Cain wasn't always like in the present: someone who disregarded the life of others to achieve his goals.
When he was born, the dragons of his society had a big party that lasted for a whole week.
In his race, they became sentient and saved memories just hours after birth.
Dragons of thousands of colors filled the whole sky around Cain.
This vision was probably one of the happiest moments of his life.
All the dragons of the city brought riches, treasures, weapons, and delicious food to the temple as if asking thanks to their Goddess.
Tiamat was the name of the Babylonian Chaos Goddess.
As Chaos was the origin of all things, she was the progenitor of many races. One of these was the dragon race.
She could change her form, like any other higher existence, but the crucial point was: her identity changed with it.
All of this was due to her past trauma with the death of her husband, Apsu, at the hands of the other jealous gods.
Every form was related to her past histories, so when she assumed the sea serpent form, she became the creation-oriented side of Chaos. On the contrary, when she transformed into a dragon, remembering her defeat to Murdok, her mind was filled with rage.
For gods, luckily, death was just temporary, and the main cons were the loss in causality the loser had to pay the winner.
Basically, she was angry because she lost a bet, in human terms.
Given the partial popularity of Babylonian mythology, with respect to the Greek, Norse, or Hindu, their gods were, on average, poorer than the others.
For this reason, Tiamat, following the moral need to sustain all the races she created, as if protecting her children, was actually dead broke.
All of this was the reason why the dragon society was feasting.
Reading the destiny of the newborns with the help of their mother goddess, they knew Cain was born with a special power that, if developed, could cause the new rise of their race.
Cain, born as a Red Dragon was, in fact, atypical: he could control the kind of mana to infuse in his flame.
Infusing light, his flame became white, darkness black, and so on.
This could give him a determining advantage in battle but could also help him in his daily life: for example, by controlling the temperature of the flame, and infusing light elements into it, he could basically cast Heal magic.
All of this was more than unusual in his society: dragons, in their opinion, were the mightiest sons of the Chaos Mother, the predilects of creation. This was caused by the fact that Tiamat chose her dragon form to fight her most crucial battle against Marduk. Basically, they were a society of battle junkies, and due to this reason, they didn't need any buffing or healing magic, or so they thought.
This started the change in the dragon society's opinion of Cain.
He was a child blessed in body and mind: he liked to play under the sunlight with his friends, study to improve his abilities and help his family at home with anything necessary.
Then the change happened: his friends stopped talking to him, and the other villagers made sure not to stay too close to his cursed home, where their strength was being dishonored.
It was useless trying to ask for advice from Tiamat: her financial situation didn't allow her to send messages with such ease, so his powers couldn't be neither accepted nor refuted by the theocratic dragon society.
At the time, he was still immature.
He cried for days and days in his mother's bosom, until his energies ran out, and he fell asleep.
She, Eve, was silent and kept caressing his head while giving him an encouraging smile.
The day after he fell asleep, after waking up, he heard the voice of his mother:''Good morning Cain, come see what I prepared for you!''
Tip tapping, with happy feet and his snake tail, on his way to the kitchen: he finally saw it.
On the kitchen table was a velvet cape.
The color was crimson red and decorated with golden thread depicting a dragon enveloped in what seemed like magic, almost sacred aura.
Together with it, he was given a black eyepatch for his left eye with contours embroidered in silver thread.
In the beginning, he was surprised by the contents of this unexpected gift, but then he saw them, and his uncertainty became pure happiness.
The hands of her mother were full of wounds caused by the needle she used to decorate the cape, and to give the finishing touches to the eyepatch.
Moreover, she tended to him during the past few days and kept working for his sake without sleeping.
The stamina of dragons was definitely not comparable to humans, but this clear sacrifice she had done for him made him feel pain and gratitude in his heart at the same time, and that day he promised his care for her would never stop in the future.
His thoughts were interrupted by her words, which were spoken just after she had hidden her hands behind her back:''I made these because I thought could be useful to you. You see, you are the Dragon chosen by destiny, and your powers are unheard of. For this reason, normal dragons are scared by your presence and the aura emitted by your eyes.''
She was clearly lying but, in the eyes of Cain, at that moment, he was just happy about the painstakingly made gifts.
After some years, when he understood the truth, that was the sweetest lie, the most precious moment of his childhood.
Then she finished:''The cape is beautiful and can hide a bit of your presence. Finally, the eyepatch covers one of your eyes, reducing the fear-inducing aura, but if you want to introduce yourself to someone, remember to cover your other eye just to be sure.''
From that day on, he was still lonely, but his smile never left him because of his cape and eyepatch, until that day.
The sky was clear, and the grey, majestic mountains where their village was built were hit by the Sun, which gave them strong and clear light.
Then that happened.
''Cough, Cough.''
He heard the sound from the room next to his, where his parents slept.
All of this wasn't normal: dragons were hardly ever sick, giving them more reasons to increase their ego and refute the powers of Cain.
So when he discovered that his mother was sick, he didn't know what to do. He tried using his powers, but it wasn't sufficient. He went asking for advice from the leader of the village, but his reaction was the worst possible.
''You and your family are the ruin of our whole race. Her disease could spread and kill other people, leave the village in this instant!''
Cain was betrayed and abandoned by his community.
His father and brothers decided to find a new nest around the world.
He continued trying to save his mother.
The medicine of humans was way more advanced than in his past village, but the difference in their organisms made human medicine ineffective.
At that point, the condition of his mother was starting to deteriorate day after day.
Then decided: he would make his mother go into hibernation using his low-temperature flame mixed with water mana until he found a solution for her sickness.
Years after starting this new research process, he finally found a book, that described the miraculous regenerative properties of the creature called phoenix.
His smile became frighteningly wider.
That was the moment when the hero became an anti-hero.