It was freezing the night he was born. Bitter, skin-cracking cold. Inside the Volkov estate, the midwives and mages stared down at the bundle and felt nothing but a heavy, sinking disappointment. Three children they'd anticipated, three giants to carry the name. Instead, they got him. A boy so pale he looked starved of life before he even took a breath, his skin a thin, translucent parchment where you could count the blue tracks of his veins. They named him Mehandi. A joke, really. A cruel irony meant to mean 'blessing,' given by parents who couldn't bear to touch him without a shiver of resentment.
He was a ghost in his own home. Next to Leo and Ivan, he barely existed.
"Look at it," Leo hissed one evening. He was practically vibrating, the air around him warping and snapping with the smell of cheap smoke and raw fire. "It's pathetic. It's a mistake."
Ivan didn't even look up. He just let his weight sink into the chair, his earth-magic pulsing through the floor like a heavy, suffocating thud. "A stain. We don't keep stains."
They hated him for being small. For being soft.
Mehandi knew it. He felt the weight of their disgust every time he walked into a room, so he stopped walking into them. He hid in the woods. He would sit for hours in the damp, freezing mud, pressing his forehead against the rough bark of old pines, whispering to the stones because the stones didn't look at him with disgusted eyes. He just wanted peace. He wanted them to leave him alone.
But they couldn't just let him be. As their parents faded into sickness and the keys to the estate changed hands, the brothers grew greedy. The land was big but he felt like outsider among them.
The change make him lonely. Suddenly, they were smiling. Suddenly, Leo was patting his shoulder with a hand that burned too hot, and Ivan was pouring dark, bitter wine into a silver cup. For your health, little brother. Drink. And Mehandi a poor boy , he was so starved for a kind word, he thinks by drinking the it will make them accept him and believe they finally loved him—he drank it. He looked them right in the eyes, smiled a tragic, thankful little smile, and swallowed the poison.
He died choking on his own blood while they watched.
The funeral was sickening. A massive, performative circus. Leo and Ivan screamed and tore at their clothes, swearing to high heaven they would avenge the "sudden sickness" that stole their dear brother. The servants wept real, bitter tears, burying the only kind soul in that wretched house in a cold corner of the dirt.
They thought they won. They thought the dirt kept secrets. They forgot the trees had ears.
Three years. Three years of ice and rain on his grave. Then, the sky literally tore open. A blinding, violent white streak smashed into the forest, a concussive boom that rattled the glass in the estate windows. Greedy for whatever cosmic metal had fallen, Leo and Ivan sprinted into the woods, panting, eyes wide with avarice.
They found the crater. It smelled of ozone, burnt pine, and old death.
And there, in the middle of the ash, a hand twitched.
Mehandi pushed himself up. Slowly. The boy who used to bruise if you touched him too hard was gone. When his face turned toward them, his eyes weren't filled with darken love for the family,—they were a terrifying, he was afraid like a little pub. The universe had poured its ancient, agonizing weight into his chest, and with it came the voices of the forest, screaming the truth of that final night back into his mind.
The boy who wanted peace was dead.
He looked at his killers, his lips curving into a terrifying, angelic smile, the starlight beneath his skin pulsing with a promise of absolute ruin.