The storm began the moment Kaelric Veytharyn opened his eyes.
Lightning forked across the heavens like the claw marks of some colossal beast, splitting the night in two. The winds howled, lashing the trees into a frenzy. Torrents of rain slammed into the village, flooding paths and drowning the fires. Birds took flight in wild, screaming flocks, and wolves howled in the distance. Animals fled. The very earth groaned as if in mourning — or awe.
Nature itself recognized what had entered the world.
A devil king had been born.
Inside Tilda's cottage, lit only by flickering lanterns and the soft glow of the hearth, Elyria cradled her newborn son. Her body trembled from the effort, but her hands were steady as stone. Blood stained her dress, but it no longer mattered. The child latched onto her breast, calm, quiet... watching her.
His eyes were not the dull gray of infants.
They were blood-red.
And cold.
Outside, in the heart of the storm, four soldiers danced like children. Rain soaked their tunics. Their swords were forgotten, stuck in the mud. Ryker laughed so hard he could barely breathe, while Dax spun in circles with arms wide. Knox howled up at the sky like a madman, and Jace tore off his cloak and hurled it into the wind.
"He's alive!" Knox roared. "He's here!"
"Our prince!" Dax shouted. "Our devil!"
Jace knelt in the mud and whispered, "Veytharyn lives."
And Ryker, watching the lightning crack the heavens, whispered to himself, "They will kneel. One day, they all will kneel."
Within days, the storm passed. But something unnatural remained.
Kaelric was no ordinary child. He didn't cry like the others. His gaze pierced. His presence... disturbed. Animals refused to go near him. The village dogs growled whenever he passed. Cats hissed. Even the birds fell silent when he opened his eyes.
At three months old, he began walking.
By five months, he spoke single words—clear, deliberate.
By six months, Ryker noticed it first.
"His aura," he said one night, sitting beside the fire. "Look closely. When he sleeps."
The others leaned in. In the dim light, they saw it — a faint shimmer surrounding Kaelric's crib. A black and violet mist, coiling like smoke, hugging the boy's body.
Knox's voice was a whisper. "It feels like... drowning in blood."
"I looked into his eyes," Ryker added. "For too long. I felt the weight of a thousand corpses pressing down. I nearly dropped to my knees."
The others stared at him in silence.
Finally, Dax said, "We must protect him. At all costs."
By Kaelric's first birthday, strange things began to happen.
Elyria, now called Lisa to all outsiders, often left him napping in the sun while she worked the garden. One quiet afternoon, the birds began to chirp too loudly near his crib. Bees buzzed too close. Flies landed on his cheek.
Then... silence.
Tens of insects — dead.
Birds dropped from the trees like stones.
Dax and Knox, gathering wood nearby, ran to the scene and saw the child, eyes open, red as blood... smiling. His black-violet aura shimmered outward, and the air seemed to crackle like fire on dry grass.
They said nothing to him. Just stared.
Later that evening, they told Ryker and Jace what they'd seen.
Lisa heard it too.
She didn't sleep that night. She knelt beside her child's bed, watching him breathe, wondering what she had birthed. A savior? A monster?
She wept, but only for a moment.
When the four soldiers saw her sorrow, they spoke together — not planned, not rehearsed — a single voice from four throats.
"We will protect Kaelric, even with our lives."
By age four, Kaelric had learned to suppress the aura, to hide the death inside.
He walked, talked, and trained faster than any child they'd seen. Ryker taught him how to stand like a swordsman. Jace showed him how to breathe while stalking prey. Knox taught how to throw a dagger without being seen. Dax, ever the light-hearted one, taught him how to smile without showing teeth — a hunter's smile.
But no child in the village would go near him.
At the playground, they felt it — the weight. The pressure. Kaelric never hurt them. He never growled or threatened.
But they sensed it.
The storm behind the eyes.
So, he sat alone. Always.
Until he learned how to suppress it.
