The main training courtyard of the Aegis Sanctum was a vast expanse of hard-packed earth and unforgiving cobblestone, walled in by the same towering, white-granite blocks that formed the fortress itself. The air smelled of sweat, of ambient Faith, and the faint, dusty scent of the pell-dummers—thick wooden posts scarred with ten thousand strikes. This was not a schoolyard. It was a forge, designed with a singular, brutal purpose: to hammer the children of the Sanctum into weapons against the Taint.
The sounds of this forge were a chaotic symphony. The shouts of nearly fifty orphans, ranging in age from six to twelve, echoed off the stone. Master Huno, a retired Holy Knight with a face like a worn boot and a voice like gravel, barked corrections. "Your guard is sloppy, Jonus! Do you want the Tainted to rip your arm off?" The sound of wooden swords striking pell-dummers was the rhythm, punctuated by the grunts of children, the scuff of boots, and the occasional yelp of pain or burst of childish laughter.
A boy, top-heavy with a wooden chest-plate, tripped over his own feet and went down, sparking a ripple of laughter that Master Huno silenced with a glare. A girl with a high ponytail executed a perfect lunge. They were children. They were learning to fight monsters, but their minds were filled with thoughts of dinner, or rivalry, or the simple, uncomplicated joy of movement. They were the baseline of this world: young, loud, and blissfully empty.
And then, there were the "twin miracles."
They were the Sanctum's two prize orphans, both seven years old, both examples of divine grace, and both total opposites.
There was Elian, the "Model Child." He was the sole survivor of a minor noble house "purged for Taint-heresy"—a dark origin that he seemed to have transcended with angelic resilience. With kind green eyes and a quick, charming smile, he was the matrons' and trainers' delight. He was bright, social, and fluid. His training forms were flawless, earning him constant praise, which he always accepted with a perfect, humble blush that made the matrons coo. Just moments ago, Asterion had watched him "generously" help a smaller boy correct his footing, earning an approving nod from Master Huno. He was the first to run for a waterskin, the first to answer a theological question, the first to offer a word of encouragement. He was beloved.
And there was Asterion, the "God-touched." Also seven, with his pale skin, small, wiry frame, and unsettling, unblinking ruby eyes. He was the silent, obsessive prodigy. His 29-year-old mind, a Nobel-winning researcher's mind forged in the hell of his perfect, torturous memory, drove his small body with a cold, terrifying precision. The trainers mistook this for pious focus, a "gift from Hepestus" born from his trauma. He didn't just complete the drills; he annihilated them, his form inhumanly perfect, his stamina boundless. He was respected, awed, and perhaps, a little feared.
Asterion stood apart from the others, his small body a coiled spring of calculated tension. He wasn't playing. He was at war. This courtyard was his cell, and his armory. His 29-year-old mind was a prisoner in this weak, infantile body, and every swing, every breath, was a meticulous, scientific act of reclamation. The phantom smells of his past—the hot, coppery reek of his parents' blood, the smoky char of Mishel's room, the sterile ozone of the being's "blessing"—mingled with the courtyard's scent of sweat and stone. His perfect memory was a constant, grinding engine of horror in his skull, and this relentless, physical ritual was the only thing that almost drowned it out.
"Enough!" Master Huno bellowed. "Training is over for the day. Clean the equipment. Be at the refectory in one hour. Go!"
A collective, ragged sigh of relief went up from the forty-odd children. Formations broke. The noise level spiked as chatter and laughter erupted. The children, released from their discipline, became children again, shoving and running for the equipment racks.
Asterion did not move. He simply reset his stance. His 29-year-old mind had allocated another hour for this. He had finished the required three thousand swings of the wooden rod. Now began his real work: three thousand swings of the weighted steel rod, a weapon far too heavy for a normal child.
Elian, Asterion noted with a flicker of detached observation, did not bolt with the others. He moved with his characteristic, unhurried grace. He neatly stacked his wooden sword and shield, gave a respectful nod to Master Huno (receiving a rare, approving pat on the head in return), and then drifted over to Asterion, as if on a casual whim. His "on" switch was at maximum brightness. The charm was radiant.
