Sealed Domain of Minagi – Year 947 of the Divine Calendar
For countless generations, high-level monsters held a near-absolute certainty: their offspring would be female.
Males, in the rarest of cases, were born as humans with a mere trace of monster blood. Even then, their existence was so rare that only a few ancient texts mentioned them.
But Foras was not that.Not female.Not human.Not even a pure monster.
Minagi knew she had given birth to an impossibility.
Since his birth, Minagi had kept him hidden—not out of shame, but out of survival instinct.
"If my sisters find out… if Ilias finds out… even Alipheese I might take interest…"
Minagi had fought for centuries.She had killed without regret.
But now, when she looked at him—so small, so silent—she felt an anxiety that defied logic.
She didn't love him like a human mother would.But she couldn't kill him either.
And that terrified her.
Foras grew at a monstrous pace—slow and steady.His body hardened like steel, but his mind… was murky.Entangled.As if he wasn't quite sure who he was.
He didn't speak much.But he listened.And he watched.
His gaze was always heavy, as if his eyes tried to pierce through the visible world—to see something beyond.
And at times… he suffered.
There were nights when the child collapsed to the ground, shaking.His body convulsed as the dark mana erupted inside him like a storm, threatening to consume him from within.
Minagi only watched.She couldn't "heal" him.That conflict was his burden.His curse.
But during one of those fits, something new happened.
Foras screamed.Not with his voice—With his soul.
An invisible shockwave burst into the air, and for a moment, the shadows recoiled.The magical pressure dispersed, as if some other force—raw, pure—had risen to defend him.
Ki.Life energy.No one in this world knew how to summon it.
But he used it… instinctively.
And then collapsed, unconscious for three days.
When he awoke, he spoke in dreams.Words in a language Minagi didn't recognize.Names.Commands.Cries.
"Full deployment… all units…""No! Don't let them through the portal!"
Minagi asked him nothing.
"If there's a foreign soul inside his body, it must've arrived by mistake. Nothing a sealing ritual can't contain."
But neither her seals nor her power could fully suppress him.
Foras resisted.The mana.His bloodline.Everything he was "meant" to be.
By the age of six, Foras already understood solitude.Not because he had been abandoned,but because he was different.
He knew he wasn't like the monsters he spied on from the heights of the sanctuary.He knew he had no voice in the world of humans.He knew he couldn't be a creature of light… nor fully of shadow.
And within him, a single question burned like a slow flame:
"Why am I here?"
Minagi, hearing him speak for the first time in months, simply replied:
—"Because you were never meant to exist."—"And yet… here you are."
One night, as the moon painted the enchanted forest in shades of blue,Foras sat atop a forbidden hill, his small body curled beneath his own tail.
And as the dark mana churned like sludge within his soul,he ignited his Ki once more.
Not for power—But for the need not to break.
Because being a monster would kill him.And being human…was never an option.