There was no pain at birth for spirits.

  No screaming. No blood. No mother’s arms.

  Oscar only remembered light

  A vast glow radiating from the colossal trunk of the Yggdrasil Tree, its roots spanning the spirit realm like veins of living starlight. From its bark, threads of pure VITA unwound, coiling into shapes, infant spirits, lesser spirits, wandering motes.

  Oscar was one of them.

  He emerged not crying, but breathing the world in.

  A pulse of energy. A flicker of consciousness. A sudden rush of instinct.

  Then a few hands, cool, shimmering and lifting him.

  A couple of high ranking court spirits had taken him in. Two gentle, patient beings with glowing hair and soft eyes. They whispered blessings over him, though spirits did not truly pray. They, well, simply… spoke harmony into existence.

  Oscar learned later that many spirits had emerged that day.

  But only one was touched by the blue flame.

  Only him.

  A bright halo of concentrated VITA shimmered around his tiny form an omen of exceptional potential. The elders took notice. His adoptive parents were honored by the Queen herself. His future was already set:

  Oscar was destined to serve the Spirit Kingdom.

  Oscar remembered his early childhood as a wash of colors and lessons.

  Spirit school was not like mortal education.

  There were no books, only direct absorption. Children shaped spells by weaving roots into patterns, their teachers guiding magic around them like rivers around stone.

  Most learned their first stable VITA strand at age 12.

  Oscar did so at 6.

  By age 9, he could bend living wood without touching it. His teachers whispered about him with awe, and occasionally fear though they never said so aloud.

  By 11, he could grow a full tree from a single shard of root.

  They said it was impossible.

  He simply shrugged and did it again.

  His parents praised him endlessly. The court spirits admired him. Even the Queen herself gave him an ethereal blessing.

  But there was something Oscar noticed long before anyone understood what that feeling meant.

  He was bored.

  Not with learning he devoured knowledge.

  But with their cowardice.

  They trained. and then they mastered.

  They learned weaponless combat, defense spells, constructs, illusions, healing.

  Yet they never used them.

  Every lesson ended the same:

  “VITA is life.

  Violence is decay.

  We maintain harmony, never disrupt it.”

  Oscar swallowed these teachings. Nodded. Smiled.

  But the thoughts festered.

  What is the point of power if you never wield it?

  What good is strength if you never use it to protect?

  To destroy threats? To reshape a flawed world?

  These questions grew as he entered the Spirit Court.

  At 16, he became an assistant in the Queen’s service, the youngest to ever do so.

  He was praised everywhere he went.

  But praise fed nothing.

  He remembered the day it happened.

  The Queen, radiant, eternal, the heart of spiritual harmony suddenly faltered. Her glow dimmed. Her body flickered like a dying ember.

  And so whispers spread:

  “The Yggdrasil is weakening.”

  Spirits were not susceptible to mortal illness. They could not bleed, age, or rot.

  But the Tree could.

  When spirits neglected their nurturing cycles, when young ones grew complacent, when balance shifted even slightly, The Yggdrasil felt it.

  And the Queen who was bound to its heart suffered.

  Oscar was assisting her when she first collapsed. She had tried to conceal the pain, but her body betrayed her. She nearly fell from her throne of woven roots.

  He caught her.

  Her voice trembled:

  “Do not fear, young one… It will pass.”

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  But it did not.

  That day, the barrier between the Pure Realm and the Corrupted Fringe flickered.

  Once.Twice. And then it cracked.

  The first shriek of a Fallen echoed through the sky like a nightmare woken.

  Then hundreds more.

  Chaos.

  Oscar had never seen anything like it.

  The sky turned red as High Fallen spirits tore through the weakened barrier. Corrupted roots lashed across the kingdom, shattering spirit houses. Lesser spirits fled, scattering like fireflies in terror.

  Oscar’s parents stood beside him, weaving defensive barriers to shelter the young. Their hands were steady. Their voices calm.

  But even their calmness faltered when a High Fallen descended from above, monstrous, skeletal, dripping black essence. Its jaw hung unnaturally wide, lined with jagged spines.

  It roared, and trees withered in its wake.

  Oscar froze.

  Not in fear.

  In fascination.

  This was pure violent power that was unrestrained, unapologetic, purposeful.

