He was an orphan and no one knew his name. They called him Lucifer. In the black corridors of Summer Village Orphanage; a humble orphanage against the rundown background of the abandoned quarter of a nation; Lucifer's earliest memories were of shadowy hallways and hushed secrets. Soft words were as valued as laughter.
At first, he considered himself to be like any of the orphans, his pockets full of dust, his shoelaces loose. The director of the orphanage, Sister Hellebore, smiled as thinly as a knife edge and looked too closely with her eyes. The other orphans also viewed him as a friend, enthralled by his rapid wit and unobtrusive resolve. But by his fifth birthday, the orphanage revealed its real face.
Combat shook walls throughout the night as armed people stormed through halls. Sister Hellebore's tranquil mask broke only once as she herded children into a courtyard in the center. "Survive," she breathed, half-horror and half-command in her voice. "Only those who survive can live. You have ten minutes to hide. You may do anything to survive."
Guns sang in darkness. Screams reverberated off pillars. Lucifer, quivering in a tunic the width of a child, cowered in shadows. He witnessed one friend fall, another fall by a knife cut. The dawn saw thirty battered bodies remaining. Children once, survivors now.
They discovered the truth amidst the slaughter: Summer Village Orphanage wasn't a charitable organization. It was an assassin school for the nation's covert army of killers. Each child had been branded from birth with no name, no parents. Only taught to be silent, compliant, and dead. Those who survived weren't saved. They were recruited.
Lucifer picked it up fast. He mastered the art of vanishing in plain view. He honed his reflexes on straw sparring dummies. At twenty-four, he was one of the best killers in the arsenal of the Night Veil ; stabbing commanders at night, pilfering secrets from impenetrable vaults, eliminating targets whose faces no-one ever saw again.
But one mission made everything come crashing down.
Under the dark nights, Lucifer infiltrated an enemy base to steal a fragment of scientific research. Something uttered to shape the fate of nations of the world. He bypassed wards, overcame guards, and made his way into the inner shrine. But as his gloved hand closed around the fragment of crystal, walls trembled again not of magic, but of treachery.
The same Night Veil Director who had instructed him stepped out of the shadows with a gun. "Loose lips sink ships," he whispered. Nobody except for their director no-one could know the secret. In a matter of seconds, Lucifer's universe went dark.
When he opened his eyes, he was not blind or shattered; just floating. An emptiness stretched in all directions, as quiet as a grave. Then he heard a voice not of flesh nor bone, but of infinite space:
"Lucifer"
The voice of the god whose voice was neither cruel nor kind, but absolute. It resonated within his head like a cymbal within a tomb of caverns.
"You were brought up from treachery and were tempered by blood. You failed at an impossible mission, but your spirit will not abide destruction. I give you a second opportunity and a mission that will destroy the pillars of destiny."
Lucifer struggled to speak. There was no sound.
"Sleep now. When the time is right, you will wake again. With purpose, strength, with the chance to prove that destiny can be broken… or remade."
And then the void swallowed him once more.
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And so begins the tale of Lucifer ; a boy raised by death, tempered into a killer, turned against his own, and resurrected by a god whose motivations remain in darkness. He is aware that his second life has higher risks than the first: behind remaining alive is divine wrath, and a mission that could liberate or destroy the very threads of worlds. Is it okay to not obey your benefactor? What happens when the god who promised to save you doesn't keep his promise?
When the people who walk between worlds approach Lucifer to work for them in exchange of healing him. What will Lucifer do?
A Magus will rise. The House of Dravidian will descend into the mortal world. The Andhakars shall rule the Omniverse Nexus for eternity.