We are back with the professor, telling the story of his father, an accidental demonic pact, and the significance of those events ...
Chapter 4
"That was it? That was the pact?" Meera blurted out, eyes wide.
Edric nodded. "Yes. That was all it took. My father didn’t realize it in the moment, but he was now bound to a demon. A single desperate answer. A single promise. And as the man had suggested…"
He met their gazes, letting the truth settle.
"…he now had a master."
Chay put a hand to his mouth, glancing at his older sister. His eyes widened, searching for reassurance. Meera looked back with a small smile, but it lacked the warmth it usually carried.
Mitch exhaled, shaking his head. "So when you said he struggled with demons, you weren’t joking."
Edric’s jaw tightened. "That’s the truth of it. He couldn’t tell anyone. He couldn’t ask for help. Though, in the end… I don’t know what help there even could have been."
He looked down at his hands. "We assumed the worst of him."
Chapter 5
As Algar’s empire grew, his time and patience for his son diminished.
Edric had spent his childhood walking on eggshells.
The house was always too quiet or too loud—either his father was absent, locked away in his study, or he was shouting, cursing, throwing things in frustration.
Edric became an expert at putting out fires—both literally and figuratively.
Servants learned to move silently, their faces carefully neutral as they worked. They never met Edric’s eyes. But he could sense it—the pity. The deckhands and sailors in Algar’s employ did the same.
No one dared challenge the master of the house.
But Edric heard them whispering when they thought he couldn’t.
"A man possessed…"
"Drinks like he’s drowning something…"
"What happened to him? He wasn’t always like this, was he?"
Edric didn’t need to ask. He knew.
There had been a time, before his mother vanished, when his father had at least pretended to be whole.
Now, his anger flared at the smallest things—misplaced papers, a torn coat, an offhand remark at dinner.
Sometimes, the rages passed quickly. Other times, they lingered for days.
Once, when Edric was twelve, he had accidentally knocked over an inkwell on his father’s desk.
The look on Algar’s face had turned his blood to ice.
"Careless boy, what have you done?"
His father’s voice had dropped low, more dangerous—that tone that made Edric’s pulse hammer in his ears.
"Get out."
Edric had never cleaned up a mess so fast in his life.
It wasn’t always violent. His father had never laid a hand on him—but Edric had always feared that one day, he might.
Not because he thought his father wanted to hurt him.
But because Edric was beginning to believe he was losing his mind.
And yet—it wasn’t all bad.
On stormy days, when the boats couldn’t go out, Algar was almost himself again.
Edric would wake up to the sound of rain hammering against the windows and know, before he even got out of bed, that his father would be in a better mood that day.
Those were the days he loved the most.
Because on those days, Algar told stories.
They would sit in the small snug by the fire, the storm howling outside, the wind rattling the shutters, and Algar would lean forward, eyes glinting like a man half-captivated by his own words.
"The Last Sorcerer, my hero," he would say, his voice thick with reverence. "His own master. A man of impossible power. Subject to no nation, no ruler. The last of his kind. Hunted, feared, but never caught."
Edric would listen wide-eyed, entranced, hanging on every word.
For a little while, his father wasn’t a man drowning in liquor and his demons.
His eyes twinkled with clarity, hope, and inspiration.
For a little while, he was just a storyteller, enjoying telling his stories.
And Edric was just a boy.
Not the son of a man losing control.