  His parents stood in its path, weaving VITA walls in front of the cluster of spirit children. The Fallen smashed through the first barrier with casual ease. The second barrier cracked. The third shattered like thin ice.

  Oscar’s father turned to him.

  In a voice choked by resolve, he whispered:

  “Run.”

  Oscar did not.

  He watched unblinking as the High Fallen lunged.

  His mother was impaled through the chest. His father torn apart in a spray of glowing essence. Their bodies dissolved before they even hit the ground.

  Something snapped inside Oscar’s chest.

  A restraint? A moral limit?

  To Oscar though… it was more like an hinderance

  Now it was gone.

  Completely and utterly gone.

  The Fallen turned toward him, claws dripping. The children behind Oscar screamed.

  He didn’t hear them.

  He only heard his own pulse, beating like war drums.

  Oscar raised his hands.

  And for the first time in centuries, a spirit used VITA to kill.

  “Burn.”

  Blue flame erupted from his palms VITA mixed with INGIS the essence of emotion he learnt in secret. Now condensed, sharpened, weaponized.

  It engulfed the Fallen’s body entirely.

  The monster shrieked, flailing, cracking, sizzling until its entire form crumbled into ash and scattered across the roots.

  The children behind him were speechless.

  But so was Oscar. Not in fear. In satisfaction. In rightness.

  This, he thought,

  is how power should be used.

  The Queen recovered.

  Her aura returned slowly.

  The Yggdrasil healed.

  The Fallen were driven back by the united forces of the realm, though many spirits died. Entire districts were ruined. The scars in the land remained for decades.

  But the attention eventually turned to the boy who had broken every code to defend his people.

  The boy who killed a High Fallen alone.

  The boy who proved that VITA could be more than healing and nourishment.

  Oscar.

  Rumors spread faster than wildfire.

  “He enjoyed it.”

  “He used too much force.”

  “He broke sacred law.”

  “He is dangerous.”

  “He is tainted.”

  Oscar was summoned to the throne room.

  The Queen appeared before him pale, still weakened. Her expression was unreadable.

  Oscar bowed.

  “Your Majesty, I…”

  She cut him off.

  “Oscar… you took a life.”

  “An enemy’s life,” he corrected coldly.

  She flinched.

  “We do not kill. We do not destroy. To use VITA as a weapon is to violate its nature. You wielded it as mortals do, as Lifeweavers or Deathweavers do. With violence… and intention.”

  Oscar’s teeth clenched.

  “They killed my parents.”

  “I know.”

  “They killed hundreds.”

  “I know.”

  “They would have killed me.”

  “I know.”

  Her voice trembled.

  “But the law is absolute.”

  Oscar stared at her.

  “You would rather I died?”

  Silence.

  Her answer was in her eyes.

  He exhaled.

  “Then I have no place here.”

  The Queen closed her eyes.

  And whispered the words that sealed everything:

  “Oscar… by royal decree, you are banished from the Spirit Kingdom.

  You will not return. Not until your heart remembers harmony.”

  Harmony? That had died with his parents.

  Oscar turned without bowing.

  Without speaking.

  Without looking back.

  Banished. Cast out. Exiled to the outer world. Oscar spent years wandering the fringes of the spirit realm, watching how the corrupted lands grew stronger, how the Fallen multiplied.

  The Perfect Realm, he realized, was dying from its own passivity.

  The spirits refused to fight. Refused to evolve, They refused to use their power.

  They deserved to fall.

  They deserved to be reshaped.

  And he, the only spirit willing to wield power as it was meant to be wielded, would reshape it.

  He studied Fallen.

  Studied mortals.

  Studied the weave of VITA and MORTIS together.

  He grew stronger.

  Smarter.

  More ruthless.

  Until one day, while crossing into the mortal realm, he sensed something impossible. Something ancient. Something forbidden.

  Threads.

  Tangled, chaotic, threads of a Lifeweaver.

  A young human boy was crawling through the forest, bloodied, broken, eyes full of rage. Threads flickered around him like dying embers.

  Oscar knew instantly what the boy was.

  What he could become.

  What he could be shaped into.

  A possible tool. A weapon. And his revolution.

  “Ato…” Oscar whispered, stepping from the trees.

  And in his glowing eyes, destiny had twisted.

  For him.

  For Ato.

  For the kingdom.

  For the world.

  —-

  What do you think of Oscar as a character so far?