The day before it all began

A day before their summer break began, Fayden decided he'd visit the training room once more.

But as he got closer, he heard voices inside. Opening up his senses, he recognized the three beings inside as he quietly listened.

"...ect! You can take her along with you." Wasn't he supposed to be in a meeting?

"WHAT?!" He winced a bit at the shrill scream. Of course, it was his sister who screamed like that.

"No way! I'm not falling for whatever you have planned." Arthur, predictably, declined. "I can already imagine how my parents will react if I bring Tess home with me."

Fayden smiled at their banter, deciding to leave them alone. His presence would only sully their mood.

He furrowed his brows when they suddenly went silent, straining his ears to hear the slightest of whispers.

"Outside? Are you sure?"

Only then did he realize that he forgot to cloak his presence.

But it was too late by then, and the gate opened behind him.

"I knew it was you, brat!" Virion barked, a grin on his face.

Fayden rolled his eyes at his grandfather, "Aren't you supposed to be in a meeting?"

"Bah! I needed a breather from their squabbling, so I escaped to visit you two."

"Fair enough." Fayden shrugged.

Virion stared at the black bags under Fayden's eyes, "Your nightmares didn't stop, did they?"

"Nightmares?" Tessia finally spoke up, surprised her brother would be having nightmares. Yet when he glanced at her, she shriveled up.

Virion glanced at his granddaughter; it pained him to see the rift formed between his grandchildren. Yet, he still followed Fayden's advice on giving her space.

Arthur stayed silent; what could possibly scare a white core mage? He didn't want to know.

Fayden sighed, "I know I agreed on a compromise gramps, but the Committee needs me right now."

Virion nodded in understanding, "I know, Cynthia informed me of the situation."

Fayden nodded, "I'm going to stay until everyone's returned home. After that you can hold up your side of the deal."

Virion sighed wearily, "Stay safe brat."

"I'm a literal white core mage gramps." Fayden deadpanned.

Virion chuckled, "Well it's time for me to go now, I need to get back before those idiots kill themselves.."

Fayden smiled, "You do that, I'm going to go patrol the area once more."

But before he could head out, Tessia moved.

Fayden came to a standstill when she grabbed his sleeve, "C-Could you co-come with us?"

As he stared down at his sister, his gaze softened as he decided to honor her courage, "Of course."

Virion smiled ever so slightly; perhaps a reconciliation wasn't so far off after all.

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The ride to the Helstea manor was awkward to say the least. With both Eralith siblings unwilling to speak, Arthur tried breaking the ice, but he failed to do so.

Arthur sighed in relief once they got off the carriage, the atmosphere wouldn't be so tense inside.

As they waited for the doors to open, Arthur noticed how calm Fayden looked in contrast to the tensed Tessia. He sighed, hoping they could make up already.

The door opened and his mother's face came into view, "It's about time you got here."

"You don't look really surprised to see us here. Did you know we were coming?" Fayden raised an eyebrow at how unsurprised Alice looked.

"Something like that." With Reynolds standing beside a pile of gifts, it wasn't hard to figure out the sender.

Tessia rubbed the back of her head in embarrassment. Arthur facepalmed and Fayden just sighed, knowing how his grandfather could be.

"Well? Are you three just going to stand outside?" Alice gestured inside. "Come in, dinner is almost done."

"Come on! I want to show you how good at the bow I've gotten." Eleanor, Arthur's younger sister, pulled Tessia inside. "Helen has been training me every time the Twin Horns visit! Hurry!"

Fayden chuckled, "She's an energetic one isn't she?"

"That she is." Arthur reciprocated the gesture.

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The Helstea's and Leywin's threw a small party, which Fayden couldn't deny he enjoyed.

After they had finished eating, Fayden slipped out of the manor, quietly making his way to the rooftop.

He inhaled deeply, taking in the fresh air of the outside and exhaled just as deeply. Below he noticed Alice and his sister talking.

Amplifying his hearing with just a bit of sound magic, he listened.

"...very comfortable for you." Alice's concern for his sister's comfort was appreciated.

"I actually had a lot of fun."

Indeed, Tessia did have fun at the party. Only when she made eye contact with Fayden did her mood slacken.

Alice's expression turned concerned for a moment. "I couldn't help but notice the tension between you and your brother. Did something happen?"

Now, Fayden did not appreciate it. He knew she was trying to help, but she was also prying into personal matters.

Tessia was silent for such a long time that Fayden almost thought she had fallen asleep. She finally spoke, "Recently, I fell sick due to my Beast Will rejecting me. My grandfather found out something was interfering with the assimilation process and told my brother about it."

Alice waited patiently as Tessia took another sip of her tea, the cup trembling in her hand.

"Fayden did something and somehow entered my 'inner world' where I was running from the Elderwood Guardian. There was a sort of snake wrapped around it. When Fayden came, he ripped the snake off the Guardian's frame with some invisible force." Raising the cup, she found her fingers failing her and she almost dropped it.

"There was this gr-group of beings b-behind him." She took a deep breath, trying to calm her heart down.

"When it la-landed among the beings, Aunt Alice," she looked up, fear evident in her eyes, "the way they c-cut into it a-and ate it, that…"

"My poor child," Alice got up, bringing Tessia into an embrace.

After staying like that for a few minutes, they separated. Tessia coughed shyly, muttering a thank you.

Alice smiled, "You can come to me anytime you wish."

Fayden sighed wistfully, staring up into the starlit sky.

'Zeke, do you have any idea why that happened?'

