An Eldritch Legacy: Sin & Sacrilege

Orbs of enchanted pewter swirled within the shade cast by thick curtains of black and gold, vessels of black raked across the whites of his eyes, like a cancer, showing the fatigue laced within them. Tired as they were, they still shone with a zeal that could not—and would not—be suppressed.

The dream had haunted him all his life, playing like a curse on repeat, forcing him to relive the past and shoulder the weight of memories he would rather forget, memories that seemed to show him the horrifying truth of who he truly was, and the worst of it was that even with this realization, he did not seem to hate it, and that was what made him fear to actualize the realization.

He had spent the entire night like this, his eyes open, his lids never growing tired, his eyes naked to the world outside. After the events of the previous day, his mind was too burdened to simply dismiss his thoughts; they swirled within like aged ale, neither fast nor chaotic nor slow. It was at the balance that allowed him just enough room to dream. A daughter who was never supposed to be his. A past that did not belong to him. The weight of existence pressing down like an ancient curse. And a realization about himself that shattered the foundation of everything he thought he knew, that there could be said to be the only thing he had earned out of all this chaos.

He wanted a toy, a pawn that he would use for his own thrill, and now he was stuck with a 'daughter.' The situation was too complicated for him to come up with a follow-up plan... And that is what he should have been doing...

But all he had wanted… was rest.

Yet even that was denied to him, for the dream consumed his mind—his mother's love pushing through the fog of exhaustion, urging him on, even amid chaos.

The commemoration of the Children of the Lurker.

The mystery surrounding his birth.

The truths were half-seen through veils of myth and blood.

He had wanted nothing more than peace, and yet it eluded him like mist slipping through fingers.

Krael sat up in bed, running a hand through sweat-matted hair. His body felt strangely relaxed, yet his mind was taxed—a contrast that gave rise to a rare, oddly pleasurable dissonance. It was like sinking into lukewarm water after a storm: not quite peace, but not agony either. It would tug at so many sensations that one would be stuck in a realm of delirium so sweet, so pleasurable, and yet skull-crushingly achy.

He stretched, clinging to that strange balance, and staggered out of bed. As he did, the waxing light of the Great Pillar filtered through, soft and vibrant—today, it shimmered with a cherry-orange hue, like the sunrise of a forgotten season. It tugged gently at the joy within those who walked beneath its radiance. Gone was the almost magical and imperial light of gold and lavender that set a pace for the beginning of something new.

This instead sought to bring that balance of normality into the lives of those it shone on.

To Krael, however, it was merely a convenient energy source. Nothing more. Nothing less, he had never had the reverence that the people of Astrea seemed to wear like chains, flaunting their servitude to the world to see who was more devout, forgetting that they were slaves to the ephemeral.

His eyes squinted, adjusting to the sudden brightness, but the discomfort only added to the odd sensation that had clung to him since waking.

His mind, now sharply alert, ached faintly with pressure, his mental energy at an all-time low and his spirit taxed—while his body, by contrast, basked in the warmth, softening under the gentle touch of the light's rays, blood heavy like mountains seemed to rumble within his veins, setting ablaze the power in his blood, so near that he could touch and yet so far that it might as well have been in another reality altogether. He relished it.

How often did the body and mind war with one another?

More often than most would admit.

In battle, it was common for the mind to disconnect from the flesh. Overloaded with fear, fury, or desperation, the mind might fray at the seams—while the body moved on instinct, unlocking latent power buried in unknown realms. Only later would one awaken, broken and bloody, blade through chest… or standing atop a mound of corpses, drenched in victory.

Other times, the body failed first—weak, brittle, and near collapse—while the will alone dragged it forward, sheer determination carrying it through the hell that came with fighting for survival, and while it seemed like only in a time of death did this seem to happen, it did not necessarily mean that one had to pick up a blade. Even the lives of everyday people could be something that drove many mad.

The failed life of a mortal man...

Krael stepped to the windowpane, his bare chest exposed to the warm light of Astrea. Its glow played across his obsidian-hued skin, casting shifting patterns that danced with ethereal grace. At certain angles, black marks swam across his body—fluid, strange, and shifting—fluctuating between sacred sigils and cancerous outgrowths. They were unrecognizable to most… but ever-present, just beneath the beauty of his skin.

Yet Krael saw none of it.

His thoughts were consumed by the paradox of pain and pleasure, discomfort and comfort, and clarity and confusion.

And even if he had been the most sane he would ever be, he may have never realized he had them in the first place.

He did not notice the subtle shimmer in the air around him. He did not see his skin shift like mist—blurring, darkening, changing—as it transformed too intricately and quietly to name, just as frequent as the changes of the sky above, an intricate dance of the law of creation and the will of the heavens.

All of it remained veiled.

Even to him and until he stepped off the ground that held mortals, he would forever be unaware.

He exhaled deeply. The strange sensation faded, and with it, the remnants of the dream vanished—as though it had never happened at all. As though it had not robbed him of sleep.

The morning air kissed his skin, cool and tender, as he gazed out over yellowing and rubied fields. While torn asunder by the passing year's surge, they had begun to heal. Slowly. Painfully. But healing, nonetheless. A struggle that even Mother Nature could not escape from, a fate struggle seemed to be strewn in the very fabric of their existence.

Astrea's crops-fire-based in nature, which fueled their dominion—stretched as far as the eye could see. Hardy, sacred, and stubborn, they had seen more pain than even those that had died to the rampage of the surge, and yet they held like weeds; soon the land would heal, and life would return once more to the farmlands, and these crops would have long grown to be harvested and processed in the ever-living fires of those of the West, imbuing the unnatural product with spirit and life.

This… was one of his quiet joys.

Something ancient within him stirred every time he watched life bloom in stillness, a calling that had tugged at his soul since conception, a yearning named within his soul. Plants, after all, cared little for politics, schemes, or the petty grip of power.

They lived.

They died.

They evolved.

That was their singular truth.

It was a serenity he had loved since he was a child. And now, more than ever, he longed to return to it.

To soak his hands in warm soil again, to get his noble hands dirty with the tender shoots hidden beneath the heat-run soils of Astrea, providing care to the one thing that did not know how to live other than to live,

He hadn't yet done so—but he remembered the joy through his mother.

He remembered how she would smile, even while soaked in sweat, her back aching, muscles trembling, her clothes marred with dirt and grime, and her hair messy and matted with her sweat.

He had felt her joy… before he had even been born.

And now, he knew—he would find his peace there.

He no longer sought to control his life that much; he had the confidence that when the time came, the reins of fate would be in the hand of no other.

No longer did he fear the shadows of fate.

He would move forward—stride by stride—and in each stride, no matter how heavy the weight, he would carve a path where his word was law, and his every thought was obeyed by creation itself. A royalty and imperial majesty.

Not the kind measured in gold and throne rooms, but the kind forged from resilience, from purpose, from a pride redefined.

Today, he would indulge in a desire long buried.

To touch the earth not as a noble, not as a count, but as a man.

As someone who had once envied the peasants for their connection to life, of the joy they shared during their time of harvest.

He had once let ridicule hold him back—mocked by nobles for his strange yearning. But no more.

He realized now that if he truly believed in himself, then he should have never cared for their empty laughter.

So today—regardless of their stares, their whispers, or their judgment—Krael would step into the fields.

He would not think of the 'daughter' who was never meant to be.

He would not be burdened by the past he could not name.

Nor the looming guillotine of fate, always hanging, always waiting.

Today, he would simply live... if not for himself alone, then for all three of them...