Before he became a monster.
Before he captured souls in oils and linen.
Before Kai ever mentioned his name on the stream....
Aden Dorian was just a boy who wanted to make beautiful things.
He was born 300 years ago in a town choked by winter.
The sky hung low like a ceiling about to collapse, and everything came in shade of ash, mid and rot.
But Aden saw colours.
Even as a child, he would draw roses where frost killed flowers, and draw sunrises on soot-covered walls.
His parents found his passion foolish.
His father once threw his sketchbook into a fire.
" you want to draw?" He shouted, " then draw how we are starving!"
But Aden didn't say a word, he didn't even cry.
He sat on the floor and watched the flames curl around the pages and said softly with a smile.
" even fire has beauty "
That night, he drew with coal on the walls of his room.
Faces. Eyes. All the people he wished he knew, people who are elegant, kind, people who are filled with wonders.
Friends he didn't have.
When Aden was sixteen, a travelling painter passed by his town.
A middle-aged man whose eyes was gleaming with something ....strange when he saw Aden's drawings.
He took him under his wing, and taught him how to mix pigments with bone dust, how to stretch skin-thin canvases, and how to trap light in the curve of a cheek.
But the painter had secrets.
He always spoke about a brush that was made from a famous painter's hair, a red made from a maiden's breath, and a varnish that could preserve the soul.
" you want people to love you right?" He asked one night, " then paint them. Forever"
Aden laughed.
But the man didn't.
Two years later, the painter died in his sleep.
Or at least, Aden assumed he did.
All that remained were a pilled of his master's brushes and unfinished potrait of a young woman with no eyes.
Aden chose the brushes and when he held it, one of them had a faint pulse.
He then left the town and never returned.
He painted. And painted.
Palace, cities, slumps, nobles, commoners, anyone who could sit still long enough.
He was happy.
But they never loved his art the way he wanted them to.
They praised the realism but missed the ache in every stroke.
One day, he painted a woman named Fiona.
She had eyes the color of the moonlight and a voice that sound like music to his ears.
So sweet. She said he made her feel seen.
She said she would never leave him.
But then she did... he found her with a wealthier man, laughing behind the curtains.
His heart boiled for the first time in his life.
She invited him to paint her again, and he did with a broken heart.
And when he finished .... she was gone.
He couldn't understand, she was there a moment ago, but now she vanished.
He looked at the potrait he painted of her and he was terrified.
She was naked, terrified and her mouth wide open like she was screaming.
This was not what he had painted.
And what's more terrifying, the painting was alive.
The image was moving.
Aden didn't understand at first, he screamed, threw the painting in the fire but her image remained intact.
Her eyes moved, her mouth twisted and a soft tapping came beneath the linen.
Aden watched with horror.
The brush he had taken from his master hummed in his hand.
Aden's fingers began to bleed, then the brush laughed.
A laugh that sounded like his master's,
" they will never leave you again" the brush whispered.
Aden finally understood.
Slowly, a smile began to form on his face.
What followed were years of horror dressed in beauty.
He invited lovers, muses and even his rivals.
He told them he wanted to capture their essence.
They smiled, laughed, posed.....
And disappeared.
Some begged at the last stroke, others caught on too late.
Each time he painted, his house grew colder, his reflection fades and his body became thin from not eating.
But his work?
Oh, it was divine.
People from around the continent came to just to admire his " potraits".
People loved them, saying that they felt alive.
Because they were.
However, Aden was dying.
Every soul he stole made him more hallow.
The brush moved with a mind of its own.
He couldn't sleep anymore. Couldn't eat.
And the voices....
Oh, those voices behind the canvas.
" let us out, let us out"
" please. I don't want to die"
" you promised love"
" please....."
Aden began to realise he was losing himself.
He tried to stop.
He locked the studio, threw the key.
Burned the brushes and smashed all the frames.
But it was already late.
They all came back.
One night, he woke up to find every painting he had smashed hanging from the trees around his manor, all intact.
Their faces had no mouth, but they still managed to whisper.
" thank you. Help me...."
Aden was losing his mind.
No. He already did.
So he made a choice.
He painted himself.
It was almost too peaceful- the final stroke, tears were falling down his face.
He felt himself slipping, unravelling, scattering like powdered pigment in the air.
And then.... he disappeared.
But the brush wasn't finish.
It twitched and kept painting.
It was painting another version of Aden, a darker and colder version.
With fingers like bones and a bright grin.
The real Aden, or what was left pf him, screamed and his eyes bled in the canvas.
The creature stepped into life and began again.
Now, that creature calls itself Aden Dorian.
But he was not Aden, he is what happened when grief is shaped into obsession.
When a boy who only wanted to be loved learned that love also disappears.
And beauty..... doesn't care.
He still paints.
But now, he chose carefully.
He doesn't trap just anyone,
He listens to the liars. Pretenders.
People who wear mask to impress, and forget their own faces.
Because they are the easiest to paint.
They have already started erasing themselves.
And he was just saving them time.
Aden doesn't paint people, he paints the masks they can't take off.
And once you're in the frame.....
You never come out.
[ Kia returns ]
" people usually leave a legacy but Aden left a legacy and a scar. Poor painter "
[@Jaija: oh please, a tortured artist? How quaint. Next you will tell me he cried into his water paint because of a broken heart ]
" actually, he did something like that"
[@642: his master left him the brush, what a dramatic little gift. Why nkt goft him a knife anda canvas of skin? They sound the same to me]
[@Jaija: imagine getting possessed by a brush. A brush. Not even a demon but a brush? Boring ]
"Careful now Jaija, the brush is actually a demon, far older than you think".
[@Jaija: ooh, spooky! Is he gonna paint me next? Hehe, maybe i will pose like the first girl he painted ]
Now now behave yourself, at least he was good at painting, unlike you "
[@Jaija : now that's a big lie! My painting skills are divine, i have painted you Kai, and i hung it over my fireplace. You should come visit ]
*Chuckles *, " alright ".
[@642: has anyone every escape the painting?]
"Nope. No one has ever made it and they would never"
[@Enchomay: so Kia, who was that woman in the painting with no eyes?]
*smirks * " it looks like the master has experienced the same thing as his student "
[@Oviesix: you mean first love?]
[@Enchomay: the brush has pulses, where did it came from?]
" ah that. It was made from the hair of a hanged saint, who secretly has a hobby of painting something...unholy "
[@Jaija : Eww]
[@642: what about the real Aden, is he gone?]
" hmm, he is not gone, but he is trapped in an illusion, a place were no soul would recognise itself. Guest that's the price he should pay"
[@Jaija: so Kia, who first held the brush?]
" i Don't know "
[@Jaija: you're lying to me!!]
Anyway, let me give a final message to my readers.
You see, Aden was never a villain, he was just a boy who wanted to be loved.
He didn't ask for the brush, he just accepted it, thinking it will make his dream come true.
Like some of you might when the chance comes.
So listen closely....
To all you little performers. Pretenders out there.
Keep lying to the world.
Keep pretending you're something you are not- but you can still lie.
Noo no, i can't stop you after all, lying is what makes us humans right?
But just don't do it too much, because the moment you believe your own lie...
It's all over and by then, it will be too late to even scream.
Bye now.