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From a young age, Caerus Ardelean has been on a screen whether he liked it or not. Only child to two prodigies, Jove and Io, expectations were always sky-high and failure was never an option.
The Ardeleans were the primary magic users within the Council, with Jove being the Castle Magician and Judge and Io being the Soul Keep Curator. Generations of Ardelean magic kept the scales of the Council in balance, granting souls to the unfairly Soulless and taking souls from the criminals of Canaan. The family was seen on every screen in Canaan, often serving as one of the hands to the Mother and Father. Their presence served as a sigh of relief, a promise to uphold justice throughout the land.
Oh, from the outside, the family Ardelean was picturesque-- two loving parents and a child hungry to prove he could become better than the Ardeleans before him. But, behind the rose-tinted windows, the Ardeleans hid something much darker.
Caerus Ardelean was born with no such affinity for magic.
Caerus Ardelean was a bastard child, the unfortunate result of an unhappy marriage and wandering hands.
Caerus Ardelean was not always an only child.
At the beginning of his training, his instructors told the Ardeleans to give him time. Unknowing Caerus’s status as an Ardelean, they were adamant that Caerus would be able to wield the magic, to continue the family name. Endless days turned into nights of training, studying, willing magic into himself.
In a last-ditch effort to save the marriage, Io Ardelean had borne a daughter, a true Ardelean, Aeon. Caerus was five years old, two years into training.
Records of Aeon did not exist. Io and Jove Ardelean painstakingly destroyed all evidence of her birth and life. Caerus held the birthright as the next Ardelean Magician in the Council. Io and Jove knew that records of Aeon could lead to rumors, and rumors could lead to the truth of Io’s infidelity.
In the Council, appearance is everything.
In Canaan, appearance is all that there is.
Caerus was fiercely protective of Aeon. As Io and Jove’s marriage crumbled around them, Caerus shielded Aeon from the worst of the abuse.
Aeon lived a life of guilt. She knew from the start that she was unwanted. Jove was very quick to remind her. The neglect from Io could only confirm it. She clung tightly to Caerus when she could. She was sent to the basement of the Ardelean home for most of her life.
Caerus threw himself into his studies, spending most of his time in the Castle Canaan Library. He looked for every solution he could to gain magic affinity. Every night, he would tiptoe to the basement to tell Aeon everything he had learned-- the giving and taking of souls, the way to capture a soul and how to grant it to another being. Aeon was intrigued, but knew she could never perform any of it herself.
[TW: physical abuse by a parent, suicide]
After Caerus had turned 15, the failing marriage between Io and Jove came to a head. Their argument had words and items flying between them. Io left the Ardelean residence, but Jove stayed. Aeon, hearing the silence and the front door close, decided to make a run for it upstairs to Caerus’s room, as she would often do when their parents left.
She never made it past the top of the stairwell. Jove, hearing footsteps from the basement, waited at the top for Aeon. After beating Aeon bloody, Jove storms to his room, locking the door and killing himself.
[End TW]
Hours later, Caerus arrived home to find Aeon on the brink of death at the door to his room. Caerus knows instantly that Aeon is not going to make it more than a few more hours.
He lifted his baby sister from the ground, carrying her into his room and laying her down on his bed. The guilt eats at Caerus, as he knows he cannot even perform something as simple as healing magic. He knows that the end of Aeon’s life is going to be painful.
With the last of her life, Aeon rips the soul from her own body. There is a blinding light, immeasurable pain, and then there is nothing but a corpse in front of Caerus.
Caerus does not stop sobbing until his mother returns.
The following days pass Caerus in a blur. In receiving his sister’s reckless soul, he loses function in his left eye, giving him a nasty scar that his mother forces him to cover.
There is a huge funeral for Jove, the Council’s late Magician. The whole city of Canaan makes their way to pay their final respects.
There isn’t even so much as a burial for Aeon.
Her body lay in Caerus’s bed until one day it didn’t. Io refused to answer Caerus’s questions.
In the following weeks, Caerus realizes he’s been granted a power far greater than any of his family and instructors. In receiving Aeon’s soul, he has also gained his sister’s magic affinity.
Instructors, blind to the truth, congratulate Caerus. A late bloomer, they would all say. He had it in him all along. Caerus feels sick every time they say it.
