Chapter Text
The first time Abyss noticed something was wrong with him was when the candles flickered. He had been a quiet child, spending most of his time reading while his parents worked. Magic came naturally to him — too naturally. At the age when other children still struggled to conjure sparks, Abyss was already able to levitate objects and use his personal magic to dash at supersonic speeds.
His parents praised him, proud that their only child was so gifted, but on his fifth or sixth birthday — he couldn’t remember when, exactly — his world changed.
He woke up trembling in the middle of the night, one eye burning with pain as though something was clawing his eyeball. When he got up and looked in the mirror, he no longer saw the warmth of his own reflection. His left eye had changed — his whole eye had turned red, while his iris was golden with a peculiar marking on it. It looked like a throbbing orb that pulsed faintly like a wound.
When his mother entered his room, the air grew heavy. She opened her mouth to reassure him, but then magic fizzled in her hands like weak sparks. She froze as Abyss blinked. She felt her magic leave her body. Her face went white.
The Evil Eye — it allowed one to temporarily disable someone else’s magic just by looking at them. Abyss still recalled that bitter moment. He remembered it all too well.
“So… magic is a gift from God?” He asked innocently as his mother helped him tie up his hair into a neat, high ponytail, her fingers brushing through his silky, blue locks.
“Yes,” she said softly, her hand trembling as she tucked his hair, using his bangs to hide the eye.
“But… demons stop people from using magic?”
“Yes,” she simply answered once again.
Abyss paused, then he spoke up quietly. “And all demons are evil? And good people have to kill them?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“But I have—”
His mother’s hand gripped onto his shoulder. “Hide that eye. You’re not a demon, Abyss.” She stopped. “Just… just promise me, never let anyone see it.”
“Yes, mother.”
At first, his mother sewed him patches and bandages. She told the neighbours he had an injured eye. For a while, that excuse worked. At first, they told themselves it didn’t matter. He was still their son, still the boy who laughed at his father’s bad jokes and begged for one more bedtime story.
But word began spreading. Strange accidents happened around the house: spells failing, charms breaking, and incantations snuffing out mid-cast. His father’s colleagues whispered. Families avoided them.
The Evil Eye was a curse — a living embodiment of sin. That was what the scriptures said. Abyss was only a child, but children could feel when eyes turned cold. He began to shrink away from the sunlight, retreating to the shadows of his home, his only safe place.
And then, the decision came swiftly. One night, after supper, his father placed a heavy key on the table. His mother did not meet Abyss’ gaze. “You’ll stay in the basement from now on,” his father said flatly, as though reciting an order given to him. “For your own good. Until… until we can think of something.”
The boy’s world shrank to stone walls and a wooden door. Meals came, quiet and silent, slid in on trays. He tried calling out. Sometimes, his mother’s voice would answer, wavering, “I’m sorry.” Most times there was only silence. Sometimes, regular food would be brought to his cell, but that routine soon came to a halt, as the portions became smaller… until he barely had enough food to even survive.
Days turned to weeks. Weeks blurred into months. His normal eye still glowed with unparalleled talent, spells that any mage would envy. Yet the more he practised, the stronger the Evil Eye felt, humming like a parasite beneath his skin.
He wanted to ask: why did God give this to me? Am I poison? Am I evil? The breaking point came one night when the door creaked open not for food, but for something else. His mother descended the stairs, her face hollow, her hair unkempt as though sleepless for weeks. Her hands trembled as they hovered near his throat.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again, but this time the words sounded less like comfort, and more like confession. “But you should’ve never been born. How could I have given birth to a child like you?!”
Abyss froze, stunned. “Mo—?” Her fingers tightened. He felt air leave his lungs. Panic clawed at him, but he didn’t fight back. He didn’t want to hurt her. All he could see was her eyes — not even a hint of hesitation or regret, yet they were filled with terror. Not of him, but of what he represented. Perhaps the idea of having such a cursed child, Abyss assumed, drove his mother mad, which was why she was doing this.
Something in Abyss snapped. His Evil Eye flared brightly, light searing across the damp basement walls. As she placed her hands on his neck, Abyss felt one of his eyes begin to water — his Evil Eye. His demonic eye.
A single tear streamed down his left cheek, full of genuine hurt — hurt that his own parents couldn’t bear to acknowledge that, despite his eye, he was still their child. He felt like shouting for help, but he couldn’t — it was like water had filled his lungs, and no matter how loud he tried to scream, no one would be able to hear a thing. And nobody would care about him leaving this world anyway. That was when everything turned pitch black.
Yet, he survived.
After the incident, he had an epiphany — that no matter what he did, the Evil Eye would always make him a monster in the eyes of others — even to the ones who once loved him.
From that day forward, Abyss closed his heart. The boy who once longed for warmth was buried beneath fear, rejection, and a curse he never chose. If this eye made him a demon — an anomaly in this world — then perhaps he was never meant to live in the light.
The church bells tolled low and slow, as though even the air itself mourned with the gathered crowd. The scent of candle wax was heavy. Flowers piled up in the worst way imaginable.
His mother — the pure-hearted woman that everyone knew — was gone. Her coffin gleamed beneath the grey light filtering through stained glass, and Abel couldn’t bring himself to look away, his grief quiet, his expression guarded.
People spoke in hushed tones around him, the words “such a shame” and “how young” slipping away into the wind, but Abel heard none of it, the only audible sound in his ears being the soft ticking of the clock near the altar.
She was gone.
When the service ended and people began to file out, Abel lingered by his mother a while longer, reluctant to say his goodbyes to her even after she had left to go to the afterlife.
That was when he saw him. Through the pouring rain, halfway down the street, was a young boy, about his age, running. His hair as perfect as silk, feet moving swiftly with every step he took. He wasn’t running toward home, nor away from something obvious. Abel didn’t know why, but there was something familiar in that motion — desperation and grief, as if the boy was speaking a secret language that Abel couldn’t speak with anyone else.
Abel heard someone call his name, one of the elders who had attended the funeral, her voice cutting through the moment, and Abel turned away.
And by the time he looked back, the young boy was gone.