7th Nahaniel, Three Years Ago

Abruptly, he came back to life. Smothered by the corpses of unlucky men, women, and children. The foul stench of decomposing bodies in various post-mortem stages overwhelmed him. He somehow knew that he had been dead for a good length of time. Yet no rot or the ever so obvious signs of human death had touched him. His lungs craved for more air as he slowly tried to move one body after another.

When he crawled out of his human grave; the cold air of the howling night and the cool water of the raging rain gave him strength.

A cart full of dead bodies. It wasn't moving. Someone had done away with the two drivers. The lonely horse was the first to go. A few strong and precise arrows had torn into it. One of the men sat with his back against one of the wheel's of the cart. Several arrows had pierced through his body but death didn't come to him with its warm embrace. With shaky hands, his killer tried to cut his throat from end to end. Several shallow and a few deep cuts later, he died. The other man laid lifeless on the muddy road. His body violated so many times by the swords of his killers that even the brightest surgeon would fail miserably to stitch him up.

He crawled over the dead bodies with the little strength he had and then fell down on the wet earth beneath him. He tried to get up.

'Cut off his skin and write the blasphemous names underneath.' An old and calm voice said inside of his head.

He looked at his hands. The skin was stitched onto them with thick surgical sutures and he recalled his loathsome death. The phantom pain of the past made his body unbearably heavy. Still, he forced himself into a kneeling position. The young boy looked up at the sky with indignation and resentment. He screamed back at the thunders with all he had. His rage directed not at the sky but all of creation. And creation itself replied when he felt someone's warm breath on his shoulder.

Time warped and everything became meaningless.

"Sweet boy..." A meticulous voice of what seemed like a middle-aged woman spoke to him.

"So much anger and hatred I feel in you..." Her words chosen carefully and her voice so tailored and serene that it would even calm the god of war.

"I find it enticing," She said as her warm tongue passed over his neck. Her intimate touch healed his body of wounds and scars. Ancient words of power appeared on his hands with burning intensity. This burn felt comfortable to him.

"Seek me out in the lonely and desperate places of your world."

"Even the Watchmaker deceives me," the boy uttered. His words barely intelligible. He didn't seem to care about the bizarre woman or the absurdity of the situation he was in.

"I will be watching you with great interest," she said as her existence disappeared into the night.

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13th Aurum, Present Year

Emilia Amadeo Frost and her mother Julia Amadeo Frost lived in a small 3 story building in the Ludemborg district of the great city of Newton. The capital of the Republic of Oplor. Ludemborg was a poor district and like most of its buildings, their building too was old and breaking apart. Julia had been saving up money to renovate it and sometimes she felt that she would never be able to save enough.

Like an ideal mother, she invested a significant portion of her waking hours worrying about Emilia. She was a pretty girl. Much prettier than Julia was when she was younger. The fact that Emilia didn’t care much about her looks annoyed her.

"Emi is still in bed. Should I go wake her up?" Bato said. He was given a room on the ground floor. He worked as Julia’s assistant in the fish shop and was quite a dedicated worker. Julia was proud of him but loathed his ‘secret’ crush on her daughter.

"No. I will do that," Julia said giving him a suspicious look.

Emilia, locally known as Emi, was a troublesome and odd child. From a very young age, she showed an unusual attraction towards books. To this day, Julia regrets her decision of teaching her daughter how to read and write.

Julia walked up the stairs and knocked once on Emilia's door before barging right in.

"What a mess!" She screamed.

Stolen story; please report.

There were books all over the place and hundreds of notes were attached to the walls. Ants infested two plates with half eaten food and clothes were thrown to various corners of the room with blatant disregard. A new addition to Emi’s usual decoration was a pentagram inscribed in a circle on the wooden floor, drawn with white chalk. Julia shuddered thinking about what its use was.

"I leave her alone for just two days and this is what she does to her room!" She yelled as she hurriedly walked towards Emi’s bed.

"Wake up! You infernal girl!" Julia screamed as she crazily shook her body.

"Hellish slaughter! ! Why do you pester me like this, woman? I was awake all night! Go away!" She screamed back as she covered her head with a pillow.

"Your arcanist buddy Samuel sent a letter," She said.

And that was enough to wake Emilia up, even from death.

"Really?! Give it to me!" She said as she hurriedly snatched the letter from her mother.

