*The beginning needs a bit of a trigger warning, just in case.

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Alec stirred, feeling the cold hard ground beneath him. Knowing that he could get sick like that, he shook away the fog that tried to wrap around his mind. With some difficulty, his eyes fluttered open, but his vision remained blurry. He shook his head and pushed himself up from the ground using his small hands. When he sat up, his vision gradually cleared, prompting him to look around. Looking at the narrow walls and trash bins in the area, he was in one of the alleys of Gelun.

He blinked. What happened? Why am I here? Holding his aching head, he tried to remember what he had done before.

He was on his way home from selling his prey when a woman walked up to him. The woman said something he couldn't remember, before forcefully leading him into the alley. After that...he remembered being fed something and his body grew weak very quickly. He was pushed to the ground, asking the woman to stop as she straddled his small body. He remembered being afraid and angry, so angry that he was screaming...and then everything went black.

"Where..."

His voice gradually grew quiet when his eyes fell on a figure lying on the snowy ground next to him, red flowers blooming around it.

No. Not flowers. Blood.

The woman who dragged him earlier lay there in her blood, slowly losing her breath from the hunting knife plunged into her stomach. He quickly backed away in surprise.

It was his hunting knife. Did he do that to her? When did he? Why couldn't he remember?

A scream from down the alleyway interrupted his thoughts. His ears rang from the sound, and it made his headache worse. Urgent footsteps started to gather towards him when the person who screamed pointed in his direction. More people started to gather, their alarmed voices combining, causing him to clutch his head harder. He tried his best to tune them out, but he could hear fragments of their conversation.

"That child...murder...."

"I knew that this...happen...day."

"...doctor, she's...breathing."

"Catch the little monster!"

No! I didn't do anything wrong. It was her! I was just protecting myself!

He wanted to voice out his thoughts. But stopped when someone roughly picked him off the ground. He struggled and shouted, trying to plead his case when he followed the direction of their gaze. Looking down at his small hands, he found blood soaking his gloves. He could feel the blood on his skin slowly freezing from the cold. Unknowingly, he started shaking.

He had been a hunter since he was nine. At 11 years old, he was already used to blood due to his years of experience. However...it was the first time he was ever disgusted by blood.

His surroundings started to darken, everything disappearing until he was the only one left. White horrifying face started revolving around him, whispering and shouting.

What have you done?

"...c!"

What a monster!

"...ec!"

He's gradually turning into a feral beast.

"...lec!"

"Shut up! Shut up!"

But the voices never stopped. They grew louder and louder until they finally shouted all at once.

What would you expect from a child raised by a monster?

"Alec!"

He snapped awake.

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His eyes opened wide. Blinking rapidly the next moment, trying desperately to break free from the nightmare. It had stopped at some point, so he thought he would not experience it again. But he was wrong.

Looking around the place, he sighed in relief. It was not the alleyway in Gelun, but a different place. It took him a moment to recognize the black starry-sky ceiling of his room in Gael's house.

Frantic movements came from his left and he watched Gael dash for the door, shouting for someone to call a doctor. He immediately ran back and sat on the chair next to his bed, adjusting the blanket that covered him. He poured a glass of water for him and handed it over. "I'm glad you're awake. It's been a day. Drink some of this."

Alec took a good look at him as he drank. The older man sported the same clothes he wore yesterday. The day-old stubble and the dark bags under his eyes indicated how much he looked after himself the past 24 hours. He was a little surprised to see him like this. Gael was always neat and tidy ever since he met him, even when they trekked through the mountains of Friosan to find the thief.

"Shouldn't...you be preparing for the start of the semester?" Alec asked as he placed the glass on his bedside table.

Gael's eye twitched, and he looked like he was about to tell him something but changed his mind at the last minute. "I dealt with it while I sat here."

Alec fell quiet at the implication. He wanted to ask why, but he felt like the answer was obvious judging from the worry in Gael's eyes. Instead, he opted to thank him and apologize. "Thank you," he said. He bit his lip and looked down. "I hurt someone, didn't I? I'm sorry for not being able to control my anger. I'm sorry for the trouble."

He felt Gael stiffen in his chair. Clenching his fists, he waited for the reprimands that would come his way.

"Alec." He flinched at the quiet tone Gael said his name. "Why are you apologizing?"

Alec's head snapped to Gael, taking notice of the confusion in the older man's face. He opened his mouth to explain but was interrupted by a knock from the open door. Looking up, he saw that it was Kreis. But when he saw who stood behind him, Alec clenched his fists even tighter and looked down again.

"The doctor is on his way. It will be a short while," Kreis said.

"That's good," Gael said. There was a brief moment of silence before Gael spoke to him. "Alec, there is someone here to see you. Also, just to be clear, he will be the one apologizing."

