We are what we are. There's no point in denying our nature

Domain Ignitium

In a forest on the outskirts of the city, a small cabin of three rooms stood, almost hidden in the shadow of the dense trees. The branches intertwined above the roof as if the forest itself sought to protect this secret place.

Linfer was seated at a rough wooden table, staring at a veiled woman before him. Her presence emanated a strange aura, both soothing and terrifying. With a simple and precise gesture, she poured tea into two cups. One was placed in front of Linfer, the other in front of her.

"So, how are you doing?" Alderbaran finally asked in her soft voice. She slowly lifted her cup, without yet taking a sip.

Linfer observed his sister without flinching. He was not surprised by the fluid way she handled objects, despite her destructive nature. Her black flame only awakened upon contact with living beings, a detail he had learned not to fear anymore.

A thin smile curved his lips as he brought the cup to his mouth. "More than ever, I feel... alive."

"Alive?" Alderbaran repeated, her tone slightly mocking. "You're changing. More and more..."

"For the better," Linfer replied confidently.

Alderbaran set her cup down, without having tasted it, and slightly tilted her head, her piercing gaze fixed on him. "For the better? Maybe. But it seems especially that you can no longer bear solitude. To ally yourself with Elysians... who would have believed it?"

In recent years, Linfer had not only transformed into a moral monk, allied with an archangel of justice, and loved by a virtuous woman. He had also grown closer to his sister. As she was in the same territory, when they were not attacking, he took the time to visit her.

Alderbaran, as usual, remained in solitude. She was the true ruler of Ignitium, but she still remained in the shadows, acting only in extreme importance. She knew that her presence was harmful to living beings, and even more so to mortals. It was one of the reasons why Linfer kept her company.

Linfer sighed, acknowledging, despite himself, the truth in his sister's words.

From his youngest age, he had grown up under the hateful gaze of a father whose animosity he did not understand. His elder brother, naturally distant, contrasted with his own playful and immature nature. Alderbaran, although kind and caring, inspired an instinctive fear.

But the deepest wound, the one that never truly healed, was the abandonment of his mother. This absence had dug a void that nothing seemed to be able to fill.

Over the years, his actions had been a desperate quest for maternal attention, an attempt to overcome his inferiority complex towards Leviathan and this unknown brother who haunted his thoughts.

He had tried to attract the attention of others, but without success. In this whirlwind of repressed emotions and unhealed wounds, Linfer had found a perverse outlet: harming others. It had become his twisted way of feeling better, of regaining a semblance of control over his life.

He paused for a moment, memories of his childhood rising to the surface, like ashes carried by the wind. "Everything I did... was to fill that void."

'Humiliating our father, feeling superior... But in the end, Epsilone, whom I saw as a simple one-night stand, became my confidant. Uriel, an unlikely ally, became a brother-in-arms, and all this, thanks to Zitish...'

Thinking of his first love, Linfer smiled tenderly, but his gaze hardened as it fell on Alderbaran.

"It's true," he murmured, "I became a man for Zitish. I changed for her. I have to prove to her that I can be different."

Alderbaran remained silent, then slowly removed her veil, revealing a face that was both fascinating and terrifying. Her eyes were two unfathomable abysses, chasms in which one seemed to be able to lose oneself, but at the bottom of which burned a black flame, flickering, as if it were burning with contained power. These eyes had something hypnotic about them, both attracting and repelling. If Eden were there, he would have noticed that she looked like two drops of water to his first love, a woman for whom he had cried so much upon her death.

Her hair, ash gray, fell in light locks around her face, reminiscent of the ashes of a dormant volcano, and on her forehead was inscribed a symbol of a black flame. But it was not her hair or the symbol that captured attention, it was her skin. Cracked, marked by dark fissures, it seemed on the verge of breaking. From these black lines sometimes escaped eruptions of black flames. With each new fissure that appeared, it was as if something uncontrollable rumbled beneath the surface, a volcanic force ready to erupt at any moment.

Her face, despite its icy beauty, was a land in perpetual threat, as if it harbored a fire that was just waiting to devour the world around her.

"Still not used to my face, little brother?" she said with a smile.

Linfer suppressed a shiver and averted his gaze to take a sip of tea. "It's hard to stay calm in front of someone who could reduce me to ashes by accident," he joked.

"You overestimate me," she replied softly. "My law, Anti-Stasis, is not that powerful."

"No, indeed, nothing too powerful. Just a law capable of returning everything to its state of instant degradation," Linfer replied sarcastically.

Alderbaran let out a slight laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. "Oh, you're exaggerating, little brother."

"Apart from Leviathan, no one can stop this flame," Linfer continued. "That's why I was jealous of him. In terms of innate talent, no one can compare... except perhaps Belzebuth."

"When we were just embryos, it was his law that prevented Mom from burning from the inside. That's why you've never been jealous of me?" she asked.

A silence fell in the room, broken only by the rustling of the leaves in the background.

"You know, Sister, I've always wondered if you had my former personality, so eager to harm others. What would this world become? Would even Leviathan be able to stop you if you didn't try to control yourself? It's hard to admit, but your law, as powerful as it is, is more of a curse than anything else."

Linfer's eyes darkened as he looked at the fissures on his sister's skin, more than anything, he knew what it meant. In fact, apart from Alderbaran himself, no one knew, not even Leviathan, his twin brother.

Alderbaran smiled, not at all sad about her fate.

"You know, it doesn't change anything. My life has always been the same color. Everything has a reason, Linfer. We are what we are. There's no point in denying our nature," she concluded, enigmatically.

Linfer, still confused by her words, looked at her in silence. "What do you mean by that?"

But Alderbaran remained mysteriously silent about her thoughts and took the two cups.

"Another cup of tea?"

She took the teapot and poured more tea.