By age six, Kaelric could choke the aura into submission, sealing the red of his eyes behind thick lashes, smiling gently, walking softly. Slowly, he made friends: Kaelan, Darian, Evander, Lucian, Soren... and one strange girl named Eliora, who wasn't afraid.
They played in the afternoons. In the mornings, Knox took him hunting. Each arrow Kaelric loosed flew straight. Each kill was clean.
"Your hand," Knox once said, "is the hand of a killer."
Kaelric smiled. "A protector too."
By age ten, he was a shadow in the trees. His blades sang through flesh like wind through grass. His aura could silence wolves, kill birds midflight, and drive weaker men to their knees with fear alone.
The Veytharyn blood ran hot in him.
One crisp autumn morning, he went hunting alone. He tracked a boar deep into the forest.
When he returned... the sky was red with smoke.
Bandits.
A horde.
They came from the southern pass — hardened killers, deserters from imperial wars, mercenaries turned feral. Forty strong. Armed to the teeth. Led by a man called Gorr, a butcher of towns.
They came for food, women, gold — and blood.
Ryker and Jace stood at the cottage with Lisa and Tilda, blades drawn. Both had blood on their faces. Their armor was torn. Their arms shook from overuse.
Dax and Knox fought in the open square, guarding villagers. Knox had three arrows in his side. Dax had a shattered leg and a spear through his shoulder, but still stood.
They would not abandon the people.
Lisa, holding a small knife in one hand and standing before Tilda, knew she could not run. Her child was gone — somewhere in the woods. Her time had come.
The bandits advanced, laughing, drunk with power. Gorr strode forward, a massive man with an axe longer than a man is tall.
"Pretty little cottage," he said. "Shame to burn it."
He raised his hand to strike.
Then the air shifted.
The birds fled.
The wolves ran.
And a smell filled the village — blood. Thick, ancient, and close.
The earth seemed to hum.
Gorr turned. "What in the hell—"
His hand dropped to the ground, severed at the wrist. Blood sprayed across his men. He screamed, but the sound was drowned by the rising roar of something behind them.
A child walked into the village.
His body was soaked in blood.
Not his.
The corpses of bandits formed a trail behind him — every step marked by severed limbs, spilled guts, shattered skulls.
Kaelric had returned.
And death followed.
His aura exploded across the village like a tidal wave.
Black and purple, roiling like thunderclouds. Trees withered. Windows shattered. Horses went mad and bucked. Children screamed in terror.
Gorr turned, eyes wide. "What the—what is that?!"
Kaelric's red eyes locked onto him.
"You dared touch my mother."
It wasn't a scream. It wasn't even a shout.
It was a whisper.
And it made men piss themselves.
The bandits drew swords. Arrows flew.
Kaelric didn't dodge. He didn't flinch.
The arrows stopped mid-air and dropped to the ground, the wood burned black.
With a single movement, Kaelric leapt forward. In seconds, the front line of bandits was gone — shredded. Bones and teeth scattered. Heads rolled.
He moved like a ghost. A reaper.
A god of death.
Dax, kneeling, whispered with tears in his eyes, "He's the heir. The Devil of Veytharyn."
Knox, barely conscious, muttered, "They should've brought an army."
The last bandit turned to run.
Kaelric appeared behind him.
His hand pierced the man's back and tore out his heart.
He dropped it in the mud, still beating.
Gorr, broken and bleeding, crawled toward the forest.
Kaelric placed a foot on his back.
"You wanted blood," he said coldly. "I am blood."
He raised a hand. Black tendrils burst from the ground, wrapping the man, dragging him screaming into the earth.
Then silence.
Smoke rose into the clouds.
Kaelric stood tall, surrounded by death, his body soaked with gore, his red eyes blazing.
The villagers emerged from hiding. They stared in awe, in terror.
And the four soldiers, bruised and broken, raised their swords to the sky.
Together, they roared:
"The Veytharyn Clan has returned!"