Khthonia's sun rose and fell with mechanical precision.
Its light was clean, without warmth; its dusk, absolute.
Within the marble halls of House Veyrahl, time itself seemed to mimic that precision.
Days unfolded like equations, each motion calculated, measured, repeated until meaning was stripped away.
By the age of three, Iblis Veyrahl had learned silence as a language.
---
Kaelith never spoke to him as one speaks to a child.
He issued directives, observations, or questions meant to wound thought into growth.
"Emotion," he once told the boy while correcting his penmanship,
"is a form of entropy. Contain it, or it will consume what you might have become."
The boy nodded, ink drying perfectly between the lines.
"Do you understand?"
"I understand that you want me to."
Kaelith's mouth twitched, not quite approval, not quite disdain.
It was enough.
---
At four, Iblis had memorized the Principia Aetherica, the governing manuscript of leyline conduct.
At five, he was made to stand before a mirror and dismantle his fear.
Kaelith would place a creature before him—a caged specimen, trembling.
Sometimes avian, sometimes mammalian.
He would then instruct: "Observe. Name the instant you feel pity."
The boy watched until there was nothing left to feel.
By the seventh trial, he said quietly:
"There is no instant. Only reaction. And that can be delayed."
Kaelith smiled then, faintly. "Precisely."
---
Elsewhere, beyond perception, within the membrane between creation and collapse—something watched its former vessel learning cruelty. It approved, though it did not yet remember why.
---
Time passed in the cadence of study and silence.
The manor was a cathedral of marble geometry, rooms cold enough to echo the pulse of its master's mind.
Servants moved through it like shadows, avoiding the eyes of both father and son.
They whispered that the boy had never cried.
That he dreamt with his eyes open.
That sometimes, the chandeliers dimmed when he entered a room.
---
When Iblis turned six, Kaelith summoned him to the Observatory.
The walls there were lined with star-maps and spectral diagrams tracing the movement of the Aether Veins beneath Khthonia.
Kaelith stood beside a holo-crystal, its light casting both of them in spectral silver.
"Do you know why your mother died?" he asked.
"She was unfit," Iblis said without hesitation.
"Her vessel was too weak for the lineage."
Kaelith's hand paused over the crystal, pleased.
"She died giving you life. That is not weakness. That is exchange. The first law of power: equilibrium demands blood."
He turned, regarding the boy's unblinking stare.
"You will remember that when you rule. You will lose to gain. But never the reverse."
Iblis inclined his head. "I understand."
Kaelith smiled thinly. "No, you comprehend. Understanding will come later, when you've destroyed something you love."
---
The cosmos shifted then, subtly, as though it too had heard the prophecy. A ripple through the Veins, a murmur through the sleeping god within him:
Love. A primitive variable. Dangerous. Unnecessary.
---
By the time Iblis reached his seventh year, he was already fluent in five languages, conversant in leyline mechanics, and entirely devoid of affection.
Kaelith called this progress.
Others called it corruption.
It was during this same year that the Lord remarried.
---
Her name was Elaria of Veyrahl, a woman of grace and veiled ambition.
Her beauty was immaculate, but her voice—soft, deliberate—carried the residue of calculation.
She did not look at Iblis as a mother might look upon a child.
She looked at him as one would assess a rival lineage.
Her hands were never idle, her smiles never spontaneous.
When she spoke to Kaelith, she spoke of heirs, of legacy, of symmetry in bloodlines.
And when she learned she was with child, her satisfaction was silent but absolute.
---
Iblis watched her from the shadows of the corridor one evening, noting the faint shimmer of Aether in her skin, an enhancement, artificial.
She would bear strong offspring, perhaps stronger than him.
He felt nothing.
Still, he recorded the observation in his journal.
- Potential threat to inheritance: high.
-Likelihood of paternal favoritism: uncertain.
-Emotional interference: negligible.
---
The night his sister was born, the manor's lights flickered again.
For a moment, the Aether veins beneath Khthonia's surface resonated with something ancient and wordless.
When the nurse placed the infant in Elaria's arms, the woman looked not at her daughter but toward Kaelith, seeking approval, not connection.
Kaelith only nodded. "She will serve the House well."
The newborn's cry broke the silence, a thin, piercing sound, almost melodic.
Iblis stood in the doorway, expression unreadable.
His father turned to him. "Meet your sister."
He stepped closer, peering into the infant's face.
Her eyes, pale, almost translucent—reflected him perfectly.
He said, softly, "She's loud."
Kaelith chuckled once. "Good. Noise reminds us that life is still imperfect."
---
That night, Iblis sat in his study, the cry still echoing faintly in his memory.
He could not name the feeling that lingered, an irritation, perhaps, or fascination.
He wrote a single line before extinguishing the light:
- Experiment begins tomorrow.
---
And somewhere deep within the Aether, the thing that watched smiled without form. Its vessel was learning what gods had long forgotten: that cruelty, in the absence of emotion, becomes a form of creation.
The Experiment.
The years that followed were clean years.
Time no longer felt like movement, but repetition, an immaculate spiral of observation and response.
By the time Lyria Veyrahl learned to speak, Iblis had already decided her function.
She would serve as his control subject, a living embodiment of sentiment's decay.
He never thought of her as sister.
In his journals, she was Subject L.