Refusing to waste his sister’s gift, Caerus pushes himself further into his studies. His aptitude in academia catches the eye of the Librarian, Amara Lenoire. Finding a kindred spirit in her, Caerus and Amara become quick friends, studying together. Amara adopts Caerus as her apprentice.
Amara is also from a well-known family within the Council. She and Caerus frequently study together in the Lenoire Estate, a long-forgotten mansion in the Forest of Time, the forest surrounding Canaan. The Lenoire family library is filled to the brim with old Canaanite records and documents. It’s nothing compared to the Castle Canaan Library before the Great Burning, but Caerus quickly realizes there is much more here than he currently has access to.
Years of studying aids Caerus in becoming scarily proficient in wielding magic. Amara fears for Caerus’s safety should the rest of the Council find out about his ability. Though it strains their relationship, Amara frequently downplays Caerus’s ability in front of other Council members.
Though he is not home often anymore, Io grows to hate Caerus. With no sister to protect and no father to defend against, Caerus returns Io’s feelings. She kicks Caerus out the second he turns 18.
With nowhere else to go, Caerus turns to Amara. Fearing rumors of fraternization, Amara denies him a permanent place in her home with Lucine, tells him that he is welcome to stay for a couple nights, but that he can't stay there forever.
After a week, Caerus begins crashing on the couches of Council members and other citizens of Canaan. Caerus makes himself useful to his colleagues and mentors, sorting files and documents long into the night. So much desire to help and share and fix lay within his heart and without Aeon, he turns the desire outward, stretches his hands to mend the gaps.
Caerus is charming, has been told so his entire life-- could sell water to a fish, they’d say. Caerus is charming and Caerus is lonely.
[TW: unhealthy sexual relationships, violence]
He never made the first move, but Caerus knows how to play the cards. People are so simple. Maybe it makes him a horrible person, leading others on for his personal gain. It’s a game that he learns how to win.
Caerus gains quite the reputation as the Council’s harlot. Though he doesn’t care for the stares it rewards him, he can’t help but feel some sick satisfaction in staining the Ardelean reputation. Even though he never truly wants it, he's willing to do what it takes to find the information he's after. After each of his sexual expeditions, his pillow talk includes asking his partners about Castle secrets. Though many find it strange, most tell him anything they know, their speculations and theories. Caerus keeps records of each once he returns to the Library, where he spends most of his time during the daytime.
During this period of time, Caerus finds Zacchaeus Graber, the disgraced ex-Council member who was the mouthpiece for the Mother and Father, now commonly regarded as the False Prophet. Entering a loose relationship with him, Zacchaeus talks about his theories about the Mother and Father, and teaches how to extract souls from humans without their consent.
[End TW]
After endless studies and records of the secrets delivered to him, Caerus finds information about the Firestarter who enacted the Great Burning. When he asks Amara about the Firestarter, she denies that he is even alive. Caerus doesn't believe her, finding that the so-called Bones of the Firestarter in the Castle Museum don't even match the DNA records of the Firestarter himself. In his studies, Caerus also learns of the Exiled Child of the Castle, the Traitor Echo. Knowing that this child was on the inside of the Council, Caerus begins his search to find them and get more information about the Firestarter.
His venture leads him to the Lenoire Estate, a mansion he has been to many times in his youth. Upon entering, there are signs that someone has been destroying it from the inside out. Caerus takes cover in the attics and secret passageways in the walls that he was shown in his studies with Amara. Watching from the shadows, Caerus is able to observe whom he assumed is the Exiled Child of the Castle.
After a while of studying Echo, another person enters the Lenoire Estate. This stranger is met with Echo and the two battle to near-death. Knowing that this powerful man could kill Echo, Caerus reveals himself. Caerus also realizes that Echo is covered by a weak appearance magic spell, giving them a different physical appearance from their actual form. Caerus easily counters this spell, and suddenly the stranger, revealed to be Atlas, is flooded with memories of Echo, who was his best friend, known previously as Malakhi.
Caerus is told by Atlas and Echo that they know nothing more of the Firestarter than Caerus himself, with the two of them actually knowing even less than Caerus himself. The three begin salvaging the documents destroyed by Echo. Most of the documents are written in Ancient, the dead language originating in Canaan. Caerus, however, became proficient in Ancient under the instruction of Amara.
Within the documents, there is a code written by a man named Abel D'Angelo giving directions on where to find him. Caerus, Echo, and Atlas set off to the outer edges of Canaan to find Abel and demand answers about himself and the Great Burning.
