Lumaria's Legacy

Part I

Nyx's POV:

In the flickering glow of the hearth, elders would recount tales of the blood witches with a solemnity that sent shivers down the spines of wide-eyed children. The very air seemed to thicken with the weight of ancient secrets as they spoke the forbidden rituals and darks pacts that marked the blood witches as pariahs in the eyes of the world.

Yet as I grew older, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was more to the story than the evil narrative suggested. As night settled upon us, I found myself opening the window of my tavern bedroom, near the forbidden mountains and dark forest. There in the stillness, and tranquility of the darkness that engulfed me, I wondered if the true evil lay not in the blood witches themselves but in the fear that gripped the hearts of those who told their tales. The flickering flame from my hands seemed to dance with the possibility that the blood witches, condemned and forsaken, might hold the key to a truth too dangerous for the world to fathom.

Because if blood witches were branded as the devil, what did that make me? The high general who fought the evils of the kingdom was okay with killing her own kin, did that make me a monster? I had discovered the secret that had been concealed from me since birth, I could control fire. I was one of them--a blood witch by birth, possibly abandoned from my parents because of something I had no control over. I despised them, how could they leave me to fend for myself? They had condemned me without understanding.

Every time I would use my powers, a torrent of conflicting emotions surged within me. The fear of persecution gnawed at the edge of my consciousness, threatening to expose the secret I had guarded so closely. But deep within my fear, lied a burning desire to understand the nature of my own existence. What if blood witches were more than cursed? I clung onto that false hope that somehow, blood witches were misunderstood and that the very essence of my being held the key to dispelling the shadows that clung to their misunderstood legacy.

Wrestling with the truth, a sense of loneliness and isolation settled over me. I begged for acceptance, yet dreaded the day when the king might discover my hidden identity. I would be branded as a traitor and killed the second he found out. The fear of becoming the embodiment of the dark tales haunted my dreams, and I questioned whether destiny would force me down a path of darkness.

And yet, maybe the blood witches wanted you to believe the stories.