I always thought I was invisible.
Even my own brother barely noticed me. He was everything I was not—strong, confident, untouchable. People followed him, cheered him on, trusted him. And me? I stumbled behind, always second, always weak.
"Come on, you can't even lift that?" he laughed one day, his tone sharp but familiar. His shadow stretched over me as I struggled to hold the practice sword. I swallowed my pride, tightened my grip, and forced myself to stand.It wasn't just the sword. It was everything. Every failure, every mockery, every mistake I couldn't fix. The world made it clear: I was weak.
I wanted to change. I wanted to be strong. But no matter how hard I tried, the gap between us never closed.
Yet… even in those moments of failure, I felt something strange, almost imperceptible. A whisper in the air, a chill in my chest, like the world was… watching me. I brushed it off. Weaklings don't matter. Prophecies don't matter. Shadows don't matter.
But my brother… he mattered. The one person who pushed me, who could see the worst and the best in me at once. And maybe… the one person whose approval I'd chase until the day I died.
Little did I know, that day was coming sooner than I thought.
Even as he laughed at me, even as I fumbled, a seed of something darker was planted. Something that would awaken when the world demanded it, something that would turn my weakness into something no one could ignore.
For now, though… I was just the weak one. Just the shadow behind my brother. Just the forgotten.
And in a world that was already tearing itself apart, that was all I was allowed to be.