The flask was in his hand. He tipped it back, pouring the last venomous mouthful across his tongue. The taste was pleasant, more like swallowing clouds than liquid, and except it burned all the way down, blooming through his chest with a cruel heat. The poison refilled, each pulse of magic threading into his veins like molten lead—only to be torn away again, dragged mercilessly into the thing hovering above his outstretched palm.
A droplet. A perfect sphere of venom suspended in the air, smaller than a coin, yet heavy in a way that pressed against his very bones. Dark light rippled across its oily surface—green, black, violet, shades that writhed and changed with each heartbeat. The room seemed to shrink around it, air bending and warping like it recoiled from its presence.
Twice already, he had poured himself dry, twice already his reserves had bottomed out to nothing. The flask had been his only salvation, his tether to continuation, but even that was gone now, emptied to its dregs. And still, still, the droplet demanded more.
He pressed his free hand against the floor to steady himself, knuckles whitening as his whole body shook. His veins burned, skin slick with sweat, yet he forced the last remnants of his strength forward, cramming it into that singular point. It was more than his body could contain—more than any vessel of flesh and bone was meant to hold—but he was no longer content to let capacity dictate his limit. He was breaking it, grinding it underfoot, feeding everything into the droplet even as the edges of his vision darkened.
The bead quivered violently, as though it resented being made, a hungry, writhing thing that stole from him without mercy. It reeked of death—not simple, swift death, but lingering ruin. Its surface rippled like a liquid nightmare, whispering sicknesses into the room: fevers that would boil marrow, blindness that would eat the eyes from within, paralysis like iron shackles on the soul, lungs turned to ash by unseen fire. Every venom he had studied, every pestilence he had tasted, every cruelty that festered in nature now compressed into one impossible tear of annihilation.
Aelius's jaw locked so hard it ached. His eyes narrowed against the blur of sweat and exhaustion, refusing to look away from the bead as if acknowledging weakness would shatter it. His heartbeat was chaos in his chest, skipping, faltering, clawing to continue against the drain. His magic screamed like stretched sinew, yet he only pushed harder, forcing more of himself into the drop, daring it to contain what no vessel should.
The room groaned faintly around him, wood creaking as though warped by pressure that wasn't there. The air itself had thickened, foul and heavy, clinging to the lungs like damp rot. A faint pulse echoed outward from the droplet—felt, not heard—like the beat of a second heart, one far more malignant than his own.
Then, at last, it fell.
The perfect sphere of venom slipped free of his trembling grasp, descending with agonizing slowness through the thickened air. It struck the empty cauldron below without a sound, vanishing into the abyssal black of its vast iron belly. For a heartbeat, there was nothing—silence so absolute it rang in his ears. The drop seemed to disappear, swallowed whole, leaving only the faint echo of its weight in his bones.
Then the iron shuddered. A deep, resonant groan crawled up from the cauldron's depths, as if the vessel itself recognized what had been given to it and recoiled. The black interior seemed to ripple faintly, like water disturbed by an unseen current, shadows bending and twisting in shapes that weren't truly there.
Aelius's arms dropped limp at his sides. His body had nothing left, every vein hollowed, every reserve ransacked. He swayed where he knelt, sweat dripping onto the cold stone floor, his chest heaving with ragged, broken breaths. Yet his eyes never left the cauldron.
The droplet had been claimed. It hadn't splashed, hadn't scattered, hadn't lost even the smallest part of itself—it had merged. What sat at the bottom now was no longer just a bead of poison but a seed, feeding silently into the vessel's emptiness, twisting the air with its unseen exhalations. A black sun with no light, radiating only malice.
Aelius exhaled once, the sound caught between a sigh and a laugh. His vision blurred at the edges, darkness creeping inward, but the faint curl of his lips betrayed something like satisfaction. The cauldron hadn't broken. It hadn't rejected his creation. It held.
And in that holding, the impossible had been given form.
He did it—forced a single droplet of poison into existence, far beyond what even he believed his body could withstand. More than his capacity, more than what any mage had the right to conjure. He'd drained himself twice over to form it, leaning on his flask just to keep upright, and now even that was gone—emptied as surely as his veins.
