They knew not their sins, the boy and his twin. Lo', these innocent babes are thusly forced to endure suffrage and hardships. A price to pay for their sire's transgressions - a debt of blood and tears repaid.

Their ruin had just begun.

Pieire and Riodion were like the many faces of Kaisermont. Drowned in a sea of encumbering poverty and earthly filth. Trapped in a loveless cage. Their domicile was riddled with weakness and wilting from decades of neglect. A few more years, the roof would collapse around them, and the walls would crumble. A pile of dust was all that would remain. Still, when the children huddled upon their stoop, the couple warmed them by the fire.

Years of volatile screaming. Years of fearful shaking. A hand raised and a child's whimpering plea that they'd not suffer the bruising strike. Weeks of excuses came when the neighbours asked about Riodion's black eye and mercy be upon them should the children imply the truth.

Asmodeus and Leviathan. Demons written in age-old lore. That is how Pieire saw them.

They were silent, the twins, lest they, too, suffer Pieire's wrath. Even when she packed their bags and forced them into the solitude of the mountains. Even when her outlet turned to them when they returned from the mills with light coin purses. Leviathan protected her younger brother and gave him an extra coin so she'd take the brunt of their mother's hand. Small mercy upon the youth. Benevolence that'd soon be unnecessary.

Pieire lay in a pool of blood. Theirs fled from their faces leaving them pale and cold, and whatever was in their little hands fell to the floor. Grown men came to collect her body, claiming it was a 'crime of passion'. Perhaps the husband's lover, they whispered. A husband that had not sought the children and instead, chose to live this simple life away from them. Away from the cruelty of the dead woman.

For years the twins only knew each other and the few faces at the mill. Their bond was inseparable. His brotherly love evolved into taboo. He'd touch her hair, her shoulders, the neckline of her dress. He'd tear it, exposing her tender flesh. So many memories he wished to undo. The fear in her eyes as he held her on the floor. The tears when she held the blade to his throat. The searing pain that tore throughout him languidly dwindled into a frightening cold. She was gone. The last time he'd ever see Leviathan.

Instead, he was nursed by a familiar face that had often come into the mills offering lunch or bandages to the children there. She'd been a child herself then, now, a full woman. A woman who nursed him from the brink of death and gave him the love he'd so desperately craved.

Sadly, it, too, would end in heartache. She was gone without a trace. Like a phantom, a hallucination, perhaps, that only he'd seen. Across Vufrien he'd chase her ghost only to find himself enthralled with the thrill of whores and gentlewomen alike. Their touch was akin to opium - their heady moans and heathen cries an addiction he couldn't fight.

One such creature he'd found rather stubborn, not so easily swayed by his charms. He persisted in pursuing her, unrelenting in his goal to mount the untamable shrew. During this time, Asmodeus sought to better himself and wormed his way from the pits of poverty. In doing so, he'd become a landowner in Dunmeath and with it, obtained himself a marriage deal. A marriage to the very woman who scorned his advances.

Despite obtaining that which he wanted, Asmodeus's faith would stray toward the docile maid. Short-lived, the affair ended when his wife announced her pregnancy.

A daughter was born to them - an albino - a tarnished stain to the Trahern name. Much to his wife's displeasure, he'd cast the child away and in that shadow of darkness, he'd change. He became cold, and distant, even to the wandering invitations of women he'd once entertained. Days turned to months. Months turned to years. Asmodeus slowly outgrew this destructive phase of his life and would attempt to make amends for the wrongs he'd cast upon the adoring, faithful creature that he'd call wife. His ever-patiently loving Poltergeist.

He found love in her arms. Love that was unlike anything he'd felt before. Love that was pure and unadulterated despite the life he'd put her through. It was a love he'd fight the world to protect, to safeguard from any further wrongs. But as is a common theme in his life, she, too, would vanish during the flame and fire that rained upon their domicile. When the throngs of war were at their door, when he returned to find blood and ash in the charred remains of their bed, he'd scour to the ends of the world if it meant finding her safe and unharmed.