While I was wallowing in confusion, they were becoming more and more certain of my fate.
Yet they never once told me. They let me live in my ignorance, which in itself is both a blessing and a curse. For how am I to go on now that I know the truth?
My lips tremble with frustration.
In the matter of seconds, I have been stripped away of everything—my past, my present and my future.
But there is still one question that lingers.
Why am I still alive? If I am to bring death upon everyone around me, then why was I allowed to live?
Almost as if hearing my thoughts, my father speaks.
“If the Lord Supreme was so concerned, why did he not delay the births himself? He had the power to do so? And why did he not kill the newborns?”
“You know as well as I do why. Because that would go beyond his role as Lord Supreme, and the houses would have rioted. It was a precarious time for his reign, and I assume he did not want to jeopardize that,” my mother murmurs with a sigh. “He did the only thing he could, Hanth. He bound his spiritual energy so he cannot cultivate or channel. Yet death still follows him. He has no spiritual energy—at last none that you and I can detect—but he still causes destruction. What alternative do we have?”
My world crumbles, together with all the theories I may have had about the strange deaths that happened around me. In my ignorance, or perhaps, my singular focus to find an explanation, I resolved that despite having defective spiritual energy, those deaths could have been caused by an outburst I could not control. It had happened before. To hear that I do not possess one bit of spiritual energy—that the Lord Supreme himself bound it—shatters all of my previously held beliefs.
If errant energy was not the cause of those deaths… Then there is only one conclusion.
I must concede that I am, indeed cursed. And perhaps I do deserve to die before I harm anyone else.
“So I ask you again, Inaria. What do you want me to do?” My father asks as he lowers his head.
“Kill him,” my mother states coldly.
His eyes snap to hers.
“Me? Why me?”
Her lips flatten. Walking to the other side of the room, she pours herself a glass of alcohol. Swirling the liquid in her glass, she takes her time to answer.
“He trusts you. More than me.”
“Inaria…”
“We cannot do it here, or it will draw attention. But you can take him somewhere else and…”
“And kill him in cold blood? Is that your solution? He is myson,” he whispers wearily.
“He is my son, too. But he is also something else. Something neither you nor I understand.”
She walks over to his side, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“This is not easy for me, either.” She sighs. “You know how much I wanted another child after…” she trails off. “I wanted to love him, Hanth. I truly wanted to love him from the bottom of my heart. But I cannot. There is something unlovable about him. You see it, too, do you not? Sometimes, when he looks at me, it’s like there’s nothing there. Like he’s just…hollow.”
“No, I do not. He is a child, for fuck’s sake.”
“He is closer to being an adult than he is to a child.” She shakes her head. “It is better to remove a rotten fruit before it poisons our entire realm.”
I cannot hear more of this. Staggering back, I dazedly make my way to my room. Upsila greets me when I enter, and I absentmindedly pour some water into her bowl. Yet as I take a step back, my parents’ words echo in my brain.
Why did I have to go get water? Why did I have to listen to their conversation?
Everything would have been so much better if I had continued as before; if my ignorance had remained the status quo.
How am I to erase this new information from my mind?
