No Father – No Mother

A long time ago, in a land far away, an adventurous young man with the heart of a star, set forth into the far open sky – to liberate all under the holy sun.

Emi sat down at her desk, she didn’t even turn on her desk lamp. The faint streetlight outside her window spilled across her floor, enough to see the book’s leather binding on her desk.

The pages were thicker than she remembered, which seemed impossible as it had only been a few days since she last opened it.

The old book, the one Orion came out of, the one she bought at that manga store. Still no title on the front. No author. Just plain and smooth cream-colored leather.

She flipped back and forth, reading the same passages over and over again. And Terran’s words still echoed inside her mind:

“The sooner you finish it, the better you’ll understand.”

But it was still the same story. The familiarity bled out of the parchment, vibrating of an inanimate stillness that almost felt like it was pretending to be dead. Inside containing the same fantasy clichés.

A child, born under a wandering star. A prophecy whispered before time began. A world steeped in twilight, plagued by war. A faraway kingdom. A Dark Lord rising in the east. The Chosen One…

“Yadi, yadi, yada,” she thought to herself.

She flipped forward, then a question popped into her mind – she had read this before, hadn’t she?

Because what she was seeing now…

Was a section she did not remember.

Her eyes were instantly caught by the words, and then they wouldn’t let go.

“The child had no father nor mother. Not an orphan – but expected, provident, ordained. The world sang songs of glory with his arrival, like an instrument strung too tight, plucked by some divine hand.

He was trained in silence and flame. Not merely a warrior, but a priest.”

Her fingers slowed, tracing the text.

A priest? she thought to herself. Not a sword or a staff… a mace? A shield?

“The priesthood of Soluna – the Kingdom of Light and Shadow – crafted its magicks through sound and song. Their weapons were not for killing, but for invoking. The round shield for resonance. The mace for rhythm. They did not merely chant – but they struck. Each ritual, each hymn, each call to power was hammered like a drumbeat into the earth.”

She could almost hear it, as if from somewhere deep in memory – a metallic warlike but liturgical sound that traveled through deep space, through airless nothingness. A holiness that did not care for the laws of physics.

As this god was on the council who wrote the very laws of all.

Turning the page, and her mind for some reason started to blur, glazing over the next couple of chapters. Whole years gone by, skipped like a scratched CD. Her eyes scanned, but the meaning slipped through her grasp. Entire paragraphs felt like déjà vu, others like static. She couldn’t remember if she read them or dreamed them. Or if something didn’t want her to see them yet.

Until…

A new scene was being described.

It was somehow so vivid, so clear, despite just being mere words.

There was a mountain, larger than a planet, being held at the edge of a place that made stars and galaxies its footstool. Bursting of magma like a volcano, but this was much mightier.

In front of it, a figure stood. Eight feet tall. Made of stone – but this was no beast.

This was a god.

He did not snarl.

He did not roar.

He thought.

His hands were clasped behind his back like a general.

His face was not a monster’s – but sculpted with regal angles, dignified in silence.

And in his eyes – all bursting with purple lightning, strong enough to fry any living thing it came in contact with. Sparkling in those dark pupils like galaxies spiraling into themselves.

And then – the god turned around, looking straight toward.

Emi leaned back, her heart suddenly beating. The book was closed, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was by her doing or by its own will.

She stared at it, unmoving. The silence of her room returned – but it no longer felt still.

Standing up, she stepped out of her room and down the stairs, the soft creak of the floorboards muted beneath her socks. She needed water, maybe a snack – something to clear the heavy fog clinging to her mind after what she had just read.

The faint glow of the living room caught her attention first. She expected to find Orion resting, perhaps sitting in quiet prayer like he would sometimes do. But instead, he was awake, fully alert, crouched near the coffee table with a look of sharp focus across his face.

Placed in front of him was his round shield – leaning against the table like a mirror being polished into a sleek, silver-toned river. And in his slow, deliberate movements, he was sharpening its outer edge with a whetstone. The scraping sound, steady and rhythmic, filled the room with a strange intimacy, a ritual both mundane and somehow ancient.

Emi watched on, entranced by his movement.

The realization sank in slowly, almost dreamlike: he could lift them now. The weapons that once seemed to weigh a ton when he was first depowered on Earth, now he could easily pick it up, inspecting its every nook and cranny. It was so obvious once she thought about it. His powers, strange and invisible – that heavy gravity of his telekinesis – this was how he was able to pick it up.

Finishing a pass along the edge, Orion stood, placing it on a band he wore on his wrist, and gave a small twist of the mechanism. The shield responded, folding inward, contracting into itself like some mechanical flower until all that remained was a polished disc no larger than a golf ball, clamped neatly against his wrist.

Emi stepped closer into the room, drawn by curiosity more than conscious thought. And instinctively blurting out:

"What are you doing?" she asked softly.

He glanced up at her, his expression was neutral but somehow not unkind. And without a word, he triggered the shield again. It bloomed outward with a gentle whir of ancient mechanisms, unfolding back into its full size with an elegant, almost ceremonial grace.

Then he retrieved something from his belt – a rod of black metal, smooth and silky like the night, hardly larger than a heavy pen. With a subtle flick of his wrist, it too shifted, expanding and locking into place with a deep, mechanical hum. The rod unfolded into a full-sized mace, its form brutally simple: blocky and rectangular, meant not for slashing, but for crushing.

No spikes, no vicious serrations, just pure, clean, devastating force. It was spotless, polished, and yet, somehow, it was soaked in blood, roaring out in pain and rage.

Emi found herself staring, both awed and slightly unsettled. The weapon seemed almost alive in his hand – and maybe it actually was. A long history that struggled to fit into the storybook she was reading upstairs. It was coming together, yes, but there were too many missing pieces.

Orion studied her reaction with a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, but said nothing at first. He merely stood there in the quiet of the living room, holding out the relics of another world, another life, as if waiting to see what she would make of them.

Finally, he spoke, his voice low, almost conversational, yet carrying the weight of some terrible, immovable truth:

"I am what I am," he said. "I am the Chosen One. I am the Son of Evil. That is the name of my father. When I get back home to Soluna, all kingdoms will be mine."

The words chilled the air around her, lingering longer than they should have, slipping into the spaces between her thoughts.

But…

Did she just not read that he had no father? No mother?

The book had been clear.

A cold prickle ran down her spine.

Without another word, Emi turned and bolted up the stairs, heart hammering, the house spinning around her as she scrambled to find the book again, flipping desperately through its pages.

It did not make any sense.