The sun rose beautifully.
Its golden light spilled across the land, warm and gentle, painting the world in colors most people called hope. To them, dawn was a promise—another day survived, another chance granted by the gods.
But to Lucien, the sun was cruelty in its purest form.
The light stabbed his eyes like shards of glass, dragging memories to the surface he would never escape. Fire. Screams. The choking smell of burning wood and flesh twisted together. The last image burned into his mind: his parents' silhouettes standing between him and the flames, swallowed whole by a blinding light no different from the one rising above him now.
A light that had destroyed everything he loved.
Is the sun just a giant ball of fire? he thought bitterly.
If it was, he hated it with every piece of himself that remained.
People praised the sun as proof the gods still cared. Yet it had done nothing while his home burned, nothing while villagers cheered, nothing to silence the laughter that still rang in his ears.
"I hate fire," he whispered into the empty morning. "I hate the sun."
They called it hope.
To him, it was only hatred wearing a brighter mask.
Night, at least, was honest. It hid scars. It didn't pretend mercy.
Lucien clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms. The memory came anyway—uninvited, unstoppable.
He remembered pressing his face into the dirt beneath the burning house, tears silent because any sound would give him away. Above him, torchlight painted the villagers' faces orange. They smiled. Some even looked reverent, as if cleansing a demon's spawn was a holy act.
How could they cheer while a family burned?
They had slaughtered innocent people and called it justice.
"Why…" His breath shook. "Why, why, why…"
No answer ever came.
Only hatred—cold, steady, and growing.
"I'll make them pay," he said, voice hollow but unbroken. "I'll take everything from them."
They had labeled him demon, devil's spawn, forsaken—all because no mana stirred in his blood.
Fine.
If the gods had abandoned him first, he would abandon humanity in return.
"I don't want to be human anymore," he muttered.
If humans could laugh while children lost everything, then he refused to be one of them.
Perhaps the villagers were right.
Perhaps he truly was a demon.
And if that was true—he would become the kind they feared in their darkest prayers.
Days bled into nights.
Lucien wandered from village to village, hunger gnawing at his belly, exhaustion pulling at his bones. Each time he approached a door, he asked for shelter with the last scraps of hope he hadn't yet killed.
Each time, the answer was the same: fear in their eyes, disgust on their faces, silence as doors slammed shut. Mothers yanked children inside. Men reached for tools that could double as weapons.
Eventually, he stopped asking.
Survival alone was better than begging from creatures who called themselves human.
His feet carried him deeper into the kingdom's forgotten corners, where roads thinned and vanished. Trees grew dense and twisted, their branches weaving a canopy that swallowed the sky. The air felt thick, heavy with something ancient watching from the shadows.
Whispers called this place The Forest of Death.
A land that devoured anyone foolish enough to enter. Monsters roamed here—goblins, orcs, beasts, and races the kingdom branded non-human. No one returned.
Lucien stepped inside without hesitation.
To him, it felt like coming home.
A place built for the forsaken.
Days later, deep in the forest's heart, he found them.
A goblin camp—crude hide tents, flickering cookfires, dozens of sharp yellow eyes snapping toward him at once.
So this is how it ends, he thought distantly.
The goblins surged forward, rusted blades and clubs raised. Their snarls filled the air.
Any child should have frozen. Should have screamed.
Lucien only walked toward them.
Not defiant.
Not mad.
Just… calm. A quiet emptiness he didn't fully understand.
A larger goblin—scarred, one-eyed—raised a clawed hand.
"Wait."
The pack halted, weapons still ready.
Lucien stopped a few paces away.
"…You can speak?" he asked slowly. "I understand you."
The scarred goblin's eye widened. "You understand *our* tongue?"
It studied him, head tilted. "You look human. Smell wrong, though."
Another stepped closer, nostrils flaring. "No god's blessing on him. Humans always stink of it."
Weapons lowered—just slightly. Suspicion shifted into wary curiosity.
Through broken words and gestures, the truth spilled out.
"Human" was not a race.
It was a title.
Those touched by the gods' mana, able to wield it, were named human—no matter their body.
Those twisted by mana but unable to command it became goblins, orcs, monsters.
And those whose power came from within, from no god at all…
Demons.
The words struck Lucien like a blade.
Everything he'd been taught shattered.
Then what am I?
Before he could voice the question—
A voice, quiet and impossibly close, spoke inside his mind.
Can you hear me?
Lucien staggered, clutching his head as pain lanced through his skull.
Who are you? he demanded silently.
Silence.
Then:
I am you.
The world tilted.
Memories flooded in—alien, impossible.
Towering structures of glass and steel piercing the clouds.
Metal beasts roaring through the sky.
Lights without flame. Machines that thought for themselves.
A world that ran on laws and reason, not miracles or gods.
A world where people survived perfectly well without mana.
Lucien dropped to his knees in the dirt, gasping.
"Those memories… they're not mine."
The voice returned, calm and certain.
I told you. I am you.
In that moment, something inside him shifted forever.
He was not forsaken.
He was something else entirely.