Victor didn't sleep that night.
He lay in the small tent assigned to him, staring at canvas walls that offered no answers no matter how long he studied them, the armored man's words circling endlessly through his mind. You are the counterseal. Everything the Vaelmyr fears, bound into a single vessel.
'Borack,' he finally thought, well past midnight. 'You've been quiet.'
'I've been thinking.'
'About?'
'About whether I already suspected this, on some level, without ever putting it into words.' The beast's voice carried something unusually heavy, none of its typical dry humor present. 'A counterseal isn't a small thing to bind into a child, Victor. Whatever process created that binding, it likely reshaped more than just your body's ability to absorb power.'
'Meaning what?'
'Meaning I don't fully know what you are anymore, either. I thought I did. I was wrong.'
