History might remember one of the greatest feats of Lunara's reign: the unification between all races, particularly a sparsely populated yet fearsome race known as the Night Creatures.
These creatures of the night found strength beneath the moon and the rich blood of strong creatures, the stronger, the better. At one point, they were rightfully confused with demons, as their gray skin and red eyes were almost immediate recognition of their ties to the demon race.
But demons they were not.
Almost immortal in the way their bodies were formed, but these enigmatic creatures still held their own weaknesses, with sunlight being a glaringly obvious one.
Yet Queen Lunara, a self-professed conqueror of dawn, shocked her loyal followers once more by conquering the plague of the sun. She created a veil over the realm that changed the sun's glow, allowing all to dwell without fear of its affliction.
This resulted in an oath made by the King of the Night, ensuring that as long as a child of Lunara breathed life, an heir to the throne of Night would always be devoted as a loyal steward. Six of the eight Shinjin were granted a loyal servant of the night from birth because of this.
"Y-you... Wait... This race... they were vampires, weren't they?" Suta blurted forth suddenly.
The response of silence from Anak was telling. Anak merely smoothed his elegant silken strands of hair behind his ear before continuing,
"When I met Lysann, he was still young, as was I. But my people aged differently; therefore, you would never tell we were the same age. While Lysann was born arrayed in gold—his smile, his hair, and his wisdom—I, on the other hand, was born on the other end of the spectrum.
Darkness was my home, the cold and unfilial lands where my father's usurped kingdom remained broken into fragments of its past self. I held no kin, only the instincts of survival: to kill or be killed. There was no trust nor camaraderie. From childhood, I was taught one simple thing: seek to kill them first, else they kill you next."
"The only freckle of hope I held was the small trace of blood that aligned me to the first King who made the oath with the goddess, an unbreakable oath that saw me ripped away from the black stones of murder and vile bloodshed and suddenly thrust into a world filled with hope, warmth, and smiles.
As you can imagine, this was unexpected and unusual for someone like myself, born in darkness. The prince of Golden Dawn taught me many things, though the most important lesson I learned from him was this: those who choose to show you kindness, despite the chaos surrounding them, are perhaps the most dangerous people you'll ever meet."
Suta sat comfortably with his legs cradled closely to his chest, staring dreamily into the fires as he awaited Anak's continuation. Anak had just finished roasting what Suta imagined was once a rabbit's foot before setting it aside on a loose log to cool down. He wiped his hands against a small handkerchief and set it aside neatly.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Now then... where was I..." Anak mused before continuing,
"The Shinjin were the first of their kind, Demi-Gods born between the union of a mortal and a Goddess. But even Lunara, in all her splendor, was not exempt from the laws of this world. With the unique gifts bestowed upon her children, a curse followed closely behind, tethered to each one, a curse from one of the ghosts of the felled Outer Gods.
The same way my people were cursed by direct sunlight. Lysann, though golden in all ways, was deaf and mute, unable to speak nor conjure the words of power, he was considered unable to cast incantations. But of course, a Demi-God's prowess was of a different caliber altogether. Lysann learned to rely on his hands, his incredible wisdom coupled with his graceful way of handling things proved to be world-changing. And thus, he created marvels within the silence of the world around him."
"One strange morning, I was with Lysann when he made a discovery, just before Nocturne's betrayal. A dream Lysann had beheld within his own silent ambitions finally bloomed—the truth that we were merely one spark amongst a vast world of stars. The existence of countless worlds was mind-blowing, but Lysann wasn't done shocking me. He revealed a strange creation of his, something he believed would help us cross the veil between worlds.
A contraption made out of two parts.
He called it the Apple of Crux."
Suta could hardly catch his breath. Feeling his heartbeat surging wildly.
"S-so... you both ended up traversing this v-veil... and then what... is that... is that how you arrived at C-" Suta began, but Anak cut him off.
"Human, be still with your thoughts," Anak sighed. "I haven't finished.
"There was little time for Lysann to test and inform his kin about this discovery, especially when we were dealing with something troublesome—a lingering essence of an outer God terrorizing the land, the wicked witch of the Northern Road. Both Lysann and I were called into action, and confronting this tempest wasn't easy. I was on the verge of defeat when Lysann made a choice... grh... a choice that changed everything. He activated the Apple and sent us three across the veil. And as you can imagine, what happened next was self-explanatory."
"We ended up being thrust into a world far beyond our usual realm, a place he would later call...Candy. Although at that time, it was fewer furry animals and two moons and was... heh... well, it was nothing short of hell. Where Monsters and plagues ran amok.
Things were so bad that we joined forces with the witch of the Northern Road just to have a chance at survival. Time passed, and with it formed an unlikely friendship between a Demi-God and the accursed outer God. Fufufu, of course, only such things could happen on a distant world. With Lysann's wisdom, he managed to form a rune, the first incantation I had ever witnessed him perform. O
ne which caused him to lose the light in one of his eyes and the feeling in his legs as a result of its obscenity. Tsk, he did it all for her—for that cursed witch."
"Wh-what did he..."
"He created a spell, a one of one that split the demonic essence away from every creature roaming across Candy. There souls tethered to a veil hidden in plain sight, it was absurd to even think about how he pulled it off heh-eh...but that was Lysann. His wisdom far transcended anything rationale."
"But one day, Lysann felt something in the sleeping Apple, a small freckle of light, a foreboding that his beloved sister, Silvanna, was about to die at the hands of his half-brothers. Suddenly, Lysann abandoned all the whimsical creatures he had formed from the devilish genes of the monsters that once roamed those lands. He formed the castle where the Northern Witch rests her helm and, with it, left me behind, cursed beneath this golden moon as a reminder of his hold over my pitiful life."