The Rising Sun: Episode 3 Read online

  Marion and his wife had tried everything. They had gone from healer to healer, searching the entire village for an answer. For a cure. Because they knew it couldn’t be otherwise … the price to be payed, if they could not bring a stop to this, was far too great. But after scouring the village, and seeking the counsel of countless trained healers, they came to accept the disastrous truth. This was not a disease … This was nothing they could cure. There was only one possibility.

  “Ion is a mystic.” Marion had whispered to his wife, Selia. And a veil of foreboding seemed to rise before them.

  “It can’t be…” Selia whispered back, the blood drained from her face.

  Looking sweet and harmless as ever, their twin boys Ion and Eol sat opposite to the couple, looking at their parents with their beautiful orange eyes. They were the couple’s greatest treasure and love. Their single greatest source of joy in this world. Ion and Eol. The two beautiful twins, with crimson hair, orange eyes and pleasant smiles ever on their lips. The twins were the only reason Marion and Selia even rose every morning to address a new day…

  The two boys had reached Marion and Selia through a miracle. A miracle that shaped the twins’ upbringing from the start itself…

  The couple had had no children of their own. And they had never asked for any either … But years back, something happened, which gifted them with the miracle of these two children … A disaster. A disaster the village would never forget for years.

  The deadly fire that had broken out in the orphanage nearby had claimed all of the lives in it. All its toddlers had been killed mercilessly in it. All … except two. Covered in cloths as infants, two beautiful twins, Ion and Eol were the only two survivors of the disastrous fire that had ripped apart the nearby orphanage. Marion and Selia had witnessed them, and had realised something through their wizened years.

  This was no accident.

  Fate had decided to spare these two children for a reason.

  And so, accepting the call of fate, and striving to aid it, they had decided to adopt the two homeless infants who had survived the fire. They had been old, but they knew that this was something that had to be done … for they knew that these two infants would one day grow up to become men who changed the world. Why else would God have spared them that day?

  And so, intending to aid God in his plan, the two had adopted Eol and Ion, and had decided to raise them with the firmest of principles and values. Love. Kindness. Selflessness. They knew that Ion and Eol would use these principles that the elderly couple taught them, these weapons, to change the world one day, make it a far better place … they knew it.But this tragic day, they had been proved wrong. And everything they knew was now teetering on the dangerous edge of collapse.

  For if Ion was truly a mystic … then everything would change. Their entire family would be in danger … but not as much danger as Ion himself would be in.

  “We have to hide it.” Selia hissed into Marion’s ear, her eyes unmoved from her foster son across the table. Ion was sitting beside Eol, and the two of them stared back identically at the elderly couple with their innocent, loving eyes, completely unbothered, and unperturbed. Blissfully ignorant of the problem that was now thundering in the house. “We can’t let the other villagers know … or - or…” Selia seemed to choke with the words in her throat.

  Marion patted his wife gently. “They won’t. Don’t worry, Selia, we’ll keep it secret.” They had to. For the sake of their foster son. To protect him from a world where others like him were subjects of great fear and mistreatment. If they found out, the rest of the villagers would have to hand Ion over to the authorities, for their own sakes as well: because the law made clear that even those found guilty of harbouring, or protecting a mystic would be punished. The rest of the village could never know…

  “Nobody will know.” Marion assured, his deadened stare fixed on their son. “Nobody can know.”

  But they had been wrong … terribly wrong.

  The village of Crados was gripped by a furious frenzy, a frenzy mingled with panic, when it rose to the surface. When the secret got out, that one of the adopted two kids of Marion and Selia was … one of them. One of those superhuman, dangerous creatures.

  The authorities of the planet they lived in surged in less than an hour after the news burst out … and Ion was dragged away, weeping, from his family. But they didn’t stop there. For some reason, the Naxim authorities weren’t satisfied with only Ion. they believed for some reason, that the condition was shared by both of the twins … and that Eol, too, was also affected by his twin brother’s disease, that he too, was contaminated. The mystical powers that Ion had, Eol too had to have, they believed … The proof of this, nobody knew. But the Naxim’s mercilessness had spiralled to a new height. They had blinded themselves to the pleas and cries of the elderly couple.

  The two boys, Ion and Eol, had been ripped from their homes, and their parents. Marion and Selia wailed their anguish out as they watched cruel fate rip them from their sole source of life in their world. The elderly couple shook with sobs as the two boys were was chained up, tossed brutally at the back of the van and driven away from them … forever. Ion could have endured, at least, if he had been placed together with his dear brother, whom he found strength in. As long as they were together, the two of them, they would brave whatever came as one … as long as they at least had each other, things would be all right, right? But … no. The Naxim had taken the two boys to two separate prison stations, keeping them away from not only their parents, but from each other. From everything they had loved. Now, the two of them were alone. Alone as could be. And then came the agony…