Shades of the New World

…

In a luxurious room of a large mansion, a small girl wailed on her bed. The girl's weeping seemed clumsy and false. There was no one else in the room, no one listening from outside the door, but the girl continued crying alone, without wishing to stop.

If someone else saw the girl, they would want to say that the girl was just throwing a tantrum, that she was not crying for real. But something about the weeping girl would give the onlooker a nagging feeling that it was all real. That the emotions the girl wanted to express were real, just that the girl didn't know how to express them. The girl knew that she should weep, that she deserved to weep, and she was trying to… But it just wasn't working.

Her cries were fake, and her tears were forced. The girl stopped crying. She promised herself it would her last time crying, her last time mourning.

She would start everything anew after this day, and she would forget the promise she made to her mother. She would take a different approach to things. She didn't have to shoulder this burden silently and obediently. She would fight back from this day on and put her sisters at their places. To hell with harmony.

'Why did I become a mage if all I ever get is just constant hate and isolation?' she thought with determination.

"Put those bitches at their places and receive the respect you deserve!" the girl declared to hype herself up.

She wiped her tears and fixed her dress. She walked opened her room's door and made way towards her destination. Her steps were precise and her posture was perfect. Nothing less was expected from her, and nothing less was acceptable for others.

Oh, how she wanted to walk and speak freely. An image of a dark-haired boy joking around with a cat and another red-haired child flashed through her mind. Oh, how she was jealous of that boy.

Strong, smart, and most importantly… free. Compared to him, her own life was like a beautiful web made of rotting lies.

Bellaslayn Borna believed that her life was one of false perfection.

As the girl walked, she thought about the last moments of her mother. The woman was a servant named Isla under Earl Borna's rule and after the late wife of the Earl died; she became the earl's concubine. She couldn't become his official wife, since she had a criminal record under her name. Bellaslayn didn't know any of this until she heard it from another old servant.

Isla gave birth to Bella after a few years, but the birth destroyed her body for some reason, and since then, she was on the verge of life and death. The Earl employed every healing mage he could find, but Bella's mother had a special physique that was conflicting with the World's energies.

The doctor explained that it was a rare phenomenon that happened to some commoners when they give birth to a mage. The baby takes away its mother's connection to the World energies and uses it to form their own mana-core.

Finding out that the problem was not magical, Velpin Borna searched far and wide for common physicians. In a world where magic could solve practically all your problems, specialists who didn't use them were like stars in the sky on a fair day.

But after months of searching, he did manage to find one doctor that did not rely on magic. But sadly, the doctor lamented that they were too late. Had they found him right after she gave birth, he could've saved the woman, but at this point, he could only delay the inevitable. Isla struggled and struggled and managed to survive for three whole years.

Isla's final words on her deathbed still lingered in the child's ears.

"Bella, promise me not to use your magic for evil… Instead, use it for your family, protect them from harm…"

The girl remembered promising to heed her mother's last words through sobs and tears… ones much more natural than her last attempt at crying.

Bella wanted to sigh, but forced herself to stop, since there were others watching her.

'No! I'm finally changing my life and it's okay for me to sigh or do whatever else I fucking want to express myself freely!' Bella scolded herself inside her mind.

Bella then sighed, but it felt forced and unnatural. Just like the tears and sobs.

The surrounding servants did not seem to notice her awkward behaviour and continued on with their designated jobs, slowly and lazily.

The fact seemed to anger the little girl even more, and she walked faster to her destination.

She took the stairs down and pulled out a large iron key from her pockets. She walked towards the dungeons of the mansion. No guards were put here, since there was no one that needed guarding.

She jingled the key as she walked, humming some tune in her cute little voice. Accessing the Worlds, she lighted the torches one by one as she progressed.

"Bella? R-release us from this place this instant! How dare you imprison your own sisters in these d-dark dungeons!" A voice was heard from the depths of the dungeon.

Bella had kidnapped her sisters at midnight and carried them to the mansion's dungeons. It wasn't a difficult task, since most of the guards protected the outer perimeters of the place. And even if there were some guards inside the manor, they would be either sleeping or loitering around, so Bella wouldn't have any problem avoiding with them, even with another girl on her shoulders.

Bella would've loved to leave the two for a week at least, but since their disappearance would cause panic inside the mansion, she had to come back to her sisters the next morning at the first sign of dawn.

There were about three hours before Bella could tame her sisters to her will. She had to force them to keep silent about this matter and force them to stay clear of her in the future.

She approached one of the dungeon's cells and saw her two sisters hugging each other, shivering. They only wore a thin white dress that they wore when they slept. A night in the cold, damp environment of the dungeon did not seem to fare well for the two.

"You little bitch! What do you think you're daring to do!" Arelyn screamed at Bella with hate.

"I'm just putting the trash in its place. Why did you have to mess with someone stronger than yourself in the first place?" Bella taunted.

"You think father will allow you to do as you please?" Arelyn shouted and stood up on her feet. She pulled up Olevyn and tried to walk past Bella.

"Where do you think you're going?" Bella stood at their path.

"Guess, you dumb bitch," Arelyn sneered, but Bella couldn't help but notice the raging heartbeats that echoed inside Arelyn's heart.

Bella absorbed some World of Life energy and directed a punch at her eldest sister's gut. Arelyn groaned and fell down to her knees.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" Bella raged, her emotions were starting to get the best of her at this point.

"Stop! We'll stop bothering you from now on. We won't tell anyone about this!" Olevyn begged after seeing her sister get punched like that so suddenly.

Olevyn was the more timid of the three sisters, but she had sided with her eldest, since they were from the same mother.

"I have to make sure of that, now don't I?" Bella sneered.

She lifted up Olevyn and punched her gut once. Olevyn lurched and wanted to fall into a fetal position, but Bella didn't allow her to. She punched once more, for good measure, and let the girl fall to the ground. Her middle sister's eyes involuntarily teared up, while she held her stomach with a painful face. Bella's body was infused with the World of Life, so her casual punches were like the strikes of a hammer for normal humans.

"Fucking… Freak…" Arelyn's voice sounded in the dungeon chamber.

"Who told you to mess with me in the first place? I don't fucking remember doing anything to you two after I was born!" Bella screeched at the girl.

"You're just like your mother, two fucking degenerates," Arelyn said with a strained voice.

Bella approached the girl to give her a few more punches, but her eldest sister's next words stopped her from doing so.

"Do you know what your mother did?" Arelyn asked tauntingly.

Bella didn't know anything other than what was told by the servants. How her mother ended up with her father was a mystery to the girl.

"She seduced our father and killed our mother," Arelyn said with a sneer.

"Don't lie to delay your beating," Bella shook her head and rubbed her knuckles.

"Don't believe me? Then do you know that Isla was a childhood friend of our mother?"