My life and my fateful meeting with Grimoire Scarlet happened when I was about five years old. My Soulpurge started to slowly kill me, as my Stigma couldn’t handle the power of my magic. The first signs appeared one day when I was at a park on my homeland Nebula. I was playing with my older sister in a sandbox. It was a day I remember to this day so vividly, as my life flashed before my eyes.

It was an extremely sunny day on Nebula since the planet happens to orbit two stars. The summers were dry, cruel days, but the wildlife and plants had evolved to get used to the heat. We, humans, adapted to it as well, but we still sweated a lot. The dry heat came rolling in like a freight train. People left and right were sweating like they were a melting glacier. Clothes clung to our skin, damp and sweaty. But I didn’t have a single care in the world. I was just happy playing with my older sister who I adored.

“Minerva! Let’s build the biggest and best sand castle ever!” I happily exclaimed in my child five-year-old voice.

“Sure thing Atlas.” She smiled.

I was absolutely spoiled by Minerva. I adored my older sister. Well, she was my step-sister to be precise. Minerva Highborn. At the time she was thirteen, meaning she’d be twenty-five today. My mother was never a big fan of Minerva. They would constantly argue, as my mother did not want me near my sister. Eventually, my mother left us, leaving him to raise two kids on his own. When our father died from two stabs and a gunshot wound from a mugger, my mother never even bothered to come try and come back and take me.

Normally, that would’ve been a problem; a thirteen-year-old teenager having to raise herself and a five-year-boy. In normal conditions, this would’ve been an impossible task. But my sister was good at doing the impossible, too good. Minerva, in short, was a prodigy. No matter what fields she would enter to work in, be it art, science, math, everything. Meaning she’d use her brilliant mind and artistic talents to get the vital money we needed. I remember once a magazine wanted her on their cover! To me, at five years old, this made perfect sense. She had long, silky soft, midnight black hair that seemed to suck in the light around her. She had amethyst purple eyes that shown with intellect and energy.

So like I said before, she and I were building a sand castle when it suddenly struck. My heart was jabbed with intense pain. I could almost picture a viper biting into my heart. My breathing was cut short fast. Oxygen refused to enter my lungs. I clawed at my chest while gasping and gulping for air.

“Atlas! Atlas! What’s wrong?!” Minerva yelled. “Somebody call an ambulance!” She yelled at the other people at the park.

Initially, some people looked at her in confusion. Why call an ambulance at a park? That was nonsense! Their confusion was flipped into panic and worry when they saw me struggling to breath, as I clutched my chest. Phones flashed into view and the local hospital must have received hundreds of calls about this one kid having a heart attack at a park.

I fell into my sister’s arms, gasping in pain, trying to combat my heart attack. My sister kept calling out my name, weeping. She kept saying that it would be alright. My vision blurred, my hearing got choppy and the darkness came for me. When light re-engulfed my world, I was in the hospital. As soon as I got the news, I wished I had stayed with the darkness. I had been in a coma for an entire month’s time, machines and healing magic keeping me away from the doors of death. The doctors had performed a Stigma scan on me. I was a Prophet. I had an unknown magic and was the owner of five Stigmas. But my Stigmas were low in numbers. They couldn’t properly contain my magic. The result was that my magic was slowly eating away at my body. The doctors said that I had maximum one year left to live on my own, until machines would be required to forcibly keep me alive. Then shortly after I’d be eaten by my magic.

“I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do.” The doctor weakly said.

Minerva was sobbing her heart out while I sat on my sick bed, expressionless as if this information didn’t faze me. Minerva didn’t bother to argue with the doctors, because she knew they were right. I was going to die. Well, I was supposed to die. She may have not argued with the doctors, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up on me so easily. She dropped out of school and spent her days doing research and staying by my side at night. Eventually, days, weeks and months passed with little to no fruits of labor to show for it. But that didn’t stop my sister. She kept on rolling like a train. I on the other hand… it wasn’t getting any better. My magic slowly started to attack various organs in my body. It attacked my lungs, my eyes, and my brain. Breathing became a constant struggle. My vision sharply declined forcing me to wear contact lenses or glasses. And I started to get mild psychological damage. Eventually, I was warded off from the other patients, as other patients feared my condition was contagious, even though it wasn’t. My food was brought to me every morning, noon and evening. If I wanted to see someone, I either had to wait for a nurse to arrive to check in on me or hope I’d get visits. Minerva usually was the only one that would visit me (which was perfectly fine with me).

Then one night, a spark of light started to slip back into my tormented soul. I was hooked up to machines that night as my lungs refused to work properly. Minerva sat by my side, holding my hand, with a reassuring smile on her face. She had the day off and spent the entire day with me. We played various games together, ate together until my lungs failed me. It shocked both of us as it suddenly happened. As I started to slip into a deep sleep. All of a sudden, the door burst open, and a red haired goddess was bathed in the light.

“Hello.” She started. “My name is Grimoire Scarlet. I have what it takes to save your life Atlas Ryder.”