Theworld was burning, and Osiris Velmora smiled.
His room in Velmora Manor shook under the weight of it all—cracks forming in the marble walls, ancient portraits rattling like they could sense death coming. The air tasted of static and ash, the scent of ozone thick like the sky had been ripped open and stitched back together with blood. He stood barefoot on the cracked tiles, watching the dance of energy slither across his fingertips like serpents made of starlight.
Mana. Real mana. But this wasn't what the others used—this wasn't light or fire or wind.
This was raw.
Violent.
Wrong.
A pressure pulsed from his chest outward, as if his very soul had been set on fire and dragged through a void of jagged glass. He could *see* the energy moving now—whispers of invisible light twisting around the world like it had always been there, hiding, waiting for him to open his eyes.
And he laughed. Not bitter, not broken—*thrilled.*
The door to his room creaked.
"Osiris," came a voice. Silken. Controlled.
Madame Velmora.
He turned his head slightly, not enough to seem alarmed. "Ah. Mother."
She was dressed in her usual posturing gown—white lace and diamond brooches, a perfect picture of nobility in ruins. But her eyes… they darted to the tendrils of mana flickering around his hands.
"I see... you've awakened." She smiled—sweet and strained.
Osiris tilted his head, let the power fizzle into silence with an easy breath. "Just a little trick of the light."
Madame Velmora chuckled. "Of course. You should come downstairs, darling. The earthquakes... it's not safe up here. We've taken shelter in the lower levels."
Her hand was behind her back. Too practiced.
Too slow.
He smiled again. The soft, empty kind that made his green-and-gold eyes shimmer. "How thoughtful of you."
She turned, leading the way with the grace of a viper.
Osiris followed. Calm. Unbothered. His steps were measured, slow enough that the cold from the cracked marble chilled his soles. Below, the staircase spiraled into shadows. The further they descended, the quieter the air grew, muffled by stone and secrets.
When they reached the basement landing, Madame Velmora spun with the elegance of a dancer—and lunged.
The icicle in her hand gleamed with mana.
Osiris moved before thought. One foot snapped forward, his heel crashing into her stomach with surgical precision. She flew back, crashing against a table stacked with surgical tools.
The lights flickered.
Gasps echoed through the underground chamber.
Three doctors. Two guards. Lord Velmora himself. All staring at him with a mix of horror and disdain.
"You ungrateful child!" his father spat. "Do you understand what we're offering you? The chance to give your life for something *greater*! For *our* son!"
"You should feel honored!" Madame Velmora coughed, blood on her lips. "Chosen as a vessel for something divine! And you attack *me*?!"
Osiris just stood there. Silent. Then he laughed.
Not softly.
Not bitterly.
But with a low, dangerous glee that curled around their hearts like poison.
"You want me to die for your son?" he asked, voice velvet-smooth and colder than the air around them. "You want me to *smile* while you carve me up like a sacrificial lamb?"
He leaned forward, just enough for the light to catch his glowing eyes. "Let me guess. Earthquakes, right?"
"Osiris—"
"—Shh." He raised a finger.
Power crackled faintly around him again, the barest hint of something darker underneath.
They had no idea.
He smiled once more—this time not to hide pain, not to disarm.
But because he was finally waking up.
___
Silence settled over the Velmora Manor like a funeral shroud.
Madame Velmora's body crumpled at the bottom of the basement steps, still twitching, eyes wide with disbelief as Osiris stood at the top of the stairs, shadows licking at his feet like obedient flames. The glow of mana pulsed beneath his skin, brighter now, alive. Like something ancient and furious had finally opened its eyes.
He stepped down slowly, one foot after the other, his smile stretched into something unnatural.
"You all really thought you could butcher me like cattle... for that worm?" He looked up at the rest of them—three doctors, two guards, and there, smug and sweating in the corner, Valeon Velmora. "For him?"
Valeon flinched.
"He was never worth it," Osiris said softly, each word slicing like a blade. "You all just wanted me to die quietly so your precious bloodline wouldn't get stained."
Mana crackled in the air. He raised his hand and the room shuddered. Veins of pure energy burst across the walls like spider cracks. Some kind of negative null zone was forming—an invisible field of absolute silence and pressure.
The guards drew weapons. Too slow.
CRACK.
Osiris flicked his fingers. The guards' bones folded inward, their armor collapsing with them. Their screams were silent in the null zone, but he saw the agony in their eyes. Saw it and savored it.
Next were the doctors. One tried to run.
