Fate of Fateless

The night before his birth would be written into the Duke family's private records in blood and ash—not as a night of labor, but a night of siege.

From the mountains to the marshes, from the edges of the Empire to the very gates of the estate, the world itself seemed to convulse at the impending arrival of the child. Every cursed beast, every twisted creature of arcane origin, was drawn to one place: Duke Hepton's estate.

No calls were sent.

No rituals summoned them.

And yet, they came—driven not by hunger or rage, but by instinct. By fear.

The child was not yet born, not even crying, and still the air around him trembled like the moment before a sword fell.

They came at dusk.

First, it was the shrieking of the Glass Fangs, thin serpents of mirrored scale that hissed prophecies as they slithered through shadow. They crashed into the outer walls in waves, splintering their own bodies just to try and shatter the barrier that protected the mother.

Then came the Blackhorn Howlers—great beasts of fur and bone, extinct since the Second Era—risen from the cursed forests with eyes glowing like dying stars. They flung themselves against the estate's defensive sigils, howling in tongues that hadn't been spoken in centuries. Every bellow shook the foundations of the manor.

And they did not stop.

Hour after hour, new horrors gathered outside the estate: beasts stitched from the remains of forgotten rituals, malformed wyverns with too many wings and no eyes, arcane wraiths that hovered in the mist, seeking a way in—not to kill the mother, not to destroy the estate, but to end the child before he ever took his first breath.

They were afraid.

The child was a threat. Even unborn.

Inside the estate, chaos burned in silence.

The Crimson Aegis, the heirloom of the Hepton line, pulsed like a heartbeat in the great hall, its radiant dome of red-gold energy blanketing the manor. Every time a beast struck it, the walls shook. Even the sturdiest of the Ash Knights—sworn defenders of the Dukedom—wavered at the sheer weight of what they were defending.

Not a throne.

Not a relic.

A child.

Ninty knights. Two archmages. Six war priests. Every one of them had drawn blood that night just to keep the circle whole.

---

But it wasn't enough.

Because while the world waged war outside, the true sacrifice happened within.

Lady Elira, lying beneath layers of holy runes and medicinal spells, was slipping away. Not from injury, not from poison—but from giving.

Her soul had been the seal.

From the moment she conceived, her spirit had begun anchoring the child to the world—keeping him hidden from sight, veiled from the very laws of nature that should have rejected his birth. But that protection came at a cost.

With every passing hour, more of her soul unwound—thread by thread—infusing the child with life, pulling him out of the void between existence and erasure.

"He is not born of this world," the midwife whispered again, her voice hollow. "He is being forced into it. And she… is the one forcing him."

Duke Hepton stood at her side, one hand gripping the pommel of his sheathed sword, the other held tightly over hers. There were no orders to give. No monsters to slay that could protect her now.

Only the child's arrival could end this war.

And Elira knew it.

As the final contraction wracked her body and her scream echoed like a dying star, the Crimson Aegis flared one last time. Every beast outside stopped.

Frozen.

Then—just as the baby emerged, breathless and still—the sky split open in a silent wave of pressure.

Every magical creature—every cursed beast clawing at the borders—collapsed.

Some vanished into ash.

Others fled, howling, vanishing into the earth as if dragged by unseen chains.

The land went quiet.

Inside the chamber, Elira gasped—one last breath—and smiled.

She cradled the silent, wide-eyed child against her chest. Her soul was almost gone, her life shortened by years… maybe decades. But her arms held steady.

"He's here," she whispered.

Duke Hepton looked down at them—his wife, broken but radiant, and his son, impossibly still—untouched by magic, unreadable by sense, but alive.

Behind him, Lionheart, the former Duke, entered slowly. He looked at the child, then at the devastation outside, and understood without words.

This child had not just survived the world's hatred.

He had defied it—before even drawing a breath.