Axia was a perfect kingdom.
But not everyone knew that perfection always comes at a price.
Its walls gleamed with a magical brilliance that had not faded with the passing of centuries.
Its libraries held secrets that no other land had been able to decipher.
Its princes and princesses were raised among rituals, ancient disciplines, and the power of a lineage that seemed to have no end.
But above magic, above history… there had always been a single house that ruled over everything.
The House of Celestis.
Since time immemorial, they bore a mark that was, at once, both glory and condemnation.
A blessing… and a curse.
The men of the house inherited madness.
The women, wisdom.
That was the fate decreed by blood.
Throughout the centuries, scholars sought explanations—magical, divine, even scientific—for why the male line suffered such deterioration.
Some claimed that the power and knowledge burning within their blood were too great for the minds of male heirs to bear.
Others believed that an ancient pact had been sealed by an ancestor who paid for it with the sanity of every male descendant to follow.
But no theory ever managed to explain the unexplainable.
Only one truth remained:
almost all men fell into madness as if it were a fate carved in stone before they were even born.
For generations, it was never a matter of "if"… but of "when."
And the women carried clear minds, sharp judgment, and an almost supernatural inner strength.
Almost always…
Because even perfection has cracks.
Even curses change shape and become something new.
Even wisdom can break.
And so it happened once, in a generation that would never be forgotten.
Her name was Mirella of Celestis.
Mirella had been a prodigy since childhood: quick-minded, strong-willed, and capable of seeing patterns in magic that others could not comprehend.
Everyone assumed she would become one of the most brilliant rulers of the lineage, for despite having three brothers, she was the heir by primogeniture.
She was twenty years old when everything changed.
No one knows what she saw.
It is only known that she saw it alone… and that whatever it was, it shattered her enough to unleash something no one had ever imagined.
It lasted only an instant,
but it was so revealing, so devastating, that it opened a crack in her mind… a crack that should never have existed in a woman of the house.
The madness that had, for generations, belonged to men awakened within her, unleashing the darkest moments ever witnessed.
Afterward, it is said that first came calm.
A calm that foreshadowed the storm that would slowly unfold.
They say that for three days, no one could approach her chamber.
They say she spoke to herself, that her eyes darkened, that magic stirred around her like a rabid beast yearning to be released, striving to reach limits never before crossed.
They say the castle trembled to its very foundations each time she screamed.
On the fourth day, the tragedy was absolute.
Mirella descended through the halls, leaving behind her a sea of crimson.
She did not speak,
she made no distinctions,
she slaughtered every member of her own household, leaving behind dozens of souls trapped in those corridors they had once walked so many times.
It is said she left no survivors—
not a single voice that could explain what had truly happened.
And when silence finally fell, when madness had devoured her completely, Mirella climbed to the highest tower of the castle and, like a warrior on a final mission…
threw herself into the void without even looking back.
They say the wind still carries her name, and that on stormy nights, the lament of a soul that never found rest can still be heard, even decades after that terrible disaster.
That sometimes, when the wind blows from the north, a faint whisper can be heard warning:
"There are things that must never be seen."
But it also made one thing clear: for every rule, there is an exception.
And now it was known that women, though rarely, could also fall victim to that curse.