To me, the moon is my sun. Once the fangs of the great light retract themselves, I prepare for my sacred ritual to live... perhaps?

I stood quietly, listening to the sounds of life fading from the town before slipping into the shadows and arriving at the front door of an old tavern. A few intoxicated men joined me in the twilight, gearing up for another round of alcohol they’d already downed hours ago. Their raucous revelry filled those narrow streets, an unwelcome intrusion on the silence I carried within.

Alexander Stormbourne—that was what my father called me sixteen years ago. He referred to me by the full name at every opportunity. A man of tradition and proper values, a perfectionist in his way. He always preached about how names carried weight and meaning; heritage that shouldn’t be truncated or abbreviated in any manner. Well, that was his view; others probably found ‘Alex’ more convenient or just lazy. After all, names do evolve with time, and practicality often wins out over tradition.

But honestly, I don’t really care. It was all about what people thought of me. Some opinions were favorable, while others either didn’t think I was worth their time or kept at a distance to avoid getting too near. And it wasn’t because I had some disease or anything like that; it was just about the timing of my birth.

So here is my story.

Born when the moon eclipsed the sun, most of my father’s inner circle believed my birth was a bad omen. They even suggested, with barely concealed dread, that I might one day bring about the downfall of my father’s reign. Imagine that! What a wild superstition to pin on a newborn. It felt like they were scrambling for any excuse to project their anxieties onto someone, and, unfortunately, I was that someone.

It wasn’t until I was eleven that my older brother, Alistair, who was a year my senior, finally gave me some clarity. He sat me down and said it wasn’t about the moon eclipsing the sun or some fat cow jumping over the moon. It was actually simpler than that. It was because I was the fourth child in our family of five. Can you believe it? All this fuss over being the fourth in line. It’s almost laughable to think that something as mundane as birth order could stir up such a storm.

The moment my brother started to explain why I was considered cursed, his expression changed completely. He looked like a deer caught in the hunter’s sights. Worried about being overheard, he lowered his voice to a whisper. The two of us hunched down, even though, quite ironically, we were alone in our family’s vast library.

According to Alistair, the superstition was rooted deep in our family’s history. It all began with our great-great-great-grandmother, who had the curious habit of favoring her fourth son for leadership. Why? Alistair speculated it might have been because that fourth son was a handsome dude. But it didn’t take long before he ran the family into the ground. Mismanagement emptied the coffers, and soon, smaller territories caught wind. They swallowed up our lands in debts we couldn’t pay. His reign ended quickly. The scandal resulted in the swift execution of my great-great-great-grandmother once her journals were discovered. The eldest son, my great-great-grandfather, was reinstated to restore order. As for the ill-fated fourth son, he was spared from execution but was exiled, condemned to live far away from the family’s affairs.

I guess my brother’s theory about his good looks was right. Our gallows always spared the good-looking dudes’ necks.

His warning didn’t bother me. In fact, I had no interest in the old curse. What annoyed me, though, was that my brother always had a way of spinning tales; he wove them with just enough believability to make you doubt everything. But I wasn’t convinced, not even for a second. He was probably just trying to scare me off. Or maybe he didn’t want me to even entertain the notion of questioning our eldest brother’s right as the head of the family.

As he finished his story, I didn’t even pause to let it sink in. I just jumped from where I was sitting and brought my knuckles sharply across the top of his head, catching him as he was still bent double and unsuspecting. He yelped, rubbing the spot where I’d landed the blow. His face twisted into a grimace like he’d just tasted something sour. “The hell did you do that for?” he snapped, clearly not expecting to be hit by his younger brother.

I just stood there, arms crossed. “You think I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here?” I shot back, keeping my tone sharp. His spectacles slid down his nose. He peeked up at me with that fake innocence of his.

“What do you mean?” he asked, eyes all wide. Yeah, right. Like I was going to fall for that.

I leaned in, jabbing a finger at him, making sure he got the point. “You think I want to be head of the family? You really think I give a damn about all this tradition crap? I sure as hell don’t want to become a Magic Swordsman, either.”

Quick Stormbourne family fact: the head of our house wields a real, not metaphorical, power. Only those with a core of mana may claim this title. Amongst the children of Marquess Lucian Stormbourne, I and my eldest brother Aiden were born with a mana core. It made just this tiny detail eligible for both of us to eventually succeed our father when he either stepped down or, you know, passed on naturally, provided there was nothing fishy going on.

“The story’s true, you numbskull!” my brother shot back. He pointed to the row of portraits lining the walls of the library, each one a former head of our family. Our father’s portrait was among them, looking down with that ever-present Stormbourne dignity. “You see that one empty space over there?”

I gave the spot a quick dismissive glance. “What of it?”

“That’s where Great-Great-Granduncle Theodore’s portrait used to hang.”

