It would be a cliché to say the house smelt of death, but I didn’t need to say it. I could see the death as soon as I cleared the porch and walked through a second door. I was in the hallway proper, stairs on my right leading up, a corridor beside it leading to what had been the dining room the last time I was here. There were three bodies ahead of me on the same musty green carpet that had been lain two decades ago.

  It was two females and a male. Clothed, faces down, eyes closed. Where they lay, the carpet had become a dark brown from where their blood had seeped into the fibres. The door beyond them was open. I kept my rifle up, as I walked over their bodies, quickly scanning for the cause of their deaths, but there weren’t any glaringly obvious signs. Given the blood, I suspected stabbing, though there wasn’t a knife to be seen.

  “Dad? Nathan?” I shouted as I made my way through to what used to be the dining room. It had become a lounge, with a door ahead of me to the kitchen. I remembered the kitchen, but I could see it was changed now. It had been extended all the way to the left, where it met the end of the lounge with an open wall between the two. I could just make out the corners of the dining table.

  There were four bodies strewn across the rug, atop the same green carpet, in the centre of the room. Two females here – one that looked barely a teenager. One of the males looked no older than eighteen either, an older man laying by his side. Another pool of brown surrounded them, larger than the one in the hallway. There was a sofa on one side, a tv on the other between the open wall and the kitchen door, and another sofa opposite me, with a familiar but long-forgotten person sat there.

  It wasn’t the way I was expecting to see my dad. He was dead, that much was apparent. It was the manner of his death that struck me.

  He was a lean, wiry man with balding hair and a small white, wispy beard. He was sat on the sofa facing me, trousers on, a bloodied wife-beater vest on his torso. For most people, that term was a bit of a dark joke. For my dad, it was a reality. His eyes were wide-open, staring at me from beneath the knife that was embedded into the centre of his forehead.

  The majority of me felt a tangible sense of relief. I realised then that this is what I wanted. Maybe not in this way, but I had wanted him gone, even though I knew I couldn’t do it myself. But there was the tiniest part of me that felt a pang of sorrow. Of regret. Of pain. I knew he would still be the same shitty father had I tried to make amends with him, but now that he was gone, I would never get the opportunity to do so. Never have the opportunity to see whether he could be a father.

  I didn’t move for a few moments. Just stared at his lifeless eyes that stared back. For most people, that might be a nightmare vision that would haunt them for years. For me, I felt like I needed the closure. There wasn’t any pleasure in seeing him like that. Just relief. Just hope that the memories buried deep down that haunted me would finally be laid to rest.

  The knife bothered me though. The other four in the room looked much like the first three. No discernible wounds, but the knife confirmed for me that they were all stabbed. The almost ritualistic manner in which it was embedded into my father’s head suggested something personal. And for all the man had done in the past, he deserved some dignity in death. I walked over to him, past the dead bodies on the floor and gently closed his eyes. He looked peaceful. A small tear fell from the corner of my eye. It would be the only one for him.

  “Still the loving son, I see.”

  My head whipped round to the source of the voice, my rifle trained on the speaker. It was a voice I knew well. One I hadn’t heard in years.

  Nathan was sat at the dining table, in a chequered green and grey shirt. He was thirty-six, eight years older than me. There’d been another brother between us, who’d passed away before I was born, when Nathan had only been six years old.

  The two of us didn’t look that much alike. Nathan had the darker tones of my dad, where I was more light skinned like my mum. He was slimmer than me, with a narrow, stronger jaw where mine was rounder and a little plump. He had flowing black hair on his head, just falling short of his shoulders and piercing black eyes, with stubble across his chin, flecked with specks of white.

  His arms rested on the table, several knives laid out in front of him, marred by streaks of blood, but it was the bracer on his left arm that drew my interest. It was gold, taking up two-thirds of his forearm and had multiple gems embedded within it. Gems of various colours but with a distinct violet glow. I’d seen the bracer before. The last time being when Melkarieth had taken it from Kaelyn’s arm. How did it get to my brother?

