting, staring at the cracks in the ceiling.

  The mansion was silent.

  The world was silent.

  Only my heart kept beating, stubborn and defiant.

  As my breathing steadied, my vision returned. I looked out the window in the back chamber—the only place that felt like mine. The moonlight reflected faintly off my pale skin, making the silver glow softer, calmer.

  Isolation surrounded me like walls I couldn’t climb.

  But deep inside, something else grew.

  Not anger.

  Not despair.

  Something sharper.

  A quiet, focused understanding of the world around me… and the role I would eventually play in it.

  I was not meant to remain hidden forever.

  Even if they feared me.

  Even if my body struggled to survive.

  My eyes would see the truth.

  And one day… the world that rejected me would have no choice but to witness what I would become.

  Illness clung to me like a second skin. Every morning began with the same heaviness in my chest, the same ache in my limbs, the same unpredictable waves of mana tearing at me from within. The pain never fully left—it only changed shape. Some days it felt like fire, other days like cold needles. But I learned something early in this life:

  Crying solved nothing.

  So I refused to cry.

  Not out of pride.

  Not out of strength.

  But because tears felt pointless in a world that had already decided I was a curse.

  My calmness unsettled my brothers more than my glow ever did.

  They didn’t understand why I didn’t scream, why I didn’t react, why I didn’t break the way they expected a “fragile cursed thing” to break. They were used to fear. They understood tears. But silence? Silence made them angry.

  One afternoon, they cornered me in the back corridor. I had grown just enough to stand, though my legs trembled with every step. The mana inside me flickered, rising and falling like unsteady breaths.

  “What’s wrong with you?” one brother demanded. His crimson eyes narrowed at me. “Why don’t you cry?”

  Another shoved me lightly, expecting me to fall. I did stumble, but I kept standing, gripping the wall for balance.

  “Are you broken?”

  “No emotions?”

  “Or did the spirits eat your brain?”

  Their laughter echoed around me, bouncing off the stone walls like cruel chimes. I felt the shove again, harder this time. My shoulder hit the corner of the wall, and a sharp sting spread across my arm. My glow flickered for a moment—but my face stayed calm.

  No tears.

  No anger.

  Nothing.

  Just quiet.

  I looked at them, not with hatred, but with the same expression I always wore—blank, observing, distant. It only made them more furious.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” one brother hissed. “Like you’re… pitying me.”

  I wasn’t. I didn’t pity them. I simply didn’t know what expression they wanted. My old soul understood conflict, suffering, and mourning… but childish cruelty felt pointless to respond to.

  My silence was a mirror they didn’t want to see themselves in.

  As they continued to push and mock me, I sensed another presence—not close, but watching. Her mana signature was faint compared to the others, softer, calmer. A gentle ripple in the distance.

  Liriel.

  She was my older half-sister, known within the manor for her elegance and intelligence. Unlike the others, she never openly bullied me. She never approached me either, but she watched. Quietly. Carefully. Almost as though she wasn’t sure what to make of me.

  That day, she stood at the edge of the hall, hidden behind one of the tall pillars. She thought I didn’t notice her—but my eyes missed nothing. Even through the pain, even through the chaos inside my body, I could sense her gaze.

  My brothers didn’t notice her. They were too busy shouting.

  “Cry already!”

  “Just cry like a normal child!”

  “What kind of monster doesn’t cry?!”

  Monster.

  A familiar word.

  A word I had already accepted in this house.

  They pushed me again, harder. My knees buckled this time, and I fell to the cold floor. My palms stung. My breath shook. The abyssal mana inside me roared, threatening to spiral out of control.

  But still—I didn’t cry.

  I simply sat there, breathing, waiting for the storm inside my body to settle. My glow flickered softly, silver light brushing across the shadows.

  My brothers stared, unsettled. Their anger drained into confusion.

  “Why won’t you react…?”

  “He’s so creepy.”

  “I don’t want to be near him anymore.”

  One by one, they left, muttering under their breath.

  When the corridor finally fell silent, I sensed Liriel stepping closer. Her steps were hesitant, gentle. She stopped a few feet away from me—I felt her presence before I saw her.

  She didn’t speak.

  She didn’t offer comfort.

  She simply watched.

  I turned my head slightly toward her. Our eyes met for the first time—her violet gaze filled with something strange. Not hatred. Not fear. Something uncertain. Something human.

  Maybe curiosity.

  Maybe guilt.

  Maybe something she didn’t yet understand.

  She opened her mouth slightly, as if to say something… but the words never came. Instead, she looked at me with an expression I had never seen directed toward me before.

  Not disgust.

  Not anger.

  Not fear.

  Just hesitation.

  Something about my silence, my refusal to cry, my unshaken calmness in the face of cruelty—it made her pause. Made her question.