"That's amazing, Asterion," Elian said, his voice pitched with the perfect amount of childish admiration. He stopped a respectful few feet away, projecting pure, non-threatening curiosity.
Asterion's ruby eyes snapped to him, then dismissed him. He began his first swing with the steel rod. The weapon was heavy, but his 29-year-old mind understood leverage, anatomy, and power-channeling far better than any knight in this Sanctum. He'd optimized the Flame Breathing Method, drawing in ambient Faith not just to breathe, but to fuel every single muscle fiber. The rod hissed through the air.
Elian watched him, his smile fixed. "Master Huno says you have the focus of a true knight. He says you're a true gift from Hepestus."
Asterion's mind dissected the words as his body completed the second and third swings. Gift from Hepestus. A label. A cage. A way for them to explain what they could not understand. He registered Elian's words as a social gambit: using authority ("Master Huno") to reinforce Asterion's "special" status, a test for pride.
"I was watching your form," Elian continued, his head tilted. "It's... perfect. You never waver. Not even a little. How do you do that?" This was the real probe, a direct question veiled in childlike wonder.
Asterion said nothing. He simply continued his swings. Four. Five. Six. The silence was his answer. It was not a shy child's silence. It was a cold, analytical pause from an adult who had no time for a child's interrogation.
Elian's smile didn't falter, but his eyes, the observant eyes, narrowed fractionally. This was not the expected response. A proud child would have preened. A shy child would have flushed. A hostile child would have postured. Asterion's cold, mechanical dismissal was a null-response, a void in the social equation.
Elian, his 29-year-old mind noted, was quick to adapt. He changed tactics, shifting from flattery to feigned vulnerability.
"You even keep your breathing steady," Elian said, his voice taking on a note of frustrated wonder. "I've been trying to master the Flame method like that, but I get so winded. My chest always burns after just a few laps, and Master Huno scolds me for it."
This was a specific, relatable, childish complaint. A complete, and foolish, fabrication.
It was the mistake Asterion had been waiting for.
His 29-year-old mind, with its perfect, obsessive recall, had data. He hadn't just watched Elian; he had studied him, identified him as a potential complication, a rival for the resources—like the Holy Bath—that Asterion would claim. He had counted Elian's breaths. He had timed his laps.
Asterion stopped, mid-swing. The sudden, absolute stillness from his rhythmic motion was jarring. The heavy steel rod ceased its movement, held perfectly parallel to the ground in his small, white-knuckled grip. He turned his head, his unnatural ruby eyes locking onto Elian's.
"No, you don't," Asterion stated.
Elian's smile froze.
Asterion's voice was a child's, thin and high, but the words were flat, analytical, and absolute. "On the last lap, your breathing rate was one-to-four, same as mine. You held it for three minutes and twelve seconds. You started 'panting' when Master Huno looked your way, after you'd already lapped Jonus twice. Your chest-plate didn't even shift. Your form is also perfect. You just make it look like an effort."
He finished the brutal, factual takedown with a single, devastating conclusion. "You're hiding."
The effect was instantaneous and profound.
The charming, bright, 7-year-old "model child" vanished. The smile didn't fade; it snapped off, as if a switch had been thrown, a mask dropped to the stone. Elian's face went utterly blank, his muscles slack. His green eyes, a moment ago warm and engaging, became cold, still, and bottomless. The air around him, once projecting warmth, became a vacuum. It was the most violent stillness Asterion had ever witnessed.
Elian stared at him. The sounds of the distant children—their shouts and laughter from the equipment racks—seemed to rush in, suddenly loud and absurd.
"You..." Elian whispered, and the voice that came out was not his. It was no longer a child's. It was hollow, sharp, and decades too old. It was a voice scraped raw. "You saw that."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of horrified, naked fact.
Asterion's own mask—the cold, pious automaton—was irrelevant. This boy hadn't just seen his discipline; he had seen the intent behind another's discipline. He had recognized a performance. He had seen the actor.
Asterion's 29-year-old mind re-classified Elian in an instant. Not a rival. Not a child. A threat. A profound, unknown, and intelligent threat.
Elian took a half-step closer, his face still a blank mask of shock, but his new, cold eyes were no longer observational. They were invasive. He was re-evaluating everything he had ever seen of Asterion, every "God-touched" moment, every "pious" meditation, all through this new, terrifying lens.
