Aamon

The distant Duke of Aberleen Castle.

=== Duke of Shards ===

A child's cry broke the silent dawn of Aberleen Castle. House Paxley, the most powerful and influential duchy in the Moniyan Empire, finally had an heir.

The child's father, Duke Paxley, named him Aamon and soon his younger brothers were born one after the other. But as the eldest son and heir of the family, Aamon was subject to stricter discipline since childhood. He was never allowed to be as free-spirited as his brother Gusion, and since childhood, he was busy all day with his studies and official duties.

Aamon didn't just learn the things required for a normal noble. His father, Duke Paxley, would also secretly teach him the spell which was only passed down to direct descendants of the family. It was a devious and merciless spell that killed people neither honestly nor honorably. Aamon once felt skeptical because the secret family spell did not fit with the honorable history of House Paxley who believed in the Lord of Light, and for this he went out of his way to read the family's history.

However, fate did not allow him to find an answer. The year Aamon had just turned 18, his father, who had high hopes for him, disappeared with his mother in a sandstorm while visiting Altaïr. After his father's presumed death, Aamon was left to shoulder the heavy responsibilities of the family as the young heir and became the head of House Paxley.

Aamon showed a level of maturity that a young man like him barely possessed, whether because of his father's teachings or the heavy responsibilities of family life. He was passionate in social circles but cold and distant in the face of his political enemies. He displayed the perfect gentleness of a noble gentleman in politics, but on the battlefield he seemed like a ghoul casting merciless spells. To most people who had worked with him, Aamon was an uncatchable shadow.

After the late Duke Paxley was presumed dead, Aamon was left with not only the responsibilities of the entire family, but also his younger siblings. In fact, he wasn't as mysterious and inscrutable as others saw him. His intention was surprisingly simple: the duty to protect House Paxley had been engraved in his mind since he was its heir, so his family and blood ties were everything to Aamon. No matter what bad deeds or good things he had done, they all had one goal: the future of House Paxley.

Aamon once thought that protecting home and protecting his families were completely the same thing, until the day the curse of the ancient prophecy fell on his younger brother, Gusion...

Aamon had never shown it to anyone, but out of all his siblings, Gusion was the one he had paid the most attention to. Because Aamon saw the qualities he didn't possess in Gusion: he was a free-spirited rebel who wreaked havoc without hesitation. But Aamon didn't like his brother for it, and he thought maybe they were supposed to be like each other as brothers, except he had no choice but to become the person he was now. Every time he looked at Gusion, he seemed to see the person he could have been.

Therefore, even if the entire Moniyan Empire knew that Aamon had a trickster and good-for-nothing brother, they would never discipline Gusion for his delinquent behaviors. Even once, when little Gusion accidentally cut Aamon's face with a knife, leaving a permanent scar on his cheek, Aamon only patted him and said nothing more. Of course, Gusion never dared bring sharp objects near his respectable brother ever again.

As the heir of the family, Aamon had heard of the prophecy of their ancestors from his father from a young age. He knew that anyone in House Paxley who had a dark mark appearing on their body would be bound by the deity. So when he found the mark on Gusion, he immediately made the decision to imprison him and cut all ties between him and the outside world, temporarily preventing other family members from discovering the changes on Gusion.

Aamon was then consumed by immense pain. Gusion's existence was undoubtedly a sword of Damocles hanging over the Paxley household, but Aamon did not want to kill his brother. However, what he did to protect Gusion didn't buy them much time. A few days later, the family elders discovered Gusion's secret and quickly arrived at the place where Gusion was being held. And they obviously weren't there to spare Gusion's life.

The situation no longer allowing Aamon to hesitate, he then made the decision to ask the servant who was watching over Gusion to release his brother in secret. But rather than just letting Gusion roam free, Aamon had kept an eye on his brother and, as expected, his wayward brother did not follow his order and remained hidden at Aberleen Castle.

Young Duke Paxley sighed and decided to do it himself: find the root of the Dark Mark's curse and save his brother, while ending the chains of tragedies that had locked their family in for centuries.

===Destiny Deniers===

=== Glow in the middle of the freezing night ===