The journey from the smoldering village was a blur of steel, leather, and the rhythmic clopping of hooves. The knight who carried him, Holst, held Asterion with an impersonal but secure grip, his armored chest a cold, unyielding wall. Asterion, trapped in the prison of an infant's body, could only observe.
His 22-year-old mind replayed the miracle.
Father Gregor, the priest, cutting off a knight's mutilated arm and regrowing it from nothing.
That, his mind seethed, is the power I need.
It was not knowledge, not yet. He couldn't grasp the "how." But it was proof. Proof that the "study of magic" and "spirit/soul cultivation" the Being had spoken of were real. This power was his first tangible lead, and Father Gregor was the first practitioner he had ever seen.
The acrid smell of the burning village—of ash and the sour, oily stench of cooked monster-flesh—clung to them all. For Asterion, it mingled with the phantom reek of his own burning past, a nauseating combination that his perfect memory refused to let fade.
They traveled for days, passing through vast, untamed wilds. The helplessness was a new kind of madness. His adult mind was a prisoner in a body that betrayed him, demanding sleep, food, and changing. He had to endure the humiliation, his iron-clad will shattered by infantile cries he couldn't suppress when his body's needs became too overwhelming.
Once, a howl echoed from the woods, a sound of pure corruption that grated on the soul. The knights formed a shield wall in an instant, their own breathing changing, a faint, palpable warmth radiating from their armor. Holst drew Asterion tight against his chest, his body a living fortress. Asterion's eyes, however, were locked on Gregor. The priest's hand rested on the mace at his hip, his eyes scanning the darkness. Asterion felt it—the same focused energy from the village, a gathering of power. The creature, whatever it was, backed down, its howl fading into the distance.
His mind filed it away. The knights used the power for defense, a subtle reinforcement. Gregor used it for offense and miracles. It was versatile. It was essential.
Finally, they reached the towering white walls of the Aegis Sanctum. It was less a church and more a fortress-city, a bastion of stone and faith carved into the side of a mountain, overlooking a sprawling city below. The scale was breathtaking, designed to awe and intimidate. Guards in polished steel, bearing the symbol of a fiery forge—the mark of Hepestus—manned every gate and battlement.
Asterion was handed over. The cold steel of Holst's gauntlet was replaced by the rough-spun wool of a matron's habit. He was taken deep within the fortress to the Sanctum's orphanage, a wing of stark, clean-smelling stone, echoing with the sounds of children. The matrons were severe, joyless women whose lives were dedicated to duty. They saw him, noted his pale skin and unnatural ruby eyes, and clucked, one of them murmuring, "God-touched, poor thing. Rescued from the Taint."
It was another cage, but this one had a library. It was his new proving ground.
Seven years passed.
To the outside world, Asterion was a small, quiet boy of seven. His ruby eyes, once a mark of misfortune, were now seen as a sign of divine touch. He remained pale, a "library child," but the endless physical conditioning had given his small frame a lean, wiry strength that was profoundly unusual. His stamina was boundless, and the trainers quietly noted the surprising density of his small muscles.
But within that small body, a 29-year-old mind seethed.
His curse was absolute. His perfect memory was not a tool; it was a torture chamber. Seven years had not dulled the horror by a single shade. Every night, without fail, he relived the slaughter. He saw Mishel's clothes being torn, heard her pleas echoing in his skull as if it were happening now. He felt the phantom splash of his parents' blood, hot and sticky, on his face. He remembered the consuming, violating agony of the Being's "blessing," the cold, incomprehensible pity in its gaze as it granted his desperate wish.
These were not memories. They were fresh, immediate, and eternal.
Triggers were everywhere. A week ago, a scribe had spilled a pot of fresh crimson ink. The color, the sharp, metallic smell, had sent him reeling. He'd locked himself in a latrine, his tiny seven-year-old body shaking uncontrollably, hyperventilating. His 29-year-old mind was completely submerged in the past, gagging on the scent of his parents' blood. He emerged an hour later, pale and silent. The matrons assumed he was ill. This was his reality: a constant, private war against his own perfect recall.
