Noelle sat hunched in his obsidian throne, his remaining left hand clawed over his face. He ignored the white-hot agony radiating from his stump, the pain merely a dull rhythm beneath the weight of his thoughts. Through the gaps in his fingers, his red eyes fixed on the floating, unconscious boy.
"Let me tell you a story, Kael," Noelle rasped, his voice echoing off the damp walls of the lair. He paused, a dark, mocking huff escaping his lips. "Oh well, your brain is still jelly from the extraction, but I will talk regardless."
He leaned back, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling as if seeing through the rock and back through time.
"When I was a babe, my parents loved me. They poured their affection into me like water into a cracked pot. But I grew not to love them. I couldn't love anyone but myself. It wasn't a choice; it was my nature. By the time I was twelve, the world already felt too small for my ambition."
Noelle's hand dropped from his face, his expression cold.
"I was playing far from my home in Osoroshi, wandering the desolate outskirts, when something weird occurred. Two figures appeared out of nowhere, tearing through the fabric of the air. I was intrigued. I didn't run away; I ran toward them. As I got close, I realized it was a woman. She wasn't wounded, but she was in bad shape—starving, wasted away, as if the journey itself had drained her life."
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
"I looked at her and asked, 'What are you?' Not who. I asked because her skin was the color of moss, and two crimson horns curved from her brow. She looked at me with desperate eyes and begged me to save her baby before herself. Do you know what my response was, Kael? I asked her, 'Why would I save you in the first place?'
Noelle chuckled, a sound devoid of warmth.
"I was a self-caring person even then. She continued to plead, but her weakness disgusted me, so I decided to kill her. I took the baby from her dying arms and walked back to my house with it."
"My parents were shocked when I walked through the door with a horned infant and blood on my clothes. So, I killed them as well. They were obstacles. Nothing more."
He gestured with his remaining hand toward the laboratory equipment surrounding Kael.
"I was smart, even at that age. I put the baby in a test tube, similar to the one you are rotting in now. My childhood home became the headquarters for the Dark Saints, and I was its first member. It was easy to recruit the dregs and the poor of the rogue nation of Osoroshi. I used the baby as an object of worship, claiming I had created her from scratch. They saw me as a god because I wielded both fire and water—the problem and the solution in one body."
"Years passed. The baby grew inside that glass prison. She grew to look just like her mother—green skin, red horns, healthy and fit. She became known as Ammit. She was from the continent of the East, a place called Nefaria. Nefarians are what you mortals perceive as demons."
Noelle's face suddenly contorted with a flash of genuine rage.
"Years later, Ammit escaped my prison of water. She fled, only to encounter you, Kael. On a date, of all things. You fought, and your mana eruption killed her. You killed my last gem."
He stood up, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the floor as he approached Kael's tube.
"Now, you are going to replace it. I was never able to match Ammit's power, yet you eradicated her with no military training—just sheer, raw power. They say the God who created us humans loved some more than others. I think you are one of them. Creatrix took his time making you, giving you power that will help us win the war commencing in a few months."
He pressed his hand against the violet glass, his voice dropping to a low, lethal whisper.
"It will be an all-out war. All races will fight until only one remains."
Inside the viscous fluid, Kael's head lollled forward. Suddenly, his eyelids snapped open. His eyes weren't the dull color of a captive; they were glowing with a fierce, piercing gold.