When I was a child, I found a book hidden by my mother. The book had a particular cover. In the middle, there was a circle with 8 arrows pointing outwards. A triangle was located within the circle, and from the triangle, a tentacle came out. There were all sorts of strange and eldritch drawings on the cover. It scared me, but also fascinated me. It was my childhood secret. It was special, not just in cover, but by who had written it. When I learned to read, I knew that one of my ancestors had written the book. I knew so from the surname. The author had the surname of Blackthorn, which was my family name. I had read it cover to cover and had memorized it. The content was strange. It seemed as if it was written by a delirious man, but to my childhood mind, it was the most magnificent thing.
One day, I was reading it and forgot to hide it. My parents were usually busy, so they had neither the time nor the attention span required to discover my secret. However, as fate would have it, that day they did. I remember quite clearly how they fought to the middle of the night, how I was punished physically for the first time in my life, and how traumatizing the whole thing was. From that day onward, they hired a strict tutor. She was an elderly woman, a harsh elderly woman. Her name was Eleanor, and she seemingly possessed endless vitality despite her old age. She never let me out of her eyes.
Eleanor was a believer and was hired with specific instructions to teach me the mother church doctrine thoroughly. So she told me of Alraune, the goddess of nature. Her doctrine seemed ruthless to me even as a child. It was all nice words, but it seemed to have a hard undertone like the earth. Alraune was born when nature responded to the cries of hanged men. Her core doctrine involved balancing things with each other so that the world is in balance. It seemed nice, right?
“All return to earth and must do so in their most natural state. As we are born naked and have nothing to our name, so we must go naked and have nothing to our name. We must be buried beneath the earth so we become nutrients for other creatures.”
Above is part of the sacred book of the earth mother church, also called the Book of Nature. It was not so bad, but it gave the sense that if I were to describe it, I would use the word primeval, or if I wanted a bit poetic, I would call it earth wisdom.
The book of nature, like any other religious book, had a creation myth and eschatology. The creation myth explained how the world was born by the god high above and how the earth was created before the sun. Anyone who said otherwise was lost or led astray by the occult and demons therein.
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One thing about the doctrine was that, like any other religion, it spoke of the end of days. Its version of the apocalypse was such that only the plants would remain, and mankind would perish. After that, Alraune would revive those with good deeds whose souls were pure enough. It was said that the trees protected the souls of good men after death. After the apocalypse, the earth would be filled with harmony, prosperity, and happiness, until the day of judgment by the god high above.
As I learned all these, I could see the irony of how the blackthorn legacy was a thorn in the eyes of others. The secret book of my childhood spoke of chaos. It said the world is a primeval forest and follows laws such as power and sexuality. The creatures have adapted to it some more and some less, but trees knew a secret that the others did not. Trees seek light. The creatures that adapted more to the darkness of the jungle would struggle more to follow the light. The book spoke of chaos, evolution, and admittedly left one a bit hollow by the first impression.
When I was thirteen, something happened that changed my life. I saw something. A dark and malevolent creature. It was sentient darkness, and a hunter was fighting it. I watched fascinated as the wolf made of darkness bled shadow. I say shadow, but it was more like vapor, but black. I later had to swear the trillium flower oath. Swearing it meant I was magically bound not to talk about it and keep my silence around the matter.
My home was in the evening district, located southwest of the true moon city. It was close to the black rose workshop, so sometimes I would go see the hunters. Hunters were the nightmare of my childhood, and after the incident, the dream of my teens. They had sworn an oath called the black rose oath. They were people who fought the darkness outside the city. The oath was supposedly a protection mechanism. They could not know what kind of horrors they had seen outside the city.
In true moon city, hunters were respected but isolated from the public because of their fearsome reputation. People often wondered what horrors they faced that they needed to swear a magical oath. To swear the black rose oath was to magically bind yourself so that forbidden knowledge could not be known by you. Even if you were to go mad and be influenced by magic, you would still not be able to write it or speak about it. It was a harsh magical oath. The oath was a geas. It gave the hunters more strength.
The black Rose oath was not foolproof. Sometimes the mystery itself was worse than the fear. Perhaps the hunters that went mad from what they had seen suffered less than the ones who had at the notion of a part of themselves severed from them committed suicide. It may seem ridiculous, but it was not clear what they faced, but sometimes the oath had to remove the memory of the person entirely to protect them.
I never became a hunter, but I faced what they faced. I never became an oracle, and I knew the secrets of the dead. I never became a priest of the earth mother church the way my mother intended, but I knew where they were coming from. I went to Dreamer Academy by a twist of fate.
This is my story of how my life became a living hell at some point, how I faced insurmountable odds to evolve, and how I became the first of my kind, the twilight angel.