  However it had done, I had the distinct feeling that I was in danger, even though I was the one holding the gun. Between my dad and brother, my brother was always the one I had most concerns about. There was something wrong with his head, I knew that. Not in the insane type of way, like he wasn’t aware of his actions. He knew what he was doing, but he never seemed to much care. I never expected this though. Cold-blooded murder. Of his dad. In such a gruesome manner. The man was worse than I thought. More dangerous than I’d realised.

  [Gravity Circle]

  It was instinctive. I activated the ability in my mind and felt mana fill me with warmth, waiting for me to direct its flow. I looked at a spot in front of me. There can’t have been more than three metres between us, the circle covering two of that.

  [Frost Circle]

  I placed that one behind me. I hadn’t forgotten how Kaelyn had moved her knife behind Melkarieth and tried to attack him. I wasn’t sure how strong my brother was yet, but I didn’t want to take any chances, looking at those knives in front of him.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Placing the circles had been as easy as picturing where I wanted them, confirming it in my mind and feeling the mana flow out of me. No colours with these. No discernible threads. Just activate, feel the mana flow within and then it was gone.

  “Nathan,” I tipped my head to the freak. It was then that I noticed there were others at the table. Two guys. One sat to my brother’s left – similar age, but tall and stocky. Shaved head like mine, but with a scar across one side like someone had cut open his skull. He looked like the kind of man that a cut skull was just an occupational hazard. I couldn’t see the other one clearly, hidden behind a column that separated the kitchen door from the open wall. I slowly backed away, a millimetre at a time, trying my best to not make it obvious, as I inched towards the door. Now I wished I hadn’t stopped Kian coming with me.

  “It’s a good thing you came. Makes my life a lot easier,” Nathan said, passing a ten pound note over to the man to his left.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, once we were done here, I was going to come after you, but Terry big-brains here,” he gestured at the man to his left, “said we should wait a little. He noticed one of those dots on the map coming towards us.

  “I thought it couldn’t be, but he bet me it was you. And here you are. Did you come for a family reunion? Unfortunately, mum and dad won’t be able to join us.”

  He stood up. I tagged him just in case, and as he shuffled around the table and stood in the open wall, that clear white thread followed, tiny ball at the start where he had been standing, and the other near his stomach. I channelled mana, the turquoise thread emanating from my body and hovering by the tiny ball at Nathan’s waist.

  I continued to snail towards the door as I flicked my head towards our dead father. “This your handiwork then?”

  He glanced at our dad as if surprised by what he saw. He pursed his lips and turned back to me. “We had a difference of opinion. Does it bother you? Shouldn’t you be pleased? What was it you said to us the last time we spoke? I hope the both of you die?”

  I had. I remembered now. I was on a call to them, on speaker.

  “Do you remember what we were talking about then?” Nathan asked.

  I edged further towards the lounge entrance, taking care to not step on the dead. I could see the shadows near the kitchen door as the other two seemed to be getting ready over there. I reapplied the [Gravity Circle] a third of the way between the kitchen door, and the lounge door. Close enough to trap them but not close enough that it triggered early. I moved the [Frost Circle] to where I was standing. It would be directly between me and Nathan. I was hoping he wasn’t able to move the blades behind me. Or was too arrogant to think he needed to.

  “I was trying to get the both of you to admit you’d killed mum,” I said.

  He smiled at me. A chilling smile. The kind that made you want to take a shower.

  “I didn’t,” he said, then nodded to my dad. “He did. Strangled her the last night we were on that holiday. In Asia. Got me to help with the clean-up. You always knew that though, right?”

  I had always known it. I could just never prove it.

