She was dreaming... She could see hated when she dreamed, it only brought memories of her life growing up, the memories of her childhood when Mother would be with her, teaching her all about the [Shadow] skills she would get, the magic she would have access in case her mana was more inclined to magic...
Memories of when she [Triggered] at five she had been the happiest moment of her life...Till she saw the face of her mother, followed by weeks of testings to find the [Taint] in her, weeks of frantic search for her to try and channel the [Shadows]... Only for nothing to be found... Later on, her therapist would say that most Mothers felt relieved when their daughters didn't inherit the [Taint], that perhaps her Mother had problems dealing with the fact that she wasn't [Tainted], and wanted the best by sending her away from the hate and danger living with a [Tainted] would have.
Somehow she doubted her Mother had those troubles, she didn't even need to be cleansed from the [Taint], and her Mother could keep her mana safe from the virtue of her own monstrous domain over [Shadows], the same way she found to free herself from the [Taint] all those years ago...If what she had been told was true that is. She of course couldn't say that to her therapist, the woman was probably already reporting to her Mother or Brother in a way or form... That was the next thing too, her brother.
Max...Maximilian Windsor, the prodigal son.
He was born to her mother's first husband, a sad attempt from her to try and spite her first love who didn't reciprocate her feelings, the man was allegedly awfully average and wasn't even a metahuman. Not that he had any regrets about marrying her Mother, even if his life was quite short from the mana poisoning he suffered from such extended contact with Mother's mana flesh, he managed to stay around for Max to grow up at least...
Max was...good, he was top of the class and inherited most of her mother's talent for mana manipulation and shadows, so he was everything she would need, not that it made her unrequited love better, then she got pregnant again when the man she loved announced his wife was expecting...And then she was born, one of the subordinates of her mother told her as such when she was eight at least.
By that point, she was used to living alone in an apartment in one of the safest parts of a city that held the biggest concentration of [Shadow] users in the world, and to not giving the [Windsor] name when someone asked for her last name, she had gotten used to saying [Ashcroft], she was used to not question who her father was, nor why she couldn't live with her Mother, to not question why her brother came only a couple times a year, nor why he was the one to give her birthday gifts and not her mother. She however, wasn't used to the looks she would get.
Everyone at school would ignore her, the boys would pull at her hair because it was [Dirty], the girls would giggle at her and bring her eyes saying that they were hideous, the teachers would try and pacify them of course, they knew who her Mother was, but they would shy away from her nonetheless, they would chastise the kids that bullied her...But that was it. No one would go to her birthday parties besides some of the employees of her Mother that she got to know, and while she liked them and enjoyed playing with them...
They weren't around, they couldn't go to her apartment and she needed to go to their part of the city, no one ever bothered there for her hair or eyes in that side of the city, but unlike them...She didn't feel the call to the shadows, and her [Skill] and [Mana] needed to be tightly bound inside of her or they would feel burned from her mere presence, It had been interesting to learn, that her mana was anathema to the [Taint]. She of course tried to help her mother with that, but she was directed to R&D and they only took a sample from her mana, which would eventually lead to a better pod than they had, but by a small margin...And she suspected that it was only an effort by Haephestus to make her feel better.
