Gabriel’s chest drew a needed breath, his body was uncomfortably heavy and awfully cold, and all sensation in his body dulled like a cramp.

The small child heard a soft chant from the other side of the room, he lifted his restless body and his eyes opened to see blinding light across the room. Squinting and adjusting to the intense rays he saw Roy with bleeding eyes chanting from an old worn out book with one hand and with the other he held gemstones.

He whispered so lightly it was barely audible, Gabriel swears Roy could sprout wings at any given time. The cleric was so rough and powerful but he had this sanctified aura like if he was part of the choir of heaven.

That is when the smaller Amesthyn noticed the literal holy spark of aura that almost blinded him, it was never there before. The gems in his hands also had a rainbow glow and the words he spoke became almost like mist of fire. Even the book Roy held had a faint blue glow. It was almost mesmerizing.

Roy finally takes notice of Gabriel and almost choked on his breath, the swirls of colors around him shifted to a pink and green shade. “You’re awake…” The cleric made haste towards the boy. “Can you hear me?” Roy asked, holding him close.

His throat was uncomfortably dry, after several swallows of his own saliva to lubricate the pipes, “Yes… You sound very beautiful,” Gabriel responded weakly.

Gabriel felt sick and his mind ached and slurred with muk, it was similar to those spring days he stayed awake dreaming and he just wanted to just sleep. The warm body beside him was welcoming and the little one leaned to the touch and closed his eyes.

“Gabriel, stay awake,” Roy said sternly holding his delicate body in his broad arms. “Grizelda!”

“Mommy…” Gabriel smiled softly and a little surge of life grounded his little form off the bed. A pang of hunger cramped in Gabriel’s stomach, his mouth watered as he thought of the delicious meal his mother could make.

“Gabriel, you mustn't move so much--” Gabriel ignored his command and pulled away from his grasp and stumbled across the room almost colliding with the mirror. “Child!” he heard Roy call out.

As Gabriel held himself up the child noticed something weird in his eyes, they were no longer dark blue like the skies on winter nights, now they had taken the hues of lilac in a spring morning. The smaller Amesthyn also saw a different curiosity: a bright outline, green mixed with pink and gold blended with the rest of his body.

The crucifix around his neck pulsed with powerful force, almost like his courage or impulse was stored away inside the silver cross.

The door to his room burst open, a strained gasp came after drawing the slow eyes of Gabriel, spotting his bewildered mother. Grizelda was disheveled and unkempt, however, she had a light that circled the back of her head like a holy crown.

Gabriel almost forgot how long her hair was. She always kept it in a braided bun so it won’t drag across the floor, once the rich dark chocolate brown now dominated by thick silver threads. The color drained from her face as well, her eyes hidden behind cracked glass once saturated with cosmic blue hues are now watered down to a pale almost nonexistent shade.

The door slammed shut behind Grizelda and she sobbed quietly as she broke down kneeling beside her son scaring the crow off his shoulder. The midwife hesitated to hold her child, overwhelmed and broken she pulled Gabriel close and took in his scent. “Sweet prince…”

Gabriel was confused. “Mama, what’s going on?” Any moment he expected his father to rush into the room, all he heard were screams of multiple women giving birth, perhaps he was assisting them with the midwives.

The little one lifted his light arms and wrapped them around her neck to consolidate her woes.

“Sweet prince,” she began and pulled away from the embrace and placed her trembling scarred hands on either side of his face. “I beg for forgiveness, I almost lost you too and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself… I will take better care of you…”

“Mama, you and Papa always take good care of me, I have nothing to fear because papa will always take care of us.” He said with an innocent smile.

The room grew tense, Grizelda hung her head and her shoulders shook. Gabriel looked back at Roy who had covered his face with his hand.

Roy lifted his face from his hand but dared not to look at the child. “Gabriel,” he strained, “we found you alone in the forest.”

Gabriel remembered it; laying on the snow almost asleep.

“Your body was covered in snow. You passed out close to the edge…”

He remembers that too, and he also remembered his father falling backwards into the gulch.

Roy stood up and kneeled before the child presenting one of the keys and Johans crucifix. The small glimmer around the key and crucifix were warm to the touch, Gabriel saw a flash of his father's smile. “Gabriel… Johan… Johan, while we couldn’t find his body, Johan…”

“No, I know where he is…” Gabriel said. “Papa, I saw him earlier!”

