My brother was always kind to me.
He was always kind to everyone because he respected everyone.
My brother is still kind to me.
He's still kind but he's now lost that respect.
Above all the changes Vani went through during his ascension this by far was the change that was most pronounced.
He still looks at the stars, but I can tell that he doesn't see the people standing with him anymore.
I remember something he said in the past, back when we always used to a hang out in that small wooden box instead of sleeping when our bedtime came, he said that he wanted ascension so that people wouldn't look down on our family anymore.
I know, just saying it sounds cheesy, but when he said it, I could tell he meant it.
Knowing that he meant it made me feel good, even if his choice of words made me want to stick my head in the ground.
He was just that kind of person, smart and naive.
It just makes me think about what he had to see in order to come out of the ritual like this.
When I heard that he'd went through ascension, I wanted to ascend too, but seeing my brother like this, I'm not so sure anymore.
What's the point of power you wanted for yourself, if the you who obtains that power isn't yourself at all.
Seeing how much he changed, I wanted to know if the cliched dreams that once enchanted the younger me still remained.
But when I came to question him, I just got scared.
Something about his eyes frightened me. It's like they're both the most human and inhuman things in the world.
Even to the way his smile forms, that's not something my brother ever had.
Yet, the worst part about all of this is that I can sense that it's not hostility.
And when he does talk to me, his words don't hold a single truth, even though I know he's never lied.
Although I shouldn't be too surprised.
Ascenders have always been like this, they always change.
Some more than others.
I read about it, I acknowledged it, but I didn't quite understand it.
Mom knows Baroness Lacroix's mother, her tragedy isn't very dissimilar to Vani's.
According to the story told, one day Dominique Lacroix woke up ascended, starting wearing things she never did before. Started talking more pridefully and started to really look down on others.
She even killed a cat that scratched her once in the past in it's own home in front of the children.
This caused the family and friends of the cat to rage in silence, since mortals cannot harm ascenders.
It broke her mother's heart, to see her only daughter acting like this.
The Baroness expressed sadness at the hurt feelings of her mother, yet that sadness didn't feel real.
Most of it felt faked, with only a small fragment of true emotion driving it.
Baroness Lacroix's mother noticed this, which only pushed her further into despair.
Her older brother who once cherished his younger sister started to hate her, but since he was smart enough to not show it, he didn't do anything.
He just sat there in silence while his sister continued to perform crueler acts on people, animals and anything else that she claimed had belittled her, in the past or in the present.
Her brother's lack of action was said to have boiled inside of him, causing himself to give way to alcohol.
When the Baroness killed one of the children who owned the cat in broad daylight after they tried to fight her out of grief, something inside her brother snapped.
Eventually, super-drunk one night, he finally gained the intoxicated courage to confront his sister.
The Baroness's mother claimed that it started with a scowl on her daughter's face, turning into a somewhat pained expression.
As he continued to express his feelings, the pain in her golden eyes was said to vanish, with only a disgusting hatred remaining.
And with that expression she materialized a black rapier and struck it through her brother's neck.
She then ripped out the sword with enough force that it shattered the windows of their house and caused her to scream in a fit of anger.
It was presumed that she felt a certain degree of wrath towards the child's family, hence the reason why she broke into their house that night with a bangle of dead cats.
In the previous months, there had been a lot of missing cats in the town, it was later theorized that this was the reason why.
She was rumored to have hung them up by their tails, like christmas lights decorating the interior of the household, red and white bleeding down the halls.
The bodies of the cats were still fresh, which provided the rumor that Baroness Lacroix could make things disappear.
The rest of the family eventually woke up due to the acrid smell of smoke.
Yes, Baroness Dominique Lacroix, one of the formerly four Barons in the Avantgarde Empire, an empire founded on opposing barbarism, burned over 300 housecats, the symbol of their trauma, to further torment a grieving family.
When the family ran out the house, the child came out first where the Baroness was waiting for them.
She then materialized a familiar cat.
The parents came out of their house to see a body hanged by the left leg, its cadaver opened, filled with a protruding mass of familiar figures.
Their faces fell agape, their jaws locked by the sight of felines falling out of that crevice.
The brutally massacred face they saw was unrecognizable, but for them the forcefully deformed features were unmistakable.
The parents screamed and cried, the thing they devoted their lives to in these past few years was hanging lifeless by the ankle.
It was said that that they looked at the Baroness in rage and blame.
Note to say, the ones they probably blamed the most were themselves, after all, that was their daughter.
In the highest moment of their grief, a black and gold rapier crossed pierced their necks.
That night, the Town of Blaire was alight.
Flames roared and scourged the wooden houses, families and friends burned.
The ones who escaped the fire however, were said to have been beaten to death by the Baroness's bare hands.
Upon their ruined house, Jeane Lacroix, the Baroness's mother, claimed to have sat.
She was then greeted by her daughter.
Her black tuxedo covered in blood and guts, the Baroness smiled at her. The same smile she always gave when she returned from exercising.
Her mother looked at her disdainfully broken, "H-ow." Her dry throat echoed to her daughter.
"How could you! What! Why! I didn't raise you like this! First your B-rother. AND NOW THIS! I don't even know how to put it into words! I can't! My daughter is a nice person. She's always been kind and courteous! I don't understand! I-"
"Mother." The Baroness said her voice surprisingly deep yet still feminine.
