The first few years of Axiros' life passed in a gentleness he had almost forgotten existed.
The world around him was soft, silken clothes, quiet halls, warm meals, and the steady rhythm of safety. It was a life shaped by comfort and abundance, one that many would have accepted without a second thought.
Axiros could not.
Luxury had greeted him before. So had kindness. In countless past lives, peace had been nothing more than the calm before the collapse.
He had learned, through suffering measured beyond reason, that happiness often arrived only to sharpen the blade that followed.
And so, even as a child, he watched the world with careful eyes, waiting for the moment it would turn its back on him.
Yet this time felt… different. But once again, the same doomed fate would be met.
His mother loved him with a sincerity that went beyond obligation or pride. She had been with him through pain and illness and never gave up on him.
It was there in the way she held him a little longer than necessary, in how her voice softened when she spoke his name, in the quiet worry she tried to hide whenever he fell ill or cried in his sleep.
Her love was not grand or overwhelming, it was patient, steady, and deeply human.
Axiros clung to that love more than he allowed himself to admit.
Of his father, there was nothing. No stories, no portraits, no passing remarks spoken too quickly to be questioned.
When he asked, his mother's smile would falter just slightly, and she would guide the conversation elsewhere. Axiros learned not to press. Some silences carried weight, and he respected them.
Still, the absence lingered, a hollow space he couldn't quite understand.
Despite his caution, hope began to settle into his heart, not loudly, not boldly, but like a small warmth he could not extinguish.
For the first time in an age he could barely remember, he wondered what it might be like to grow without fear constantly coiled in his chest. To live days that were not measured in battles survived or pain endured.
He did not dream of greatness. He did not yearn for power.
He only hoped, quietly, almost apologetically, that this life might allow him to learn how to be human again. That perhaps, just this once, existence would not demand blood as the price for breathing.
And for now, at least, the world did not prove him wrong.
One day, a man dressed in fine wear, a butler, visited their house. He held a letter with him, a letter with the seal of the Goldheart family, one of the richest in the world, having over a trillion dollar's worth of assets.
"Mom, who is it?" Axiros, now Liam asked, meekly behind his mother's back.
"No one important, my son." She hesitantly lied. She headed towards the door, where the butler was seated.
"I expected you audience, mam. I carry the letter from the head with me." He spoke.
"What is it? What does that bas-, person want with me now? After all these years, he hasn't sent a word." She spoke, gritting her teeth in hidden anger.
The butler cleared his throat and spoke, reading the letter, "Emily, I, as the head of Goldheart, order you to come to the main house with our son. You will be provided the finest wear and practically limitless money and wealth. Bring your son with you. This is an order and not a request."
"What the fu-!?" She stopped midway, realising Liam was present there.
"What? I can refuse right?" She asked.
"Mam, I am sorry but you cannot refuse this. It is an order issued by the head himself and you as his wife, are not allowed to refuse or reject." The butler spoke.
'I fucking knew it. I knew it. My life will now go downhill from here.' Axiros cursed. He had faced these kinds of situations countless times before.
Over the following days, his mother and he were taken to the Goldheart mansion.
The estate itself was vast and immaculate, its halls lined with polished stone and cold gold inlays that gleamed under hanging chandeliers. To an outsider, it would have seemed like a place of privilege and honor.
For Axiros and his mother, it became a cage.
At first, the hostility was subtle. Conversations would halt when they entered a room. Servants received quiet instructions to delay meals or "forget" requests. Smiles were offered that never reached the eyes.
Axiros' mother endured it in silence, holding her head high, shielding him as best she could from what she clearly understood far better than he did.
As the years passed, the cruelty grew bolder. Axiros had grown older, old enough to be an adult.
The children of the Goldheart family mocked him openly, their words sharpened by the knowledge that no punishment would follow. They called him nameless. They called his mother a burden.
Laughter echoed through the corridors as if it were part of the mansion itself.
His mother tried to fight back, not with anger, but with dignity. She appealed to elders, to distant relatives, and finally to the head of the family himself.
She spoke calmly, laying out every slight and every humiliation, asking only for fairness, not favor.
Her pleas were heard.
They were simply ignored.
The family head listened with an unreadable expression, offered reassurances that felt rehearsed, and promised to "look into the matter." Nothing changed.
If anything, the harassment became more refined, more difficult to prove, as though the mansion itself had learned how to hurt without leaving marks.
Axiros watched all of this quietly. He held his mother's hand at night when she thought he was asleep. He memorized the way her shoulders stiffened before each gathering, the exhaustion she tried so desperately to hide.
Once-
"Let's put that bitch in her place. Yo, Mark, do you have any valuables on you?" A boy said.
They were in a corner of the mansion, their eyes glinting with bad intentions. Whatever they were gonna do, it was going to be nothing good.
"Yeah. I got my diamond necklace on me right now. What are you gonna do with it?" Mark answered, puzzled with Anthony, the boy's intentions.
"Nothing much. Just enough to get that bitch Emily out of the mansion." Anthony replied, clearly stating his bad intentions.
"Alright. What role do we have in this?" Mark asked.
"Mark, you are going to check whether the area is clear. Josh, you are going to place Mark's necklace in her wardrobe." Anthony assigned their roles.
"That is fucking genius. What about the cctv? When are we gonna do this?" Mark asked.
"Dont worry about the cctv. I will change and fabricate it. We will carry it out when the coast is clear my boy. We will do it when they aren't in their chambers." Anthony replied with a smirk on his face, clearly pleased with his plan.
