Vergil's footsteps were heavy as he made his way toward Elvira's home, each stride sinking into the dirt like a blade pressing into flesh. Eleanor followed close behind, a tense silence resting between them. The village was in ruins—scorched wood, shattered stone, and the iron scent of blood filled the air like a cursed fog.
He turned the final corner.
The old house was there—barely.
Its roof had collapsed inward, beams blackened with fire and caved in like the ribs of a dying beast. The door hung off one hinge, swinging slightly with the wind, creaking like it was mourning. The herb garden Elvira once tended was trampled and charred, the small flowers she'd always fussed over nothing but ash.
"…Elvira?" Vergil called out.
No answer.
Vergil stepped inside slowly, the floor groaning under his weight. Eleanor remained at the threshold, watching quietly.
He moved through the broken living space—memories flashing in quick bursts. Her tea set on the counter. Her chair by the window. Her soft scolding voice echoing from a time long past.
Now… just silence.
He checked each corner, each fallen beam, each bloodstained tile.
Nobody.
No body.
"Elvira's gone," he muttered, jaw clenched. "Either taken… or worse."
His Primal Awareness stayed active—no signs of life, no demon residue, no heartbeat tucked away in the shadows. Just absence.
Eleanor walked up behind him. "She wouldn't leave without helping someone. Maybe she tried to protect others."
Vergil didn't respond. He just stared at the broken remains of the hearth, the place she always sat during the cold nights… gone.
Vergil punched the wall with his migjt
"…We were too late," he finally said, his voice low. "Too fucking late!" Punching the wall one more time
He turned away, fists clenched. The God's Demonic Eye shimmered faintly beneath his transformation, reflecting a quiet, dangerous rage building beneath the surface.
"Let's check the rest of the village," he muttered.
"Right," Eleanor replied. "But Vergil... if she's out there, we'll find her."
He nodded once—but his eyes never softened. If demons had taken her... there would be hell to pay.
And he was the collector.
Vergil stood amidst the ruins of Vaelmont's guildhall, the air thick with dust and blood. His Primal Awareness pulsed again—there, beneath the rubble. A heartbeat. Faint. Alive.
He bolted forward, his voice sharp. "Eleanor—there's someone under here."
He didn't wait. He brought out the Authority of Transformation, demonic energy flaring around him. His form twisted—limbs stretching, bone shifting, flesh reshaping.
"Authority of Transformation."
His body surged in size, demonic arms bursting forth as he took on the monstrous six-limbed physique of Morvax. His eyes burned like coals, and his back legs anchored deep into the earth as he pushed aside massive chunks of debris like they were driftwood.
The cracked stone moaned under his strength—but then, he saw her.
"Elena."
The young receptionist lay curled in a shallow cavity beneath the wreckage. Dirt coated her clothes, and her breathing was shallow, but she wasn't crushed. A few scrapes, bruises, and a nasty bump on her forehead—nothing fatal.
She was still breathing.
"Atleast…their are survivors" Vergil , more relieved than he expected, his voice mimicked Morvax
Eleanor exhaled beside him. "She's okay."
Vergil extended a clawed hand carefully, gently pulling Elina into his monstrous arms, cradling her like glass. "Ill carry here, were searching for Elvira ."
"Got it ?" Eleanor asked, scanning the destroyed village.
Vergil turned toward the edge of the village.
'Where could they be?'
Without waiting, he bent low, four legs driving into the dirt. "Hold on tight."
With a burst of demonic speed, he dashed across the broken village, Elena in his arms, Eleanor on his back. Dust and blood whipped past as the monstrous figure tore through the ruins of Vaelmont.
The air was still.
Vergil stood before the half-buried shelter, the village behind him in ruins—bodies, ash, and whispers of things once living. He felt something beneath. Something faint. Something... final.
He knelt and dug with clawed hands, rubble scattering effortlessly as his transformed arms moved in grim silence. The trapdoor revealed itself, stained with black blood and dried red smears.
He opened it.
The smell hit him like a blade—rot, blood, sulfur, and smoke all mingled into something foul and permanent.
He descended slowly.
Inside the underground shelter, it was chaos. The walls were torn by claws and burned by spells. Demons lay mangled and dead, their corpses twisted in agony—but so did villagers. Men. Women. Children. Strewn across the floor, some clutching each other. Some alone.
And then he saw her.
Elvira.
Slumped against the far wall, a jagged piece of bone pierced through her abdomen. Her eyes, once filled with harsh wisdom and biting sarcasm, were now blank—frozen in a silent end. Blood pooled at her feet. Her staff, snapped in two, lay beside her.
Vergil didn't speak.
His demonic form slowly dissolved. Morvax's monstrous limbs retracted, leaving only the trembling frame of a young man.
He walked to her without a word.
His knees buckled as he knelt.
He reached out with one hand, hesitant... then gently closed her eyelids.
The world around him faded into silence.
No system voice.
No heartbeat.
No breathing.
Only the storm inside him.
