Page 53 of The Vespertine Treaty
I opened the ledger. The smell of old ink and parchment hit me instantly. The meticulous ink lines detailing expenditures—security wards, Cenite training, obsidian maintenance—pulled me backward, not through time, but through memory. The cold authority of the page was a threshold into the past.
I was eleven years old again.
The polished obsidian of my father’s study floor gleamed, reflecting the single point of light from his desk lamp. The air tasted of sterile rage and expensive ink. The room was cold—colder than it was now—kept at a temperature that preserved the ancient texts but froze the marrow of a child.
I stood before him, trembling. My knees knocked together. There was a dark stain of dried blood marring the knee of my perfect black trousers, a stark violation of the pristine Alistair aesthetic.
My father, Lord Malachi Alistair, sat behind a desk piled high with identical ledgers. He didn't look up. His fingers, long and spider-like, tapped a slow, merciless rhythm against the leather. Tap. Tap. Tap. It was the sound of a judge’s gavel in slow motion.
"The expenditure for your upkeep is excessive, Cain," he stated, his voice a low, cold hum that stripped the air of oxygen. "We invest in tutors, in armour, in magical conditioning. Yet the return is consistently flawed."
He finally lifted his eyes—two chips of glacial ice that held no recognition of kinship, only the appraisal of a disappointed investor.
I swallowed, the shame a bitter stone in my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, wishing I could disappear. "I scraped it, Father. I was running with Rhana."
The word 'running' was the fuse.
He rose. His presence was instantly colossal, filling the room with a terrifying, suffocating pressure. The backhand blow sent me reeling. The impact was a silent, cracking echo in the grand room. My head snapped back, the taste of copper filling my mouth.
But the physical pain of the strike was irrelevant. It was the prelude.
He seized my arm, his grip like an iron manacle, and dragged me closer. "You do not run. You do not play. You are the Death-Touch Heir! You are meant to be controlled destruction, not a spoiled, clumsy child who soils his attire like a commoner!"
His grip tightened.
Suddenly, my vision exploded in white-hot agony. It wasn't heat; it was the absence of it. The freezing cold of his fingers seeped past my skin, past the muscle, and seized the very essence of the life in my arm. It felt like he was turning the blood in my veins into freezing sludge, crystal by crystal.
"The Death-Touch, boy," his voice was a cold purr of supreme pleasure, his breath hot against my face as I gagged on the pain. "It is not merely a fatal kiss. It is a dial. At its peak, instantaneous annihilation. At its lesser functions, it is the most refined instrument of torture the cosmos has ever devised."I realised then that my father didn't want a son; he wanted a musician of misery, and I was the instrument.
The pain escalated. It wasn't just hurting; it was unmaking. I could feel the cells in my forearm withering, the magic stripping away the vitality layer by layer. It was a tearing, liquid fire that made my teeth ache and my vision grey out.
I tried to scream, but only a desperate, choked sound escaped, a whimper that shamed me even as it left my lips.
My father’s lips curled in a cruel, detached smile. "Channeling half of its power, Cain. Surviving this level of pain makes you strong. It prepares you for the filth you must absorb. Look at the beauty of the control! I am killing the cells slowly, exquisitely, making you understand that your pain is merely afunction of my will. You are not a boy. You are a vessel. And vessels do not leak sentiment."
My world narrowed to the crushing vice on my arm. The terror, the raw, isolating agony, was absolute. I fought the urge to vomit, my body convulsing against the cold, slow rot consuming my limb. I wanted to die. In that moment, I prayed for him to turn the dial up and end it.
He released me suddenly.
I crumpled to the floor, gasping, my arm hanging uselessly at my side. I looked at it through tear-blurred eyes. It was striped with sickly grey and purple energy burns—brands of necrotic magic that would take weeks to fade.
My tears started, not from the sting of the blow, but from the raw, agonising fear building in my chest.
Rhana, then a sleek black cub barely the size of a house cat, emerged from beneath the desk with a terrified, confused whimper. She nudged my leg, her tiny tongue rasping against my skin, trying to offer comfort.
My father towered over us. He looked at the cub with a look of pure disgust.
"And this beast," he spat, gesturing to Rhana. "She is a familiar, bound to your soul. A crutch for the weak." He leaned down, his face a mask of granite. "But should your weakness persist, Cain... should you choose sentimentality over power... I will find a way to use the Death-Touch on her."
I froze. The air left the room.
"I will make you watch your own pathetic lifeline wither and die, piece by piece," he whispered, the promise hanging heavyin the air. "I will unravel her while you scream, until you understand what true loss demands."
The threat was a final, absolute violation. The logical part of my young mind screamed that it was magically impossible to kill another Dyad's familiar without killing the Dyad first, but the terrified boy believed the monster who was his father. Malachi Alistair did not make idle threats.
I stumbled back, scooping the whimpering cub into my good arm. I ran. Blindly. I ran from the study, the physical pain of the beating forgotten, replaced by a terror so profound it eclipsed everything else. I ran to my room and curled beneath the thick furs, holding Rhana so tightly she could barely breathe. I cried that night until the tears froze on my face, not for the bruises, but for the devastating, absolute possibility of her death.
The annihilation of the only pure thing I possessed was the ultimate vulnerability.
