Another noble dropped dead today. How peculiar. His magic consumed from the inside like an ever expanding void. Familiar….
"It was the Solstice feast. Yet another year where none set out a plate for me. Not an insult….but an oversight. My family's magic recoiled from my chair like water from oil, leaving a perfect circle of unscorched wood in a room charred by my siblings' tantrums. Even destruction had forgotten me."
There I sat as mothers flame spell licked across the table roasting the meal before us. Again the flames missed me. It's heat absent from my skin as if it had died only inches before me. This Solstice just like the last, a feeling of emptiness carried me through. My family, they seemed….happy? Perhaps it was because they didn't notice me. I wanted them too, but that feeling always died as it arrived. I knew something about it wasn't right. As I looked around I could catch a glance of my sister, Fortune, her eyes panned away from mine as normal.
The day of Solstice was like no other. A celebration of magic….no a celebration of light. The Solstice Sun. I never understood that light. My family's manor was the heart of magic within the realm.
The Grand hall blazed with magic. Thousands of Nobles watched with eyes that shined like diamonds, sapphires and rubies. The gems always seemed absent to me. Even with all these eyes, all that magic surrounding me I never once felt so much as a thing from any of it. More eyes that wished to look through me.
They watched as the Magic Committee bestowed my siblings each with a grace of Solstice. A companion of light: A phoenix for my eldest sister, Danica. A wolf with fur of roaring storms for my brother Karios. Then a reanimated hatchling dragon for fortune. Creatures that made the pit I felt inside grow and tremble. I wonder if the Grace of Solstice trembles because I linger near. When they approached me, the Committee Head's staff flickered out.
He recoiled.
"Still clinging to the table, leech?" He sneered, loud enough for the gallery to hear.
"Your family's light is dimmed by your…..emptiness. A noble house such as Solstice shouldn't tolerate such trash."
Laughter echoed. Mother averted her gaze. Fathers knuckles whitening as he grasped his goblet.
I anxiously grasped the tablecloth. It frayed to threads beneath my fingers.
The Committee skipped past me. I heard their words echo through layers of consuming silence. Muffled. But cutting clear all at once.
"Nobles don't keep leeches—they purge them…"
Danica's eyes pierced me with unmistakable hatred. An anger that shed her magic around her being.
"Damned Parasite…dragging the solstice name." she spat in hushed tones.
I reached for a goblet of wine.
My fingers passed through the stem. Gold shivered and dissolved like smoke. No one noticed….they never did. But across the table my sister, Fortune, Flinched. She knew, she had always known.
Father raised a toast, his catalyst shining bright with Solstice's light.
"To the convergence! May our Magic burn brighter than the solstice sun!"
Flames of golden erupted from every candle, every sconce…except for mine.
Around my chair, darkness pooled, thick and hungry. A hunger that grew ever vast with every passing Solstice celebration where my breath lay still.
The shadows stretched towards my siblings' light like roots seeking water.
My sister Dancia's grace from Solstice light ventured close to that hunger. Its fire gutted out. It fell, ash before it touched the floor.
Dancia shouted before the table as her grace fell to nothing.
"Are we really to keep this parasite around our noble ventures in magic?!" She prattled.
I could barely even hear the talk among the gallery.
Mother finally spoke to me.
"Must you sit there, boy? Like a stain on this celebration?" Her voice was scalding, but her magic wavered when she gestured toward me.
The grand chandelier above dimmed.
Fortune whispered,
"Mother don't-"
But Father slammed his fist, the table trembled. The Committee turned attentive.
"Enough! Your presence poisons this house!"
Magic surged from him—a tidal wave of force meant to crush me. It hit my chest, tearing me from my chair…and vanished. Not deflected. Erased.
The void I felt gnawing within yawned wider….I was not allowed to remain at the feast…today felt. inevitable. Unavoidable.
I ventured into my manor's halls as the Solstice Celebration continued. The walls cracked at my wake. I could see the paint from the manors art reel away. The doors held shut by magic cried and opened in my mockery of a presence.
I was always drawn to the garret of the manor. The space was cramped. Filled with dust, sulfur, and the manor's music box.
The tune from the box grinded silent as I ascended into the space. My steps never printed where I went. Not even a creak of the old manor floorboards.
A chest lurked at the attic's end. What led me here. As I reached down into the open chest, a blade of an enchanted edge pierced my reckless searching arm. The blade's light glimmered dim as it faded from tempered steel to ash.
"I learned I was dead when the flies avoided my wound. Blood should draw them, but the gash on my arm wept only dust, and the insects veered away like I was a window they couldn't see."
Shards of broken mirrors in the room reflected only a blurred figure.
I found Fortunes grimoire within the chest—Forbidden Hexes & Necromancies.
The leather hissed at my touch. Pages dissolved like wet ash as I read:
".....to quicken flesh that never drew breath…"
Suddenly Fortune snatched it from my deathly hands.