Pain.
Grief.
Rage.
Regret.
Confusion.
Guilt.
Hatred.
Emptiness.
It twisted through his chest, clawing at the hollowness left behind.
He clenched his fists tightly.
He wanted to scream. But couldn't. He wanted to kill every demon in this world. But that wouldn't help. It was his own fault, that this happened.
He tried to say something
But no words came.
Instead, his lips curved into a smile—shaky, broken, hollow.
And then the tears followed. Quiet. Relentless.
He cried—shoulders trembling in the dim flickering light of the shelter, surrounded by the fallen and the dead. A smile on his face. Tears in his eyes.
The silence remained.
But something inside him changed forever.
[User has met the conditions]
[The Authority of predation is reacting]
[Another seal has been unlocked, another function has been activated]
[Burden Carrier Activated]
The world was warmth once. Before the blood and the flames, before the screams and warlocks, there was only the wind through the hills and the rustle of grain fields swaying under a sun-drenched sky.
Elvira was born on the first day of winter's end, in the quiet farming village of Thaleen, nestled between green, rolling valleys and the dense Eldertree Forest. She wasn't born under candlelight or with ceremony—she came into the world in a storm, lightning splitting the sky while her mother screamed beneath the shelter of their modest wooden home. Her father would later joke that even the heavens were startled by her arrival.
She was a strange child.
Not in the way the other village children were strange with crooked teeth or mismatched shoes—but in the way her eyes seemed to track the flight of unseen birds. In the way her hands would twitch when the wind stirred, and sometimes, the wind would listen.
By the time she was five, her mother had caught her levitating a bowl of soup with no formal training. The spoon floated beside her like a faithful bird. "See, Mama? I didn't spill it this time." Her voice was soft, her smile wide, innocent.
Her parents—Mira and Halden—were simple farmers. They didn't understand magic, not really. But they loved their daughter, and that was enough. Mira would brush Elvira's fiery hair every night, whispering prayers to the goddess of light, hoping she would protect her child's soul. Halden, when not toiling in the fields, taught her to whistle like the sparrows and carve small toys from driftwood.
But as time passed, the village began to notice.
They whispered behind her back. When Elvira walked near, their children would move away. Doors closed a bit faster when she passed by. Rumors of "the witch's daughter" began to stir in the tavern, and one morning, someone painted red glyphs on her home to ward off evil.
Elvira didn't understand why.
She was only six when she first asked her mother, "Why do they look at me like I'm a monster?"
Her mother didn't answer. She simply pulled her daughter into her arms and held her, long and tight. "You're not a monster," she whispered. "You're a miracle."
Despite the rumors, life went on. Elvira grew. She spent hours alone beneath the trees, whispering to the leaves, watching the patterns of clouds. Magic was her companion. Without scrolls or books, she began to control wind currents and made them dance through tall grasses. She carved figurines with fingers that glowed faintly, wood shaping itself around her intent.
At age seven, she helped a broken-winged sparrow fly again by instinctively mending its bones. When she showed it to the local healer, the woman dropped her salves in horror.
"She tampered with life," the healer said. "No child should have that power."
The fear grew stronger.
Children threw stones at her when no adults were looking. One boy called her "cursed witch spawn" and pushed her into a creek. She didn't cry. She sat in the water, staring at her reflection, wondering what was wrong with her.
That night, the house was set on fire.
Halden and Mira barely escaped with her, the roof already collapsing by the time they got outside. A local mob had set it ablaze—"to cleanse the dark magic," they claimed. The village elder declared it an accident, but they all knew the truth.
Still… her parents never turned her away.
They built a shack on the far outskirts of the village, closer to the forest. Halden kept farming. Mira taught Elvira how to cook, how to tend a garden, how to read what few books they could scavenge. At night, her mother told stories of the stars and the first flame, of lost kingdoms and the celestial beings who once protected mankind.
Those stories became Elvira's lullabies. The stars, her silent companions.
But she changed, slowly. The loneliness began to harden inside her, not bitter, but cold. She became quieter, watchful, sharp-eyed. She learned to listen—to winds, to people, to hearts.
And when she turned eight, something else changed.
A storm rolled over Thaleen, unnatural and fast. Lightning split a tree near their home in half. Halden rushed outside to pull in their animals, but the wind had become violent. It howled with unnatural pressure. As her father was nearly thrown off his feet, Elvira stepped outside barefoot, hands raised.
The wind stopped.
Dead still.
A single command. Unspoken. Natural. Absolute.
The storm broke around her like waves crashing into stone, avoiding her like she was the eye of the world. Halden stared in awe, soaked and shivering.
"She's not a child," he whispered to Mira later that night. "She wants to learn more about the world."
Three days later, a wandering magus from Thaelon arrived. His name was Master Kelvian. Silver-bearded and blind in one eye, he claimed to have followed the threads of an awakening. "A spark," he said. "A flare of raw, unshaped mana. It came from here."