But what for? That was the thought pressing in on him, heavier than the exhaustion. He had no purpose for the poison. No one to use it on. No plan that required it. He had pushed himself until the edges of his vision blackened, until his hands quaked with weakness, and for what?
To get stronger. That had been the idea. To sharpen himself against the impossible until he bled. But the act itself had proven more difficult than he imagined. Not because he lacked means—he had the spell variety, more than most could even comprehend. He had the raw power, the ethernano reserves deep enough to rival whole guilds. He had everything that should have made such a feat easier.
And yet…
It wasn't enough.
He could always push those points higher, could force himself to refine, to grow sharper, to build more. But that path was slow. Too slow. He couldn't afford to crawl, not when he needed leaps, not when enemies already existed who could crush him flat before he drew his next breath.
Time—time was the problem.
His head tilted up, the room spun, but his eyes were still fixed on the cauldron. Inside, the droplet pulsed faintly, alive with sickness and ruin. Something born from agony, too vile to be real, too wrong to exist—and yet it did. His creation. Proof he could do more than reach. He could tear through.
His chest rose and fell raggedly. Every breath scraped like stone against stone. His body screamed for rest, but the thought would not leave him.
He hadn't made the poison for use. He had made it to break himself, to force himself past the wall he could no longer stomach waiting to climb.
And now, staring at that drop of corruption, he knew he had succeeded.
He had proven to himself that the impossible was not beyond reach—it was only beyond restraint.
His lips moved again, a whisper ground out between broken breaths.
"Stronger… no matter the cost."
The words hung, unshaken, even as his arm slid off his knee and he toppled sideways, landing hard on the stone. The cauldron pulsed in the silence, as though it alone bore witness to his vow.
His cheek pressed against the cold floor, breath shallow, body trembling with the strain of having wrung himself dry. But his eyes, half-lidded though they were, still tracked the faint glimmer within the cauldron's black belly. That single droplet. That single act.
"…Is that it?" His voice rasped, rough with dryness. The words sounded too loud in the basement's stale air, carrying like the mutterings of a madman. He swallowed against the burn in his throat, forcing another breath. "Is that all I can do?"
The question hung, unanswered.
His fingers twitched weakly against the floor, nails scraping stone. He wanted to rise, but his muscles rebelled, his veins felt hollow, his skin clammy as if he'd already bled out. "One droplet. One impossible droplet, and I'm crawling like a beaten dog." His lips pulled back in a faint, humorless sneer. "What good is that? What does that prove?"
He forced his arm beneath him, shoving himself partway up. His body screamed at the effort, his vision flashing with sparks. "If this is strength, then it's pathetic. If this is all, then…" He trailed off, a sharp breath breaking the thought.
The cauldron pulsed once more, the ripple invisible yet undeniable, stirring the air with its wrongness. Aelius's gaze locked on it, eyes narrowing, lips curling into something caught between a grimace and a smile.
"…No. It can't be all. It isn't all." His voice cracked, rising louder, like a man daring the walls to mock him. "I won't accept it. Stronger isn't a single droplet, stronger isn't crawling until my lungs give out. Stronger isn't this."
He pounded a fist against the stone, weak though the blow was, the echo carrying hollowly through the basement. His laugh came low, bitter, dragged through clenched teeth. "And yet here I am, proving myself wrong with every breath. Am I chasing ghosts? Am I so desperate I'd call this strength?"
He slumped back, spine scraping against the wall as he slid down again, his eyes still fixed on the cauldron. "It's never enough, is it?" he whispered. Then louder, almost shouting: "It's never enough!"
The air shuddered faintly, or maybe that was just his skull pounding in his ears.
His hand rose and pointed at the cauldron as though accusing it. "You're not enough. I'm not enough. A droplet isn't enough. None of it is enough." His voice cracked at the end, though his jaw locked against the weakness showing.
He dragged in another breath, head tipping back until it thudded against the wall. For a moment, he simply sat there, panting, glaring upward into the dim rafters. Then, softer, almost too quiet to hear, the words came again.