This new world was his prison and his lab. His desperation to learn had only intensified.
The people here, he learned, were long-lived. A full, healthy life could span 250, sometimes even 300 years. Adulthood was not recognized until the age of twenty. This meant that here, at seven, he was a mere child, a fact that was both a maddening constraint and the perfect shield. His unnatural intelligence and discipline were not seen as a threat, but as a miracle.
The world was governed by a simple, brutal dichotomy: The Tainted and The Faithful.
The Tainted were the monsters from the village. He learned they were ancient, evil creatures reviving from a long slumber. Some texts whispered of them as sleeping, lesser "Old Gods" bound to the world, their malevolent spirits seeping back into the land, bringing plague and madness.
The Faithful were the followers of Hepestus, the god of fire, whose power Father Gregor had channeled. The Aegis Sanctum was the main seat of this faith, a militant church that trained Holy Knights and Priests to be the shield against the darkness.
His days became a rigid routine, every moment allocated by his researcher's mind.
Mornings were for the library. He had earned his place there. At age four, he had "deciphered" a complex theological text by cross-referencing it with three others. The feat brought a senior scribe to Father Gregor himself, who tested him. Asterion, with his perfect memory, had recited not only the requested passage but the three preceding pages. Gregor had looked at him, his severe face unreadable, and declared him "a true gift from Hepestus."
From then on, the library was his. The scribes no longer had him copy basic texts. They tasked him with restoring and cross-referencing damaged manuscripts, believing him a prodigy. This access gave him everything.
He devoured the history of The Kingdom of Alerion, a nation forged from the ashes of a cataclysmic war against the Tainted three centuries ago. The Aegis Sanctum had been built first, and the kingdom had literally grown up around its protective walls.
He learned of the power structure: The Crown ruled the land, but the Sanctum ruled its soul—and held the monopoly on the ultimate strategic resource: Faith.
It was a tangible energy, harvested from the prayers of the masses. The Sanctum, with its special symbols, acted as a giant refinery, processing this raw energy into a potent, liquid form called Holy Water. This liquid, in a heavily diluted form, was supplied for its healing properties. But the pure, concentrated form was an incredibly rare resource, guarded jealousy.
He learned of the two paths: The Path of the Shield (Holy Knights) and the Path of the Word (Priests). The divergence was clear: Priests, like Gregor, were individuals who had naturally awakened a spiritual attribute, typically during maturation around ages thirteen to fifteen. This attribute allowed them to channel Faith and perform "miracles." Those who did not awaken such an attribute, but still had aptitude, became Knights.
Both paths used the Flame Breathing Method as their foundation—a core technique to absorb ambient Faith energy, which was heavily concentrated in places of worship like the Sanctum.
In the more restricted sections, in texts bound in scarred leather, he found other, competing paths.
He read of the Argent Hand, a powerful and secretive order of Spiritualists. They were not heretics, as they didn't deny the gods, but they were seen as dangerous rivals to the Sanctum. Their philosophy was one of self-divinity. While the Sanctum drew power from a god (Hepestus), the Argent Hand worshiped the potential of the soul itself. They refined their own souls directly through brutal mental and physical trials, seeking to achieve a form of godhood on their own terms. The Sanctum's texts described them as arrogant and misguided, yet Asterion could read the clear respect—and fear—between the lines. The Argent Hand was undeniably one of the strongest factions on the continent.
He found mentions of Spirit Containers, a heretical practice where individuals used their own souls as cages for Tainted spirits, stealing their power. The texts warned it was a guaranteed path to corruption and madness. One chilling addendum described a Container who had trapped a "Whispering Duke" and leveled a town, only to be found weeks later, his body grotesquely morphed into a chattering, multi-limbed horror, his soul "devoured" from within. The trapped entity would grow alongside the host—a ticking time bomb of damnation.
