When did it all begin? Probably when my parents decided to get rid of me by “sending me to a tutor” for a while, the day of my ninth birthday. No surprises there, mom. And I thought dad cared, so I went to him to complain. And guess what? He ended up being the one dragging me to my tutor, kicking and screaming. My brothers? Most of them refused to acknowledge I exist, like a piece of mold in the corner of a bathroom. My sisters? Arguably even worse. They all acted like they were pitying me, but in reality they despised me more than anyone else. I still remember watching them celebrate my departure from the first floor’s window when I was escorted out of the family’s mansion.

  And who could blame them? My family, the Leventis, has always been one of the most respected noble houses in Crystal Rose. Elven descent with some extra spirit genes mixed in, spawning genius after genius each generation. All of them, gifted with Wind magic powerful enough to even gain the respect of wind dragons. God I hate wind dragons, I don’t think the planet could’ve given rise to more cocky and stubborn creatures. Come to think of it, my father’s pet wind dragon always hated me, for as long as I can remember. Probably because I was the first failure the Leventis ever experienced. Because I was born with a derivative of Wind magic, which caused me to be unable to use the latter. It’s not that I didn’t want to, just that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. That’s what happens in one hundred percent of cases for Irregulars wielding a derivative, they can never truly understand the original magic. I’m not even the first one in the family, I have a few ancestors who were Irregulars. But they had stuff like “Hurricane magic”, allowing them to generate natural disasters on command, which made them go down in history as some of the most respectable mages in the family. But me? Nah, I’m just stuck making a little bit of air about as hard as a log. What a joke.

  Haha… even in my own, biased memories all I can ever achieve is pointless self loathing. I get why dad disposed of me as fast as he could. I’m just a stain on the family’s name, something other houses can use as ammo against my siblings’ achievements. I just wish he drowned me instead, like a lot of undesirable Irregulars, but I guess I was a little too old for that. Hey, maybe he did have a soft spot for me after all!

  So he took me to this mansion. The headquarters of the Fifth Branch of the Arcane Guard, conveniently named Variety Business. Hard to suspect them of anything when they’re involved in almost all fields. Court proceedings, construction, government affairs, foreign trade, hell I think they even do weddings. Last time I checked, half the judges in the city are working for them.

  Inside their headquarters, I was acquainted with my tutor, a Wind mage named Sergius who was some kind of eminent magic researcher. Officially, I was being enlisted into the Arcane Guard’s magic counseling program, which helps Irregulars come to terms they’ll never be regular members of society. Alright I’m being a bit harsh, it’s just here to help people control their powers, at least normally.

  Officially, I died in a tragic accident involving a rogue Irregular three months later. I was completely vaporized by some variant of Fire magic, not even leaving bones behind. The Irregular in question also was reduced to nothing but dust after unleashing this spell, conveniently leaving no tangible evidence behind. Seriously, couldn’t they come up with a better excuse to make me disappear? It feels like they just picked the first thing they thought about and called it a day. And it worked, too. Really shows that you can get away with anything if you have enough coin. I don't even know how it's possible that I'm classified as a missing person today, because that wasn't the case a decade or so ago.

  From that day on, Julian Leventis was no more. In reality, during these three months I was put through a training regiment so hellish that I can't believe I survived, in the dungeons of the Fifth Branch’s headquarters. I don’t even know how deep they really go, but I heard from a guard passing by that they went well over a kilometer underground. Sergius would lock me in a small stone cell with the rabid wild animal tickling his fancy this week, and task me to survive as best I could while barking advice at me. At first, I was just getting mauled and he had to jump in to prevent me from being killed. Then he’d call a healer, but not before leaving me to marinate in my blood for what felt like hours. He used to say that it was to develop my magical energy reserves. Bullshit, he was just a sick bastard. If I refused to cooperate, he’d just let me sit inside a dark room for a few days with a puddle of muddy water, a few dozen rabid rats and my bad decisions.

  After the first month of this routine, I eventually discovered that if I was quick and precise enough, I could just freeze the airflow around the head of a creature and slowly suffocate them. It wasn’t enough, so I had to become even more precise. That’s when I learned to solidify the air directly inside a creature’s trachea and lungs. It was hard at first, but it became natural after a few tries. It helped that Sergius would cut them open to show me their insides, telling me that I should remember their anatomy to be more efficient the next time.

  Date: September 23rd, year 1270 Location: Dungeons of the headquarters of the Fifth Branch, Crystal Rose

  When I stopped struggling to kill basic animals, Sergius invited someone in the basement room I had been locked inside of for the past months. It was an unnaturally tall woman, most likely being two meters in height if not more.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  She was wearing a black dress with floating white streamers attached to her wrists and back, and her pristine white hair was so long that it reached her ankles. Her irises weren’t just black, they felt like they were actively absorbing the light in the room.

  - “I think it’d be a waste to try to turn him, we should use him for test subject collection. His magic is perfect to kill people without leaving a trace.” I overheard Sergius tell her.

  She didn’t reply, and simply turned to look at me. When I looked into her eyes, I felt like I was falling into some kind of bottomless abyss for multiple , long minutes even though it only lasted a few seconds. I’ve always been afraid of heights, but I’m positive this permanently made it a hundred times worse. I started screaming and breaking down into tears, and Sergius just shook his head.