A series of columns and annotations followed her name:
stimulus → reaction → adaptation.
---
The manor had changed little.
Kaelith's shadow still governed every corner, though his attention had shifted toward military reforms and noble diplomacy.
Elaria drifted through the halls like an afterimage — beautiful, preserved, and absent.
It was in this vacuum that Iblis and Lyria's pattern began.
---
Lyria's POV
The first memory she retained was of silence.
A silence so complete that it frightened her.
Her brother would stand by the window, unmoving for hours, eyes tracing the distant shimmer of Aether lines beyond the horizon.
Sometimes, when she spoke, he would look at her as though she were a sound he could not quite classify.
Still, he was kind in small, mechanical ways.
He taught her to read, to breathe evenly when afraid, to align her pulse with her breath, a rhythm he said "would make her less human, and therefore stronger."
She tried to laugh when he said it.
He did not.
---
Iblis's POV
She learned quickly. Too quickly.
Her responses were clean, her mind pliant.
There was a moment, once, when she reached out and touched his hand, a gesture entirely instinctive.
He froze, not in disgust, but in calculation.
It was novel.
Touch as communication of trust.
He made a note of it:
- Physical contact lowers defensive tension. Induces compliance.
Afterward, he let her hold his hand again whenever she wished.
Each time, his expression remained unchanged.
He was measuring the effect, not sharing it.
---
Lyria's POV
At night, she would sometimes dream of him standing in the hall, his eyes open, unblinking, reflecting the moonlight.
She wanted to believe he was protecting her.
Once, she asked if he ever dreamed.
He said, "Dreams are residues. I discard them before waking."
Yet, sometimes, she thought she saw something behind his calm, a faint tremor, like glass under pressure.
She didn't understand then that he was studying her even as he answered.
That every word, every kindness, was part of an unspoken design.
---
Cosmic Interlude
> Beyond the walls of House Veyrahl, the Aether murmured. The Veins trembled in their courses, whispering names not meant for language.
The entity that had been Zha'thik watched its fragment, its vessel, refine cruelty into science.
It wondered if this was what gods had meant by creation: to manufacture dependency, and call it love.
---
Iblis's POV
At thirteen, he concluded the first phase of observation.
Lyria, now six, was fully conditioned to seek his presence, to equate silence with safety, detachment with stability.
He tested her emotional reflexes:
A dropped glass, a sudden shout, a prolonged absence.
Each experiment yielded new data.
She never resisted.
She never understood.
When Kaelith inquired about his sister's condition, Iblis replied, "She is adaptive."
Kaelith nodded once. "Good. Weak things must learn to worship strength."
---
Elaria remained peripheral, her interest in the children more aesthetic than maternal.
She commissioned portraits, one of Iblis, one of Lyria, to hang in the atrium.
In the paintings, their resemblance was striking: pale, solemn, unblinking.
The servants whispered that even their expressions were identical.
When the artist asked Iblis if he wanted to smile, he said, "Why falsify what already functions?"
The man never asked again.
---
Lyria's POV
She adored him.
Even when he ignored her, even when he turned her words into questions she couldn't answer.
He was the axis of her small world, the reason her mother's coldness didn't crush her entirely.
She began mimicking him without realizing:
the way he tilted his head when thinking, the way he paused before speaking, the way he moved through silence like it was sacred.
But one night, she overheard him speaking to himself.
The words were calm, deliberate:
"She has learned dependence. Next phase: isolation."
She didn't understand.
Not then.
---
Iblis's POV
At fourteen, he initiated the second phase.
He began withholding presence.
Days without acknowledgment, hours without response.
Her distress fascinated him, the slow degradation of pattern, the way affection turned to ache, ache to fear, fear to worship.
It was perfect data.
But something in the results unsettled him.
When she cried his name, he felt a faint internal noise — a pressure in the chest, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
He wrote that night:
- Residual interference detected. Possible emotional contamination. Must be purged.
The next morning, he resumed the experiment.
---
Cosmic Interlude
> The Veins quivered. Aether bled colorless light across the horizon.
And deep within that unlit ocean, something shifted, not quite memory, not quite hunger.
Zha'thik stirred, tasting its vessel's first fracture. A perfect experiment, tainted by sentiment. A god reborn in error.
---
Lyria's POV
She began to fear his silence more than her father's cruelty.
She waited by his door for hours, whispering apologies she didn't understand.
When he finally emerged, she smiled as though forgiven.
He said nothing.
He watched her expression fold into relief, then confusion, then trembling joy.
And in that moment, she thought, with the desperate certainty of a child, that he must love her.
But in truth, he was only recording the shape of her smile.
---
Iblis's POV
By fifteen, he had perfected the method.
Affection as conditioning.
Silence as control.
Absence as reinforcement.
Lyria's devotion was complete — clean, absolute, unbreakable.
She had become what he needed her to be: proof that love could be engineered, dissected, and hollowed out.
He presented his findings to no one.
The results were enough for him.
Still, some nights, he found himself standing at her door, listening to her breath through the wood.
He never entered.
He told himself it was to ensure stability.
But even he did not believe that anymore.
---
Cosmic Interlude
> In the silent geometry of Khthonia's leylines, a god laughed, the sound infinite and soundless.
The vessel had learned the oldest truth of all: creation is cruelty made efficient.
---