EXTRA CHAPTER- Rhael Moren: Origins
VIREHOLM —Political heart of Northcrest.
The hallway stank of burned fabric and ruptured nerves.
Rhael stood alone beneath a cracked archway, breath steady, shirt torn open at the collar. Blood ran down the length of his forearm, not his own. He was 16 at that time
Six older students lay crumpled in the corridor behind him — not dead, but broken in ways they wouldn't recover from soon. One had a leg twisted completely backward. Another was still twitching. The third… wasn't moving at all and rest three? Don't ask.
He hadn't meant to do it. Not entirely.
He just wanted them to stop talking.
To stop grabbing.
Then the hallway... responded.
Like something inside him had reached outward and pulled the sound back in — their words, their hands, their motion. And then gave it all back at once.
The walls still vibrated.
He tilted his head.
"…Interesting."
Older. Sharp silver eyes. Long charcoal coat. The Northcrest recruiter — the one who found him after the incident in Academy of Vireholm. The one who saw what Rhael had done to those six boys with no spell, no weapon.
Just timing.
Echoes.
"You were impressive," the man said.
Rhael didn't look up.
"I was bored."
The recruiter smiled faintly.
"We like bored minds. It means you're listening."
He was sixteen when they gave him the Northcrest Initiate Badge.
Seventeen when they handed him his first mission.
A Year Later
Messy was the only thing he was good at.
He wasn't like the other initiates. Didn't care for the riddles or reflection tests. He answered questions with blood when he could. And when he couldn't, he learned how to.
He didn't want understanding.
He wanted power.
Each resonance echo he triggered taught him something new — how to plant trauma in a surface. How to wait. How to delay pain until it cracked the ribs from inside.
And the recruiter?
He started talking too much.
Called Rhael "his legacy."
Said he made him.
So Rhael made a correction.
The wind in the summit chamber howled against the ancient glass. Ice-patterned floors, twin hearths, banners of moonlight stitched into silk. This was Northcrest's inner sanctum.
And at the center — standing with hands folded behind his back — was Kieran Duskvale, The Supreme Head Of Northcrest
Cold. Beautiful. Terrifying.
His words came slowly. Precisely. Like each syllable had been examined a dozen times before speaking.
"You want something more than chaos, don't you?"
Rhael didn't answer. Not right away.
He had no reason to lie. Not here.
Duskvale turned. His eyes — a cold, pale iced-blue — studied him like frost on glass.
He reached into the folds of his coat.
And tossed a yellow badge onto the floor between them.
It clicked softly against the stone.
"Authority," he said. "Logistics, clearance, operational command over initiates in the Moonfen region. You'll wear it."
Rhael's gaze didn't shift from the badge.
"And the other one?"
Duskvale's expression never changed. But the next words weren't casual.
"Bring me what I asked for. And I will give you black."
"The highest tier a Northcrest operative can hold without being born into the seat."
"You'll have power most only whisper about."
Moonfen Reach – 1 Months Ago
Off-Record Operation Site – Classified
The wind beneath the Reach didn't feel like wind.
It breathed like something buried.
The stone was old. Not weathered — erased. Even the moss didn't cling for long. And yet here they were. Three factions, one goal.
Northcrest. Stonehelm. Silverquill.
An illegal alliance of interests — buried under so many layers of silence even the sky wasn't allowed to speak of it.
And if he succeeded?
Black tier. The badge of power just beneath the seat of the Council itself.
The mission was simple:
Retrieve what the Head of Northcrest wants from beneath the ruins. Whatever it is. Intact.
What it was? No one told him.
Didn't matter.
He remembered the boy sitting alone in the treeline.
Back to the world. Knees drawn. Quiet.
Didn't even sense him approach.
Rhael narrowed his eyes when he didn't give him importance.
Arrogant little shit.
Didn't flinch. Didn't even look up.
Just kept watching the woods like the trees were going to give him answers.
So Rhael wanted to say something sharp.
The boy ignored him.
No fear. No awe. Just apathy.
Rhael's smile didn't reach his eyes.
He wanted to shatter him just for the look on his face.
One Day Later – Ruin Perimeter Briefing
They gave him a file.
Seren Vael, Age 19. Velrenmar Local academy. Incomplete records.
File flagged with missing data, blank points, and a flame related affinity listing that no one seemed to notice.
Pathetic.
No documented achievements. No proper duels. No faction sponsorships. No reason to be relevant.
He almost laughed.
"You? You're nothing. A twitchy little mutt playing at mystery."
Still, something itched at the back of his skull.
Like a story that didn't end where it should've.
Rhael couldn't stop thinking about it.
Not the file.
The look in Seren's eyes.
That half-glance. That silence. That complete disregard for danger.
It wasn't bravery.
It was worse.
He didn't treat Rhael like a threat.
And that?
That made him want to gut the boy slow and watch him realize how wrong he was.
The second time he truly saw Seren fight was beneath the falls.
Moonlight bleeding through the mist. Wind biting through the carved-out pass.
Rhael had waited in silence — perched high, watching.
He felt it.
That presence.
The boy had wandered into restricted territory, past boundary wards that even seasoned scouts avoided. Alone. Like a moth dancing through a minefield.
Perfect.
"There you are. I was hoping you'd wander somewhere stupid."
Rhael had leaned forward slowly, pupils dilated, lips parting.
He didn't know why he was grinning.
It wasn't joy.
It was something purer. Hungrier.
He'd planned to cripple him — not kill. No, not yet. Not until the boy knew what kind of thing had been watching him from the trees.
And then Seren moved.
Not like a fire-user.
There were no flames.
No heat.
Just—momentum.
Coiled. Rerouted. Condensed. Released.
Not magic in the usual sense — mechanics in motion.
His footwork wasn't flashy. His strikes weren't beautiful.
They were designed to kill.
That was the first warning bell.
But Rhael didn't care.
Even when the ground cracked. Even when his body was redirected mid-step. Even when Seren's elbow collided with his rib like a warhammer hidden in silk—
He was smiling.
Because Seren was still struggling.
Still bleeding.
Still panicking.
He looked strong unlike in the file— but his bones told the truth.
Rhael could hear them.
Cracking. Buckling.
So he whispered again.
"You'll snap eventually. I'll make sure of it."
But Where Did It Go Wrong?It wasn't one moment.
It wasn't the elbow.
Or the redirected shockwave.
Or the palm that detonated his sternum.
No.
It was after all of that.
It was when Seren didn't fall.
When he kept walking through malice field designed to cripple even top tiers he faced in past.
When he bled from the mouth and never blinked.
When he keep on waking, with his shoulder broken and his leg split at the joint.
That was when the joy started to rot.
It turned to confusion.
Then disbelief.
And finally—
Fear.
"I told you not to smile."
Seren dragged his steps to the edge of the basin, blood dripping with each motion — steady, deliberate.
He didn't even glance back.
"Smile now," he muttered, voice like cracked stone.
"Let them see your pathetic self crumpled like trash."
"Let them watch."
A pause. The silence almost respectful — but it wasn't.
Rhael had once killed the man who brought him into Northcrest.
Split his spine open across marble tile, just to prove he deserved power.
He'd smiled when the body fell.
Smiled when he took the badge from the corpse with blood still warm on it.
He thought that was control.
But now...
Now, he understood what the man saw before he died.
The same look Seren Vael had just given him.
Not rage.
Not satisfaction.
Pity.
The kind that didn't come from mercy—
—but from certainty.
"I thought fought the worst."
"That had been the worst."
"Northcrest fed me that lie like wine."
"Turns out—I wasn't the beast in the pit."
"Just a loud fish in a shallow pond."