𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐃𝐆𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖 || 𝐉𝐔𝐉𝐔𝐓𝐒𝐔 𝐊𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐍

Chapter 12: The Torment Sigil

The usage of Torment Sigils had long been outlawed, and those who used it faced harsh penalties, but there were those who had still managed to cultivate the technique to use it.

Those with the abilities to do such things as a result of mutated DNA were able to achieve things beyond the mundane, with those people few and far between. Of course, the Institute had made sure to round them all up, Mina being one of them. She was always curious and wary as to why she never saw the others.

Until that day.

Instead of taking her down the usual white corridor towards her 'training' room, they went left instead and down numerous flights of stairs.

As the years had gone by while she was in captivity, never being able to see the outside world, Mina caught snippets of information from the outside. At the age of 18, Mina had only just begun to realise how far she had underestimated the strength and aspirations of the Magister and the Institute. They had staged a violent coup and managed to overthrow the government, ruling the country of Lucrenze with an iron fist, the Magister being the self-claimed ruler.

It was only later, she found that the Magister had plans not only for the country but the planet Vastra itself.

And unbeknown to Mina, it all starts and ends with her.

She was forced to learn and absorb new abilities and techniques until she collapsed, only for her to recover and be forced to endure the process all over again.

It was then she realised why she never saw the others who had been captured.

They were the failed experiments, leaving only her. As the years went by she'd been trained to see herself as a tool, and not a person.

That made killing the others meant nothing to her, she did as she was told.

The first time she used the Torment Sigil was when she stole the technique from the blood of the last known user of the technique, using it against him in a twisted and ironic fate.

She touched his blood and commanded it to move, sketching itself into an intricate design on the floor around the man.

She remembered him begging and pleading, tears in his eyes as the magister looked on smugly at her success.

Before she lifted her fingers and wiped two fingers smeared in blood across his forehead. The scream unsettled her, but she felt an out of body experience as if everything that was going on around her was so very far away.

Then the man, blood streaming from his eyes, mouth, nose and ears, keeled over as he slumped to the ground, his blood bubbling hot under his skin before catching on fire.

That was her first murder.

And it wasn't the last. to kill from a young age would affect the most stable of minds, to the point where she hated to see her reflection, pale from the lack of sunlight, her once pitch-black hair smattered with streaks of white from the strain of her gruelling "training" and experimentation.

She was but a tool, the sword of the Magister, ready to bring forth a new golden age of destruction and tyrannical rule under his hand.

___

It had been a few moments when her eyes finally refocused as she studied the remaining photos containing the Torment Sigil, memories she didn't realise she possessed now flooding her mind.

How did I forget the first time I killed a person?!

The memories felt so alien to her, almost as if they were someone else's, but she couldn't deny that they were definitely hers.