'Not really, but I did notice how your Beast Will is different from others.'

Fayden almost rolled his eyes, 'No shit, sherlock.'

Ezekiel did roll his eyes, 'I'm not just stating the obvious here. Where other beast wills are like a festering fragment of the beast's soul still holding onto its power, yours is more like a thousand fragments, each possessing some sort of power similar to mine. If others have Beast Wills, you have an amalgamation of thousands, a Chimeric Will, if you would call it that.'

'...' Fayden remained silent after that.

"...ow that he's my brother and he'll never hurt me intentionally, but I'm still scared, scared of that power."

His attention returned to their conversation, he would need to ponder about what Zeke said later.

"Trauma isn't that easy to overcome, my dear." Alice said gently, as if speaking from experience.

"It doesn't matter." Tessia blurted out. "I need to be able to face him! He says he's going to wait for me for as long as it takes, but I know he's affected by this too. Everytime we cross paths, I can still see the pain in his eyes."

"Both of you need to fix what happened that day," Alice answered after a while. "While you are channeling your mental turmoil outwards in the form of your fear, he is bottling up his, hoping that given time, he'll be able to face it again."

Fayden scoffed from above. "Don't try to psychoanalyze me Alice, it'll get you nowhere."

Alice sighed, "I cannot tell you what to do Tessia, I can only give you advice."

Fayden sighed, cutting off the sound magic around his ears. He didn't need to eavesdrop any further.

As his attention returned to the skies above, he began thinking about what Zeke said.

As far as he knew, the only thing different about his Beast Will was that it came from a god.

A god, a divine entity. He almost laughed at the sheer irony of it all, a divine will with an eldritch horror inside.

"There you are." A voice made itself known behind him.

Fayden sighed. "Hello, Arthur. Please, invade my privacy if it so pleases you." he muttered to himself.

"What are you doing here?"

"Nothing, just pondering over a few things." Fayden said as he moved aside to make space for the auburn-haired boy.

"What kind of things?" Arthur plopped down beside him.

"Look at the sky, Arthur."

Arthur followed with a raised eyebrow, he had seen this view many times now. Back on Earth, it was nigh impossible to see a single star, but here every single one of them were laid out for the naked eye to see.

Fayden raised his arm, as if intending to grab a handful of them. "That's the level we must reach to stand a chance against deities."

Arthur stayed silent for a while, before breaking the silence. "Do you think we'll ever reach that high?"

Fayden clenched his fist tightly. "We have to.

Because if we don't, this continent is already ruined."

.

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A battalion of mages marched through the caves of the A-Class dungeon, Hell's Jaw. Led by a Lance, they moved like a well oiled machine.

The Hades Serpent fought tooth and nail, but against fifty trained mages and a Lance, it stood no chance.

But when they dug out its core, a sickly black shade, it crumbled in their arms.

Wasting no time to ponder on it, they marched through the cave it was guarding. Shivers ran down their spine as the presence of a single man made them tremble.

The man's skin was such a shade of pale gray that one could mistake him for a corpse. His lanky arms hung at his side, almost as if they had popped outside their sockets. Thick dark bandages covered his entire body dnd a black mantle rested over them.

Crimson eyes stared back at the mages, but his most striking feature so far were the pair of obsidian horns jutting out his forehead.

"Eh?" Alea hadn't even seen the spikes rise from the ground, skewering her soldiers.

Half the battalion was gone just like that.

The demon, for there were no other words to describe him, held up two fingers and spoke. "Two options."

His gaze had instantly shifted to the green haired Lance, as if aware she was their leader, "Dismember each of your teammates one by one, and I'll let you go."

"Or," he scoffed, a sound akin to running a dagger across hard concrete, "you can try and fight."

Alea gulped, pocketing the beacon her prince had given her, her expression a mix of anger and fear. She smashed the crystal to dust, some confidence returning to her at the knowledge that help was coming, and yelled. "Charge!".

"Do you think your efforts will make a difference? The war is coming regardless." His condescending voice did nothing to hide his glee at being able to slaughter so many mages.

As he mowed through her soldiers, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction, he came closer to her.

"You'll not be needing this any longer." He grabbed her hand, a manic grin visible on his face.

A yank, the sound of flesh tearing and a Lance screaming.

"Kekekekekekeke, you should have taken the first option."

A dark presence made him stop and look up as a palpable aura settled on the dungeon.

He narrowed his eyes, jumping back when a sword stabbed the ground where he had just been standing.

The sword was made of what looked like the night sky itself, countless constellations glimmered over a black canvas. It was a mesmerizing sight, as if the cosmos itself had been forged into a blade.

A moment later, a man flashed in, his hand hovering over the handle of the sword. Black hair fell to the middle of his back, piercing silver eyes glared into the crimson of the pale faced man. Runes of the same color adorned his body, running down his torso and his limbs. The eerie darkness surrounding him like mist further amplified the sense of dread Uto was feeling.

'Zeke, tend to the wounded.'

'Got it.' Greenish black flames leaked out of Ezekiel's maw as he began void stepping to the wounded soldiers.

"Normally I'd make a joke about your mother sleeping around, but unfortunately for you I'm in a particularly bad mood." His voice was like a whisper in the dark–quiet, but clear. And though the air was filled with the screams and groans of the fallen, his whisper reverberated through the room.

Shivers went down Uto's spine as Fayden uttered his next words.

Fayden grinned, a grin with so much malice it made Uto choke. "I was looking for something to vent on, so nice of you to volunteer yourself."