The smell of burning herbs filled the basement. Long black hair hung over his forehead, hiding youthful traits that were devoid of any childhood charm. His deep blood red eyes reflected the flickering candles standing around the circular stone altar. Beside him, the maid shifted her weight, holding a small silver lantern.
"It is time, Young Master Iver,"she murmured quietly, offering him the iron ceremonial knife. "Smear a drop of blood on your spirit animal to awaken your spirit core, Even... even if it is only an Axolotl, it will give you enough spirit energy to live out your days here in peace out here." He took the cold iron hilt without a word.
"Peace" It was a word meant for people who believed the world was fair. He didn’t view his second life as a gift or a fresh start. There was no such thing as a clean slate, his reincarnation had to be a type of chess game from a higher being and he was just a chess piece in it, but he wasn’t about to take part in this game.
...
In his former life, he had been entirely alone. Abandoned by his biological parents as a child, kicked out by his foster parents the moment he was old enough to walk away, he had grown up as a ghost among crowds.
He was bullied, rejected by society, he even became homeless but he became able to withstand it all, viewing life not as a series of random choices, but as a predetermined fate where the world was structured against him from the start.
He still remembered the day he decided to go to the park, sitting down at the park bench. The cold afternoon breeze, the sight of a small girl dangling precariously from the high ledge of a nearby building. He hadn’t run out of heroism or hope, he had just acted, he sprinted, throwing his body forward to catch her as she fell, she survived, though the impact still left her with minor injuries.
Then came the maid, the child’s actual caretaker, who had left the girl unattended while the parents were away. Panicked, desperate to escape accountability for her own neglect, the maid pointed at him and shrieked that he was a kidnapper attempting to abduct the child and that he had hurt her during the process.
So the mass crowded him even nearby witnesses sided with the maid and beat him up and later on the police took him away.
When the child’s wealthy parents returned, they used raw corruption to buy the judge, ensuring a swift, brutal conviction. He was sentenced to death, sitting in that courtroom, listening to the conviction, he hadn’t felt anger or hatred.
It was simply human nature. Self preservation was the absolute law of mankind, when backed into a corner, people will always crush an innocent variable to save themselves. The system wasn’t broken, it was working exactly as human nature dictated.
As the heavy noose was fitted around his neck, he had looked out over the crowd, completely detached. He had closed his eyes, expecting the void.
’What a crappy life’, he had thought as the trapdoor fell and his neck snapped. But at least it ended. Except it hadn’t.
...
He woke up as an infant in the frozen continent of Requiem, born into House Vorne, an elite assassin family serving the Empire. His mother, a noblewoman carrying the legendary Phoenix spirit, died during childbirth.
When the clan elders inspected the newly formed spirit runes on his infant back, they revealed the mark of a soft, pale, translucent creature with feathery pink gills. An Axolotl. To a family that bred lethal Shadow Drakes, an Axolotl was a useless disgrace.
Disgusted, his father honored his mother’s final request by keeping him alive, but banished him immediately to the dark, isolated forest on Requiem’s southern border, leaving a single maid to raise him in a secluded wooden manor.
For ten years, while the rest of the Waning Realm clawed for survival, he lived in total isolation. He read the dusty books, learning of the grand history taught to common folk, that the great founder Typhon had slain the ancient primordial evil that once threatened the universe, leaving humanity to rebuild itself using spirit animals.
He learned of the Empire ruling from Solace, the Saint Mortis cultists hiding in Gloomhaven’s mists, the lawless outcasts in Nilheim, and the abominations of Terminus.
He knew humanity was trapped in a decaying world, searching desperately for a way out. But he cared nothing for saving them. He viewed his reincarnation as a piece set on a grander board by some higher entity. He refused to be a pawn ever again. To bow to no one and stand at the top.
Now, at ten years old, Iver sliced his left palm with the iron knife and pressed his bleeding hand flat against the center of the altar.
CRACK.
The stone split down the middle. A wave of suffocating, pitch black miasma erupted outward, blowing out the candles instantly. The maid gasped, stumbling back against the stone wall as the air turned heavy enough to crush lungs.
As the spirit awakening completed, the runes etched into the skin of Iver’s back began to shift and rewrite themselves. The pale, faint mark of the Axolotl cracked and dissolved. In its place, thick, jagged lines carved themselves deep into his skin, forming the intricate, terrifying tapestry of a coiled, crowned serpent with slit pupils. A Basilisk, A calamity class spirit.
The maid stepped closer, her eyes wide with absolute shock and amazement. She stared at his back, breath catching in her throat.
"Young Master Iver..." she gasped, a sudden, bright smile breaking across her face. "Look at these runes! This isn’t a weak salamander... it’s a high tier spirit beast! If I show this to your father, if I send word to House Vorne right now, they will take you back! You won’t have to stay in this forest anymore. You can finally return home!"
She turned toward the wooden stairs, eager to grab a scroll and draft a message to the main estate to deliver the good news. Iver stood still, He knew she wasn’t trying to hurt him. In her mind, she was trying to save him, to return him to a noble family. But to Iver, returning to House Vorne meant being shoved directly into a cage of political scheming, and public scrutiny. Returning meant putting a leash back around his neck.
Even with a ten year old body, a physical confrontation with an adult wasn’t something he could win through brute strength alone. He had to be precise, leveraging the exact moment her guard was completely down.
As she stepped past him toward the stairs, overwhelmed by excitement, she left her flank completely exposed. Iver moved without a sound. He didn’t yell or show hesitation. Using the momentum of his step, he drove the iron ceremonial knife upward into the soft gap between her ribs, piercing directly into her heart from behind.
The maid froze. The joy in her eyes collapsed into confusion as her knees buckled. She didn’t even have the breath to scream as Iver supported her weight briefly, letting her slide silently to the stone floor. He couldn’t afford to let anyone know his true core had awakened.
"No hard feelings," he whispered, placing his hand over her cooling back.
Within his soul, the hidden Basilisk core pulsed, violently stripping her spirit energy. A dark red light flared, and a single crimson rune etched itself alongside the Basilisk markings on his spine his first absorbed ability, Presence Erasure. (the power to mask one’s presence/aura).
He wiped the blade on his sleeve and turned toward the dark window, looking out into the perpetual gloom of the forest...
...
This is my first book, if you think something should be improved, feel free to tell me...