It was the end of the ten years long war between two nations, Ochamus and Erune. Celebrations rang out in the streets as workers of industry could return to normality, instead of working long hours in factories, toiling to create weapons of war.

Civilians celebrated this momentous day, as the messengers flocked across the Eastern continent to bring the good news. For each city, a letter, and for each letter, a messenger.

Soon, the joy had spread across both nations, but tragedy wasn’t far away. Not on a nationwide scale, but in a single family.

There was a boy who lived in his famous father’s shadow, his older brother’s care, but almost never talked. His iris’ were a sickly, almost uranium green, a bad omen in his city in the capital of Ochamus, Bellaver. Most believed this meant he was ill, and carried a deadly disease that would soon take his life, but infect anyone that made contact.

Nobody knew the truth. This boy wasn’t a threat, the green eyes were simply a birth defect. But it was true that he was to be feared, just not yet. And it would remain a mystery of who would fear him, innocent lives, or the darkest evils.

His father was a baron, but also an alchemist. He was responsible for creating chemical weapons used in the war. Chemicals were his passion, and thus he was cold and reserved. Except to his children, to them, he was a completely different person. Protective, nurturing, and kind.

“Dr. Zeneger.” a voice said through his son’s door. “Oh, you aren’t the doctor.” the man said, opening the door to look at the boy, curled up in his bed. It was early in the morning, and he had yet to awaken.

“Do… Do you know where I can find Dr. Zeneger? I have something important for him.” he said as the boy sat up and opened his eyes. As soon as the man saw the green, he flinched instantaneously. “Oh, you are his son.” he said after a short pause.

“Lab.” the boy muttered silently, lying back down.

“Thank you.” the tall man nodded. The child noticed he carried a petri dish in his hands with some sort of sample inside.

The boy was only nine, yet he had a curiosity for all things that had only grown stronger with time. His father’s research fascinated him, his brother's knight training did too, although he much preferred the study and tactics over bold action and swordsmanship.

He got up out of his bed after ten minutes of contemplation. He was hardly a rowdy or actionable boy, he took things slowly.

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Instead of going to the bookshelf, he decided to check in on his father. He was always in the lab in the morning, sometimes awaking there after a long, coffee-filled night, a rare, but helpful drink. This new man he’d never met seemed interesting. And he wasn’t a stranger, because he knew his dad obviously. His father was truthful about the dangers of the world, and told him many truths to protect him. Strangers were to be avoided, especially in this time of war. Fear was rampant, but the war had ended now, they’d known for over three days now.

He opened the door slowly and walked out into the castle hall. They had two houses, the castle was one of them, and then they had their rural house back in the nobles neighborhood.

The cold winter air rushed past his ebony black hair through the castle windows, he frowned a little at the chills.

His fathers lab was just down the hall, and as he neared it, the door flung open, and the same man who had seen him earlier dashed out and leaped up on the windowsill gracefully. He wore a black wrap over his face now, but the boy remembered his face shape, his body type, and everything just from that short glance.

Then the man leaped from the window, out onto the roof, sliding down it, landing in the courtyard on his feet. He then walked away casually, nobody noticing him.

The boy looked into his fathers lab, the light scent of toxins and oil slipping out into the breeze. As he went closer, he still couldn’t see his father, but then he heard a cough.

He saw the newly sick man on the floor, the petri dish the other man carried now smashed upon the floor in little shards. His father was infected.

“Leave, now… that man… he… *cough*...” he choked through the virus, it worked extremely fast.

By the end of the day, he would be alive, but comatose. He would remain that way for years. His lab and his youngest son would be quarantined, and his older son would be sent off to boarding school.

But that was simply the start of the both miraculous, yet bone chilling life of little Xanthus Zeneger. He would follow in his father’s footsteps after all, and while his old man may have told him truths you and I know today, there are truths in the very fabric of their world that must never be learned, truths his father certainly kept.

And truths that Xanthus would soon discover that would bring upon a new war onto the Eastern Continent.