I woke up drowsy, with my body paralyzed on the ground of a room I didn’t recognize. I tried to move but couldn’t fight the heaviness in my limbs. It felt as though I was being forced down with thousands of insects biting into my skin.

I instantly knew what the sensation was from.

Father’s angelic power was blood manipulation, the ability that got passed down to me. As a master of blood manipulation, my father could take control of people's bodies, forcing their movements to his will. He could make somebody stab themselves with a dagger or easily stop their heart. 

He was using it now to keep me from moving.

After a small groan of pain, I glanced around the room with my eyes. It was dimly lit with candles, and the ceiling stretched abnormally high. There was no furniture, save for shelves lined on the walls, filled with various sized bottles and jars. On the ground in the center was a small, circular, platform.

Was this a chamber in my fathers house?

Then I noticed him, standing in the dark corner of the room, staring at me.

“Awake now, are we?” he said coldly. 

I remembered then what happened before I passed out and my head started to throb. Getting hit in the face was a first for me. 

My eyes widened as he stepped closer, my heart quickened, and a small noise escaped my lips. Even through my daze, my body still remembered that there was pain when he got close to me.

“Good,” he said, bending to eye level. “I’m ready to get started.”

Unable to move, I watched as my father walked to his shelf and grabbed a relic– a carved obsidian amulet. The longer I stared, the louder I heard unsettling whispers escaping from it. 

It felt… familiar.

He placed the relic on the circular platform in the center. Then, reaching for a dagger and a glass cup, he moved back toward me.

“This is going to cleanse you of your demonic lineage that you inherited from your bitch of a mother.” His voice was a chilling monotone, more unsettling than rage. 

My eyes widened with fear and I began to plead with him, but it fell on deaf ears. He raised the dagger, slicing into my arm without hesitation, as if he had done this many times before. A choked sob escaped me as the red substance floated out of my arm, guided by his power into the glass.

“Please,” I begged. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Please!”

Tears streamed down my face. He finished, and with the glass in hand, walked to the center of the room to draw symbols on the ground with my blood. Each scrape of his fingers against the stone sent tremors of dread through my spine. Realization hit me.

I knew what this was…

Witchcraft.

“Your mother,” he spat, “failed to inform me that she was born of demonic descent.” His fingers continued to draw, blood dripping off of them. “Something that was also, evidently, unbeknownst to the King when he arranged our marriage.”

I tried to move, but his ability held me down. “That’s not possible. I-I’m f-fourteen. Father-”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” His head whipped toward me as he stopped his movements, a fierce raging in his eyes. He suddenly took a breath and continued his work on the ground, as if nothing had happened. “She either lied to me that you were my child, or you are somehow the only Lament to live past seven.”

I struggled to understand his words. It was impossible. He was raging mad!

“I have to assume it is the latter, unfortunately,” he continued, “because I know, for a fact, that disgusting Seraphiel never had the guts to lay his hands on my woman.” Then, his eyes glanced at me in a look of shame. “Besides… you look like me and inherited my ability.”

He stood up, finishing his symbols, while I still tried to comprehend what was happening. Reading from a crumpled piece of parchment, he chanted in a language unknown to me. It sounded foreign on his lips, like he had no idea of the meaning behind the words.

The whispers from the relic began to grow louder in my ears, turning into horrifying yells in a demonic language. Then the pain started– a dull ache that quickly transformed into a searing agony. It felt as though every nerve in my body was ripping itself apart. I gasped, my vision narrowing, and my mind drifted on the edge of consciousness. 

As the pain intensified, a shrieking sound escaped me. The next time I drew breath, a black smoke erupted from the relic and sped across the room, forcing its way into my throat. The lack of air sent intense pressure into my head and it choked me until I passed out.

Darkness. That’s all I could see. The pain from a second ago was gone and replaced by an eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach. My hairs stood, and I sensed I was being watched. I frantically tried to look around and saw nothing but black.

My lack of vision heightened my senses and I heard tiny clicks, almost like animal claws, connecting with the ground repeatedly. I looked into the direction of the noise, my body tensing as I awaited the creature who would end me. Slowly, an even greater darkness began to take the form of a large figure and glowing red eyes appeared. I started backing away.

"Finally," the silhouette chuckled, menacingly.

Fear unlike any I had known twisted within me, sucking breath from my lungs. I lost all the strength in my body as my knees wobbled and I fell to the ground, voice faltering. “Who... are you?”

The figure drifted closer. “Me?” it mused. “I, child… am Kako.”

Well, shit.