Magi: Jaeyria Lightwood

Prequel #3

Jaeyria stared down at her parents' still bodies, tears streaming down her cheeks. Every mask she had was shattered and falling in pieces to the mossy floor of the forest. Their house stood behind them, broken as she was. She'd done everything she could to save them, but in the end, she had failed, and it was her fault they died.

If I hadn't tried to show them the way I could mess with shadows, this wouldn't have happened, she thought bitterly. I should've been able to control the way the magic manifested itself, but I couldn't, and I ruined the house. I killed them.

Blood stained her parents' clothes. Her mother's face was no longer beautiful and serene; a falling beam had seen to that. Her father had been stabbed by one of the shadows as it dissipated. He'd held on longer than her mother had.

Jaeyria didn't understand how this could've happened. She was a Shadow Sage. She was supposed to be able to control the shadows, but instead, something had caused her to lose that control. The shadows had siphoned her power off until she was spent and nearly dead herself. She'd just managed to pull her parents from the house before something blew the whole thing up. One wall was still standing, but nothing else was. As she was pulling them out, the explosion had thrown debris in all directions, and she had scrapes all over her body from it. A gash in her forehead was bleeding.

Someone's heavy footsteps thudded on the mossy ground. "What happened here?"

Jaeyria whirled to face them, trying desperately to compose herself. It didn't succeed. "I... I was trying to... to show them s-something." She hated how her voice wavered and cracked. Jaeyria was strong, not this weak, sniveling creature.

"What did you do?" The man snapped, staring at her dead parents.

She shook her head, backing up instinctively. Her foot bumped against something, and she lost her balance, falling backward. She hit hard, the breath knocked out of her as she landed. Her parents' wide, glassy eyes met hers, as though condemning her for her part in their deaths. "I... They... I'm sorry," she moaned, covering her mouth with her hand as bile forced its way up her throat.

"You did this." He stepped forward, his eyes fixed accusingly on her instead of the bodies.

"No... I mean... I didn't mean to... Something just went wrong."

"You went wrong. I always knew you were a rotten one... They all said you were, and for a while, I didn't believe them. But after I saw how you treated people... And this... You're a monster."

Her lower lip trembled, and tears fled down her cheeks, refugees making the long trek to the ground. "No. No, I'm not. You can't make that judgment. You don't know me." But the words fell hollowly on deaf ears. Neither of them believed the things she mumbled.

She shoved herself to her feet. Staring down at her parents' bodies, she shook her head, the full weight of what she'd done settling onto her slender shoulders. Shoving past the man, she fled. Everything she knew and loved had been destroyed, and she didn't know what to do. So she just ran from the horror and fear.

And after that, she never did stop running. Not from herself, the world, and her past. Most of all, she ran from her past and the guilt it carried. She would never forget that fateful, sunny day when she murdered her own parents.