There's sothing quite evil, and maybe a little sad about not wanting soone around so much, and yet repressing all that hatred until it becos imbued with Mana and gains life to exist independent of you.
When Kaya first returned ho and the atmosphere felt stifling, with an aura of unwantedness, she was ready to accept it as normal. It had been normal her whole life.
However, her refined perception picked up on the aura as an entity that could be faced and maybe defeated. She spent the days following her return working on introspection and trying to learn what magic would work best.
It beca very obvious early on that the only magic that could help face off this entity was the sa magic that had allowed Kaya to sense it at all; Nature Magic.
Alas, Kaya's Nature Magic was self-taught. There was no one she knew to ask for advice. Sure, she could help herself along by studying Light Magic, but at best she would just be sinking in so blanks and left with a picture she couldn't really see and didn't quite understand.
Kaya spent so long agonizing over what to do next. She had wondered if her knowledge of Mature Magic thus far would be enough. All the while, the unwanted air continued to grow more and more stifling. Getting to the point where falling asleep was a chore.
It was as though spending months away from ho had been enough to acclimate Kaya to how the atmosphere should normally feel. All the pressures of school were nothing compared to this pressure that made her feel like she didn't belong at ho.
Now back at the Grand Manor and struggling to fall asleep, Kaya found herself rembering her experiences growing up. She rembered how for years, she was never not wearing a hat or head tie with the tips of her ears tucked in to hide them away.
She rembered being scolded whenever any of her ears slipped out of her hat/head tie. She rembered how it all created a complex in her that made it so even whenever she left the Manor and its unwelco pressure behind, it seed to weigh on her shoulders still.
She rembered how when she beca a teenager, the biggest act of teenage rebellion she could think of was to stop wearing hats and be proud of her ears. And oh, could she rember how her stepmother wouldn't even look at her on those days and wouldn't deign to be in the sa place as her.
Kaya rembered how she never really made friends. She rembered how every waking day, she felt like a freak that didn't belong. Even after she eventually let her ears out for show, that didn't change. It seed to get worse in fact.
Even acts of kindness and words of admiration from a very select few—most of them workers at the Manor—seed to her like they were observing her. Like she was locked in so cage and they were peering in trying to get her to do tricks for them like a zoo animal.
Every ti they cooed or liked sothing that she did with her ears, with her magic, it always seed to be more about her half-elf heritage rather than being about her as an individual.
Accepting that that was never going to change was Kaya's first step into pseudo-adulthood. While it might be irritating, she now understood the curiosity. There weren't many half-elves around. She was indeed a rarity.
She stopped caring how her presence affected anyone in the Manor. She sat at the dinner table with her family and didn't act like she saw whenever her stepmother turned her nose up at her.
She stood her ground against her brothers and even though her magic was nothing compared to theirs, she pushed it to its absolute limit to make sure she wasn't pushed around.
And her father? Well, it's hard to have mories of doing anything different with soone you hardly ever saw. All her life, the number of tis Kaya had seen and spoken with her father was in the single digits. And conversations were usually limited to passive greetings.
'He's a busy man,' Kaya had rationalized to herself.
All in all, Kaya began to actually live for the first ti. She chatted with the Manor workers—the closest she had to friends—and refined her conversation skills.
She beca more open about practicing her Nature Magic as well as the other Elents she felt affinities with.
But even though she beca less of a shut-in and actually developed her personality, the aura remained. It didn't change no matter how well she lived. And it was one of the reasons that the day she headed off to Lochxen beca Kaya's happiest day ever as of then. The prospect of spending months away from that unwelco aura was a delight.
And what an experience it had been.
Kaya smiled when her reminiscing reached this point. She rembered making a friend for the first ti— well, one that didn't work at her father's Manor anyway. She rembered eting Caius and everything else that happened after…
It was only a few months but Kaya got very used to normalcy. Not just in atmosphere but in relationships. She got used to tenderness. She experienced an actual rivalry—mostly with Aylin Khione—that didn't make her a perpetual bullying victim but one where she was very much her opponent's equal.
She got used to feeling a wild variety of emotions—including rage, anger, annoyance, and others—and not feeling ashad of feeling them.
She got used to truly living.
So, of course, when she returned ho, she couldn't help lying in bed, tossing and turning while being sure this atmosphere was abnormal. Kaya was sure the new normal she experienced in Lochxen was what aided her refined Perception to sense the issue at hand.
And now, after she had beco convinced she had the magic needed, she picked a hall in the Manor and prepared a ritual of sorts that pulled the Unwelco Aura from all over the Grand Manor, forcing its consciousness to gather and gain enough depth to expose the crux of the emotion that gained life.
*GRRRRRRRRRRRR*
A growl thrumd out with a tremor so deep that it shook the Hall and likely the building it was in.
Kaya opened her eyes, a luminosity shone in her leaf green eyes as her lips turned up in a tired smile.
"There you are," she said in a low voice, "Took you long enough to show up."
Above Kaya's head was a deep blue haze that collected and took on a form that looked like a mask with its lips turned in perpetual sadness, pain, and regret.
The lack of definite features made it impossible for Kaya to know whose face the Mask was supposed to represent and that caused her to frown. She had been hoping for a clue on whose emotions exactly this thing had originated from.
Fortunately, she didn't need that information to exorcise it.
"You've existed long enough," Kaya said as she stood to her feet glaring at the deep-blue mask of sadness,
"You've cast your doom and displeasure for long enough. Be at peace."
For an answer, the mouth on the mask remained closed, but a sound thrumd deep from its hazy blue form, rocking the building even harder as it roared.
"RARRRRRRRRR!!!"
The force of the roar smacked Kaya and pushed her back but she struck her staff into the ground, sinking it in for an anchor as she gritted her teeth and let loose Nature energy to combat the force.
"Fine," she said resolutely,
"If it's force you want, so be it. One way or another, there will be peace."
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