"What's your mask for?" Elian breathed, his dead voice a stark contrast to the lively courtyard. He stepped into Asterion's personal space, a territorial challenge. "All of them," he gestured to the other orphans, "they're nothing. They're empty. You... you're like me. You're pretending."
His gaze dropped to Asterion's rigid, over-controlled body, his white-knuckled grip on the rod. "That... that focus." He gestured at Asterion's entire being. "It's not piety. It's not discipline. It's... a cage. A leash. You're holding something in."
Asterion's 29-year-old mind went on full alert. This was too close. Far too close. He could feel his heart—his traitorous heart—begin to beat faster.
Elian's gaze was so penetrating it felt like a physical violation, like a scalpel dissecting his soul. He was diagnosing Asterion. "You practice until you're so tired you can't... what? Think? Until the noise stops?" He tilted his head, a chillingly analytical motion that was pure, cold intellect. "Or is it so you can't... Remember?"The last word—remember—struck Asterion like a physical blow, a mace to the chest.
His curse. His perfect, agonizing, absolute curse flared.
It was not a memory. It was reliving.
It was the smell of the blood, hot and coppery, splattering his face. It was the sound of Mishel's pleas, in perfect, high-fidelity torment, echoing in his skull. It was the sight of her clothes being torn, the feel of his own dislocated shoulder, the agony of the being's "blessing," the cold, incomprehensible pity in its gaze. It was all there, all at once, as fresh and horrifying as it was seven years ago.
His breathing. His perfect, iron-willed, scientifically optimized Flame Breathing... hitched.
It was a single, tiny, ragged gasp. An infinitesimal break in a three-year rhythm. A single crack in the iron-clad facade.
But Elian saw it.
His cold, dead eyes snapped to Asterion's chest, then back to his face. He heard it.
And Elian knew.
The analytical coldness in Elian's expression cracked. It was replaced by a sudden, raw, and terrifying empathy that was a thousand times more violating. He wasn't seeing a 29-year-old mind. He was seeing the thing inside Asterion. The howling, traumatized, eternally-burning thing. The same thing that lived inside him.
"Ah," Elian breathed, his own face going pale. He took an involuntary step back, his hand coming up to unconsciously rub his forearm, as if phantom fingers were gripping it. "So that's it."
His voice was just a whisper, a shared secret in a world of noise. "You're not God-touched. You're... you're full."
He glanced at the other orphans, who were now splashing each other at the trough, their laughter high, shrill, and alien.
"They're just... loud," Elian murmured, his voice dead. "Empty. We're... heavy. We're the ones who remember what the dark looks like."
In that moment, Asterion realized.
This was not a child.
This was a 29-year-old mind in a 7-year-old body, staring at a 7-year-old child whose mind had been shattered and reforged by trauma into something just as old, just as broken, and just as observant.
They were prodigies for the exact same reason. They were the only two "adults" in the entire courtyard.
Elian didn't know Asterion's secret, the truth of his reincarnation. He didn't have to.
He just recognized the weight. The crushing, suffocating weight of a past that would not fade, a past that had burned the child away and left... this.
Then, as suddenly and violently as it had dropped, Elian's mask snapped back into place.
The transition was instantaneous. His shoulders relaxed. The charming, perfect, 7-year-old smile returned. His eyes became bright, superficial, and warm. The vacuum was gone.
"Well, you're doing great, Asterion!" he chirped, his voice light and airy, as if the last thirty seconds of soul-baring horror had never happened. "Keep it up! Master Huno is right, you're a real gift! See you at evening prayer!"
He turned and jogged away, waving to one of the trainers, the "perfect model child" once more, his performance utterly flawless.
Asterion was left alone on the hard-packed earth. The heavy steel rod, which he'd held steady for two minutes, suddenly felt impossible to lift.
His heart—which his 29-year-old mind could will to slow, could control like a machine—was pounding against his ribs like a trapped, terrified bird, utterly beyond his command.
He is like me.
Not a reincarnator. A survivor. A fellow actor.
And he had just proven he was, in his own way, just as dangerous.A variable he had never accounted for.