"Samuel is coming today, with an instructor from the academy. I stood 67th in the Academy merit list! He is coming with the interviewer," she said with an excited voice as she put her hand inside her shirt to fix her brassiere, which was annoying her left breast for a long time.

"Don’t do that! It’s so unladylike," her mother said.

"To hell with ladylike! Comfort trumps manners!" she said.

"You will never get a proper husband with that sailor's mouth!"

"Who needs a husband? Foolish woman, I’m going to the Academy! As far as I’m concerned I will end up running this country someday. I swear I will make a law mandating girls to use at least one slang in every sentence. That will teach annoying mothers like you to know better!" She said with glowing eyes.

'There she goes with her wild dreams,' Julia thought, this wasn’t a good news for her.

She was in content with Emi receiving essential education from the nearby school, but certainly wasn’t happy that she was going off to get nonessential education. She especially felt disturbed about the fact that her fields of interest were Arcane Arts and Natural Philosophy. Both fields were dominated by men of somewhat lesser morality.

Emilia brushed her teeth, bathed and wore the nicest dress she could find. When she came down, Bato could do nothing but blush like an idiot.

She sat down on the dining table and her mother passed to her a plate of fried fish with a piece of lime, bread and a glass of warm lemon water.

"I am so happy today that I won’t even complain about the fact that all we eat is fish," Emilia said. Their family business being cleaning and selling raw fish, made it their default food.

"You’re happy? Ha! You’re never happy! Last year you ate the cake Aunt Julia made for my birthday… all by yourself! And then you stole all of my pocket money and then you beat me up.." Bato's face became increasingly sad as he went on another one of his unrelated 'Emi' trauma rant.

"You’re going somewhere with that?" Emilia rolled her eyes.

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13th Aurum, Present Year, Somewhere else

Nahaniel walked the stairs silently. In his right hand he held a translucent blue crystal rock that lit up the heavy darkness and in his left hand he held a playful little black cat. His face was covered with a gray cloth. He wore a black vest and a white shirt underneath it with black linen pants. There was something archaic about the air of this building that made him feel queasy and a sense of nausea was creeping up on him as he slowly reached the topmost floor.

Nahaniel looked at the cat and it meowed once before jumping out from his hand. Nahaniel watched as the cat seemingly disappeared into the shadows.

"So this is it," he said to himself.

He approached the door and found it to be locked. It didn’t matter to him, as he had many names. Names no human should have.

"He who is everywhere and nowhere," he whispered in an ancient tongue. He suddenly disappeared.

He reappeared on the other side of the door and carefully saw what lay in front of him. There were hundreds of empty bird cages of various shapes and sizes. He slowly walked towards the center of the room and broke the crystal by crushing it with his bare hand.

The darkness consumed everything again and the bird cages clashed with each other violently, making a cacophony of noises. Something plunged towards him with an animosity unknown to the familiar world. Yet Nahaniel's body moved just as fast as that thing as soon as he could sense it. At the next moment he was facing the direction from which the thing was approaching him. He stood quietly as he heard its louds steps and wicked noises. The foul stench of death and decay soon followed. It was close.

Nahaniel did not falter. Nor was he afraid. "He who sees," he whispered again and soon veins became visible around his eyes and his sclera turned blood red. The darkness burned before him. He could see everything.

‘Old man Barnabus. He waited a decade in this room with his friends, birds that nobody cared about. Men were cruel, Barnabus knew that. But he could never understand the cruelty of children. He gathered these birds and put them in cages to save them. But is this how you save a bird? He spoke to these creatures and they spoke to me. So one day I came to him and spoke the ancient tongue. It gave him powers beyond his imagination and what did he do with it? He stopped the evil children. When he realized what he had done, he locked himself up in this room and cursed my name, earning an eternity of pain.’ The woman spoke.

She took down the cover from his eyes and he saw it. Suspended right in front of him. It had no eyes or nose. On its face were ten deep holes and ten tongues came out them.

She had left the world again. The cat became extremely violent. Nahaniel twisted the head of the cat and looked deep into its eyes. The wicked thing that walked in this room was no more.

He quietly put down the lifeless body of the cat onto the floor.

Rest in peace. Barnabus.’ He said. The cat slowly stood up again and jumped on his lap. He petted it with cold eyes.