Bad move.
With a twist of his wrist, Osiris sent a raw mama pulse into the man's back—a shadowy tendril laced with dark energy. The doctor arched backward, skin turning black, then gray, then dust.
He turned to the other two. "You saw me as a lab rat. How's that science taste now?"
One collapsed to his knees. "P-please... we were just following orders."
Osiris grinned, teeth like knives. "And I'm just following instinct."
He didn't even need to move. The null zone shrank around the doctor, crushing him into a small, wet red memory.
Haa this one.
Valeon.
The golden boy. The one everyone said was destined for greatness. The one who watched Osiris bleed, laughed, and called it tradition.
Osiris approached slowly, the manor groaning as mana bled from the walls.
Valeon held up his hand. "Y-you can't kill me. I'm a Velmora! I'm your master!"
"No," Osiris said. "You're a stain."
With one final motion, he opened his palm—and a spear of pure mana force pierced Valeon's chest, lifting him off the ground, twisting, distorting, until there was nothing left but a screaming shadow and a splatter of red.
The room reeked of scorched flesh and ozone. Osiris stood over the crumpled body of their beloved heir, boot still pressed into the boy's caved-in chest. Blood painted the tiles like broken glass mosaics—art, if you asked Osiris.
He turned to them slowly. Mother. Father. Still frozen at the far end of the hall, horror etched into their once-flawless, aristocratic faces.
"Do you feel it now?" Osiris asked, voice low, quiet. Almost kind. "That lovely panic squeezing your throats shut?"
Madame Velmora stepped forward, shaking, posture rigid with the old pride she wore like perfume. "You don't have to do this," she said, lips trembling. "We raised you—"
"You groomed me." Osiris cut in, voice flat. "Fed me scraps while he got feasts. Beat me for sneezing too loud. Told me I was born to be useful, never to be loved."
He took a step closer. The shadows clung to him like old friends. His green eyes flickered gold for just a second, then back again.
Lord Velmora snapped. "You ungrateful little wretch. We took you in. You were nothing!"
Osiris smiled. "Exactly."
With a flick of his fingers, the air cracked. Dark energy surged—a sudden shift in pressure that made the windows shatter and the light fixtures implode.
Madame Velmora screamed as her legs buckled. The mana in the air turned viscous, like it hated them. Her bones vibrated under the force.
"You know," Osiris said conversationally, walking forward, "I learned something new tonight. Mana doesn't just move things. It pulls. It tears... If don't right."
He raised a hand lazily, fingers twitching.
Her body lifted from the floor, invisible threads yanking her into the air. Her scream was short—cut off by the sickening crack of her spine folding in ways it shouldn't.
He held her there, suspended and twitching, like a marionette with its strings tangled.
"And you, dear father," he turned to Lord Velmora, who was crawling toward a fallen dagger. "You always said I'd never be strong enough to lift a finger against you."
Osiris lifted more than a finger.
Lord Velmora was slammed into the far wall with a force that cratered the stone. Then again. And again. Bones shattered like china under the onslaught. But Osiris wasn't done.
"You beat the fear into me for years," he whispered as Lord Velmora slumped, bleeding and gasping. "But I learned something else tonight..."
He stepped in, knelt beside him, their faces inches apart.
"I don't feel fear anymore."
With that, he grabbed the man's jaw and unleashed a point-blank ancient Pulse—raw energy, chaotic and crackling, that incinerated from the inside out.
Madame Velmora's body dropped to the floor with a thud, her glazed eyes locked on the smoldering corpse of her husband.
Osiris stood, blood spattered, the light in the room flickering madly. His hair shimmered—strands shifting from black to a violet hue, like ink swirling in water. The mana no longer rejected him.
Osiris stood in the ruin of the once-proud Velmora family, breathing in the aftermath. Power coursed through him, more than ever. His skin felt like it was splitting, mana boiling underneath. His black hair began to shimmer, the violet creeping in like ink dropped in water.
He reached up and ran a bloodstained hand through his hair. "Finally... it's mine."
The building groaned again—this time in protest.
Osiris walked through the manor, room by room, and set it all ablaze with a wave of his hand. Blue flames danced through the halls, devouring silk curtains, paintings, everything. Everything they loved.
He stepped out into the cold air as the manor behind him became a pyre.
His green eyes glowed. Unnatural. Judgemental. His hair now fully violet, fluttering in the breeze like the banner of a war god.
He smiled again.
But this time, it wasn't to hide the pain.
It was to honor it.