Domaine Ignitium
In a forest at the outskirts of the city, a small three-room cabin stood, almost hidden in the shadow of the dense trees. The branches intertwined above the roof as if the forest itself sought to protect this secret place.
Linfer sat at a rough wooden table, staring at a veiled woman before him. Her presence exuded an odd aura, both calming and terrifying. With a simple, precise gesture, she poured tea into two cups. One was placed in front of Linfer, the other in front of her.
"So, how are you doing?" Alderbaran finally asked in her soft voice. She slowly lifted her cup, but did not yet take a sip.
Linfer observed his sister without flinching. He was not surprised by the fluid way she handled objects, despite her destructive nature. Her black flame only awakened when in contact with living beings, a detail he had learned not to fear anymore.
A subtle smile appeared on his lips as he brought the cup to his mouth. "More than ever, I feel... alive."
"Alive?" repeated Alderbaran, her tone slightly mocking. "You're changing. More and more..."
"For the better," Linfer replied confidently.
Alderbaran set her cup down, untouched, and slightly tilted her head, her piercing gaze fixed on him. "For the better? Maybe. But it seems like you can't stand being alone anymore. Allying yourself with Elysian... who would have believed it?"
In recent years, Linfer had not only transformed into a moral monk, allied with an archangel of justice, and fallen in love with a virtuous woman. He had also grown closer to his sister. Since she was in the same territory, when they weren't attacking, he took time to visit her.
Alderbaran, as usual, remained in solitude. She was the true leader of Ignitium, but she stayed in the shadows, only acting in extreme importance. She knew her presence was harmful to living beings, especially mortals. It was one of the reasons Linfer kept her company.
Linfer sighed, acknowledging the truth in his sister's words.
From a young age, he had grown up under the hateful gaze of a father whose animosity he couldn't comprehend. His older brother, naturally distant, contrasted with his own playful and immature nature. Alderbaran, although kind and caring, inspired an instinctive fear.
But the deepest wound, the one that never truly healed, was the abandonment of his mother. This absence had created a void that nothing seemed to fill.
Over the years, his actions had been a desperate quest for maternal attention, an attempt to overcome his inferiority complex towards Leviathan and this unknown brother who haunted his thoughts.
He had tried to gain the attention of others, but to no avail. In this whirlwind of repressed emotions and unhealed wounds, Linfer had found a perverse outlet: harming others. It had become his twisted way of feeling better, of regaining a semblance of control over his life.
He paused for a moment, childhood memories resurfacing like ashes in the wind. "Everything I did... was to fill that void."
"Humiliating our father, feeling superior... But in the end, Epsilone, whom I saw as just a casual fling, became my confidant. Uriel, an unlikely ally, became a brother-in-arms. And all of this, thanks to Zitish..."
Thinking of his first love, Linfer smiled tenderly, but his gaze hardened as it fell on Alderbaran.
"It's true," he murmured, "I became a man for Zitish. I changed for her. I have to prove to her that I can be different."
Alderbaran remained silent, then slowly removed her veil to drink her tea, revealing a face that was both fascinating and terrifying. Her eyes were bottomless abysses, chasms in which one seemed to get lost, but at the bottom of which a black flame flickered, as if burning with contained power. Those eyes had something hypnotic, both attractive and repulsive. If Eden were there, he would have noticed that she looked just like his first love, a woman for whom he had cried so much upon her death.
Her hair, a shade of ashen grey, fell in gentle locks around her face, reminiscent of the ashes of a dormant volcano. On her forehead was inscribed a symbol of a black flame. But it was not her hair or the symbol that captured attention, it was her skin. Cracked, marked with dark fissures, it seemed on the verge of breaking. From these black lines sometimes escaped eruptions of black flames. With each new fissure that appeared, it was as if something uncontrollable rumbled beneath the surface, a volcanic force ready to erupt at any moment.
Her face, despite its icy beauty, was a land perpetually under threat, as if it harbored a fire that only waited to devour the world around it.
"Still not used to my face, little brother?" she said with a smile.
Linfer suppressed a shiver and looked away to take a sip of tea. "It's hard to stay calm in front of someone who could accidentally reduce me to ashes," he joked.
"You overestimate me," she replied softly. "My law, Anti-Stasis, is not that powerful."
"No, indeed, nothing too powerful. Just a law capable of returning everything to its state of instant degradation," Linfer said sarcastically.
Alderbaran let out a slight laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. "Oh, you're exaggerating, little brother."
"Apart from Leviathan, no one can stop this flame," Linfer continued. "That's why I was jealous of him. In terms of innate talent, no one can compare... except maybe Belzebuth."
"When we were embryos, it was his law that prevented Mom from burning from the inside. So why weren't you ever jealous of me?" she asked.
A silence fell in the room, broken only by the rustling of leaves in the background.
"You know, Sis, I've always wondered if you had my old personality, so eager to harm others. What would this world become? Could Leviathan even stop you if you didn't try to control yourself? It's hard to admit, but your law, as powerful as it is, is more of a curse than anything else."
Linfer's eyes darkened as he looked at the fissures on his sister's skin, knowing all too well what they signified. In fact, apart from Alderbaran herself, no one knew, not even Leviathan, his twin brother.
Alderbaran smiled, not at all sad about her fate.
"You know, it doesn't change anything. My life has always been the same color. Everything happens for a reason, Linfer. We are who we are. There's no use denying our nature," she concluded, enigmatically.
Linfer, still confused by her words, looked at her silently. "What do you mean by that?"
But Alderbaran remained mysterious about her thoughts and took the two cups.
"Another cup of tea?"
She poured more tea from the teapot...