Cursed Duality

Aiden’s POV

The wind whipped against me as I stood on the edge of the cliff, staring out over the landscape. This world was my prison and my heritage, and somewhere in the sky above was the human side of me I tried so hard to bury.

I was half-human, half-Serakyn, a creature caught between two worlds, and accepted by neither. Always hiding, always feared.

The Serakyns, with their silver blood and unyielding strength, ruled this world with an iron grip, ancient and bound by tradition. Full-blooded Serakyns were known for their purity and power. But I wasn’t fully one of them. I was a Nyren, a half-breed.

My Serakyn blood gave me unnatural strength, speed and body built for survival. My human side, however, hidden and despised among the Serakyns. I looked back at how I had struggled to hide this humanity, moments where my compassion and empathy nearly exposed me. They were feelings I could never fully shake, qualities my kind considered weaknesses.

I had led a precarious life, always wary of who might discover my human origins and turn against me. My father ensured that my human side was buried, for my survival, he said. But as I look out now, alone in this world, I wonder if it was worth it.

The sun bled into the distant mountains, painting the sky in fiery hues. It reminded me of her—my mother.

She’d always loved sunsets, said they were a reminder that even the brightest things had to fade eventually. It was one of the few things she clung to, living in a world where she was hunted for loving the wrong person.

My father hadn’t been kind to her. Oh, he could pretend well enough.....charming smiles, sweet words, empty promises. That’s how he’d lured her in. But beneath the facade was a man driven by duty, by loyalty to his bloodline and its unyielding laws. To love a human was to betray everything he stood for, and yet he’d done it anyway.

For a time, I think he truly loved her. I remember the way his gaze softened when he looked at her, the way his hand would linger on hers just a little longer than necessary. But love wasn’t enough. Not for him. Not when the weight of expectation came crashing down, and he realized the cost of what they’d created.

Me.

I was the reminder of his failure to uphold the laws of his kind, a living, breathing symbol of his betrayal. And her? She became the scapegoat. He convinced himself that she’d bewitched him somehow, that her humanity had been a weakness he was forced to endure. He killed her for it.

I still remember that day.... the coldness in his eyes as he told me she was gone. No explanation, no remorse. Just a stark reality that shattered whatever illusions I’d had of him.

“She was a threat,” he’d said, as if that made it better. “She would have exposed us.”

Exposed us to who? The same kind who would have killed her anyway? The same kind who would kill me if they knew the truth?

He thought he was protecting me. That was his excuse. But the truth was simpler: my mother had become inconvenient, and my father never let anything stand in the way of his ambitions.

It’s why I hate him. Why I’ll never forgive him.

I’d learned to build walls that made me seem untouchable, unbreakable. And I suppose that’s what they saw in me. The power and the coldness, the force and the fear. It made me strong, yes. But it also made me a monster in their eyes.

They didn’t know how I had to keep that human side hidden, even as a child. I learned young that there were questions you could never answer and truths you could never speak. One wrong word could have ended me. So, I closed off parts of myself. And maybe it worked too well…because now, when I look inside, it’s all walls and silence.

But Zara…. Zara was different. A faint smile touched my lips at the thought of her, a rare feeling of warmth thawing the icy fortress I kept around my heart. She was my half-sister, but it was more than that. She was the one person who saw me as something beyond strength and fear. When we were younger, we’d spend hours together, lost in stories and laughter, as if we were the only souls in the universe. For a few moments, I almost felt…whole. Almost believed I could belong. With her, I didn’t feel the heavy weight of my secret. I didn’t have to be Aiden the Serakyn, or Aiden the human. I could just be.

Yet, there was an uneasy feeling, I always worried that my affection for her could cost me everything. She brought out a gentler side of me, allowed me to be vulnerable and show warmth that I concealed from everyone else.

But even Zara didn’t know the whole truth. She didn’t know what I was, what I carried in my veins. My human side, the side that could destroy me. I knew if she ever discovered it, that bond we shared would snap. A part of me wanted to believe she’d still look at me the same, that she’d still see the brother she cared for. But another part…the part that kept me alive all these years, knew better.

The sky was restless tonight. Something shifted in the air, dark and foreboding, like the calm before a storm. A faint sound, or maybe it was just my imagination, echoed through the mountains. My fingers clenched, my muscles tensing, ready.

Maybe I’d stood on this cliff long enough. A cold resolve settled in my chest. Whatever came, I’d face it. Alone, if that’s what it took.

I took one last look over the landscape, the twin moons casting their ghostly light on the jagged rocks. I belonged to no world and yet, maybe I was meant to protect both. The silence broke only by the faint howl of the wind as I turned my back on the cliff, ready to meet the darkness ahead.

Aiden's POV

The citadel corridors were colder than I remembered, every step echoing against the silent walls. There was an emptiness here now, a hollow reminder of what this place had always meant to me. The air was thick with the whispers that trailed me at every turn.

It wasn't just my father's death, it was the way people watched me now, from behind closed doors...watching from the shadows, assessing me.

People who had once looked at me with respect or even admiration now saw something darker. To them, I was a hidden danger lurking in plain sight, something they couldn't fully understand or control.

I moved past the citadel, taking long strides to the throne room where the Elites had gathered in tense anticipation. The Elites are pure-blooded Serakyns. They represent the upper and ruling class of the Serakyn society. They had fixed an early gathering as soon as word about my father's exit got out.

My presence caused a hush and I watched the Elites ex