Horns

The Horned

In this world it's natural for people to be "gifted" with natural born otherworldly abilities. These gifts usually manifested around the age of 6-7 years-old. This phenomenon is as natural as breathing in this world, and yet still, those who are born powerless cower before those with it, naming those with abilities, the "Horned" and those without, the "Crowned".

Small-town urban teen, Bryson Nyx can somewhat use basic smoke/haze abilities, albeit, not all that well. He's no prodigy, that's for sure. Still, life goes on. In this town, you're either lowborn (the powerless), middle class (with little to average abilities) or highborn (A class with top tiered abilities, usually consisting of mages and warriors), and the Elite (top of the top of Snobsville, usually consisting of those who've used their abilities to lucratively invest after Premonition Jumps).

Bryson lives in Chidoron's Alabaster Orphanage. No, there's no backstory here about how he's  special because he doesn't know who his parents are. No sir, no clichés here. On the contrary, he knows exactly where they are, and more importantly, where they are. One is located precisely at...St. Rhodes Penitentiary for the most insidious of criminals; and the other one, well, rest In peace, stepmom, aka, Sharon. Bryson doesn't remember much of his early life. An intricately woven "Pandorian-Knotted Hex" the doctors called it. "Just leave it alone," they'd said. "We can't even trace its origin, or who it came from, but be grateful it's there, kid. It's a wall that's protecting you from you, it appears. I can only imagine the things you saw growing up; better to forget I'd say". It was the same saying I'd heard over and over that night before the move. That much I could remember, in looping nightmare like dreams.

It's expected, at the very least, when your dad is convicted for the most satanic killings in the town...well the state; that's 17,000 murders over the span of only 13 years if you're counting.
Bryson is your average 16 year old. Social media, girls, sports, food, there's not much to it, other than this: Bryson can't remember his youth, and not because of a "spiritual block" or whatever other BS explanation he was given. It's good ol' basic unhealthily psychological repression...with a little dash of spiritual blockage...ok so they were somewhat right. Growing up, Bryson's parents (who are later discovered to have been possessed by otherworldly demons) used to murder innocents and have him assist, to the point where he could, and did use his age to lure unsuspecting people to their demise. Oh yeah, can't forget the satanic flesh slicing rituals, because what story would be complete without that?

At age 12 Bryson's bloodlust rivaled that of his "dad's", so what better gift to bestow upon a deserving son, than a piece of his very essence, his Demonic Void Flame ability (an otherworldly, cold flame that freezes internally, while burning externally). If not for the brief moment of internal relapse in control that his stepmom mustered up to call the town's Ability-Control Sergeant, and inform him of the situation before taking her own life, than they would more than likely still be the most infamously unknown murdering family. The family that slays together, stays together, right?

After an abundance of eerily interconnected events, the most recent involving one of his classmates being fatally injured by a grotesquely twisted and sinister figure, unable to do anything, but fill the room with a dark smoke, Bryson seeks the aid of the pricy upperclass Mystic, Cleo, who might be able to help him, at the very least slightly loosen a thread of the Hex that blocks his access to his repressed childhood memories.

Surely he'd manifested some type of ability back then and had just forgotten how to exemplify it now. She does as such, but Bryson leaves feeling defeated, as he feels exactly as he had before; clueless, and weak. It wasn't until a week later that the same malevolent figure returns, leaving nothing between the two, but Bryson's snapshots of returned memory, and more innocent victim bloodshed. What can I say, memories can be a bitch, and there's a reason some things are better off left in the past. Will Bryson's story be that of redemption, continued horrors, or both?