Magnus Sekai

Chapter 1- Masquerade

"Today's moon begs us for a retelling, my precious Aura." Said Nero, hunched over the window of his lonesome mansion, with nothing but a book in his presence. "My, you would be so proud to know you were right all along..."

A deep silence painted a hesitant man for the span of half a minute, until the vanished anguish in his gaze gave way to the memories of his planet. While he clung onto the hard covers of that book, he began to flip its pages and its story, narrated:

"Terra, a delicate shape of our own fate. Once the land of paradise for every living entity who resided in its lands and seas, having the equilibrium of nature be the judge for every being that lives inside it. The inhabitants only sought one instinctual desire, which thoughts saw no influence: survive. Howbeit, nowadays 'survive' is a word that can be interpreted in such a twisted manner that even its notion is an impure reason to live. We have risen with our own evolution, we began building, rebuilding, changing, and then transforming. Then, since our greed wasn't quenched, we started destroying, to ensure that our artificial egos wouldn't be surpassed. Oh, such is greed, that strong word, that corrupt emotion instilled inside us all!"

"It all clear becomes when we analyze our past. We discovered the source of our existence, our very own portal to a global reform, capable of bestowing immortality, peace and all the small benefits that an equal world could bring, and decided that it was a better idea to create sovereignty. Yes, little Aura, even with such miracle at hands, the "Souzou Sphere", that infamous, sacred ball of matter was used to develop supremacy, just to remind us that our egos have no barrier, and limitless it can be. The lunatics who first had the audacity to embrace it, wanted to manipulate the energy inside the sphere to synthesize a new race of superhumans, perhaps gods. Such gall those had to compare themselves to divinity! Was it the fear of the ever expanding number of Magi? The toxic, multiplying nuclear threat of the nations? Or is it the possibility that such sphere could fall in less noble hands...? My rambling matters not, the outcome has already fallen upon our earth. The catastrophe we live today was unplanned, not only by those scientists behind the experiment, but by us all. A huge explosion us it gifted, consuming all the souls around it, and with them, came their desires and their thoughts. Their wish to develop perfection was granted, but chained to it came a destructive factor, one which turned that perfection into a flaw. The particles traveled across the planet, conceding millions of individuals genetic mutations in a grandiose scale, turning mind into hostage, an occurrence which thus lead us to Magnus. For my Latin kind, naming it such is beyond sacrilege! Magnus is how we have classified these individuals with great psychological abilities, capable of such incredible feats such as mind-reading, to manipulation and invisibility. Dangerous potentials were given to frail, broken minds... Think, and you shall receive! Our new era omnipotent beings came with a multitude of mental disorders! Some turned insane, suicidal, lost their memories, their emotions, their logic and their reason. I believe even you, little Aura, can pinpoint to what side of destiny our planet would face, when you turn a pack of malfunctioning beasts into divine beings. Yes indeed! We get misfortune, blood, and apocalypse! Gracelessly, we named this moment the 'Chaos Era', an unending time cycle that has clawed mankind and suffocated our fate, marked by the rise of the void-like, deadly wildlands, full of killers and criminals of magnus descent, spreading their genetic madness through generations that has placed many leaders at urgency, and inevitably lead us towards the current crisis that our world battles today. More than half of that world we knew has been ravaged, my child, for only humans are foolish enough to declare dystopia in their proposal for utopia. Defense lines have been created, cities have been rebuilt, laws have changed, technology has been transformed, and even now, after YEARS of reform, now that we believed to reach a short period of paradise, we managed to destroy it, once again. We are drawn to greed, and eventually we become selfish. Some live by it, some fight against it, thus defining rebellion, or "liberation" as they call it. We all act blind to the many paths that differ from the one we portray as rightful, but no matter how you travel, the result is always the same... Chaos. Little Aura, in this world only two things are certain: We will all die, and we will all become someone's demons."

Nero calmly closes the book in his hands, dusty from how long it has been sitting in the shelves of the Sancta Terra library. He then places it aside on the wooden cabinet besides the bed in which he is sitting on. Everything in the room is rich and intricate, from gentle gold engravings on the corners of the cabinet, to the beautiful white silk sheets of the bed. The vintage headboard, attached to it, made of wood, framed a beautiful, pristine circular mirror in the middle, and the white, soft curtains covered the window, window that revealed the stunning late night view over the mountains around the hill in which the mansion was built. It was located just a few kilometers away from the Nuovo Vaticano, or more commonly known as the Holy Grounds, an union that covers the entire remains of Europe, having its newfound capital residing in the rebuilt catacombs of the Vatican. Such union was also conveniently governed by what is believed to be a lady so pure one could mistake her for an angel, an angel that controls its society by the most basic of manipulations: a cult religion. In that mansion, all the walls were white and delicate, and the floors robust, cold, brown concrete. Despite lifeless, there was the one odd item in the bedroom that contrasted in all spectrums the noble set of objects around it: a coffin which rested against the wall, standing directly on the opposite side of the bed, next to the wooden door which lead to the hall. As easily mistaken as decoration or horror that coffin could be.

"I also suffer from greed, my child. Perhaps your purity will forgive me once you reawaken." Nero calmly spoke, directing himself towards that very exquisite black coffin. In it was painted a large yellow cross and four golden letters were engraved on its front that spelt "Aura". He then, as to imply a routine, slowly began to shift his body to rest on that same bed he was sitting on, laying his head against the white cotton pillow, where he adjusts himself comfortably, closing his eyes to escape from the same chaos he talked about. The blankets crumple, the curtains swing, the void consumes the night and one more day goes by. Nothing is resolved, none more is said but one more whisper:

"I am my own demon, Aura."