CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 3: Tenth Son

The form was that of a Duke's offspring, to be exact, Asher Wargrave, the tenth heir in the prestigious Wargrave bloodline. The Wargraves, as Dukes of the Zarethorne Empire, formed a household tempered in the fires of combat, a lineage marked by endless wars, celebrated for their combat skills and toughened through countless generations of strife.

Asher had reached sixteen and was nearing his seventeenth birthday. Being the Duke’s tenth boy, he earned admiration and submission in every place he visited. Yet, in a home where superiority ruled, simple heritage fell short.

The Wargraves consisted of a clan of exceptional talents, with each of Asher’s nine brothers and sisters a prodigy in their field, just like his mother, father, uncles, and aunts. Average ability found no footing in such a heritage.

Talent alone wouldn’t suffice; he needed to shine exceptionally. Truly, the Wargraves resembled less a aristocratic dynasty and more a breed of beasts cloaked in triumph.

In this fresh realm, all people, whether highborn or lowly, faced an awakening at fifteen years old. It served as a common ceremony, surpassing rank or ancestry.

However, though unavoidable, the essence of this awakening stayed hidden from Ethan. Even so, as a keen consumer of fantasy tales, he held a broad grasp of its possible nature.

Awakening happened at fifteen, yet triumph wasn’t assured. Not all managed to awaken. Everyone received as many as three trials, during their fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth years.

If those three fell short, their path was locked.

They’d stay mundane forever, bound to an existence without might or promise in a realm that honored power most highly.

Yet Asher achieved the impossible—he botched his awakening at fifteen. And from there, the downfall started.

While the realm offered a follow-up shot and even a final one in the coming years, any setback, even brief, counted as a silent shame in the Wargrave home.

In a clan where might wasn’t just anticipated but required, such frailty couldn’t be tolerated.

This wasn’t merely some elite manor; it was the territory of beasts, a bloodline shaped for battle, where strength formed the inheritance and averageness a crime.

Once Asher flopped his initial awakening, the taunts kicked off. His siblings, who had shown no fondness for him from the start, grabbed the chance to jeer and diminish him. Affection held no room among them, solely drive.

Every one competed to claim the role of next Wargrave leader, and Asher’s flop turned him into a prime mark.

Even the staff, previously polite out of obligation, started eyeing him with barely concealed contempt. Certain servants had succeeded in their debut try, while the Duke’s youngest heir, raised in luxury and tradition, hadn’t.

To them, he embodied shame.

Still, Asher refused to surrender. He didn’t shatter under their derision or the burden of their sneering looks.

Rather, he looked inside himself and held firm. He drove his form past its boundaries, accepted the agony, and sought the quiet.

Daily, he stuck to a brutal schedule: rise, dine, practice, rest, then cycle again. No diversions. No justifications. Pure resolve.

As Asher hit sixteen, his next awakening opportunity came. All eyes locked on him, observant, hopeful, merciless. Might he reclaim his honor? Could he at last shed the mark of that debut defeat?

Even success wouldn’t erase the murmurs. The echo of that initial flop would persist. But what transpired next hushed even those murmurs, swapping them for shocked astonishment.

Asher flopped once more.

A double flop, beyond imagination. Beyond pardon.

This round, it shattered him.

He sensed their glares, stabbing, ridiculing, laden with mockery. The press of their scorn overwhelmed him, and the wicked glee in their stares, the delight in his misery, proved too much.

He couldn’t fake indifference anymore. He withdrew to his chamber, blocking out the outside.

For days, maybe weeks, he simply wept, fed himself, and sipped. He submerged his grief in spirits, eager to soften the harsh lines of his existence.

In that dim chamber, encircled by hush and the sour aroma of defeat, Asher ceased being the Duke’s tenth boy. He became merely a fractured youth, gripping the base of a pit he couldn’t escape.

Yet nothing offered comfort.

The booze, the sobs, the seclusion—it fixed zilch. Worse, it dragged him further into the void, devouring the scraps of his will. Each day, the harsh pattern repeated.