He looked back at me, his face lighting up in anticipation of an apology. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction, at least not in the way he wanted. Instead, I humored him in my own way. I gave him another knuckle on the head, this time a little harder. “Or maybe Great-Great-Granduncle Theodore just wasn’t having a good hair day and they couldn’t get a decent portrait. Or maybe the painting fell because the wall couldn’t stand how terrible his haircut was. Did you ever think of that?”

Before he could shake off the second blow, I had already spun on my heel and darted out of there. His voice trailed after me in a flow of curses, but I wasn’t going to wait around and listen. He’d be waiting for the sun to rise in the west before I let him have the last word.

Life didn’t get easier as I grew older. It was not because of the whispers behind my back, but because my responsibilities finally caught up with me. Remember when I said that I did not want to become a Magic Swordsman? Well, it did not mean that I could escape from my family’s tradition.

I turned twelve that day, and for four darn years, those Stormbourne instructors never let up. They wanted to make me into the next Aiden, or at least their version of him. It was a battle every single day, not against the sword, but against the weight of my brother’s legacy. Oh wow. Thank you, my amazingly gifted brother... Really deserving of your talent. And every time I fell short, feeling that frustration simmer within me before inevitably snapping at the instructor: “Are you blind? I’m not Aiden!”

It bugs me that he’s always brought up in comparison to me, but still, I can’t bring myself to hate Aiden for being talented. He’s an okay dude, really. I appreciate his philosophy when it comes to me: “You do your thing, and I’ll do mine.” It has worked out well enough for both of us.

Before Aiden set foot in Silverdome Academy, he had been a third-level swordsman—an Adept Magic Swordsman. By the time he graduated, he reached fifth mastery as an Expert Magic Swordsman. And just a few months ago, he pushed himself even further to become a Master Magic Swordsman at twenty-one. Although he didn’t surpass our father, who reached that level at nineteen, hey, who’s complaining? I still haven’t passed the Novice stage.

Aiden was our people’s darling, our father’s and everybody else’s. He was totally the opposite of me. Swordsmanship and magic ran through his veins. He genuinely cared about the affairs of our region. The folks at Stormbourne Estate and our town, Stormvale, literally worshipped him. Rumor had it that my father might retire sooner rather than later and name Aiden as his successor. I could see why he never stopped boasting to the house elders; even the servants heard about it.

And me? Let’s just say ale and wine flowed through my veins like a never-ending tide. I was probably the youngest Stormbourne to start drinking at fourteen, no less.

“Hey, Alex! What’s wrong with you? Let’s make a toast!” A voice snapped me back into the present. I turned my head slightly to the guy sitting on my right. He had a face like a sick horse and was raising his tankard of ale to me.

“James is right, Alex! Why did you go so silent all of a sudden?” Dean said, sitting opposite me. His nose always appeared to be running with snot when he got drunk, and tonight was no exception.

“Probably scared he won’t be able to drink anymore when he gets into Silverdome,” grunted Craig with a grin. He’s the biggest guy in our circle, with caterpillar eyebrows that make him look hilarious. “You know how those academies are. They’ll have you trading ale and wine for dusty old tomes.”

Dean, snickering at our banter, paused briefly to snort snot back up into his nostril. I cringed whenever I saw him do that, but it’s hard to be mad when he’s so unapologetically himself. He went back to laughing, filling the stale air of the overly crowded tavern as if he were all that and a bag of chips.

These were the three crazy dudes who first introduced me to the so-called wonders of drinking, always insisting that ale and wine could solve all my problems. I wasn’t so sure it did much for my self-doubt, though. My troubles always came rushing back once the buzz wore off, heavier than before, like a former lover who couldn’t seem to move on.

“As if!” I rose from my chair, lifting the tankard high. “Here’s to that future me, the first person ever in Valoria... awarded the title ‘The Drunken Swordsman!’”

The four of us raised our ales like fools without shame or sense, running to war, and laughter joined the chorus with clinking mugs as the brew slid down our throats.

“Here’s to glory!” Craig roared, his caterpillar eyebrows dancing in glee.

“To epic failures!” Dean added. His booming laughter was punctuated by the unsettling slurp of his nose.

“To forgetting all our troubles!” James joined in, a wide grin spreading across his face.

With every swallow, the world blurred, and for that brief instant, I felt like I could take on anything, even the weight of my own doubts.

“And this is for calling yourself the Drunken Swordsman!” A wine bottle came hurling through the air from a middle-aged man sitting alone at the far end of the tavern. It connected with my head with a dull thud, and just like that, everything went black.

So, that’s the gist of my story so far, as best as I can recall it. Little did I know that the next day, I would cross paths with a mysterious old man who would turn everything I thought I knew about myself and the world upside down.