And he found references to Witchers, humans modified through potions and spiritual rituals in their infancy. The practice was now banned. The texts claimed the process "burned away" their humanity, leaving them as cold, efficient killing machines. The few remaining bloodlines were outcasts, feared, and exceedingly rare.
All of it was knowledge. All of it was a potential weapon.
But his first step was the Sanctum's. He learned of the crucial, selective ritual. At the age of fifteen, only the initiates who showed the most potential were granted the Holy Bath. It was not a right, but a prize. The church would not waste its rare, concentrated Holy Water on the mediocre. This immersion was a trial and a blessing, forcefully reforming the body and soul.
Eight more years. He was seven. He had to wait eight years just for the chance to be chosen. He, an orphan, had to prove he was more worthy than the children of nobles and decorated knights.
Asterion's mind saw only the objective. The Flame Breathing Method was his key. For the other children, it was a rote exercise. For him, it was how he would build a foundation so overwhelming they could not deny him.
Afternoons were for physical conditioning. At seven, his body was already a subject of quiet awe. His 29-year-old mind knew exactly how to execute a perfect pivot, how to shift his center of gravity, how to put his entire body mass behind a strike with the weighted steel rod. While other boys his age would be red-faced and gasping, Asterion would simply continue, his breathing falling into the steady, rhythmic cadence of the Flame Breathing Method. He channeled his cold, unending rage into his training, using his perfect anatomical knowledge from his past life to optimize every movement, pulling faint, ambient traces of Faith into his body with every rep.
Evenings were for prayer. This was his true work.
He would kneel on the cold stone floor of the minor chapel, the scent of incense heavy in the air. It mingled with the phantom smell of smoke and burning flesh in his memory, a nauseating combination he had learned to endure. Father Gregor still led many sessions.
"Still your thoughts, children," Gregor's voice would echo, calm and powerful. "Control your breath. BControl your heartbeat. Feel the vessel you inhabit. Only once you are master of your own flesh can you ask the fire of Hepestus to answer your call."
The other children fidgeted or fell asleep. They were children.
Asterion, with the iron-clad mental discipline of a Nobel-winning researcher, hunted. He was not praying. He was dissecting. He could feel the thrum of collected Faith flowing through the symbols in the stone beneath his knees. This place was a nexus. He sank into his consciousness, his focus absolute. He felt his heart beat—thump... thump... thump...—and, with a surge of will, slowed it. Thump.... thump.... thump...
For three years, he had felt nothing. Then, at age four, he'd felt it: a single, minuscule particle of ambient Faith drawn into his body, a single spark in the void.
Now, three years later, that flicker was gone. In its place was a small, steady current of power. He could consciously draw the potent energy from the chapel, inhaling it with the Flame Breathing Method, and circulating it through his own body. He was meticulously strengthening his vessel, atom by atom.
From the front of the chapel, Father Gregor's eyes occasionally strayed to the small, pale boy in the back. The other children prayed with the unfocused sincerity of youth. Asterion... Asterion meditated. The boy's focus was absolute, his stillness unnatural. Gregor saw it not as the cold hunger it was, but as a profound, miraculous piety. A child so broken by the Tainted, yet so wholly given to the god. He was truly a blessing.
Asterion felt the priest's gaze but ignored it. He was a compressed spring, a patient predator.
As he knelt in the chapel, his small hands clasped, his ruby eyes stared unblinking at the stained-glass window of a fiery forge. His expression was not one of worship, but of cold, obsessive, and patient hunger.
He would master this Path of the Word. He would master this Path of the Shield. He would devour every piece of knowledge this world had to offer. He would prepare his vessel so perfectly that his "potential" would be undeniable.
He would get that Holy Bath.
And when he died, he would take that knowledge with him into the next life, and the next, until he stood at the apex.
Until he was no longer helpless. Ever again.