  - “Well he’s still a child. I’ll have to whip him into shape if he’s squeamish to the point of crying over looking into your eyes, Director.”

  - “...” The woman just opened her mouth for the first time. It distorted into a horrifyingly wide smile, with nothing but darkness visible in her mouth as if she was completely hollow. She leans over Julian, covering him in her shadow. “Are you scared?”

  I still remember the sound of her voice. It didn’t seem like a person’s, it just sounded like the sound came directly from inside the dark void in her mouth. She didn’t move her lips either, or her facial muscles. Long story short, yeah I was fucking terrified. I was nine, what else would I be? I just nodded as fast as I could to try and get her away from me. That just got her to squint her eyes, like she was having the time of her life.

  - “Good.” She simply declared before turning to Sergius. “Do what you will with him, but don’t try to turn him. He’s not open, there would be no point.”

  - “What does open mean anyways?” Sergius asked, raising an eyebrow and grinning. “I’m sure if you told me, I could work on that. You can be so cryptic sometimes, Director.”

  The woman immediately turned towards him, and even I knew that something bad was about to happen.

  - “You dare question me, human?” She asked, her voice resonating in the room. “Would you like me to remind you of where you stand?”

  She reached forward, and a very small ball of darkness formed in front of Sergius. Immediately, I saw him being pulled towards it, levitating while his flesh was slowly being ripped from his skeleton and his body bent in unnatural angles. One of his eyes pops out of its socket, and is absorbed into the ball. He screamed louder than I ever heard him, and the woman smiled once more.

  - “Well? What was your question, pray tell?”

  - “-orry!! I’- ORRY!” Sergius yelled, his teeth starting to be forcibly pulled from his mouth. He was flailing his hands around, and wind currents were blowing in his direction in a futile attempt to counteract the effects of the spell.

  The ball of darkness instantly disappears. There was no trace of Sergius’ eye besides a fine dust lightly falling on the floor. The latter also plummets to the ground, writhing in pain.

  - “Do not disappoint me.” The woman declared as she hunched down to get through the room’s door. I remember her head turning one hundred and eighty degrees to look at me. "We will see each other again soon."

  Date: October 14th, year 1270 Location: Crystal Rose, Kingdom of Specta

  Sunlight. It’s been so long, but I was finally outside. Not necessarily for the right reasons though. I was tasked by Sergius to find some homeless people and suffocate them with my magic, then hide their unconscious bodies for other agents of the Fifth Branch to collect them later. If I didn’t comply, he said he’d call that Director person again. Big talk for someone who lost an eye and spent two weeks recovering even with the help of someone capable of using a type of healing magic. But at the time, I was so terrified that I didn’t think twice about it. Granted, I had something else on my mind that day. My death was publicly announced about three weeks earlier, and they were holding my funeral today. At first, I wondered why they waited for so long, but then I ended up just being happy that they even bothered. I made my way there, wearing the brown traveler’s cape Sergius had given me to stay under the radar of the Arcane Guard. I knew it was dangerous, and I was told by him that if I was caught he’d make sure I die before I can hand over any information. He had collected a large sample of my blood, and told me he could locate me at any moment with it should I try to run. How ? Beats me, I’ve never heard of a magic that uses blood. And honestly I didn’t care by the end of that day. Why? Well, I think something snapped when I went to my funeral and saw no one there besides a priest of Solomon and one guy in a black outfit, standing alone where the crowd should be. He had elf ears, and I thought he was my father at first but he was much shorter. I just walked away, feeling empty. Maybe I hoped that in death, something would be different.

  From that point on, I just became desperate and my mind went blank. I started following Sergius’ orders religiously, treating him like my surrogate family. I even remember calling him “father” from time to time. Just thinking about it makes me want to rip my eyes out, in hindsight. One day, he asked me to age myself up as much as I could to increase my physical strength and stamina, and I didn’t even think twice before doing it. Normally, I didn't plan to appear in my teens before I turned fifty or so, as most elves do. But I guess I was never meant to have a normal life from the get go anyways.

  So I threw myself at my work. I became more and more efficient. I even started asking Sergius to bring in tutors for personal lessons on how to wield various concealable weapons, so I could still take out the people who actually managed to resist my magic. Those were getting more and more common as I took on riskier jobs. I was sneaking into houses, kidnapping people in broad daylight and even killing witnesses before cleanly disposing of their corpses in the city’s river. By the time they were found, they were usually floating somewhere in the ocean and people just assumed that they had drowned. Some had stab wounds, but they were attributed to the fauna given how bloated the bodies were. I eventually started taking on straight up assassination jobs, taking out political enemies of the Fifth Branch. I upgraded from houses, and started infiltrating larger manors, mage towers and official buildings. By this point, what was left of my consciousness had grown completely numb to all the murders I was committing. I hadn’t realized it yet, but multiple years had already gone by ever since I started doing these things for the Fifth Branch. Sometimes, I’d scare myself thinking I ran into a demon out of the blue, then realize I just walked past a mirror. I remember being proud of that too, thinking that being less emotional made me more useful to Sergius. Rumors had started going around town about a serial killer indiscriminately targeting the population of Crystal Rose. This is probably why, just like my father, Sergius also decided to get rid of me.