A seven-year-old boy was staring at himself in the mirror, feeling the crawling current of magic around him. His light brown hair, which he had grown fond of over the seven years he lived in this unfamiliar home, was being corrupted by a deep onyx tinge, and his bright blue eyes were darkening into a deep indigo.
However, the process would still take a few more years to complete. For now, only about half of his features had been dyed in his magic's colours.
Viaelle couldn't help but sigh in relief. Relief so great that he could finally sleep soundly after seven long years.
It was harrowing to find himself in a world where magic didn't exist. His parents and his older siblings were humans… Thankfully.
However, none of them were capable of even the simplest of spells or invocations. To them, magic was a myth.
Viaelle never stopped having nightmares after that realisation. A world without magic was simply absurd.
Even those born without the magic gene were still capable of casting terrifying spells by setting the world around them and invoking Mother Nature herself. For this world to not have even the simplest of cleaning spells made Viaelle wretch in disgust.
The most terrifying part of it all, of course, was the fact that Viaelle himself was magic-less. He did not have the gene to cast magic.
Thus, even before Viaelle learned how to walk, even before he learned how to speak…
He was depressed.
Recalling the curses sent his way by billions of souls, he deduced that something had overflowed when he cast his ancient magic. Devouring that many hateful lifeforms obviously had their side effects.
'Honestly, I thought I accounted for those.'
Unfortunately, he might have underestimated the hatred of seven billion souls that he had personally reaped.
So, for around four years after being born in this new world, Viaelle wallowed in depression… As well as in relief surrounded by the mundane.
Being the adaptable monster he had been before, someone who didn't hesitate to use another person's limbs as his own, he started learning how to live with those he found himself surrounded by.
In a primitive world where bacteria still existed like an annoying pest.
"Ugh,"
Viaelle abhorred the existence of those multiplying bastards with a passion. Having only read about them in [Echo Streams] and in the bloodline inheritances of his slain enemies, the thought of bacteria being an ever-present plague was extremely unsettling.
…And no matter how much he cleaned himself, nothing could compare to the absolute cleansing of his world's magic.
Still, despite his discomfort, he had learned to enjoy this life.
Every morning, he would be one of the first to wake up among his three siblings. The tantalising smell of fried bacon tossing in the pan wafted up the staircase as he descended with light, thumping footsteps.
Rounding the corner and walking into the kitchen, Viaelle caught sight of his mother — a middle-aged woman with smile marks and a stern glint in her eye. He had learned the hard way how strict she was over the years, making sure his posture was perfect at all times, and that he never dirtied his clothes unnecessarily.
Coming home with muddied shoes had earned him a dire scolding. Slouching over his notebooks wasn't as bad, but it still earned him a glare and a hiss.
Looking at her hair, tied up perfectly in a bun, and with not a single splash of oil on her garments, Viaelle smiled and greeted:
"Good morning, mother."
Without sparing a glance in his direction, his mother took the pan off the stove and emptied its sizzling contents onto a square piece of ornate golden-brown ceramic. The bacon still bubbled from the boiling oil, gleaming golden in the morning sunlight filtering into the kitchen.
"Breakfast will be ready in a bit, Vale. Set the table for your father and I, will you?"
Viaelle replied, "On it."
Walking over to the plate filled with fresh bacon, he grabbed the part that was furthest from the sizzling and carefully transported the item through the kitchen and to the dining room, where a small wooden table was surrounded by six chairs of varying designs. The table was an aged brown, looking to be heavier than him and his siblings combined. The chairs surrounding the table were indicative of those who sat there, with his father and mother's chairs being the only two matching pieces of woodwork. However, even then, the husband and wife had customised them to their comfort.
His father hand-crafted a pair of arm rests, wrapped in soft cushioning that the man recycled from one of their old couches. Viaelle's mother, on the other hand, had sown a pillow for her to sit on, creating a barrier between her bottom and the rigid chair that gave her backaches.
The other chairs were a mess compared to those, with Viaelle's being the most tame. However, his own chair was the most colourful… if being covered in paint and crayon markings could be said to be colourful.
Art was a distant concept to the boy, so he spent much of his new life learning about the colours of the world, and the way the human heart could express itself through the stroke of the brush. This was something his past life could never fathom.
In a bleak, dying world of greys, whites, and blacks due to the absence of pure sunlight and untainted photons, the human heart expressed its yearning in other ways.
Music was one of those… until sound could no longer travel through the world because of the lack of an atmosphere.
"Vale, call your father."
The sound of his mother's voice was the only thing that pulled him back from his dreadful reminiscence.
"…Yes, mother!"
After a few minutes, Viaelle found himself sitting at the dining table with his new parents, munching on buttered toast and bacon. A new day was ahead of him, and he was enjoying every bit of it.
Listening to his parents talk about what was happening outside — pieces of information that his father had read on this morning's paper — he wondered what kind of adult he would become.
'I want to be like Angelica and Irene… and definitely not like Oscar.'
Viaelle shivered, thinking about his older brother. That kid was a mess, especially compared to their two older sisters. Had it not been for their father's status as a professor in Durham, Oscar's tutor would have never kept the boy around. Breaking something in the Museum of Archaeology was tantamount to academic heresy, after all.
Angelica and Irene, on the other hand, were better students. Angelica, especially, who would be heading to college in Oxford soon, was their family's pride and joy. Irene, although younger than Angelica, had more real-life experience, having accompanied their father on trips to heritage sites and long excavations near the Suez Canal bordering Asia and Africa.
Speaking about those siblings of his…
Viaelle heard footsteps moving down the stairs, calm yet lethargic. Looking up from his food, he saw Angelica blinking out the drowsiness of her late-night studies as she walked over to eat breakfast.
"Good morning, mom, dad. And, Vale… I thought I told you to wake me up?"
Angelica plopped down on the chair beside him, rubbing her face and trying to smother out the cow licks on her head before their mother began her lectures. Nothing the girl did, however, was able to smoothen out the light-brown bird's nest on her head.
"Your little brother tried. Now, you'll be living alone soon, young lady. Shouldn't you have figured out how to get up by yourself by now?"
Their mother's voice chimed in a swift defence for the cute youngest.
Angelica shrugged in reply.
"I know, mom. I just want to spend more time with lil' ol' Vallie. He's growing up way too fast. This is because you keep lecturing him. Look! He's more of an adult than Irene."
Viaelle watched as their mother shook her head and sighed.
"Angelica…"
And then another lecture started, first thing in the morning. Irene and Oscar woke up while it happened, sneakily completing their first meal of the day and disappearing just as silently as they arrived. Their parents were biased towards their eldest and youngest… but it came at the cost of having more expectations.
Stuck beside Angelica, Viaelle sighed in resignation.
This was how he spent his years.
In mundanity.
At least, until he realised that this world wasn't as alien as he once thought it was.