"These people overstepped." She explained, "They lost sight of their place. When that happens punishment is deserved."
"W-What?" Her mother was flabbergasted, she expected a more broken answer, a more unsure answer, proof that old daughter was still inside that monster somewhere.
Yet all she got was an explanation on why rabid dogs need to be put down.
Her expression got more fierce towards her daughter, "Did your own brother deserve it!"
"Obviously." She replied, "He originally only expressed his opinion without permission, but since he's my brother I can grant him some privileges. It's when he raised his voice to me that he was crossing a line, hence I decided that he needed to be punished.
Yet I was appalled when he actually thought he could order me around!
This got me thinking about his state, he was drunk wasn't he? I strictly remember ordering him to stop drinking! He was complaining about that little rascal I struck down earlier.
He was so ungrateful.
Even if he was my brother, it escalated far past that point, I just couldn't ignore this anymore, so I struck him too, it's fairly simple mother."
"So what! Everyone is less than you simply because you have fancy powers!" Jeane reprimanded
"Lower your tone, Jeane. Your pressing too far." Dominique reportedly said
Her mother jumped back in astonishment.
"Of course I'm better, I'm a divine creature. Don't believe me?"
She grabbed a lifeless child from the ground and put one hand on the bottom and top of his jaw.
She pulled hard, causing the head to explode with a sonic boom. Scattering blood across the ruined street.
"You see this MOTHER! Humans aren't capable of this!" She roared
She continued, "You need to understand that your attitude is the reason why I did all this. It wasn't just brother. Everyone was ungrateful! It was past the point of no return! A child, a mere mortal child, tried to challenge me. A creature of the divinity holds residence in your backwater town and this is how you treat her!
I made sure to especially visit that household, and when I did, other people tried to stop me!
That's when I knew, in accordance with reverence, this town itself was void. So I had to make sure that such ungrateful things would never cause heresy for myself or my equals. As a divine Baroness of the Empire, that is a given duty."
Jeane tried to grasp at straws, "Come on, Domi please! Then why haven't you punished me! It's because you're still human and you're still suffering, what happened in that ritual, for you to act like this it really must have been terrible. You've never spoken about it at all, we can talk about it-"
Baroness Dominique Lacroix's expression immediately became fierce as she pulled out her rapier and slashed it against her mother's eyes.
A scream rang out.
"Do you think you can trick me with your petty lies and humble eyes, BITCH!" The Baroness kicked Jeane's left knee in, breaking it.
Dominique reached for her sleeve and pulled out a knife her mother was hiding.
"You wanted to harm me! A divine being with this fragment of mundane rock!"
She placed the cold knife back in her mother's hands and forced her to cut a hole in the fabric of where her stomach was.
"Then stab me. Try to kill me."
Jeane took the opportunity to force the blade on her daughter's pale skin, but is was for naught, the skin didn't even bend.
"See that, Jeane! Your ploy against divinity!"
Baroness Lacroix grabbed her mother's left hand and snapped it.
Another bone-chilling scream rang out.
Apparently she grabbed her mother's knife and dug it into her forearm, placing the blade in her bone while carving the symbol of her authority on her broken palm.
When we later received Jeane Lacroix in one of our hospital beds, she was losing blood fast and was barely conscious.
She refused to speak about what happened there to the doctors and our mother who cared for her so deeply.
We managed to prolong her life, but not by much.
One day she wanted to see me, so as a deathbed wish, I came.
I was only 5 at the time.
She wanted me to remember this story as much as I could and submit it to my memory, regardless of its gruesome contents.
Maybe then I was, but now I'm not foolish enough to actually believe all the aspects of Jeane's story, especially the parts where she wasn't there to witness them, adding to that she had sustained brain damage due to blood loss before she even told it.
But there is a lot of truth to her story. The fact remains that the Blazing Hellfire of Blaire really happened, Dominique Lacroix was the only survivor, and the unburnt victims were brutally mangled. Although I'm pretty sure the cat scene was a figment of Jeane's broken imagination.
All in all, she wanted me to learn of what happened because she wanted me if I ever came to a similar crossroad, to chose the human option.
To the very end the mother believed in her daughter, even while bleeding out on her deathbed she still thought that if she talked to her daughter earlier, that the massacre could have then been avoided.
As for me, I believe that Baroness Dominique Lacroix has always been a psychopathic egoist. She just got the ability to finally act how she wanted to.
I listened to her story to the very end. After her death, I did not mourn. I felt filled with a purpose and told Vani all about it. He seemed very concerned and moved by the story.
If I thought about the one thing that made him want to ascend more then anything, it would probably be this.
That's what truly scares me about his new disposition.
'The world isn't nice to families without titles, to them they aren't even human!'
That was Vani's catchphrase for whenever mom asked him why he was trying so hard to ascend.
She probably never guessed that 10 year old Vani was talking about something as horrible as this.
I looked out the window to see Baron Vanitas Valentine go into the carriage.
His smile, it was familiar but distant. Like a warped image of what it once was.
Heh. Hearthflame and Blaire both have fire in their name.
Shit. I started to cry