A week had passed since I returned from that nightmarish place, and I was still in disbelief that those events had happened. I could stand

here and ponder, but I had to get ready to work again to put food on

the table for my brothers.

While chopping some wood for the furnace that I'd made a while back

I felt some light tapping on my back; it was Rennie. "What can I help with, big bro."

-his eyes gleamed at the thought of being somewhat of help around the house.

"It's okay; you can go in and study with Reggie again"  I let out a sigh thinking they had

gotten too attached to me. "Time is going to come, and you won't have me there,

I'm going to die someday as well!" trying to be strict, I thought of getting them

to know the world better.

"Y…You'll leave us too, brother?" he asked me with tear-filled eyes. I could not bear

Seeing him cry as I loved them so much. Hugging him tightly, I started to pat his

back and let him cry it out. When he finally stopped, I told him everything would

be fine, and I won't leave them. He went back into the house to study again; I

sat down and took out a smoke. The fact had been that I was the one that took

away their parents from them. I was always in conflict with myself, thinking if I

was right to take a human's life. The thing was that I could not even consider them

Human, to begin with. What's right and wrong, huh… that had been a topic

that I had drowned my thinking in for the past six years. Dwelling into my memories

Again, I began to go into a trance, and flashes of the moments I murdered my

parents came to me again. I did not feel any guilt when the ax that I usually used to

chop wood went through the necks of both of them. I felt a rush that I

could not explain; It had been pure bliss. Watching them wither in pain as they drew

their last breath made me ecstatic. I have freed… no more abuse, no more pain, no more suffering…

or at least that's what I thought anyway. They had left me with nothing. After the adrenaline

stopped going into my body, I was washed with a deep feeling of emptiness.

I vividly remember taking my brothers out of the closet that I had put them in after

cleaning the mess that was my house at the time. I hugged them tightly, and that's where

I made my promise to make their life better. After the flashes had ended, I felt a sharp pain

in my right hand. The feeling was similar to your flesh being carved by a sharp blade.

For a moment, it felt unbearable, and then it seized…

I lift my shirt sleeve only to find a tattoo shaped like one of the shadows still stuck in my mind from my time in that castle.

I was baffled; tattoos of monsters were very rare and only showed up after you

had beaten them and taken their essence, or at least that's what I had heard from

the conversations of higher-ranking people. It was impossible for me, that only

interacted with them, to have gotten it. Sharp pain took over once again, only

this time it was on my lower back. The pain lasted for about two hours, way

more than in my hand. "RENNIE! REGGIE!" I shouted. Two pairs of footsteps

approached me in a hurry. "What's wrong, brother" their voices in sync.

"Can you please describe to me the tattoo on my back?" I asked after calming

my head from both the pain and disbelief I was in at the moment.

"It…it looks like some veiled lady" shocked, I remembered her so clearly and just stood there taking it in

"Where did you get this, brother, aren't you supposed to get markings only on 3rd class rifts and above?"

That was right. You could only get these tattoos from 3rd rank and above

Rifts and the rate was 0.2%, scaling up to 0.8% for the 5th rank, was the hardest, but the

The thing that surprised me the most wasn't that I got it without killing the creatures, but the fact

You had to have an awakened innate talent to get marked by the rift creatures.

This meant that I awakened my innate talent when they started showing up on my skin.

I had hope…

Understanding what those markings showing up on my body meant, my

brothers started crying tears of joy and hugged me tight, their eyes filled with hope for the future.