My elder sister, Elara, never missed a chance to remind me that I wasn't our father's son.

  For some reason, she enjoyed tormenting me in any way she could.

  …Actually, I knew the reason.

  It was because she used to think, and still does, that I'm the catalyst for our parents' strained relationship. I'm the reason they don't love each other anymore.

  When I was five, she told me about the night when a monster came and forced himself on our mother. That's how I came into this world – born not from love but from cruelty.

  According to her, my existence itself is the sole cause of our parents' unhappiness, the root of all that went wrong in their lives.

  Her endless torment and bullying often pushed me to the brink of taking my own life – the scars on my wrists stand as proof.

  Unfortunately for her, and perhaps even for our parents, I don't bleed easily.

  So, I lived.

  And while growing up, I heard tales of my father– my birth father, I mean.

  Some of those tales were mere rumors I overheard from the mansion servants, while others were fanatical fiction written on the internet by zealous cultists… or so I thought.

  With time, I came to realize that each and every one of those unsettling legends about him was... true.

  My birth father was a monster…

  No, even monsters couldn't be as ruthless as him… as terrifying as him.

  At the tender age of twelve, my father awakened his Rune and became a Marked One. That in itself wasn't the problem – people typically get Marked around the age of twelve or thirteen.

  The problem was that my father hailed from an Original family who descended from a celestial deity – Kael'tar.

  Kael'tar was one of the nine New Gods – beings of incomprehensible power existing in a realm far above us.

  He was among the first nine individuals who were marked by the System. These nine individuals then went on to become the first and only ones who ascended to Godhood in this new age; hence, they are called the New Gods.

  Those born in the bloodlines of these nine New Gods, the Demigods, inherited their ancestors' Runes and called their families the Original Houses since they were of newly created divine lineage.

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  So, what was the problem?

  Well, Kael'tar wasn't precisely a kind man. He was horrendously evil. Even before his ascension, he was known as the God of Plague, War, Blood, Calamity… and Chaos.

  He was the living embodiment of everything that was wrong and wicked.

  He conquered our world and many others through unchallengeable might, killing all who tried to oppose him, be they Gods or mortals.

  After his ascension to the heavens, his descendants – the Ashenford family – retained his Chaos Rune and continued his malevolent legacy. Like their ancestral God, they too were evil.

  Through the use of Chaos magic that Kael'tar had left with them, they continued to hold the entire world in their palms.

  Anyone daring to challenge them faced their arsenal of dark sorcery, inevitably bending the knee to them… or being exterminated from the face of the world.

  As such, all the other Demigods banded their Original Houses together and formed an alliance in order to defeat the descendants of Kael'tar, their one mutual enemy.

  After hundreds of years of continuous bloodshed and warfare, an Original house called the Dragonovas finally managed to bring an end to the Ashenfords' tyranny.

  The Dragonova family then assumed control of the world, becoming its sovereigns and ending the Dark Times, ushering humanity into the Age of Light.

  After establishing the order, the Dragonovas captured the remaining Ashenfords and sentenced them to a three-hundred-year death penalty for the crimes of their bloodline.

  This meant holding public executions for the Ashenfords every decade for the next three hundred years.

  Some Ashenfords were spared and allowed to reproduce their tainted blood so the kids born in captivity would be executed the next decade.

  A few were permitted to live full lives, but in slavery, giving back to the world from which their ancestors had taken so much.

  Why were they spared at all? Well, it was because the Ashenfords were also being harvested for their blood.

  Their blood possessed supernatural properties which, when refined, were capable of healing every illness and temporarily boosting the magic of all Runes.

  Their blood was a treasure trove of resources.

  So, basically, they were only being born to be locked in a cycle of slavery, blood harvesting, and eventual execution. Their lives only meant that much, as if they were nothing but mere cattle.

  My father was born in the last decade of the promised three hundred years, and his mother was the last Ashenford to be executed.

  After her execution, the remaining Ashenfords were meant to be released into society but relegated to a life of servitude, strictly monitored, and kept away from Chaos Sorcery, living as the lowest class citizens with no rights to speak of and no laws to protect them.

  In a way, it was just another kind of death penalty.

  It was a fitting end for those monsters. After all, as I said, the Ashenfords were evil. Their blood was evil. Their magic was evil. Their Rune was evil. Their existence was evil.

  But my father didn't see it that way.

  All he saw was the unjust and ruthless persecution against his kind.

  All he saw were masses gleefully cheering and laughing when the blade of the guillotine severed the head of his mother.

  All he saw were his innocent siblings being forced into slavery or subjected to a fate much worse right in front of his eyes.

  All he saw were his people being punished for the crimes they didn't even commit.

  All he saw was a world that deserved to be burned.

  And so... he burned it.

  He burned it all.

  At the age of fourteen, just two years after being marked by the Chaos Rune, he escaped his captive cell, killing around seven Dragonova knights in the process.

  A mere child taking down seven highly-trained knights of the most powerful family in the world! No one could believe it.

  But that was only the start of what was to come. The next year, my father was on the run.

  But the following year, he massacred an entire district, causing hundreds of casualties on the spot and fatally injuring countless more.

  He ruthlessly butchered any bounty hunters, special forces soldiers, or knights who pursued him with his own two hands.

  At the end of the very same year, on his birthday, he gave himself a gift by killing a direct member of the Dragonova family.

  Just as he was about to be captured, his Rune fully matured, and he opened a Rift, commencing his first Riftwalk and escaping into the stars.

  His deeds only escalated after that.

  Genocide, holocaust, mass destruction, terrorism, usurpation, crimes against peace, vigilantism, cannibalism, crimes against humanity, and even deicide! You name a crime, and that man has likely committed it.

  After conquering several Apocalypses, his power significantly rose as he seized not just one but several planets from the grip of the Earthen Empire.

  Even the Patriarch of the Dragonova family couldn't kill him. Their battle concluded in a bitter stalemate.

  On today's date, he stands as one of the strongest men in the whole world – several worlds, actually.

  He's the first mortal so close to achieving true Godhood in centuries, second only to the Dragonova's Patriarch.

  He is Erebos Ashenford, the Graceless Titan of Independence. He is my biological father... and the architect of all my suffering.

  He's one man in all the worlds I resent the most.