  And in that moment, I realized something important:

  Not everyone in this house had fully decided what I was.

  To most, I was a curse. A mistake. A monster.

  But to Liriel…

  I was a question.

  A mystery.

  Something she couldn’t judge so easily.

  Her eyes lingered one last moment before she turned away.

  As her footsteps faded, I remained seated on the cold floor, breathing through the pain, my silver glow reflecting faintly on the stone.

  I didn’t know why she hesitated.

  But I knew this:

  Someone in the Veyraze manor had finally seen me—

  Not as a curse,

  Nor as a monster,

  But as something more.

  Night in the Veyraze manor was always heavy. Shadows thickened in the corners, stretching like silent creatures waiting to swallow whatever was weak. The halls became colder, and every breath felt like it drifted into a void.

  Those were the hours when my mana instability grew worse.

  The pain always came like a slow tide—first a dull ache, then sharp pulses tearing inside my chest. I curled quietly on the floor beside my small bed, trying to breathe, trying not to lose control. The spirit glow around my skin flickered faintly, fighting against the darkness within me.

  I was used to this.

  Pain was my constant companion.

  Silence was my only answer.

  But that night… the silence broke.

  A soft knock came at the door, barely audible. No one ever knocked for me. For a moment, I wondered if I imagined it. Then the door slid open just a fraction.

  A dim lantern entered first. Then a familiar face.

  Liriel.

  She stepped inside, closing the door gently behind her. Her violet eyes darted toward the hallway, making sure no one had followed. Her hands trembled slightly as she set the lantern down.

  “You… can’t sleep?” she whispered, even though she knew I couldn’t respond yet.

  I was too weak to stand. My breath was uneven. But I met her gaze. That alone seemed to tell her everything.

  She knelt beside me, and for the first time, I saw worry on her face. Real worry—not disgust, not fear.

  “You’re burning,” she murmured. “Your mana is going wild again.”

  Of course she noticed. Liriel always noticed things others ignored.

  From her cloak, she took out a small glass vial filled with a soft blue liquid. I recognized it from the faint scent—it was medicine for mana stabilization. A rare one. Something only noble heirs usually received.

  She wasn’t supposed to bring this to me.

  In this house, all rules forbade helping a “cursed child.”

  But she ignored those rules.

  “I stole this from Father’s storage room,” she whispered. “If they find out… there will be punishment.”

  Her voice shook at the thought, but her hands stayed steady as she opened the vial.

  She gently lifted my head and pressed the glass to my lips.

  “Drink. Slowly.”

  I swallowed. The liquid was cold, calming like fresh water drawn from a mountain spring. The moment it touched my throat, the storm inside me eased. My glow steadied. My breath grew less painful.

  Liriel exhaled with relief.

  “You’re just a child,” she said softly. “Why do they treat you like this?”

  Her question wasn’t meant for me, but for herself—something she had likely asked many times in silence.

  She touched my cheek lightly, almost in wonder, as if seeing me clearly for the first time. Her eyes widened slightly.

  “There’s light… in your eyes.”

  I blinked, confused. She leaned closer.

  “No… you’re not cursed. Not at all.”

  Her voice grew firm, almost defiant.

  “You’re different.”

  Different.

  A word that didn’t stab like the others.

  She stayed by my side, taking a small cloth from her pocket and dipping it into warm water she must have carried separately. Carefully, she cleaned the bruises on my arm from earlier that day. Her touch was gentle, nothing like the cold hands of the servants.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she admitted quietly. “You don’t cry. You don’t lash out. You endure everything. Why?”

  I didn’t have the strength to answer, even if I could. My body was still trembling as the medicine worked through me.

  She continued cleaning the scratches on my palms, the ones I had gotten from collapsing in the hallway.

  “You’re more disciplined than any of us,” she whispered. “More composed. It doesn’t make sense.”

  For a long time, she simply worked in silence, wiping blood, covering bruises, adjusting my blankets so I wouldn’t shiver. I watched her hands move with a care I had never experienced in this life.

  Something warm spread through my chest—not mana, not pain. Something else. Something I couldn’t name yet.

  When she finally finished, she sat beside me, her lantern glowing softly on the floor.

  “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she admitted. “But when I look at you… something tells me you’re not what Father says you are.”

  I stared at her.

  At her eyes.

  At the rare gentleness in them.

  The words rose in my throat before I realized what was happening. My voice was rough, unused, fragile—but it came out.

  “…Thank… you.”

  Her breath caught.

  She froze, staring at me with shock widening her eyes.

  “You… you spoke.”

  She leaned closer, almost disbelieving.

  “Say it again. Please.”

  I swallowed, my throat aching. But I repeated it, softer this time.

  “Thank you.”

  Her lips trembled.