  I was fourteen at the time. Mum had been there one night. Then the next morning, when we were leaving to come back to the UK, she wasn’t at our hotel. Dad had said she had left him. They’d had an argument the previous night, and she’d left and never came back. I was always sure there was more to it. I’d been half-asleep that night when my dad had come to the room I was sharing with my brother and asked him to help with something. Now I knew what that had been.

  Of course, I had no solid proof. When we’d got back to the UK, life went on as normal, minus mum. Verbal abuse from my dad. Physical from my brother. Almost on a daily basis with mum no longer there. Over time, my dad filed for the ending of the marriage and got the house entirely in mum’s absence.

  I’d eventually gone to the police just before my eighteenth birthday and told them my suspicions. They took me seriously, and followed up with my dad and brother, but again, no solid evidence. Just weak circumstantial. Not enough to pursue prosecution, they’d said. The only two people who knew the truth had stuck to their story. Mum had just left.

  I took the beatings of my life in the aftermath of making that report. Beaten so severely that I truly wondered whether I would live. The two of them had kept me alive of course. Fed me. Let me heal up before letting me see the sun again. They made it clear that if I ever mentioned it to the police again, I wouldn’t get a next time. It was then that I knew I had to leave, and I did as soon as I could. I never stopped trying to get the truth from them though.

  “Why are you telling me now?” I asked, as I was almost at the lounge entrance. I could see Terry big-brains and the other man – slightly shorter, no less stocky, but with some hair – coming through the kitchen door. It would be moments before the trap triggered.

  “I’ve always wanted you to know. It’s been such a weight on my shoulders to hold on to such a terrible secret. It feels cathartic to share.” He said all of that with as much emotion as the dead bodies I was surrounded by. “And I don’t suppose there’s much you can do about it now anyway,” he said, with a slight curve of his lips.

  I knew what he was doing. Trying to catch me off guard. Trying to overwhelm me emotionally, so I’d make a mistake. Act out. Become enraged, maybe. But I was used to those tactics from him, and my deceased father. That was the thing about abusers. They liked to use the same tactics over and over. Goad you into responding to their psychological attacks, so they could respond with far worse. But once you understood the cycle, you could train yourself to be free. Maybe not of the trauma within. But at least, to move on from their abuse.

  Besides, I’d been through far too much already for it to work.

  “Who are the rest of these people?”

  “Just neighbours. Came over, looking for a place to shelter when the battle began.”

  “And I guess you and…Thomson and Thompson over here got rid of them? Why?”

  “Why? The fact that you’re asking shows that that gem in your head doesn’t belong to you. It needs someone who will know how to make better use of it.”

  The two by the kitchen were a moment away from the [Gravity Circle], but I was more concerned by the knives that had suddenly appeared next to my brother.

  Four of them plopped into the air around him and hung suspended. The bracer on his arm started to glow a little more. It was a Legendary mana-stone that controlled space, Kaelyn had said. Then something else occurred to me. Would that mean he was classless like me? Did all mana-stone holders have that privilege, or was that restricted to Divine mana-stone users?

  Best to act like it was the former. Best to pray that he also didn’t have traps set up like me.

  My back was to the lounge entrance as I watched the two from the kitchen. Just one more step. My finger was poised on the trigger of my rifle. After hearing the truth about my mother and seeing what he had done to his father – the man he had always seemed to adore, I was under no illusions that this was a kill or be killed situation.

  And I’ll be damned before I use another reset.

  by Daniel Newwyn

  He can’t conjure grief, can barely levitate a pebble, and once submitted a stanza instead of a spell schematic.

  Fabrisse Kestovar: aspiring thaumaturge rock collector, confirmed pastry enthusiast, and perhaps the least emotionally competent student in the Order’s seven-hundred-year history.

  PRAXIS NODE, a long-dormant, possibly AI-driven interface that delivers cryptic quests, sarcastic prompts, and calibration objectives measured in light-years. He has a Legacy Token, no combat thresholds, and a growing collection of useless rocks the system insists are ‘historically significant.’

  He’s also the only one who can see any of it.