A dark room with no windows or doors, only a small opening at a corner where light can hardly pass through. Inside that room, something is moving. Breathing heavily, a human, or what is left of it.

“Urgh…”

The thing is groaning and groaning, scratching the walls with his weak fingers and overgrowing nails. He had never seen the light of the sun his whole life.

“When do you think it will die?”

Just outside the room, two guards are talking. They are standing in front of that room with no door, at the end of a long corridor with torches as the only source of light.

“Don’t know. He is too resilient. It has been twelve years now. I never thought he could reach fourteen years old in such a place.”

“Not ‘HE’, it. You don’t want to be punished by the captain again, right?”

“Right. Anyways, ‘IT’ has stopped making noise. Should we check?”

“How will you do that? there are no doors or windows. And I don’t want to peek through that opening, we never know what might happen.”

BRRRRR!!

Suddenly, everything starts shaking uncontrollably and the guards almost fall on their butts.

“What was that?!!”

“We must be under attacked!!”

After regaining some balance, they grab onto the walls so as not to fall but right after that, the earthquakes stop just like it started.

“Can you guys move? I want to get out.” Then a voice that shouldn’t come from there resounds loudly.

“WHAT?!!”

Hearing an unfamiliar coming from inside right after the earthquake, the two guards turn like a single person, unsheathing their blades. Anybody who came by at that moment would have laughed at the scene of the two men facing a wall with trembling hands and swords.

“Did you hear that?”

“Y-yeah, I did. What was it?”

“I-I don’t know. Maybe a dream. I mean, today’s meal was pretty nasty.”

“Yeah, it must have been a dream. We should probably-“

“I said move.”

“Hii!!”

The same voice resounds again, more powerful, making the two guards tremble and fall on their butts.

While they tried to stand up again, the wall in front of them starts cracking, and in less than a second it explodes, projecting rocks everywhere.

BOOM!!!

The two guards got hit and fell again. The first one on the head and the second on his right arm and leg.

“W-what is happening?!”

“Reinforcements!!!”

The two guards start screaming as loudly as they could. Their frightened faces are distorted with the intense pain.

“That’s why I told you guys to move.”

A leg comes out of the smoke that is covering the wall and the alley. The overgrowing nails on it easily make the leg look like one of a monster. The leg is of a pale white color, like a vampire.

“Monster!!”

The two men scream at the same time when seeing it.

“Really?”

The rest of the body appears from the smoke. A fourteen years old boy, naked. His green hair are so long it reaches the ground, his body is so thin bones are sticking out from everywhere. the overgrowing nails on his fingers and toes give him the look of an absurd monster.

“I am not a monster. Wait, am I really?”

The boy starts looking at his hands, His dark green eyes give a frightening glare that could easily pierce the soul of any unaware and naïve person.

“That fucking idiot. He didn’t send me back properly. Shit!”

The boy starts cursing while stomping the ground. The two guards were so bewildered by the scene that they almost forget about their wounds for a moment.

“Anyway. Sorry guys, I will be borrowing those.” The boy takes the two swords on the ground. The guards almost jump back as he bends forward, but the small alley doesn’t allow them to flee any further.

“See you.” As he says so, the boy disappears in a pillar of light, leaving the two guards completely stunned by everything that just happened.

“That food was really bad, we are having a delusion.”

“Y-yeah. It has to be, right?”

They finally managed to speak.

****

“That fucking god, he didn’t send me back properly. I don’t even recognize my body now.”

On top of a small hill, in the middle of a forest near a big town. A bizarre boy is cursing again and again while cutting his nails with a sword.

“No, it unlikely that he sends me into a different body or person.”

‘I won’t grant you my blessing. Let’s see how long you can survive without it.’

The boy suddenly remembers the scene. Yes, he is indeed LEKAS VALAHAL.

“So that’s what he meant. Well, that a pretty shitty start then.”

His nails perfectly cut, Lekas stands up.

“I should try to find some informations. From what the guards said, I am fourteen years old now. Meaning that I have only one year until she branded a Draig.”

Lekas’s eyes were shining, He was ready. This time, he would save her and love her. Like he always wished to, like he never could.

As he tries to walk, however, he stumbles on his own hair and falls to the ground, hitting his forehead.

“Ouch!!”

While he is rolling on the floor, holding his forehead. He realized. The current state of his body was no good, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Sitting on the grassy hill, he opens his hand and closes his eyes. Spheres start to appear in front of him. Fire, water, wind, lightning, darkness. Those are the elements inside the spheres. Of the different elements, Lightning has the biggest sphere, with the size of an orange, while fire and darkness are equals. Wind is the smallest sphere, almost the size of a seed, and water is just a bit bigger.

“I see, I still can’t use earth magic so that is my body indeed. But it seems my affinity with fire has diminished quite a bit. Thunder is still my most dominant though. Though it is very curious that I can still use magic without that bastard’s blessing. Windhil did say that God’s blessing is not a condition to use magic or else demons and dragons would be able to do it.”

The spheres in front of Lekas disappear. Then two other spheres appear as if to replace them. In one sphere, a weird sort of white mist could be seen while the other sphere was empty.

“Hm-mhm. Now, I can’t use summoning magic but I can use a bit of spirit magic.”

The two spheres disappear as well and Lekas stands up. Then, the air starts changing, it becomes heavier, like the climate is changing. And suddenly, a magic wave is released from Lekas’s body.

That magic wave is so strong that the hill he was seating on collapsed. The nearby trees are all destroyed and fall to the ground.

“My magic is at ten percent of what I had before I died. That’s way better than I had hoped.”

Lekas tried to swing his sword around in the middle of the dust cloud but the movements were sloppy.

“Yup, I will need to train my body way more than before.”

His bony body can hardly be described as a living human body. Anybody seeing him move would easily believe he is an undead creature. But the determination in Lekas’s eyes shows how little he cares. It was as if he didn’t even care about his stomach grumbling indefinitely.

“Time to find some food.”

Or maybe he did after all.