On a moonless night, beneath the shadowed spires of Eldoria, a child was born into silence.
The Greenal estate, seat of one of the five most powerful noble houses on the Celestria continent, should have erupted with celebration. But instead, the halls were quiet, save for the soft cries of a newborn in a dimly lit chamber, far removed from the gilded heart of the manor.
He was a bastard.
Born to a count, yet touched by shame.
His mother, Alena, once a commoner of no name or land, now bore the invisible weight of scandal. Her hair, black as midnight with strands kissed by violet light, framed a pale, weary face. But it was her eyes—tinted with a strange, ethereal purple—that held the gaze of anyone who dared to look. Beautiful and broken, she clutched her child as though the world might tear him away at any moment.
The child was unlike any babe the physician had seen. He was small, frail, with pitch-black hair that curled gently around his temples. But his eyes—those haunting purple eyes—were mirrors of his mother's soul, ancient and otherworldly. He smiled, even in his weakness, a smile too knowing for a newborn.
The physician frowned. No mana. Not a flicker. And his body, fragile like porcelain—too soft, too weak. A disappointment by all noble standards. And yet, that smile…
"It's as if he knows," the midwife whispered, crossing herself in silent superstition.
The Count of Elden, Veron Greenal, did not come. He had three wives—one the sister of the King, another a noble heiress, and the last, Alena. Veron fathered three sons and four daughters from his esteemed wives. The bastard child, born of a woman he once desired but now barely acknowledged, was less than an afterthought.
No name was given by the father. No herald declared the birth. No mark of Greenal adorned the cradle.
And so, Alena named him herself.
Ansel.
She whispered it as if it were a prayer, a spell, a plea to the fates.
Ansel—whose name meant "divine protector" in the old tongue.
But even the gods seemed to look away that night.