Roy shook his head and swallowed. “Gabriel, you were dead for 3 months… We never saw Johan since.”

The proverbial glass in the child's mind broke, nothing made sense. “A witch had his cross…” Roy explained, however the child refused to listen and broke free from his mother's embrace and dashed to the door.

“I know where he is!” Gabriel was tugged by the collar and a massive hand covered his mouth. “Be silent…” Roy warned, “You seem to not grasp the situation.” The cleric turned the child and held him by the shoulders. “You are to be in this room, you are not allowed to interact with anyone beside me or your mother.”

“Why…?”

“Because if anyone finds out you are alive several things will happen, witches will come after you and the church will go after your mother for possible witchcraft.”

“But I didn’t die… I'm still here…!” Roy covered the hysterical child’s mouth once more. The light behind Roy was too bright and Gabriel had to shut his eyes close.

“Grizelda! We have cursed child!” They heard from across the hall. Roy and Grizelda panicked. Roy took the child and whispered to hide under the bed. Gabriel, seeing the urgency, he complied. Roy sat on the bed and right at that moment the door opened. “Grizelda, we must hurry--” Gabriel recognized the voice of the midwife, it was Else. “Are you alright…?” she asked.

Like a switch, Grizelda’s voice shifted to a harsh angry tone. “Have you no manners to knock?” She said as she adjusted her glasses.

“I...I must apologize. It was urgent--” Else was nervous, more so than ever. The dim red light around her faded in and out every time Grizelda spoke.

“What was so urgent that you forgot to knock on the door, have you forgotten we have a very important guest living in our household?”

“A-a… it…” Else always feared his mother’s wrath, his father at times did as well. “We have a cursed child…”

“Else I am sensing a pattern, do you find cursed children so repulsive that you always ask me to complete the birth?”

“N-No! I...I just we need assistance because the mother--”

“Useless woman… the worst type to roam this cursed soil…” Grizelda curtseys to Roy, “My apologies, please help yourself because I am needed in the clinic.” Roy didn’t say a word as Grizelda pushed Else out of the room and slammed it shut.

“The church always preached the wrath of God is what we should fear. Sometimes I wonder if they were implying that perhaps God is a woman…” Roy said and reached a hand underneath the bed to drag the child out. “Are you alright?”

Gabriel stayed quiet, the light was irritating the child’s eyes. Instinctively he shielded them with his arm. What in hell's blaze happened? The child thought. It was getting stranger still as the days went by. He refused to believe his father was dead. Gabriel knew without a doubt where he was and if he had to sneak out again to find him Gabriel was willing to risk it.

Moving his arm slightly, Gabriel clutched the crucifix to see the purple swirl of colors mixing with his own royal tones and thick glass spout from the back of his hand. The colors danced like flames inside the crystals. “Merxill Umnai,” Gabriel whispered and screwed his eyes close.

“Child,” Roy said. A thick yet gentle hand lifted the small chin and placed a rather large tinted glasses on Gabriel’s face. The lights and colors dimmed and adjusted to some normalcy. “Better?” the cleric simply asked.

Gabriel looked around almost confused. Roy was so close to his face he almost jumped back. The smaller Amesthyn touched the frames and lifted them slightly to see the difference between them.

“You have vision sensitivity. Like your mother and I, you have the sight.”

“What is that?” Gabriel asked and Roy placed a hand over his chest. The child blushed intensely and his heart accelerated. “We humans have a natural body heat that gets warmer at the very core. The most visible of examples is,” he moved his hand away and held his palm open close enough for the boy to see a burst of hot blue and orange ribbons, “an open flame.”

“Thi-…What color is the core? Does it change?”

“Yes it does; in fact, it’s what you would normally call an aura.”

“Aura…?”

“An aura is the human core powered by an emotion. If you were cowering in fear and you were running, that will reflect and the ones with the sight can know exactly how you feel and use it against you.” Roy explained. “You are fully aware of what they look like, but judging by how you react to them clues me that you just recently started to see them.” He chuckled before he continued, “you are a natural, kid.”

Gabriel felt a sense of pride when Roy praised him. Roy laughed harder; his voice would kill him if he continued. “Your aura keeps changing, you need to control your emotions,” Roy said.

“It’s hard when someone like you is being so nice to me!” Gabriel shouted.

