The wind at Paragon's Rest was a constant, keening thing. It swept down from the northern ice fields, tasting of iron filings and distant snow. It scoured the vast, packed-earth training yard, carrying with it the rhythmic CLANG of steel on steel and the grunts of straining men.
This was not the Aegis Sanctum, with its soaring chapels and quiet libraries. The Paragon's Rest was a fortress, a crucible. Its walls were black, volcanic stone, and the motto carved above the main gate was not one of comfort, but of cold fact: Faith is the armor, but Will is the blade.
Asterion, now nine years old, stood in the center of a dueling circle. His 29-year-old mind felt the chill of the wind, cataloged the way the dust devils danced at the edge of the yard, and analyzed the flaws in his opponent's stance.
His opponent was a sixteen-year-old squire named Thom. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and muscled like a young bull. Boiled leather and chainmail covered his torso, and his face, slick with sweat, was a mask of teenage fury. He was breathing hard, his chest visibly rising and falling as he huffed the gaseous Faith of the Flame Breathing Method.
Asterion, by contrast, was small. He was a nine-year-old boy in a simple, loose-fitting training tunic. He was not breathing hard. He was as still as the winter air.
Surrounding the circle was a silent ring of the other squires, adolescents and young men ranging from twelve to eighteen. Their faces, hardened by the brutal regime of the Rest, were stoic, almost bored. This was not a spectacle. It was a live dissection.
"Die, you little monster!" Thom roared, his patience breaking. He lunged, his practice sword a blur, not a spar, but a full-force overhand blow meant to shatter bone.
Asterion didn't dodge. He moved a single half-step, just enough to shift the angle of the attack. He raised his own wooden sword, his motion economical, almost lazy.
CLANG!
The sound was not the dull thwack of wood on wood. It was a sharp, percussive crack, as if two slabs of steel had collided. The sixteen-year-old's sword, thick as a man's arm, was knocked from his grip, his entire arm vibrating with the shock.
Thom stared at his empty, shaking hand in disbelief. Rage contorted his features. "You—"
He abandoned his weapon and launched a brutal side-kick, aiming for Asterion's ribs. It was fast, powerful, and backed by the full strength of his Aether-filled body.
This time, Asterion did not move at all.
He stood, his feet planted, and took the blow.
THUD.
The sound was heavy, sickening, and final. It was not the crack of a child's ribs breaking. It was the sound of a leather-wrapped mallet striking a side of beef.
The sixteen-year-old squire cried out, a sharp gasp of pain. It was his pain. He stumbled back, clutching his foot, his ankle already swelling. He had kicked, with all his strength, what felt like a stone pylon.
Asterion's ruby-eyed gaze was cold and analytical. He had not grunted. He had not even shifted. His nine-year-old body was a dense, living lie.
His 29-year-old mind saw the opening, the wide-eyed shock, the complete breakdown in his opponent's defense. He took one smooth step forward, crossing the distance. He didn't use a complex martial art. He didn't waste energy.
He punched.
His small fist, driven by a body forged in liquid Faith, connected with Thom's solar plexus. There was no Aetheric flare, no flash of light. It was just weight. Asterion's fist, for one brief, terrible instant, had the existential density of a falling stone.
Thom's eyes rolled back in his head. The air evacuated his lungs in a single, explosive whoosh. It was a complete system failure. He collapsed to the packed earth, his armor rattling, and did not move.
Silence.
Asterion stood over him, his breathing as calm as a sleeping man's. He looked at the unconscious boy, then at his own fist, cataloging the data.
The crowd of squires remained silent. There were no cheers, no gasps. This was what they had come to expect. They parted, offering a corridor of cold respect as Asterion walked from the circle, wiping a smudge of dust from his cheek.
He glanced up.
Elian was not in the crowd. He was perched on a high weapons rack, flanked by two scarred, full-fledged Knights of the Shield. He, too, was nine. He, too, wore a simple tunic. But he had not sparred with a squire in over six months.
Elian caught Asterion's gaze. He tapped his own temple with one finger.