His kin required no physical strikes against him now. Their barbs, sharp and unyielding, wounded deeper than blows. Every remark eroded the remnants of his fortitude.

In time, Asher snapped.

One dawn, no longer able to endure, he hired a servant to fetch a substance. She raised no queries. She wouldn’t risk it. It wasn’t her role; she was only a simple attendant.

That evening, Asher chose his path.

He ingested the substance, not rashly, but with calm, purposeful closure. To him, it wasn’t a plea for aid—it was freedom. A method to quiet the taunts, the verdicts, the flops. A means to vanish from a realm that never welcomed him.

Asher Wargrave, the Duke’s tenth heir, perished not amid combat, but in an isolated space, overcome not by foes, but by the load of demands and quiet.

Ethan sensed Asher’s feelings surge over him like a massive surge, brief flashes of delight, intense drive, subdued determination... then grief, hopelessness, and ultimately, passing.

‘At least the end wasn’t agonizing.’ Ethan reflected, his stride firm as he neared a modest desk. Upon it sat a vial, halfway filled with the exact substance Asher employed, and next to it, a creased note with slight smears on its borders.

He skipped perusing it. He grasped its message already. The recollections felt as clear as his personal ones.

Without delay, Ethan flung the vial away and ripped the note apart, allowing the shredded bits to drift down like cast-off sorrows.

Though he’d endured Asher’s last instants, Ethan detected no enduring burden. The grief, the dread, the futility—they tied to Asher, not himself. And while they brushed him, they didn’t seize him.

‘I ponder why none of Asher’s recollections held any lore of this realm.’ Ethan pondered while heading to the pane.

Beyond, the grounds radiated strictness and regularity. Clad warriors circled the edges with robotic accuracy, their sights keen and motions drilled.

Servants and attendants glided along the paths with refined poise, their footfalls noiseless, their faces serene. All operated in the rhythm of a smoothly running device.

Further out, slender, graceful trees rose toward the heavens, their limbs coiling like emerald and amber snakes. They scattered across the terrain in swirling patterns, lending the property an odd, groomed allure, as though nature itself here learned submission.

Still, amid its splendor, it seemed strange. Foreign. Lovely, yet not belonging to him.

‘If I leaped from this spot... would death truly claim me?’ Ethan questioned, gaze locked on the far-off earth beneath. Or would the clock merely reverse, hauling me back to the instant I stirred in this form?’

It struck as an odd notion, one probably absent from those who dreamed of rebirth.

Where others could bask in the excitement of another shot, Ethan’s thoughts veered into a gloomier, more inquisitive route.

‘Suppose someone, given fresh existence in a fresh realm, opted to discard it right away? Might the power driving the rebirth step in? Would it halt them, anxious to guard its scheme or intent for them? Or... would it permit their end? Simply so. No fight. No aim. Merely conclusion.’

The puzzle bit at him.

He held no bond to this existence. Not as yet. The feelings passed from Asher already receded into the distance like a tale overread.

But deep in his thoughts, the true query persisted:

‘Would it conclude?’

‘Would I return to Jennifer?’

‘Would I rouse again in Asher’s bedding as though naught occurred?’

The urge to experiment with the idea was genuine, perilous, but genuine. Stemming not from woe... but from intrigue.

The sort that might slay a person as quickly as any blade.

"Isn’t this the moment where I should catch that ding, system startup noise, just after absorbing the memories?" Ethan whispered to himself, more for his own ears than others.

He creased his forehead, delving further into reflection. "Don’t say I’m set to be the sole transmigrator lacking a system."

He halted, considering the options.

"Well, in certain tales the systems trigger only at awakening. I suppose I must bide my time for it."

With a defeated breath, Ethan pulled back from the pane, shaking away the persistent doubt.

‘I’ve been conscious for more than half an hour. Why hasn’t a servant stopped by to see to me? Or at minimum to offer a greeting?’ he pondered quietly.

Before the wonder could hang too long, a soft rap resounded from the entrance, as if replying to his wordless interest.