"Alright, I will be on the lookout." Mark said.
----
They did just as they conspired. They planted the necklace in the wardrobe, when both Emily and Axiros or Liam were away.
"Elder Nicholas, Elder Nicholas. Help me." Anthony came running to an elder of the house.
"What is it Anthony? I swear if it is to waste my time, you, my boy are going to get a punishment so sev-"
"Aunt Emily stole Mark's necklace. I don't where it is. You got to check her house." Anthony interjected his sentence.
"What!? What proof do you have? You cannot blame someone carelessly. It could have been anyone else." Unlike others, Elder Nicholas was one of the most trusted of the head's men.
He was renowned for his clarity of mind and composed nature. No matter the situation, he never let personal bias cloud his judgment.
This is why Anthony chose him for his plans. Everyone had great faith within his judgement and won't doubt his decisions.
"Here it is. I have cctv footage. I had expected something like this would happen, so I had planted a secret camera, of course with Mark's consent, near his chambers." Anthony told, lying through his teeth.
He then proceeded to show the footage to Nicholas. It earned him gasps from the elder.
Nicholas did not act in haste. He understood the gravity of the situation and the consequences that careless words or rash decisions could bring.
Maintaining his composure, he instructed that her chambers be searched, quietly and respectfully. A small team of five was selected, people he trusted to carry out the task without unnecessary disturbance or gossip.
The search was conducted with care. Each drawer was opened slowly, each corner examined with deliberate patience.
Then, within the wardrobe, they found it, the necklace Josh had planted. It rested there innocently, as though it had always belonged, yet its presence felt painfully out of place.
The discovery did not bring clarity, only heavier questions. Nicholas examined the necklace himself, his expression unreadable, aware that a single object now carried the weight of suspicion and doubt.
He resisted the urge to jump to conclusions, knowing that truth demanded more than evidence, it required understanding.
Only after careful consideration did he give the next order. Emily and Liam, along with Axiros, were to be summoned back from their tour of the city.
The message was brief and courteous, offering no explanation beyond the need for their immediate return.
As the summons was sent, Nicholas remained where he was, silent and thoughtful. Whatever came next would change everybody's course.
"Mom, what going on?" Axiros asked.
"I myself am unaware son. I don't know." Emily spoke. Her chest tightened with a bad feeling.
'Fuck! Something bad has happened. I odnt feel good about this" Axiros thought as a knot formed in his stomach.
His instincts had never failed him, ever. And they now spoke of horrors.
They reached the mansion quickly, where they were informed of their compromised state.
Emily was kept in a temporary house arrest, accompanied by Axiros.
"Mom. How did this happen? I knew those bastards wouldn't let you stay here mom. We should have never come here." Axiros told. He was contemplating his next moves.
"I don't know son. You are right. We should never have come here." Emily sighed, holding back tears.
Just then, they were called. It was a trial within the family which would decide their fate.
Axiros knew their fate was sealed.
There would be no sudden mercy, no late intervention, no hidden kindness waiting at the end of the corridor.
He had lived too many lives to believe in such things. Patterns like this never ended differently. They only pretended they might.
With the weight of countless lifetimes pressing quietly against his thoughts, he understood what awaited his mother. Banishment, if they chose to be merciful. Execution, if they decided her existence had become inconvenient.
The outcome changed from world to world, from family to family, but the loss was always the same.
It had happened before.
Not once. Not twice. Enough times that the pain no longer surprised him, only hollowed him out.
In other lives, he had begged as a child before he rose to power. In others, he had screamed, threatened, even shed blood in desperation.
Sometimes he had tried to be obedient, believing that compliance might soften fate. Other times, he had fought back, only to learn how easily resistance could be crushed.
And in the quiet, he prepared himself to survive what he already knew was coming, because survival, cruel as it was, had always been the one thing fate allowed him.
Axiros quietly followed her to the trial room.
Several hours pass by as they waited for their verdict.
The members' true nature, one they had hidden behind masks, was revealed in the trial. None, absolutely none of them supported her.
Axiros had known this moment would come. Long before the accusations were spoken aloud, he had prepared for them, quietly and meticulously. He gathered timelines, contradictions, witnesses who had nothing to gain from lying.
He laid out the truth with care, stripping the lies bare piece by piece, certain that reason, at the very least, would be acknowledged.
It wasn't.
His words fell into the room and vanished, as if he himself did not exist. No one interrupted him, no one argued against his evidence.
They simply did not look at him. Their gazes slid past his small figure, fixed instead on the verdict they had already chosen.
Understanding settled in his chest, heavy and cold.
Bloodthirst surged up his throat, sharp and bitter, demanding release. For a moment, instinct screamed at him to act, to tear, to destroy, to make them understand what they were doing.
His hands trembled at his sides as he forced it back down, swallowing the urge with practiced control.
He had learned this lesson before.
Violence now would change nothing. It would only hasten the end.
His eyes lifted, meeting the room at last. They gleamed, not with tears, but with something far more dangerous.
A killing intent so dense it threatened to leak through his gaze, carefully locked behind layers of restraint built across lifetimes of suffering.
No one noticed.
He stayed silent after that. Not because he had nothing left to say, but because he had understood that this was not a trial meant to decide guilt.
It was an execution that wanted permission.
Then the voice of the judge, a corrupted and bribed man rang out.
"Emily Warden, you hereby shall be executed for your crimes. This is the decision of the jury collectively." He said.
A moment of disbelief ran through everyone. They had expected banishment at the worst not execution itself.