Alec was so surprised he ended up looking towards Professor Gravis. The one-armed man gave him a nervous and awkward smile. He also side-eyed Gael, as the man silently glared at him. "Hello, Alec. I'm glad you're alright," Gravis began. "About what happened in the lakeside...that was my fault. I went overboard with my provocation. I was trying to get you to attack me for real...but looks like it worked too well. I apologize." After saying so, the older man bent at the chest to give him a bow of apology.

His jaw slackened at the sudden apology.

He had always experienced a series of "blackouts" whenever he was angry and in danger. In both cases, he would never remember what he did and would later realize that he had hurt someone. Some were innocent, but most deserved what he gave them. But others around him mostly blamed him. It was the first time he received an apology.

He clenched a fist over his chest when a stuffy feeling inside started to form. Taking a deep breath, he looked Gravis in the eye and nodded. "I accept your apology, sir," he said. "I'm also sorry for what happened. I knew you did not mean it. But I let myself be controlled by my anger...again. I already knew that I would lose myself when I'm angered but I still let it affect me."

Gravis raised a brow at the apology, before nodding as well. Gael's face morphed into a frown at Alec' apology, but decided to let it go. There was a long silence after that as Gravis, Kreis, and Gael exchanged looks with each other. They would look at him before silently having a conversation without using words. Alec tilted his head in confusion.

"Now that you mention it," Kreis began. "Does this 'losing control' of yourself always happen whenever you're angry?"

"It was worse when I was a kid, but I've gotten a lot better at managing it through my years as a hunter. I've learned to suppress it enough that it won't affect my judgment in battle. Today...was the first in a while."

The last few weeks have been tough, so I think I got overwhelmed and just snapped. He did not say it out loud.

The three men went back to their "eye" conversation before it was Gael's turn to ask him something. "Since when did it start?"

"When I was...eleven."

"Were there draes around whenever it happened?"

"None."

"Did you get a fever every time?"

He looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall. "I think so?"

"You think so?" Kreis asked.

"I would wake up in a prison a day later. I felt awful every time, and my body temperature was a little high...so I think I got fevers."

A heavy silence filled the room as the three men's faces darkened. "How many times did it happen?"

"More than ten times."

A sharp inhale came from Kreis before he pressed his fingers to his nose and exhaled roughly. "Excuse me, for a moment. I need to hit something." After saying so, he left the room and Alec heard him go down the stairs. Gravis said something similar and followed after the Ryder Commander.

Gael remained seated in his chair, hands clenched over his knees. Alec could not see his face because he had his head down, but soon lifted it up after a deep exhale. He quickly noticed the sadness in the man's green eyes as he looked at him. Very carefully, Gael reached over and patted his hand that was under the blanket.

"Don't worry, Alec. Those blackout episodes won't happen anymore."

Alec's eyes narrowed at his comment. "Why?"

"It's a very rare case, but it happens. There are many types of abilities passed down to Sentires. Each of these abilities has emotional triggers and factors needed to activate properly for it to manifest.

"Sometimes, when there is a missing factor, the sentiral power would fail to manifest itself. It causes the Sentire to be consumed by their emotion and lose reason for a few moments. Their bodies will be strained and they would develop fevers, the same way a successful manifestation does, but only much worse."

Alec was not stupid to understand where the conversation was going. He just couldn't believe it.

I'm a Sentire.

"For your case, your emotional trigger seems to be anger, which is rare among Sentires," Gael continued. "Also, your sentiral power has tried to manifest itself more than ten times, but kept failing because there weren't any draes around."

Alec frowned, not liking where this was going. "Draes are a factor because?"

"You're sentiral power, according to what we saw...seems to be the ability to control draes."

Control draes.

Control.

Flashes of memories of Crimson, the thief, and the strange red crystal appeared in his mind.

His stomach dropped.

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What happened to Alec in the past as shown in the beginning of the chapter, actually also happened with Alec in the first version. I just never got around to talking about it. It's been years, so I don't really remember WHY I didn't write about it. But I think it was because I was pretty young and uncomfortable with writing about darker stuff back then. I still am uncomfortable, but I feel kind of proud that I managed to share it, even implicitly.

Also, Alec was tiny until he had growth spurt when he was 12. For a time, he held "Tiny Hunter" and "Cutest Hunter" among the hunter circles outside of Gelun. It was quickly replaced by the title "Blazenspawn" once he started outshining most of them.

The next chap is more info on Sentires (which I also never got to properly expound in the last ver. Stupid brain) and fluff...and also as requested by multiple people in my private messages "Gael in Protective Brother Mode"

Fly high today, Draeyers!