  And then—for the first time since my rebirth—I saw someone smile at me.

  Not out of mockery.

  Not out of fear.

  But because they were moved.

  “Noctenion,” she whispered, “you’re not alone anymore.”

  In that quiet moment, with only the lantern’s light between us, something changed.

  For the first time in this new life…

  The darkness around me felt just a little less cold.

  Azrail, the head of the Veyraze bloodline, demanded perfection from every child born under his roof. Every sibling of mine lived under his strict gaze—trained in the arts of mana, combat, discipline, and bloodline pride.

  But for me…

  There were no demands.

  No expectations.

  No commands to improve.

  He never called my name.

  Never tested my strength.

  Never asked me to stand with the other heirs.

  To him, I wasn’t worth shaping.

  That truth settled into me slowly, like cold water seeping into cracks.

  One morning, while my body still ached from the previous night’s mana instability, I stood at my hidden corner near the courtyard. It was a place where the sun touched the stone floor just barely. A place where shadows covered me enough that others rarely noticed my presence.

  In the courtyard, my brothers trained under Azrail’s watchful eyes.

  Their blades sang through the air.

  Their mana flowed in sharp, disciplined lines.

  Their shouts echoed with confidence and pride.

  Azrail watched them like a commander inspecting soldiers.

  “Again,” he ordered.

  “Your stance is weak.”

  “Control your breath.”

  “Stop relying on brute force.”

  His voice was cold, sharp enough to cut. Yet his eyes held a strict expectation—a belief that his children could be powerful, if shaped properly.

  But when his gaze drifted toward me—just once, briefly—there was nothing.

  Not anger.

  Not disappointment.

  Not even curiosity.

  Just emptiness.

  A look that said: You are not one of them.

  A look that said: You will never be acknowledged.

  That realization didn’t make me cry. Tears didn’t come easily to me anyway. Instead, I accepted it with the same quietness that had become a part of my existence.

  If I was not meant to stand in the courtyard…

  I would learn from the shadows.

  So I watched.

  While they swung their swords, I memorized every movement. Every shift of weight. Every flick of the wrist. Every breath drawn before a strike.

  My body was too weak to mimic them—not yet—but my mind worked faster than my limbs ever could.

  I began to see patterns.

  One brother relied too much on his right leg.

  Another hesitated before every strike.

  A third released mana unevenly, wasting strength.

  Azrail scolded them again and again, but they never corrected the mistakes fully. They couldn’t see the flaws I saw.

  I stood unseen, absorbing everything.

  The angle of a blade.

  The timing of a dodge.

  The rhythm of controlled mana.

  My eyes tracked it all, burning it into memory.

  When the training intensified, Azrail demonstrated a technique himself. The air cracked when his sword moved, carrying a force that shook my bones even from far away. My brothers tried to replicate it, but their strikes fell short.

  Azrail growled, frustrated.

  “You are Veyraze,” he spat. “Act like it.”

  His words pounded through the courtyard like thunder.

  I repeated the movement in my mind.

  Slowly.

  Calmly.

  Piece by piece.

  His foot placement.

  His shoulder angle.

  The twist of his torso.

  The release of mana through every muscle.

  My body trembled just imagining it. I knew I couldn’t perform even one tenth of the motion without collapsing. But the knowledge stayed with me, locked behind my glow-filled eyes.

  As I watched, a strange heat rose in my chest.

  Not envy.

  Not longing.

  But realization.

  No matter how much I studied…

  No matter how much I memorized…

  Azrail would never look at me with the same expectation he gave my siblings.

  I would never be acknowledged as a Veyraze heir.

  Not in his eyes.

  Not in this manor.

  Not in this life.

  The truth stung for a moment, but only a moment. Because in the next breath, another thought bloomed, quiet but firm:

  If he does not acknowledge me… then I will surpass his expectations without needing them.

  Because the world I came from—the life I remembered faintly—had taught me something important:

  Acknowledgment doesn’t create strength.

  Resolve does.

  My body trembled again from inner mana instability, forcing me to press a hand against the wall to steady myself. Even so, I kept watching, analyzing every movement through the pain.

  My brothers swung their swords mechanically.

  Azrail shouted commands.

  Servants watched from afar, terrified of mistakes.

  But the one who learned the most that day…

  Was the quiet child hidden in the shadows.

  When training ended and the courtyard emptied, I remained in my corner. Slowly, carefully, I raised my weak arm.

  I mimicked the first inch of Azrail’s stance.

  My muscles screamed.

  My glow flickered.

  But I continued.

  If my body could not keep up…

  My mind would guide it one day.

  I would grow.

  I would learn.

  I would surpass the expectations no one had for me.

  Even if I was never acknowledged—

  I would carve my existence into this world myself.