Now it was all going down.
Aurora and I were now preparing for war and bloodshed, and I realized that I had to train her in the same way my mother had raised me. Maybe I would need to go back to Persephone for the numbers, as the Quintels were as many as them, and we couldn't do it alone. But that was for later.
For now, I had to train my daughter for worst-case scenarios.
And it hurt my heart to see what our once beautiful family had turned into—for revenge.
Aurora and I didn't even have interactions like we normally did. There was a sense of coldness in our conversations, and it was always tense—like we were speaking because we had to. And I wish I could say I tried to fix things, but I wanted to just get revenge, and everything else didn't seem to matter to me anymore.
How could I have thought that? She was my daughter. The last part of her I had to hold on to.
And I turned her into a… well, me.
Training, like always, was brutal and felt endless. From power development—which involved giving my daughter essence of Nefarious blood, because she wasn't fully Nefarious and wouldn't be as strong as she needed to be—the transformation was painful and unending.
Drinking Nefarious blood felt like having all the bones in your body broken and put back together. Like being set on fire and freezing cold at the same time.
We were a different breed, so for someone to become fully Nefarious, they had to be remade from the inside out.
And I sat and had to see my daughter struggle—struggle for air and scream with the pain. I clenched my fists and turned my eyes away and covered my ears.
I couldn't cry.
If I did, then I would have to deal with all the emotions I had bottled up for months—and I wouldn't get up again if I did.
Aurora's transformation took two weeks.
I could never forget.
Two weeks of hearing my daughter scream and cry and gasp for air. And it was all for my revenge.
I saw the bones of her body sometimes poke out of her body. You could see the blood trying to seep out of her eyes, and I couldn't handle it most times. I just wanted it done. When I tried to touch her, her skin seemed so cold, and she would always move away like she was irritated by my presence. Aurora was with me because she knew that I could help her become the monster she wanted to become.
And I just… I don't even know what the point of this is. I just wanted Lunafreya back.
I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I couldn't breathe at night. I would wake up holding on to my chest and just feel this pain in me, and it was too much. I would fall off the bed and just beg whatever power is greater to take me and just end it all.
I didn't want whatever this life was anymore.
I had finally found my reason—and then she was taken from me.
The regret turned to sorrow, and then finally… to anger.
Now, with Aurora holding all the power of a full Nefarious blood, she was going to be my most dangerous weapon.
From lifting weights to using her powers to the point of exhaustion and beyond—I would see her tire herself out, gnash my teeth, and tell her to keep going.
Just like you, Evan.
When she was finally ready, I set her out on her first mission. We found out there were still some Quintels on a nearby world.
But she, unlike you, had no moral dilemma.
As I saw my daughter have no hesitation to pull out her sword and slash Quintels before they could even react—she had been filled with rage. So there was no flinch in her.
She knew exactly what she wanted to do.
And no one was safe. She had no mercy—a stunning and scary image of Persephone. She not only killed the Quintels but everyone else around her—a weapon of mass destruction. I saw what I had done to my daughter, and I was proud of her. But like always, we would have to leave before reinforcements came. After all, we were just two people, which is why my biggest consideration was going back to my mother's empire for the numbers.
Aurora would never want to run away.
She scared me, and I also feared what would happen if she met my mother. At this point, they were practically the same person—so imagine what would happen if they met. Still, we needed them. So before we would go, I decided to have a conversation with Aurora to try to change her understanding of things.
But she said that she came from an empire of greats who were on top of the world—and would never run from a fight.
And I was stunned. Shocked at what my daughter's words meant.
But still… I would take her to the empire. Her words were cold to me. At this point, it felt like my relationship with my mother.
And we still left.
At the gates of the empire, as always, there was this stench all around—like dried blood and rotten corpses. I was always sick to my stomach.
I was back here—after leaving for love, after trying to escape the death and carnage. I just wanted a peaceful life with Lunafreya and Aurora. And now, broken and battered, we were back. Worse than when we left.
I didn't say it at the time, but I could feel it—Lunafreya, somewhere deep inside me, begging me to turn around. Telling me to leave. Whispering that nothing would ever be worth this.
But the look in Aurora's eyes… like she loved it.