He tested Elvira with a few small illusions and incantations, but she saw through all of them. Not just saw—she instinctively dismantled one spell mid-air with a flick of her wrist.
Kelvian fell silent.
"She doesn't just have talent," he told her parents. "She has command. I've only seen that in archmages —people who train for decades."
Mira wept. Halden nodded grimly. They knew she would never belong here.
When Elvira left with Kelvian, she didn't cry.
She kissed her mother on the cheek and hugged her father tightly. "I'll come back," she promised.
They watched her leave, a small girl with a bag of books, red hair blowing in the wind, walking into the mist with the old mage.
She never saw Thaleen again.
---
And Vergil felt it all.
The smell of wet grain fields.
The burn of hatred in innocent eyes.
The ache of being loved fiercely—and feared relentlessly.
The warmth of a mother's arms.
The silence of a home burned down.
The cruel birth of isolation… and the solemn acceptance of one's path.
It was something he had not experienced in years.
The memory faded.
But its weight did not.
Vergil's body remained motionless before the bloodied shelter, surrounded by corpses and silence. But in his mind, the world shifted.
The warmth of the farm faded.
It was replaced by towering spires of marble, glowing orbs of light floating in the air, the scent of ancient parchment and ink. The Thaelon Arcane Institute. The capital of magical advancement across the continent. A place where only the elite—nobles, prodigies, or chosen ones—could walk.
Elvira was thirteen when she stepped through the wrought-iron gates.
And she did not belong.
Not truly.
She wore common boots and a threadbare cloak. Her hands were calloused, her accent rural, her mana raw. But what she lacked in refinement, she made up for in something far more dangerous: instinct. Magic didn't bend to her—it obeyed her. And it scared them.
Vergil stood in her place now, watching, feeling. His mind tethered to her soul like a ghost.
He saw her in the dormitories—sitting alone, poring over advanced grimoires, her eyes never leaving the pages even as whispered insults floated by.
"Farm rat."
"Who let the dirtfolk in?"
"Her mana's wild. She'll explode one day."
Vergil clenched his jaw, his fists twitching even though they weren't his. He felt her chest tighten but her face never wavered. She endured in silence.
But the academy didn't let up.
Her instructors treated her like a ticking time bomb. Kelvian had warned them all—"She's a natural, not a scholar. Be careful."—but none truly listened.
Vergil followed as Elvira walked into her first trial.
A practical spell duel. Her opponent? A noble-born prodigy, three years her senior, with a wand tipped in mythril and a robe lined in elemental thread.
She didn't flinch.
The boy summoned a pillar of flame, twisting it into a serpent. The crowd of students gasped at his control.
Elvira raised her hand.
No chant. No tool. Just will.
Boom.
The flame shattered, scattered into harmless sparks, and reformed behind her—now her serpent. She didn't send it at the boy. She simply let it coil in the air behind her, crackling like thunder.
The silence was deafening.
Vergil felt it—her choice to show control instead of destruction. The restraint. The message.
I am not a weapon.
I choose who I burn.
And yet… the students feared her more.
"She didn't chant—did you see that?"
"That's not normal."
"She's dangerous."
Day after day, week after week, Vergil lived her studies. Her sleepless nights. The endless tests. The arcane rituals. The ancient languages she memorized with bleeding eyes. The subtle bullying, the empty corridors, the professors who smiled politely but kept their distance.
And still, she persisted.
She passed every test. Mastered every element. She studied under archmagi, traveled to ancient ruins, negotiated with spirits, and even once calmed a mana storm by singing an old lullaby under the rain.
Vergil's chest ached.
"How many times…" he thought, watching her walk the halls with silent pride, "…did she want to be acknowledged?"
He saw her journal entries—small glimpses of her mind between pages of spell diagrams and research.
"Today, I finally caught the attention of Professor Wyland. He asked if I've considered teaching one day."
"They still whisper. But I think some of them are just scared of what they don't understand. I can't blame them. Sometimes, I'm scared of it too."
"I miss the smell of my mother's bread."
Vergil stared down at the parchment. He saw the fading ink. The pressed flower between the pages. She'd kept it—after all those years—a petal from the fields of Thaleen.
She carried her past like a chain and a shield…
And still rose higher.
---
As the memory began to fade, Vergil remained suspended in a liminal haze.
He wasn't crying.
But his chest felt heavy.
She had lived a life not of power—but of restraint. A flame surrounded by kindling, always afraid she'd burn the wrong thing.
And yet… she still chose to teach.
To protect.
To remain in that quiet village, broken and scarred, helping others rise.
Vergil's heart throbbed.
"Intresting," he whispered to the silence around him.
Vergil was different to others, he had a hard time trying to understand other people's actions even now.
'If that were me, what would I have done?'
'I guess everyone is different'
He wasn't sure if he meant it as an apology.
Or a vow.
But deep inside, something stirred.
The next memory waited.
And he braced for it.
A/N
Not all people welcome mages. When Elivra meddled with life. Not all people are grateful.