“Alright,” Roy gathered his composure and stared at Gabriel, “What colors do you see in me?” Gabriel stared at his glorious god like body and watched the colors dance off his splendid skin, “Yellow. Orange—Pink? I—I can’t tell…”

“Good. Some auras are mixed with other colors, very hard to distinguish right off the bat. Now, what colors do you see?” His face had the same soft and assertive expression but the colors shifted in tones, “Gray. Gold—wait! Platinum! Your aura is Platinum—huh?” his aura suddenly stopped emitting any color or any type of light.

“Good, can you find me in the dark?” Roy’s entire being faded into thin air. Gabriel’s bottom jaw, because it was locked with his skull, didn’t hit the ground. “How did he do that!?” he thought to himself since he failed to speak.

He couldn’t hear a thing in the small space. Roy was moving with the grace of the wind; fast and silent. Gabriel noticed a glint of light at the corner, “platinum,” Gabriel whispered with a hint of excitement. He made a mad dash, the coat was close to his finger tips and as he touched the fine leather, the light giving life to it vanished and it fell to the ground.

“Where--?” Gabriel’s breath hitched when he felt a hand on his shoulders and an acidic whisper rushed in his ear, “Don’t be fooled… Aura is the evidence of life. At times, the aura can resonate for a period of time before fading.” Gabriel made a hard turn seeing Roy standing there missing his cloak.

“One can tell if they are no longer with us when the heat is constant. Popular to contrary belief, undead creatures are not cold to the touch, if they are still moving that means their heart is pumping and their brain is active even if they just have basic survival needs. A lively vessel can create a light spectrum of colors per minute. In your case, it is per second.”

“Animals can do it too?”

“Of course.” Roy reached into his pocket and held a flower in his open palm. “Animals, plant life and some insects will emit the essence of their souls however tiny they are.” The flower’s swirl of colors was mesmerizing to Gabriel’s eyes, but he was sure the flower was a constant fluorescent green and it was mixing with Roy’s life.

“It is simple to destroy the light inside of life. All it takes is brute force…” Roy closed his hand into a tight fist and the green light dispersed into the sky. Upon opening his hand again, the flower’s state was obvious but it hurt Gabriel in a strange way he can’t seem to understand.

“We are all meant to die…” Roy whispered as he held Gabriel’s hands open and placed the wilted flower in his tiny palms. “One thing I was okay with when I served the church, was to eradicate those that were deemed dangerous. Some do not understand because only we see all of the sides no one else can. We expose ourselves to danger for the sake of salvation.” Something in his voice almost broke, every pause Roy made was to keep his tone even.

Gabriel nodded after a lingering silence.

“Make no mistake… The act of death is one that will burn your hands even after life. Killing should never be an alternative until it is the only one. Do you understand me…?” The cleromancer’s voice was hoarse as he spoke. Gabriel didn’t seem to understand Roy’s dual beliefs, normally that was a heretics game.

“I want you to understand that this world is not so black and white as many paint it to be… Many of us are born into strange circumstances no one dreamed of it occurring. That no god outside of Earth or inside is in total control of our actions… I want you to promise me that if you have that courage and impulse to kill, it is because it was your only alternative to save someone’s or your life.” Gabriel can now understand and relate his parents sacrificial acts of a life for a life, and his father’s leap of faith. How it all seemed heavy and weightless all at once.

“Death can change a man, whether the weight of his actions are too much for him to bare and lose sight of himself in the bloodbath. Don’t make the same mistake of those souls who have sinned for the sake of following orders… Never make my mistakes. Do you understand…?” The cleric placed a gentle palm over the apprentice's heart. Gabriel stared at before reaching Roy’s pinky finger with his own sparking with electricity upon contact. “I promise… If you help me find my father. I know he is not dead, I have faith that he is alive.”

Roy held his gaze steady, but it slowly crumbled under the eyes of the Amesthyn. “...You have blind faith--”

“I do not,” Gabriel said firmly. “He is in the gulch, I’ve been in there and met Crow… who you take orders from…” Roy’s eyes slowly blew wide. “I am not strong,” Gabriel added. “But I am sure we can find him together…”

Roy just stared at the child and sighed. “Then you have much to learn, Gabriel Amesthyn.”

Gabriel nodded and suddenly he felt faint and weak as his stomach cramped, quickly collapsing to the floor. He heard Roy groan in slight frustration. “ ...I’ll get you a meal.”