Chapter 9: Bath with the maid (1)
House Deimos. One of the strongest exorcist clans in the world, said to descend from a cursed celestial who drank death like wine and turned pain into power.
They weren't just warriors. They were pain-weavers. Death-born. People whispered their name like a prayer during plagues and war.
And yet, even among the legends, there was hierarchy.
House Deimos was split: the Main Family, direct descendants of the original Bloodline, and the Branch Family, adopted long ago to serve and support. Though the branch had no true Deimos blood, centuries of close contact, of shared Aether had changed them.
Twisted them.
It wasn't just imitation anymore. Their features—the main family had one color of hair— red, now due to years of mixed Aether and marriage the branch family hair had turned dark red, a mixture of Demios dominant Aether and their personal Aether —eyes that shimmered like cooled embers instead of the violent red, voices that carried the same weary weight—had started to mirror the main line. Even their auras carried that faint scent of inevitability.
But even with the same robes and similar power, the line was drawn deep.
And Zephyr—the body he now inhabited—was born to the Main Family. The last-born of four. The one who carried the "purest drop" of the original death-scorched bloodline.
And yet... he had not awakened.
The shame echoed through the halls of the citadel like a lingering ghost.
Especially since Serena, a mere branch family child once assigned as a sparring servant, had awakened the Clan's gift before him. She had summoned the black thorns of agonized pain when she was two.