The night he was born, the stars did not shine.
The midwives whispered that the heavens had turned their faces away, as though ashamed of what clawed its way into the world.
The mother screamed as black ichor poured from her womb instead of blood. It reeked of burnt copper and rotting wood. Her body convulsed, her eyes rolled white, and her belly split with a tearing sound too wet and too long. The child was not pushed into the world — he gnawed his way out.
The first cry of the infant was no cry at all. It was a rasping choke, wet and guttural, as if something ancient had been stuffed into lungs too small. His skin was the colour of bruises. His nails — not nails but tiny hooks.
"Abomination," one of the midwives whispered. She backed into a corner, hands shaking.
The father spat on the floor. His eyes were wide, wild.
"Kill it now. Before it curses us all."
He lunged, thick hands gripping the slick, squirming newborn. His thumbs pressed down on the soft skull, intent to crush bone before thought. But before the pressure could yield death, the infant's hand shot upward. Those tiny claws — too sharp for nature — ripped across his throat.
The father staggered back, choking. Blood pulsed out in fountains. The baby's mouth latched on to the wound with feral hunger, slurping his own father's life. The sound echoed through the chamber like a drunken suckling, grotesque and gleeful.
The midwives screamed. One fled. Another fainted. The last dropped to her knees, muttering prayers that tasted of bile.
The mother… she was already gone. Her chest caved inward, empty, drained by her own child's arrival.
And there, amidst blood and death, the stars appeared above through the cracked roof of the hut. But they did not bless him. They laughed. Twinkling with scorn, their light dimmed, retreating as though to mock his existence.
It was then the shadow fell. A chill deeper than death, a pressure that made the midwives piss themselves in terror. Horns scraped the rafters. The room thickened with the scent of brimstone and rotting roses.
A voice — heavy as mountains — slithered into the newborn's ears:
"So small. So vile. Already you kill your kin."
The shadow bent closer, a grin of jagged fire splitting the darkness.
"You are mine, little worm. Mine to sharpen. Mine to wield."
On the baby's chest, the shadow burned a mark — a jagged sigil of bleeding teeth. His body convulsed, and within his infant mind, something opened.
A sound no one else could hear rang like steel scraping bone.
[SYSTEM AWAKENED]
Slaughter is Experience. Despair is Currency.
The baby cooed. But it was not the coo of innocence. It was a wet giggle, broken and cruel, as his father's blood dripped from his mouth.
The One True Demon Zorvak laughed with him.
The world would never know peace again.