WARNING: ALLUSION TO SUICIDE.
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Memories that were not hers. Fragmented ones, from a being whose existence was in complete juxtaposition to her own. For years, she had called them dreams. They began at 16, in the sterile quiet of a hospital room after the first attempt. At first, they were a refuge—a brilliant, vivid escape into the life of a boy in a world thrumming with magic. A fantasy so intricate, so potent—it almost made the ache of living worth enduring. But the refuge became a prison. By the age of 19, it was no longer a nightly viewing; it was a dual existence. With a man who eventually turned into a nauseating, vile being. She didn't just dream of him; she saw his life through his very eyes when she slept, waking with the phantom sensations of another body—the ghost of him curdling in her heart.
In a way, she was him the first time he took another life. Him when he pressured women to be his. Him when he issued decrees of genocide. They were not dreams. His memories accompanied her own, being just as real. They were a pervasive thing, a force demanding to be part of her consciousness.
After that final moment, as the police bullets tore through her, the last fragile barrier between her and the other shattered completely. And now, unmoored from her dying body, she was drowning in him. This time, they arrived not as a fragment of a life, but as a tide into the whole ocean, pulling in Serena's consciousness. His name was Virgil, and his story began not with a wail, but with a coronation of light at his birth.
He was born to the throne of a vast Empire, and the world bent to acknowledge him. The air in the birthing chamber of the Palace had shimmered with latent power, the very stones of the fortress humming a welcome. The court mages, their hands trembling, declared him unprecedented. The orbs that were designed to measure magical potential hadn't glowed; they had exploded, unable to contain the reading. He did not cry; his eyes, the colour of molten gold, opened and seemed to assess the world, finding it acceptable. He was not just a heir; he was a new epoch given flesh.
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"Such exceptional magic prowess, young prince!" his magic teacher would praise.
The shield of solidified light he conjured was more complex than any master mage of his era could manage. His father, a man carved from the same stone as the pillars of their palace, watched with a pride that was less affection and more like an artisan inspecting his finest work.
"Unprecedented," his father said, the word a ritual. "You are the culmination of our bloodline."
"Virgil, the world is but a canvas for your will."
His childhood was a symphony of praise, each note building the foundation of his reality. The worship was not a comfort; it was a coronation. Serena, a silent, unwilling passenger, felt the truth of it settle into the boy's bones.
He was special.
The universe existed to confirm it.
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His mother, with her gentle voice and sorrowful eyes, would occasionally murmur, "With great power comes the choice of mercy, my light. Don't be too much like your father." But her words were feathers against the gale of universal worship.
He would nod, his gaze already looking past her, toward the next puzzle, the next demonstration of his superiority. True empathy was a language he never ended up learning, for he never had a need for it. In his eyes, why care for the feelings of those who were, in every measurable way, beneath you?
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By 14, he stood in the Imperial War Room, a place of shadow and cold strategy. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment and rigidity. Before him on a vast table of marble, a glowing topographical map of a neighbouring state shimmered.
"Their Lords are entrenched here, Your Highness," a General said, pointing to a fortified canyon. "Their earth mages have made the approaches impassable. A direct assault would cost thousands."
Virgil's expression was one of boredom. "You think too predictably, General," he said, his voice cool and precise. His finger traced a path far to the East. "Their water comes from here. They have one primary aqueduct, shielded against attacks—but not against a sustained, precise magical force. I will travel there. While they are focused on my troop, you will move your forces through the Southern pass. It will be undefended."
The general stared, dumbfounded. "But the Southern pass has been swallowed by rockfalls for a century. And forgive me for overstepping— but to inflict substantial damage on their aqueduct would require the full focus of the army's power."
Virgil offered a thin, condescending smile. "I will clear the Southern pass myself. As for the aqueduct, I alone am enough."
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The reality of his plan was even more dumbfounding than its conception. Minutes after dealing a critical hit to the aqueduct with a massive sword of light as large as a building—Virgil stood alone before thousands of soldiers and mages. He seemed like a boy against a mountain.
He didn't speak. He simply raised a hand. The colossal boulders casted by the opposing magicians halted in mid-air, not frozen, but disassembled. They unraveled into their constituent grains of sand, a reverse sandstorm that hovered in obedient silence.
The mages stared, their magic useless against a power that didn't just oppose, but un-made. With a flick of his wrist, Virgil sent the sand swirling around them, a suffocating, biblical plague. He didn't watch them die. He was already calculating the logistics of the General's troop movement, the victory a foregone conclusion the moment he had conceived of it.
This was his early prowess: a mastery over the elements so absolute it was mundane. He could summon hurricanes to scatter fleets and part seas to drown armies. But after a certain point, a change was stirring. The clean, classical magic of his lineage began to feel like a child's toy. A deeper, more resonant power was waking up within him, a reflection of his own burgeoning nature.
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It was on a later expedition at 18 years of age, after defeating a dragon whose strength rivalled his own—that he underwent an awakening. The world did not explode. It unfolded. Elemental magic—the energy he had mastered as a teenager—was about persuasion, about forcing the world to bend to your will. This was different. This was pure domination. A tide of pure, red-black energy erupted from him, a power that was not of mana, but of something older, something hungry. It was demonic. It felt true.
Drunk on this new, absolute authority, his experiments began. A captured rebel scout was brought before him. The man pleaded for his life. Virgil listened with clinical interest, then extended a finger. A wisp of the bloody energy touched the man's arm. It did not burn or cut. It unraveled the flesh into nothingness, the cells screaming into a silent void.
Serena tried to look away when the rebel began to scream. She couldn't. His eyes were her eyes.
Virgil merely observed the process, noting the rate of decay, the exact pitch of the man's final, soundless scream. It was data. Progress. The power was his to understand and use, and all of the world was his laboratory.
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Returning to the Palace, he found the pace of his own life suddenly, insultingly slow. His father spoke of patience, of diplomacy, of the responsibility of the crown. The words were like the buzzing of a gnat.
"You counsel delay, Father," Virgil said, standing in front of him in the throne room. The new power coiled in his gut, a welcome serpent. "You fear the neighbouring kingdoms will unite against us if we move too quickly. A logical concern for a man of your... limited means."
His face was now a mask of royal anger. "You overstep, my son. The throne is not yet yours. There is more to ruling than pure power."
"Is there?" Virgil asked, genuinely curious.
Silence.
"I see only systems. And you have become an inefficient component."
There was no rage, no dramatic speech. It was a simple, surgical decision.
The red energy lashed out as a needle-thin filament. It pierced his father's heart. There was no wound, only a sudden, absolute stillness. The King crumpled, the light in his eyes extinguished.
As the guards stood frozen in horror, Virgil turned. His mother had a hand pressed to her mouth, her face a tragedy of white shock.
"Virgil... what have you done?" she whispered, her voice breaking.
He looked at her, his golden eyes devoid of any trace of guilt. "Ambition is the engine of progress, Mother."
He saw the slight flicker of fight leave her, replaced by a bottomless grief. She did not kneel, but she turned and walked away, now even more of a ghost in her own palace. Virgil watched her go, then ascended the dais.
The throne was his. The empire was his. The world, he knew, would soon follow.