"What do I need to become?"
The silence afterward was total, smothering. Only the faint, slow pulse of the cauldron answered, steady as a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
"What have I done for strength…" His voice came ragged, half a whisper, half a confession dragged raw from his chest. "To be strong enough to leave. To be strong enough to live." His fingers curled against the cold stone, knuckles whitening as though he could grind it to dust by sheer will. His eyes burned despite the blur of exhaustion, hollow yet sharp enough to slice through the silence.
"I'm not a good person," Aelius said, voice tightening, bitter on his own tongue. "Those fools in the guild don't see it. To them, it's always—'you're better,' 'you can be better'—as if their care, their feelings, could bend reality. As if wishing made truth." His lip curled, a faint snarl caught between weariness and scorn.
"I've murdered. Some innocent. Most not. A few that walked the line." His hand shook once, then steadied against the stone. "All of them—every one of them—just so I could survive the labyrinth. Survive its hells. Protect the ones I… cared about." The words faltered for a breath, softened, before hardening again.
"But even then—" his head bowed, hair falling across his eyes—"even after I threw away my humanity, whatever was left of it, even after I cut it out piece by piece and fed it to the dark, it wasn't enough. Alaric. His father. The entire kingdom." His voice rasped, cracked under the weight of memory. "I failed them all."
He lifted his head just slightly, teeth bared, though no one was there to see. "I can't even excuse it. All those bodies, all that blood for power—yet in the end it didn't matter."
"And here I am, wallowing in pity because I can't figure out how to get stronger!" Aelius roared, the sound jagged, desperate. His words ricocheted off the stone walls, coming back at him as though the chamber itself mocked his fury. The cauldron's faint pulse seemed to thrum louder in answer, like a heartbeat deep in the bones of the earth, steady while his own ragged one faltered.
He slammed his left hand into the floor. The sharp crack of breaking bone rang out, followed by a dull thud as his palm stayed pressed flat against the cold stone. His fingers twisted at odd angles, pain flashing bright and white-hot through his arm, but he didn't flinch. He didn't care. The pain was almost welcome—an anchor that proved he was still alive, still moving forward, no matter how broken he became.
"It's always, we're here, we can help," Aelius muttered, his voice rasping low, bitter. His head lolled against the stone, sweat darkening his hair as he stared at the ceiling beams above, vision flickering in and out of focus. "How can you help when you refuse to see what's broken in the first place?"
His lips curled, not in humor, but in contempt. "Fairy Tail… a guild for the stupid. Too stupid to cut off the blighted bit, and instead try to embrace it." He spat the words like venom, each syllable scraping his throat raw. "They see rot and call it wounded. They see a beast and call it family. They see me and pretend—pretend—that I can be better just because they've decided to care."
His broken hand twitched against the stone. The pain jolted through his arm, yet he ground his teeth and let it burn, let it carve through the haze. "But care doesn't change what I've done. Their hands can't wash away blood, no matter how many times they reach for me. And yet—" His breath hitched, torn somewhere between a growl and a laugh. "And yet they keep reaching. Blind. Pathetic."
"I'm alone. In my creepy basement. Talking to myself. Wallowing in self-pity." Aelius let out a sound that might've been a laugh if it hadn't been so hollow. His broken hand dragged up and pressed against his face, palm grinding into his eyes as if he could blot himself out entirely. Blood seeped between his fingers, dripping into his hair, sliding hot and sticky down his cheeks like some parody of tears.
"Great Grandfather above," he muttered, voice muffled behind his mangled hand. "Look at me. I'm a mess. Surely this isn't what you had in store for me. Live with a god, kill the god—surely this isn't all I am. All I can be."
The ceiling above him blurred into warped streaks of wood through the red haze in his vision. His chest heaved, a sound caught between a groan and a breathless laugh. "What am I supposed to do, huh? Keep clawing at shadows, keep bleeding myself into bowls and jars until something finally sticks? Is this strength, grandpa? Or is it just madness? Is this all that's left of me?"
