Michael Price was a man who had been molded to become a serial killer by life itself. An absent father, who abandoned his family when his partner went into labor during a hurricane. A drug-addict mother who died when he was eight, at which point he found out her boyfriend was a registered child predator, one who very nearly saw Michael as his newest perverted obsession.
As a kid in the foster system he was bullied, pushed away by his peers, and left to soak in his own, slowly twisting thoughts. Eventually, those thoughts turned to revenge, justice, and violence.
He saw the monster he was becoming, but no way to escape it, not entirely. He tried suppressing his violent urges, but the relentless torment of his more vicious peers made it impossible. So, he killed. Stray cats, dogs, squirrels, snakes, anything he could get his hands on.
He made it through high school and went on to attempt college, but he didn't trust himself around so many people. Not the girls or anything, don't get him wrong. No, because of his torments, he did have a sense of right and wrong, though not like you or me.
No, the problem was that the college had too many temptations in the form of jocks and frat bros, the ones that openly talked of raping or assaulting this girl and that.
He realized it was too much, that he would cross that line sooner rather than later, especially after he grabbed a boy openly selling date rape drugs and beat him within an inch of his life. What's worse, he had enjoyed doing so.
So, he left school and worked wherever he could. He still butchered animals, but he found a new outlet that worked even better. Stalking. He found that he loved stalking people who were arrested and tried, but found innocent. He had to stalk them and determine the truth for himself.
A manslaughter charge here, a drug charge there, it really did work to follow these people that had been accused only to be let go. It worked, until it didn't.
He was watching a man, an elementary school teacher, who had been accused of molesting several of his students, boy and girl alike.
Insufficient evidence and plenty of character witnesses sealed his freedom, but it also put him on Michael's radar.
It had taken less than a week. Less than seven days had passed before Michael caught him in the act. He had chosen to kidnap the brother of one of his alleged victims from a park using a "lost puppy". He grabbed the boy, pulling him into the stereotypical white van and then driving away semi casually, with no one, save for Michael, the wiser.
Michael,who owned a very nice knife, one with a blade six inches long and kept wickedly sharp. He had followed, he had trailed the pedophile for forty-two miles,until finally, he stopped at an old farm out in the South Carolina countryside.
Michael waited for the man to drag the boy inside, then he grabbed his knife and walked towards his fate. He knew it was inevitable, that he would be crossing that line, never to return, but he couldn't just leave the boy to his horrific fate. Could he? Besides, he wanted to. Oh, how badly he wanted to. To cut someone open and see their life drain from their eyes.
He broke in silently, carefully. He found the boy upstairs in a bedroom, tied to the bed naked and beaten unconscious. The pedo was in the bathroom, preparing a bath for the two of them. He had a sick and demented smile on his face, likely imagining the night ahead.
Michael woke the boy quickly, after cutting his rope bindings and throwing him his clothes. He told him to go downstairs, to run and don't look back. He handed him his own phone, knowing his old life was gone forever, and told him to call the police. He told him to wait ten minutes first. He didn't want to be interrupted, after all.
The boy ran, and as the pedo came to stop him, Michael attacked, slamming his head into the bathroom's doorframe and then stabbing him in the back.
It was all too easy from there, since the man seemed to lose all strength. It was disappointing, truly, but he did try his best to have as much fun as he could. He slashed and stabbed, letting him slowly crawl downstairs, to the front door of the ranch house.
Then it happened. The pedo drew a gun. A pistol. Where did it come from? Surely he didn't have it the entire time? Was this some sort of sick joke from God?
The last action the pedo took was to kill Michael Price. He did so using a gun. The gun that was never found by police. The gun that was put there and removed by the goddess known as Joy, from the world known as Elysia.
You see, Joy and her brother Death, did so enjoy watching other worlds, looking for potential heroes and villains to bring to Elysia to see how they would affect the world, like the bestowing of a Miracle.
They saw Michael, but moreso, they saw his future on Earth. Michael would have left that farm and become the world's most notorious serial killer. Indeed, he would have killed hundreds, thousands even, before being stopped by age alone. He would have started by killing criminals and wolves in sheep's clothing, but eventually his bloodlust would lead him to no longer seek validation, and just the kills themselves.
The decision to stop all that before it began was a surprise to Death, who yanked the killer's soul away from its future in Hell before asking what she was thinking.
She says to him that Michael would have only brought darkness and despair, and as such, it was pointless to let that happen.
Death thought otherwise saying that was only one potential future, that he may have met someone, found love, and gave up on his hate.
In the end, neither would concede the point, and so their father, the last of Elysia's three gods, Order, suggested they give him a second chance and see what he does with it.
So Michael was reborn, sent to Elysia as the firstborn son of Damien and Leah Blackguard, Dainn.
His father was a skilled Bowman, and in his world he reached the third highest rank of martial fighters, and was known as Damien the Hawk-Eyed, Bow Paladin. He was an adventurer of C-rank, but he settled down with Leah, a priestess in Asylum, in the kingdom of Nubia.
Neither could use any of the eight schools of magic, and so they thought Dainn would be the same. Of course, like any isekai story, the gods had to give him a "slight" advantage, otherwise it wouldn't be a Miracle, would it?
And so sometime after Michael's fourth birthday, after reteaching himself to read and studying an old tome given to Damien by a former party member, Dainn finally attempted a spell, of the Silver School, umbramancy.
He had thought that surely a shadow spell wouldn't cause too much trouble if he managed to successfully cast it. What Dainn didn't understand was that while most kids start at a Student level in magic, he was already above that, and above Mentor, and could cast at the level of a Master already.
In short, Dainn cast a Master level engulfing void spell and imploded half the apartment they were currently living in. This would be the start of Dainn's new life, because upon seeing their kid could do things they never could nurture for him, Damien pulled the few strings he had to contact Lord Henry Hera of Vatica, Nubia, and sold their son to him to be raised and trained.
This is the story of Dainn Blackguard, the first Divine Black Mage.