🜏 Narrator: Varek
"Mothers are born knowing how to die for their children.But some also die knowing their children must learn to kill."—Luciano Kerens
Mother's blood smelled like burnt stars.I knew it from her first scream—the one that broke in her throat while fire devoured the walls of the old refuge we once called home.
—"Varek… come…" she whispered.
I was only ten, but I already knew what those words meant:Death. Inheritance. Choice.
She held my hand—nails dirty, lips cracked.She had no more time to give.But she left me something better than time:A name. And a mandate.
—"Varek…You…Protect your brothers, whatever it costs, Varek…and use your blood."
Her body fell beneath the roots of the sacred oak.Her last words burned themselves into my veins as the world collapsed around me.The echo of her voice was carved into my blood when, with the Dagger of Fate, I traced the runes with my own flesh.
The air cracked.Beneath her, the runes began to glow.They were not mere words…They were memories carved into living stone.An arcane barrier only my blood could awaken.
Something inside me broke that night—as if my childhood died with her body.
Behind me… my father watched.Velmior Rahz.Beautiful as a cursed god.Unmoved.Unfeeling.
He did not weep for her.He did not come close.He only waited for the chance to claim one of our bodies for his own.
I knew it then:He never loved her.He only used her.
The Ritual of the Gifts
Should the day come sooner, I was prepared.I would seal him forever—because my mother had guided me in dreams.I knew what had to be done.
With the Dagger of Fate she left me,I cut my palm and traced the runes with my blood.They flared like lava threading through the dark.
The air cracked again.My brothers watched—innocent, unaware of the power that was about to divide us.
I took Sanathiel's hand.The middle one.The calm before the storm.
—"You… your soul is tied to the moon."
Sanathiel received the lunar medallion from our father: the dominion over the Nevri—beasts that carry your wolf-blood.His golden eyes glimmered, and his fangs grew as if answering that inheritance.
—"You will be their guide… or their nightmare."
He held it.Trembling.And for an instant, his eyes burned like twin suns.
Then I turned to Sariel.The youngest.The quietest.The darkest.
A shadow touched his shoulder—our father's hand.Dark chains coiled from his skin, wrapping his torso like a promise and a warning, but they did not harm him.The shadows obeyed him.
I marked his shoulder with my blood.His body lit with radiant chains, his skin pulsing with living shade.
—"You carry the dark within…I grant you the Gift of Shadows."
His eyes turned completely black.Hollow.As if a part of him had already died to make room for something else.
Finally, I looked at my own hands.And the dagger whispered something I did not yet understand.
—"For you, my firstborn… Varek.The gift of immortality.Your flesh will not break,but your soul will carry every shattered piece."
My eyes changed.Violet.As if holding a storm yet to be born.
The dagger burned.And a mark surfaced on my arm:
The Ouroboros—eternal symbol of the cycle that devours the soul, bearing at its origin the head of a white wolf.A long wolf, spiraling, devouring its own tail.It began as bone.Shifted into fire.And ended in liquid shadow.At its center: a closed eye.And within…an inverted moon.The wolf's fangs brushed—a faint human heart.
Mother always said love is the last thing to die…even in monsters.
—"Only one of the three…will bear the full blessing," whispered my father.
The Sealing of Velmior Rahz
After that, I overheard his plans.He wanted nothing more than a vessel—one of us.And so, I carried out mine:
"To seal Velmior Rahz."
With both palms wrapped in blood, I awakened the runes.They blazed alive, scorching the night.
My father stepped forward.His human shape…began to burn, twist, shatter.
He screamed.Not in pain—in fury.
—"You are my vessel, Varek!"
With one final stroke of blood, I closed the circle.
—"No more.Never again."
The demon roared his betrayal:—"Your body is mine!"as his flesh seared in green fire upon the barrier I sealed.
The roots of the oak rose.The earth split and swallowed him.
Before leaving, I placed my hand upon the burning ground.
—"You will go no further, Father."
Velmior Rahz, specter of the night, writhed in his consumed form while the forest became his prison—and his curse.
I did not look back.I took my brothers' hands and fled.
But the cycle had already begun to twist.
The Birth of the Cycle
"I took Sanathiel by one hand. Sariel by the other. And we crossed the forest.Once we passed the cursed boundary, we took our true forms…"
Outside, the world changed us.
Sanathiel sniffed the air like a feral beast.His fangs lengthened.His golden eyes burned in the night.Even his voice no longer sounded like a child's.
"Brother Varek…"
Sariel…began whispering things no one had said.Everything around him withered when his anger rose.Flowers shriveled.Trees lost their sap.The earth dried beneath his feet.
And I…I only saw differently.Faster.Stronger.More…I began to see the world through eyes no longer fully human.My strength was inhuman, and my soul—a well of contained fury.
We found a hidden village in the mountains: Refuge.I built a cabin.I taught my brothers to read, to write.I fed them warm meals.I sang them to sleep.
One of those nights changed everything.
Sanathiel slept curled against my chest.I hummed a lullaby mother once whispered between her teeth.Sariel watched us from the shadows.His gaze… hurt.
I met a boy.He taught me to write.To speak.To laugh.
But one day, he vanished.
I went to the attic.And found him.Without eyes.Without hands.Only a pool of blood.
Sariel had begun to kill.First it was that boy. The one who helped me write better.
I found him—eyeless, handless, his teeth torn out.An altar.A message.
—"He wanted all of you," Sariel said.—"But they wanted the same. They would have taken you."
And then came the fire.
—"Why, Sariel?" I asked.
He looked at me with tenderness—and a broken smile.
—"You liked his hands…and his laughter…so…I kept them for you."
The candle fell.The fire roared.Everything turned an infernal green.
Sariel struck with chains of shadow.He tried to drown Sanathiel.He blackmailed me.
And when he embraced me in the green flames,he stabbed me with the dagger:
—"Forgive me.This is how I free you."
He drove the blade into my little brother's heart.
But I did not die.
⟡
I awoke among ashes.Sariel's body… consumed.
I took the dagger.I wanted to die.But I could not.
Luciano Kerens appeared.Clad in black, cloaked in shadow.Pale as death itself.
—"You are immortal," he said.—"And your brother…the one who sleeps beneath the tree…still lives."
I saw Sanathiel.Trembling.Innocent.
—"Do you think he will live well with you?" Kerens asked.—"He will kill him."
—"NO!" I shouted.—"I cannot."
—"Then… erase his memory.Hide him. Protect him.I will watch from the shadows.
Leave him in the village: Deer's Hope.A new home.Without monsters.Without curses."
—"Only if I can watch over him," I whispered.
Luciano smiled.It was not a kind smile.It was a transaction.
—"Thus begins the second cycle."
He turned, while I held Sanathiel in my arms.Behind us…the ashes of our home burned.
That night, before leaving him at Deer's Hope,I held Sanathiel one last time.I sang to him.I wrapped him in a feathered blanket.I wrote a letter I would never deliver.
And before dawn, I disappeared among the trees.
But from the hilltop, I swore:
—"No matter how many years pass.No matter how many times you curse me, forget me, or hate me.I will protect you.Always."
The cycle had begun.And I…was no longer a child.
Luciano, standing by the cursed tree, murmured to himself:
—"Sometimes, heroes don't save the world.They only delay its end…for a little while."
And meanwhile, in the place where Sariel once stood…something dark still pulsed beneath the ashes.