"At least the other three know what they like," Aelius spat, words jagged, torn from his throat. "Vanessa with her damned parties—it fuels her, makes her laugh like she's invincible. Caius and his endless crusade, swinging that axe at anything that breathes. Even that bastard Nehzhar, with his hunger for knowledge, with his schemes and secrets. They all have something. A piece of themselves they can hold onto."
He coughed, the sound raw, bitter, his voice breaking against his own fury. "And me? I'm… nineteen, I think. The oldest of us four. And what do I have? Slugs? Bugs? Maybe me rotting in this basement, brewing poisons like some hag in a storybook. No—no, I know. It's the drinking. The bottles stacked like corpses. And I can't even get drunk."
Slowly, he lowered his bloody hand from his face. His vision, blurred and stinging, fixed on the ceiling—those warped lines of wood that never seemed to stay straight, twisting and swimming in the half-light. He blinked, and blood smeared down from his brow into his lashes, hot and wet, painting the world in red veins.
"What am I supposed to do, Grandpa?" he whispered, voice gone quiet now, a child's plea dressed in the rags of a man. His lips trembled against the words. "I'm too weak to live… too strong to die."
"I see the irony though," Aelius muttered, not letting the silence settle, lips curling into something between a sneer and a grimace. His chest hitched with the sound, closer to a sob than a laugh. "I'm stuck in the cycle. I get… content, if you can call it that. I let myself breathe, let myself think maybe—maybe I'm enough. Then it hits. I realize I'm not strong enough. Not nearly. And that's when it starts—the fucking pity party."
His broken fingers twitched uselessly against the stone, a dull ache climbing up his arm like vines. His teeth clenched until his jaw trembled. "Then begins the spiral into hell. Every time. I'll wake up one day, and they're gone. They'll all be dead. And I'll be here again. Alone again. Over and over, like some cruel joke I can't claw my way out of."
His eyes flared wide, glassy and wild, searching the lines of the ceiling as if some hidden script would explain it all. His voice rose, cracked, bared and desperate. "What's the point of it then? To watch it all burn, again and again? To love just enough to bleed when it's taken away? Tell me, damn you—what am I supposed to do when I can't stop it?!"
The last word echoed sharply in the cellar air, rattling off the stone walls until it collapsed back into silence.
"Yea, yea, I know—I killed you," Aelius said quietly, as if the words had finally lost the power to bite. He pushed himself upright, slow and shaky, his uninjured hand smearing the blood from his face in streaks that only made him look more worn. A long sigh slipped past his lips, tired more than bitter.
"Gods, I hate when I get like this," he murmured, not with anger, but with a weary sort of recognition. His chest rose and fell, steadier now, the edge of the spiral blunted by exhaustion. "It didn't break me before. It won't now."
He let his magic stir again, no longer holding it back. His broken fingers gave sharp, ugly snaps as they righted themselves, pain rushing through him, but he didn't recoil. He simply breathed, letting it wash over him, grounding him.
When the hand obeyed again, he flexed it once and let it fall back to his side. "Just have to try harder, I guess." His gaze drifted to the cauldron, its faint pulse steady in the dark. For a moment, he almost smiled. "Maybe… maybe Nehzhar was what I needed, if only to remind me I can't sit here forever. I'll get my footing. I'll do it my way."
Aelius rose, his body moving with the quiet precision of habit, each motion smooth despite the lingering ache in his limbs. He crossed the room without hesitation, climbing the narrow stairs until the basement's weight fell away behind him. The dim light of his living space greeted him, but he didn't pause there—his steps carried him onward, turning toward the bathroom on the second floor.
However common the sight had become, he had never grown comfortable with it. The blood clinging to his skin, matting in his hair, staining the lines of his face, it was something he could never quite accept.
When he reached the bathroom, Aelius tugged the bloody, sweat-soaked shirt from his body and sent it into his requip space, followed soon after by the rest of his clothes. The air was thick with heat by the time he stepped into the shower. Steam curled against the mirror, the tiles already slick with condensation.
The water hit him in a heavy downpour, rolling down his face and over his shoulders like a relentless rain. It worked its way through his hair, loosening the dried blood until it streaked down his cheeks in faint red trails. Aelius leaned into it, letting the scalding stream wash over him, dragging away the grime and the smell of iron. He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, feeling the weight of it all slide off him bit by bit, leaving only skin and silence beneath the falling heat.
