~Awooooo~
By simply observing at close proximity, it would be glaringly evident as to why this place was collectively known as the Weeping Cottage.
It was almost as if the place was designed and built to scare off guests rather than welcome them; a tiny backyard that literally wails like a pregnant woman in her first days of labour whenever a gust of wind drifts across, and a bone-chilling cold that didn't just bite; but chews one down to the marrows.
A frontyard with a bench that sighs when one sits, and an atmosphere that can unnerve even the wildest of pigeons; one would be led to believe that this is more of a figurative resting place, than a literal one.
But right there, just beyond the miserable bench, crouched an abode that looked like a hut from the slums of ancient Nordic movies was straight-out cropped and pasted into the compound.
Nevertheless, it was within this nightmare-prop of an abode that Soren awoke with the metallic tang of blood licking at the back of his throat. It was his daily morning taste of the horrific potency of the Tranquil Poison; a "gift" from the Tribe Matron two years ago: a colourless, odourless, and tasteless cocktail of thirty different venoms meant to stop his heart in his sleep and end his embarrassment as the Cursed Heir of the household.
However, for some miserable reasons, Soren persisted. He became a sickly, trembling insult to his assassins; his body, a battlefield where venom of tyrannic potency and his stubborn, ineffable will to survive fought tooth and nail to a daily miserable stalemate.
He was Seven this year and yet looked seventy. He pulled the thin, moth-eaten quilt tighter, trying to trap the meager warmth of his own breath, but the bells of the Obsidian Spire tolling outside wouldn't even give him that much respite.
Today was the day fate would officially decide if he was to continue his life as a person or a ghost, the day of the Awakening Rite.
Lethargic and hesitant, he sat up shakily, feeling like he had rusted iron for bones. His breath blooming in the air like a soft peppery fart in infrared view.
On the bedside table sat a bowl of water, frozen solid. He stared at his reflection in the ice—pale, gaunt, with eyes that seemed too large for his face. They were the eyes that had cost his mother her life, or so the servants whispered when they thought he was sleeping.
The "Curse" he was tagged with wasn't just a rumor; it was a record of the successive disasters that followed his presence back when he still lived within the cozy embrace of the inner ring of the tribe estate.
It was known that on the night of his birth, the tribe's sacred Eternal Flame—a fire that had burned for a hundred years—had briefly turned a deathly grey before being plunged into an eternal darkness.
Then, the midwives had been seen fleeing the chamber with bleeding noses, screaming that the Chief's Consort had birthed a Karmic Blackhole; and ever since then, bad luck followed him like a loyal dog.
By his fifth year, the stigma was set in stone: a gardener had tripped over a rake and broke his neck trying to respond to Soren's wave. Also, a prized warhorse had abruptly gone mad in the stables simply because Soren was seen passing by.
People didn't just dislike him, they horrifically abhorred him; to them, he was like a goodluck thief or bad luck magnet; it wouldn't have mattered much if it were all directed towards himself, but he seemed to brand every living thing in close proximity with this curse effect.
~Chweee~
It was a soft push, yet the door screeched like its hinges that hadn't seen oil in years.
"You're still with us." A timid whisper, followed by a light, hesitant step broke Soren from his reverie.
Liora slipped through the gap, carrying a basin of tepid water and a clean, patched towel. She was a young orphan maid, the only one in the tribe brave enough to ignore Soren's supposed "curse effect".
To the world, Soren was a plague; but to Liora, he was just a boy who daily fought his grim fate so desperately and refused to die.
"It's a heavy day, Soren," she said, her eyes avoiding the patches of dark, necrotic bruises under his skin where the Tranquil Poison chose as their point of sickening rebellion. Dipping the towel into the water, she began to scrub the ink and soot from his trembling fingers.
"The Chief is watching. The whole tribe will also be watching, so we have to make you look like an Heir, even if it's for the last time."
She worked with a feverish kindness, smoothing his hair and tightening his belt to hide how much weight the poison and malnutrition had stolen; and for a moment, her warmth seemed to push back the depressing atmosphere Soren perpetually dwelt in.
"There," she whispered, squeezing his hand.
"Let them see the curse hasn't won yet." She added, pulling him toward the entrance, before their moment of respite was shattered by the door flinging open, and rebounding against the stone with a bone-breaking crack.
"Get up, little curse."
Kaelen, the First Heir, stood at the doorway; draped in white silk robe, with his chest glowing with the rhythmic pulse of an expert at the peak of the Body Tempering Stage; yet even he dared not step inside.
No one ever stepped fully into Soren's room if they could help it, at worst they feared the "curse" would catch their own luck, at best, they feared the sickly stench of his room hinted a communicable disease.
To Soren however, he couldn't decide which was more taunting; the fact that no one wanted to near his abode, or the envious pulse of power brimming vigorously within his brother.
"I am coming, brother." He replied with the voice of one who hasn't tasted water in weeks.
"Don't call me that," Kaelen however, was having none of it; his hand momentarily hovering past the violet hilt of his sword.
"You, an overestimated ink-blot on the family scroll dares to call me brother.
I guess I can't be overly punished for letting out a little open secret to you, Blightbearer. Father is only allowing you to attend the Rite of Awakening so the Shamans can formally declare a valid reason to label you dead to the lineage.
Try not to cry. It's bad enough that you're a failure; don't be a coward too." Kaelen retched out, as he casually flexed the force brimming within his body.
Soren already anticipating what was about to follow, slipped his hand out of Liora's grasp as swiftly as he could just before a wave of invisible, pressurized force sent him tumbling over his bed, and shoulder-first into the stoned wall of his room.
Without sparing any attention at Soren's life or death, Kaelen simply turned, his silk sleeve snapping with a whiplike crack, as he left a trail of expensive scent to mask the smell of the sickroom.
Soren simply laid there, the cold of the stone walls seeping into his new bruise, as he stared at his hands; small, pale, and stained with the blue ink of the library scrolls he'd been illegally hoarding.
Wiping the soot on his cheek, he stood up too quickly to follow Liora out the door, and his vision blurred for a heartbeat, and right then, Soren could have sworn the gray stone of the floor turned translucent. It was almost as if veins of pulsing, jagged light were running through the very foundation of the yard in a sickly violet and aggressive gold hue.
If one didn't know any better, one would have thought the world was infected; but then, he blinked to refocus his view, and the vision vanished like a figment of his imagination, leaving behind his hunger and the ever-present cold.
'Ahh, here I am hallucinating a floor made of glass while my stomach is almost see-through.' He lamented weakly.
But Soren could never have guessed that the stone itself was a victim in his case, he only knew that he had to walk into the sunlight and let a Stone tell him he was nothing, while the hundreds gathered in the village square waited to watch the "Cursed Heir" finally be erased...
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~~ Author's Footnote: - With this opening, the stage is set for a saga that breathes through the friction between a dying boy and a world that refuses to let him leave quietly.
Soren's struggle isn't just with the politics of the Ignis Tribe, but with a physical body being systematically dismantled by the Tranquil Poison.
I wanted to highlight that his isolation in the Wailing Cottage isn't merely a punishment, but a desperate attempt by the tribe to wall off an omen they can't control.
As we move into the next chapter, the weight of Soren's brief vision will begin to ripple through the tribe, and while the nobilities prepare for a future that may no longer exist, Soren must first navigate his way towards a village square with deepening forshadowing...]