The Scorpion’s Aura: The Price of Rebirth

Once, there was a frail young man with opal-pale skin named Sertol, born under the occult sign of the Scorpion. One afternoon, he was walking home from school at a nonchalant pace with his little sister, through streets of clinical cleanliness.
​”Big brother, what are we eating tonight?” the girl asked.
Sertol, with a distant look, tenderly stroked her head before replying: “We’ll ask our older brother as soon as we get home.”
​Back at the house, Sertol devoured his bowl of rice with a wild hunger, his mind elsewhere. He wondered if he could ever surpass his elder brother’s culinary talents. Three hours later, the eldest decided to go to the supermarket. He asked Sertol to watch over their little sister while he was gone.
“I’ll take care of our princess, don’t worry,” Sertol replied protectively.
​Barely ten minutes after his brother left, a convoy of vans appeared. A group of intimidating men, whose mere sight curdled the neighbors’ blood, arrived in deathly silence. They crept toward the back of the house.
“When do we strike?” one whispered.
“Now,” the leader snapped.
​They forced their way in. Despite his efforts to barricade the door, Sertol was swept aside by brute force. What followed was an unleashed storm of violence. The intruders beat and tortured him with nameless cruelty. As he faded into unconsciousness, they emptied their magazines into him. Sertol’s body collapsed, riddled with bullets.
​While they hunted for the girl, they eventually found her hiding spot. Her screams of terror and heartbreaking sobs echoed throughout the house. Sertol, lying on the floor, heard his sister’s frail voice, but he was paralyzed. The pain was agonizing: the men had released hundreds of venomous snakes whose venom slowly devoured his flesh.
​Sertol closed his eyes. A final thought brushed his mind: “Am I dead?”
​BAM!
​Suddenly, a titanic aura—an “Alpha” shockwave—surged through the room. Sertol was standing. His physical appearance had radically changed: fragility had given way to raw, shadowy power. The men opened fire in a panic, but Sertol dodged every bullet with supernatural ease.
​The retaliation was lightning-fast. He struck down two attackers in a flash before subjecting the other twelve to an implacable punishment, wiping out the venomous snakes with a single gesture. He spared only one, grabbing him by the throat:
“Who ordered you to assassinate me?”
​Overcome by a fear beyond understanding, the survivor stammered the name of his employer, hoping to buy his life. But Sertol, without a shred of mercy, executed him coldly. He gently placed his unconscious sister on the armchair and whispered a final goodbye. Clad in the clothes of one of his aggressors, he vanished through the back door into the night.