"What am I to do…" Aelius muttered, the water coursing down his face, dripping from his chin in steady lines. His words fogged with the steam, swallowed before they could truly echo. "The basics work, but they take too long. Training, drills, magic theory—it's not enough. It'll never be enough." His hand pressed against the tiled wall, palm flat, water tracing down his arm in trembling rivers.
"Fighting—that's how I grew strong before. That's how I survived. I need to fight again." His eyes narrowed, staring at the drain as though the spiraling water could answer him. "But what? The guild's too weak, aside from Master and Gildarts. None of them would accept a real fight, and even if they did…" His jaw tightened, breath coming sharper. "If I accidentally killed someone, it'd all come crashing down. This place doesn't forgive that kind of thing."
He leaned forward, head bowed under the relentless spray, voice low and bitter. "So it has to be something else. Something no one would mourn. Something no one would care if it died." His teeth clenched, the thought hanging heavy, half-formed and dangerous in the steam-choked air.
Aelius let out a short, dry laugh, the kind that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Well, I know one. If I can find the bastard…" He tilted his head back, letting the hot water run over his face, hiding the faint grin that tugged at his mouth. "Nameless doesn't get found, though. He finds you first. Always has. Always will." His chuckle died into the steam, the thought lingering sharp as a blade in the back of his mind.
"Maybe I start smaller," he muttered, rolling his shoulders, letting the heat soak into his tired muscles. "Just a quest. Something simple. An S-Class, maybe a Decade Quest." He exhaled slowly, the tension easing out of his chest even as the hunger remained. "Worst case… I get more money."
His hand dragged slowly down his face, nails grazing against skin, smearing blood and water into a faint pink before it slipped through his fingers and pattered onto the tiles below. The sound was faint against the roar of the shower, but he heard it—like a clock counting down, drop after drop, reminding him of the weight of time pressing in.
"Best case…" His voice was low, steady now, the edge of hysteria that had carried him earlier burned out by exhaustion. "It works. I get stronger. More experience, maybe something that can push me to and past my limits." The words felt like a vow, spoken into the steam, swallowed by the heat, but no less real for it.
He pressed both hands against the wall in front of him, leaning into the stone as the water poured over his shoulders, tracing the lines of his new scars. His body was a battlefield, always had been, always would be. And yet, here he still stood.
"Always stronger," he whispered. His forehead rested against the slick surface, eyes closed, as if the weight of the words themselves could anchor him. "Always more. I have to follow the cycle… to break it."
The thought lingered, heavy and sharp, turning over and over in his mind. The cycle. Pain. Strength. Failure. Survival. He had walked it so many times it had carved itself into him, each turn of it leaving scars on his soul as deep as the ones etched into his skin. And yet he couldn't step off it. He wouldn't.
His breath fogged the stone, mist curling off his lips like smoke. "Grandpa… was this what you wanted? For me to be bound to this wheel? To keep tearing myself apart, stitching it all back together just to go another round? Or…" He lifted his head, eyes opening, pale fire flickering in them as the water coursed down his face like fresh rain on old earth. "…or is this the only way forward?"
The silence that answered was nothing new. It had always been silence.
Aelius pushed off the wall, straightening his back, rolling his shoulders until the joints cracked. The blood was gone now, swirling down the drain in thin, pink ribbons, vanishing into the dark. He watched it for a moment, then shut off the water.
The steam settled heavy around him as he stepped out, leaving wet footprints across the floor. His body ached, his hand throbbed where bone had broken and reset, his mind still hummed with the remnants of his spiral. But beneath it all, there was that familiar pull in his chest, that gnawing hunger that no amount of rest or reassurance would ever smother.
He reached for a towel, his reflection catching his eye in the mirror. Damp hair clung to his face, his eyes were shadowed, hollowed, but they burned. They always burned.
"Stronger," he muttered again, jaw set as he dried himself off. "Always stronger."
For now… It would have to be enough.