Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 185: Embers of Self-Loathing (Miranda’s POV)

Hatred.

An extreme emotional dislike or disgust towards something or someone.

I was five years old when I first discovered the meaning of that word. At that time, I asked myself why anyone would ever feel this emotion.

I’d always been a cheerful and amiable person and though I had a few things I disliked, I didn’t think I disliked anything to the point where it could be considered Hatred.

The next ten years of my life only reinforced that belief. That Hatred, wasn’t something Miranda Violet Scott could feel.

I was utterly convinced of that.

Fast forward another ten years and that belief of mine had been completely turned upside down.

Unable to feel hatred?

Such a hot load of bullshit.

I’d been deluding myself all those years.

Or rather, it was the environment I grew up in. It was one where I was loved and protected so much that I never encountered anything that drew out the ability to feel hatred within me.

But after that day that Jay and I were captured by the Witch of Chaos’ minions, the seeds of hatred bloomed in my heart.

The first thing I hated...was my weakness.

If I wasn’t weak, Jay and I could have escaped. But then again, that was wishful thinking.

What was I at the time? Fifteen?

Sure, I had the potential to become strong in the future, but at the time, that was just potential.

There was no way I could match up to a Witch Queen who had the power to crush stars in their palms, or a Phoenix King who could destroy planets with a single strike.

So naturally, I understood that Jay and I had messed up from the part where we ignored our parents’ warnings and entered that forest.

I accepted that I was at fault.

But It didn’t change the fact that I was too weak to resist being captured and I hated this.

If that was the only thing, then it might’ve not been more of a problem. However, the number of things I ’hated’ increased with each year that went by.

I hated Angela.

I hated her children. Especially Olivia who always liked clinging to Jay and claiming she was the closest person to him.

How dare she?

That position was mine, and it’d belonged to me alone, never to belong to anyone else.

I hated that I couldn’t accept things as easily as Jay did.

Even after we left Thornes, the things I hated only seemed to increase. From the looks of pity people gave me when they finally found Jay and me after years of searching, to the way that other women looked at Jay and the smiles he showed them.

I understood that Jay was objectively good-looking, so he was sure to catch the eye of other women. But seeing them approach him and him spending even a little bit of time with them irked me even though I didn’t understand why.

But most of all, what I hated was the fact that I had been turned into an...abomination.

Vampires and Werewolves are two races that have been enemies from the beginning of time and probably will remain enemies until the end of time.

But one of the few commonalities they had was their dislike for half-breeds.

Jay and I had essentially become Half-Breeds of both races, so it stood to reason that I didn’t like this.

At this time, it was still just ’dislike’.

But if someone were to ask me exactly what caused that ’dislike’ to become ’Hatred’, then a certain day came to mind.

It was the first time I stepped out into the Sun after Angela’s experiment succeeded.

At that time, I still didn’t have a full understanding of exactly what had been done to me. I was just tired of being cooped up in a building for so long, and I wanted to go outside.

It was evening and the sun was going down, but the day was cloudy so the light of the sun didn’t reach me even after I went outside.

However, clouds were not stationary things.

They moved, and the clouds of that day were no exception.

When the clouds moved and the light of the sun peeked in through the gaps, the first thing I felt was heat.

My hand which had been hit by the light from that Star in the sky that Planet Estea orbited felt hot, like I dipped it into lava.

Due to my innate flame resistance, pain from heat was something foreign to me. Due to this, although I was physically strong against heat, my mentality was weak to it.

At that moment, my instincts screamed DANGER at me, but before I could even get up from where I sat, my whole body was wracked with excruciating pain.

A guttural scream escaped my lips involuntarily, and by the time my brain could understand what was happening, I was rolling on the floor trying to put out the flames.

Just a little bit of direct Solar Light and my whole body had spontaneously combusted.

Like I was thrown right into Hell.

However, because of my Immortality...I couldn’t die from it.

So if...just if...the Planet just so happened to be tidally locked to the Sun, and no one pulled me out of there, then I would have burned for eternity.

It was frightening to even think about it.

Jay was the one who dragged me out of that torment, and I couldn’t bear the sight of my own body that was burned all over.

Even worse, was when I saw how my body eventually healed from all those grievous wounds right before my eyes.

That was when the understanding of what I had become finally hit me.

And what followed it was fear.

I was scared.

Scared that I wouldn’t be able to go under daylight again.

Scared that I wouldn’t be able to eat normal food again and would need to survive on the blood of other living beings.

Scared that I would have to deal with the hunger pangs and bloodlust that came with being a Vampire.

Scared that even a little bit of divinity or Light magic would become deadly to me.

Scared that I wouldn’t be able to even touch the silver accessories that Jay got for me.

At one point in time, I was even scared of the silver in my own hair and had repeatedly yanked it out, only for it to regrow within seconds.

I couldn’t think of the strengths of a Vampire. Only the ’countless’ weaknesses and limitations of a vampire haunted my thoughts, each one a potential death sentence or source of agony.

At one point, my overwhelming fear transformed into overwhelming hatred.

Why?

Why was I turned into this?

Why did I have to suffer this?

I didn’t want this.

I cursed the woman who turned me into this. I wanted to kill her even though I knew it was impossible.

At one point, I began hating myself.

I mean, it was my fault I ended up in this situation. I was the one who went into a place where I was warned not to go and witnessed something I shouldn’t have.

So, in the end, the overwhelming feeling of hatred with nowhere to be directed at came barrelling back to me.

It was because of this hatred of mine, that the first law I sought to comprehend after achieving Transcendence was not my main Element of Fire, nor was it any other elemental law.

The first law I sought, was the law of ’Sealing’.

As for what I wanted to Seal, it couldn’t be any more obvious.

Not even Angela herself who turned me into a Hybrid could remove these powers from me. Jamie said something about not even the destruction of the Universe could change the fact that we were Hybrids.

Since losing them was impossible, I could only seal them away.

Permanently.

Using a ’True Name Seal’. It was the strongest possible Seal I could use, one that tapped into the depths of my Soul...the root of my existence.

Was it perhaps my desire? My Race Breed? Or my innate talent? Whichever it was, comprehending laws was something that came easy for me.

Even easier when I had a good affinity for it.

It didn’t take me long to gain a Pseudo-Authority in the law of Sealing, and I didn’t hesitate to lock those Hybrid powers away for good.

I returned myself to the way I was born. A Werewolf.

Only then, did I feel relief.