"You Parasite!"
"Stop defiling everything you touch!"
The last thing I could read as the pages crumbled: "Quickening requires a price. One living soul per minute of false breath.
She flinched back as I exhaled in her direction. Even the stench of her grave magic smelled like nothing to me.
Father stormed in, Magic crackling.
"First the committee's disgrace, now theft? You deathly boy. This will be the last Solstice you suck the light from."
He cast a searing chain—a whip of white fire and thunder. Father's lightning spell rang silent in my ears. As it struck and vanished. I fell deeper into an empty chasm. The world had dulled.
Fathers hand blackened. His arm withered to bone, flesh peeling like rotten fruit. He screamed—a sound that vanished into my silence.
Mother had soon arrived. Her back glued to the wall as if to avoid me.
Fortune screamed as father collapsed.
"I had to give you form! Mother said you were just waste!" she screamed at me, tears cutting through her stature. "I didn't know you'd be hungry!"
"We cut it out of me…." Mother hissed, backing away as rot spread across the ground toward her.
"We ended you before breath, that thing was no child…It had no spark. No magic. No soul…just flesh…Fortune stitched a corpse to torment us."
Fortune sobbed.
"You said he was nothing! But he's worse—he's—"
"You gave us a cancer!" Father spat, cradling his withered arm. "A walking scourge!"
"I thought I could fix it! But you're not a person—you're just a hole wearing skin!" Fortune cried.
"I am what you made me." I said, my voice killed the purity of Solstice that day.
Their words meant nothing to me. I already knew. I'd always known. The rot around me completely crumbled. I had finally felt something. The void where my soul should have been.
The Truth settled. The truth I had always known.
My neglect wasn't cruelty.
It was instinct.
Their magic recoiled from the abyss in my skin.
For their magic knew the void in my skin better than they did.
Was that any fault of mine? Anything I could control. No.
I was the Anti-Solstice.
"You're right," I said. "I never breathed the spark of life…."
I smiled. I don't know if it was joy? Or satisfaction.
"But I can still end." I proclaimed.
The manor's magic rushed into me—not light, but the absence of it. The manor's stone cracked. Relics crumbled. Portraits aged to dust. Fortunes reanimated roses that spread the manor's gardens blackened and fell.
Mother tried to banish me. I saw the anger that cursed her. The hate….that plagued her.
Her spell dissolved like sugar in water.
"You are nothing!" She screamed.
"You're right," I agreed. I watched on the verge of satisfaction.
Her skin desiccated, from flesh and flesh from bone. Hair whitened, then vanished. She collapsed into a stained gown, filled with ash.
Father Lunged. His fist passed through my chest. His body unraveled like thread.
Fortune knelt in the ruins. Clenching mother's ashes. Sobbing over mothers empty clothes.
"I'm sorry! I'M SORRY."
"I thought I could fill that void….with love."
She pleaded.
As I stepped forward I heard the manors' years crack beneath my feet. An endearing feeling. I cupped Fortune's cheek. The spark from her magic—sour and green—flowed into my palm. Necrotic light wept from her eyes like dying stars.
"Sorry?" I asked. "Don't be." I whispered
"You made me real…."
Her body became still as a statue. Silence settled.
I embraced her. Something I had never been able to do. I whispered in her ear as I drew close.
"You were right... I am a parasite."
Her magic flowed into me—sweet, sour, final. Her tears dried as they left her near lifeless eyes. Outside, Eternal Night fell.
Inside, my shadow stretched across the barren marble. Sharp and vast.
The Solstice Sun outside pulsed, a beacon—a beacon of the realm's magic. I stepped onto the crumbling balcony. Thousands gaped.
"Look, it's the leech!" Someone jeered
I raised my hands. Not in spellcraft. In invitation.
The Essence of Solstice bent toward me. Not like metal to a magnet. Like water into a drain. Scrapped from life before it could take another breath. It streamed into my chest. I felt no warmth. No power. Only the silence deepening. The void of the sky mirrored my own. Screams rose as nobles' magic flickered out:
A sorceress's jeweled gown became rags.
Tomes of Solstice's Magic decayed.
Enchants consumed by the encompassing void and rot.
The once beautiful gem colored eyes of the Nobles faded to gray scaled hues.
The Committee's staffs rotted in their very grasp.
But the Grimoire….Remained.
Cracks of nothingness spiderwebbed through the realm. Magic—all magic—rushed into the void.
In the dark, my shadow didn't mimic me. It devoured the light that remained.
I returned to the manor's crumbled hall.
The Solstice was over.
The Magnate crown of magic was no more.
This year's celebration of light…reached its conclusion.
I learned the true meaning of Darkness was the absence of Light.
The true meaning of my existence was never defined.
Pulled into the darkness before my retinas even realized the light.
I held one of Fortune's now blackened roses.
At last…..that gaping maw inside me. Was full.