Void Lord and his Harem Stars

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"Nine Circles," she said. "Each one a ring inside your heart. The more you unlock, the stronger your magic becomes."

She was sitting near the gate that day, wrapped in a faded quilt that smelled of dried herbs and old woodsmoke. Her voice trembled with age, but her words were clear. She stared at the fire as if it held answers to questions even she no longer dared to ask. The flames danced in her eyes, casting shadows on the lines carved deep into her face.

John had been sitting on the floor with a half eaten crust of bread in his hand. He looked up at her, hesitant. His voice was barely a whisper.

"But I think I don't have any magic," he said.

She turned to him slowly, her cloudy eyes soft but piercing. "You will," she said.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Because your eyes see the world as it is," she replied. "That is rarer than any power. And because you carry the bloodline of mages. Magic sleeps inside you. But one day it will wake. And nobody knows what type of power they will awaken. No matter what type of magic someone gets, it all depends on how you use it. The method of using magic determines how strong you are or can be."

He did not fully understand what she meant. But the certainty in her voice made something ache in his chest. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe that there was something special about him. Something more than the chores and the silence and the stares from behind manor windows.

That was the last spring he would ever hear her voice.

She died during a thunderstorm. A wild, angry storm that rolled in from the northern cliffs and slammed against the cottage like a beast clawing at the sky. Rain battered the roof. Lightning tore the clouds open. The wind howled through the cracks in the shutters. And inside the little cottage, she lay on her bed, still as stone.

John sat beside her all night, holding her hand. Her skin was cold and thin as paper. Her breath came shallow and slow. He begged her to stay. He whispered promises. That he would take care of the cottage. That he would try harder with the chores. That he would be strong. She said nothing. Her lips moved once, like she was trying to form a word, but no sound came.

When the morning came, she was gone.

The storm passed. The rain stopped. But inside the cottage, a deeper silence settled.

John did not cry at first. He just sat beside her bed, staring at the window, listening to the wind outside. The world felt too big all of a sudden. Too wide. Too empty. The one person who had ever spoken to him like he mattered was gone. She had been the only one who treated him like he was more than a shadow. More than a low born boy with a strange ring and no past.

He was twelve when he buried her alone, behind the cottage, beneath the old tree where the branches bent like old arms toward the sky. He dug the grave himself. The earth was wet and heavy from the storm. His hands blistered and bled. His knees sank into the mud. The cold clung to his bones. But he kept digging.

There was no one to help. No one to mourn. No one from the servants house came. No one from the manor even noticed.

When the hole was deep enough, he wrapped her in her favorite blanket and laid her gently inside. He said no words. He had none. Just silence. Just the sound of birds returning to the trees. Just the wind whispering through the grass.

He placed a smooth stone at the head of the grave. That was all he could give her. Then he sat beside the grave until the sun disappeared behind the hills and the stars blinked awake in the sky.

That night, he wept.

He buried his face in his hands and sobbed until his throat burned. He cried for her. For loneliness. For the coldness of the world that kept pushing him aside. He cried until he had no tears left, and still the pain did not leave. It stayed like a weight inside his chest, a heavy ache that refused to fade.

He was alone now. Truly alone. The cottage was silent without her. The fire no longer felt warm. The walls no longer felt safe. Every shadow reminded him of her absence. Every creak in the floorboards made him look up, hoping she would appear again.

But she never did.

Days passed. Then weeks. And the world went on. The servants passed by the cottage as they always had, eyes down, faces blank. The manor lights still burned each night. But no one looked his way.

The ring on his finger pulsed once. Faint. A slow throb of warmth. He looked down at it. And for the first time since her death, he whispered to it. "I miss her."

A few days later, the beatings began.

It was never announced. Never discussed. Never spoken of in the halls or whispered at the garden walls. But it became a pattern. A ritual. A quiet sport hidden in shadows. Julian and the other four half brothers found reasons. Or rather, they invented them. A scroll missing from the study, though John had never set foot inside. A vase shattered in the hall, though he had spent the entire day chopping wood behind the cottage. A noble's robe brushed by wind borne dust, and somehow it was his fault.

Each excuse was thinner than the last, yet each one was enough.