A silent, cold critique. You were thinking again. You let him hit you.
Asterion gave a subtle, infinitesimal nod. It was for data.
He turned and headed for the barracks.
Their room was as spartan as Kaelen's old tower. Two cots, two wooden chests, and a weapons-training dummy in the corner, its oaken "body" splintered and pulped from countless, inhumanly heavy strikes.
Elian was already there, having dropped from the rack and taken a shortcut. He sat on his cot, honing a steel longknife, the shing-shing-shing of the whetstone the only sound.
"You took the hit," Elian said, his voice that cold, hollow, adult tone. He didn't look up.
"I needed to confirm the kinetic dispersal of his Aether-backed strike against my own forge," Asterion replied, his voice the high, clear treble of a child, but his words the sterile jargon of his old laboratory. "His output was inefficient. A gaseous-state user can't fracture a liquid-state's defense, even with a five-to-one mass advantage."
"You were calibrating," Elian said, the whetstone never faltering. "He was a sixteen-year-old boy with sloppy footwork and a rage problem. You are a forge. You could have broken his wrist on the parry, or his ankle on the kick. You could have ended it in half a second."
He finally looked up, his eyes seeming to absorb all the light in the room. "Data is useless, Asterion, if the next one has a steel blade and hits your eye. Stop thinking. Just be heavier."
Asterion nodded, accepting the brutal logic. "Noted."
This was their friendship. It was not one of games or shared laughter. It was the bond of two veterans, two weapons, who sharpened each other's edges. In the year since arriving at Paragon's Rest, they had become "Kaelen's Monsters."
Asterion sat on his own cot. His mind drifted back over the past twelve months.
The Paragon's Rest had been exactly what Kaelen promised: a crucible. After that first month, Asterion's 29-year-old mind had finally mastered the circulation of the Inner Crucible liquid. The following year had been dedicated to saturation.
Night after night, he and Elian sat in meditation. The nightly ritual of his Curse was no longer a crippling, agonizing surprise. It was a tool.
The memories still came. The splintering farmhouse door. Mishel's scream. The glint of the knife on his mother's throat. The smell of blood.
But now, the 29-year-old mind did not recoil from the pain. It harnessed it. The black, seething rage of his 22-year-old self, perfectly preserved by his "blessing," was the fire. The agony of loss was the hammer. He used them to fuel his meditation, to drive the liquid Faith deeper, to forge his nine-year-old body.
He was a lie. His bones were now dense as ivory, his muscles like woven steel cables, his skin tough as boiled leather. He was nine years old, but he weighed as much as a twelve-year-old, a fact that baffled the Sanctum's quartermasters.
Elian, however... Elian was a different species.
He hadn't just circulated the liquid Faith. He refined it. His control, born from a trauma that had made him a pure, predatory survivor, was absolute. Where Asterion's power was a passive, constant density, Elian's was an active, terrible will.
Asterion had watched him in the masters' yard, sparring against Sir Kaelen himself. Elian had learned to pool the liquid Faith. He could make his small hand, in an instant, as heavy as a warhammer, shattering a steel shield. He could will the Faith to his skin, making a longsword skid off his forearm as if it had struck an anvil.
He was the undisputed, terrifying prodigy of the entire Sanctum. And he was Asterion's only friend.
The door to their room opened with a heavy creak, and the already-dim light was blocked by a mountain.
Sir Kaelen filled the doorway. His iron-grey hair was damp with sweat, his own plate armor scratched and dented from his own spars. His scarred face was unreadable.
"It's done," he rumbled. "Our posting at the Rest is over."
Asterion and Elian rose to their feet in perfect, drilled unison.
Kaelen strode into the small room and unrolled a massive, cracked-leather map onto their small table, pinning it with a gauntlet. The map depicted a continent so vast it beggared belief.
Kaelen pointed to a spot on the western edge. "The Aegis Sanctum. Our home."
He dragged his finger across the map for what represented hundreds of miles. "Paragon's Rest. A two-month ride. Where we are now."
His finger did not stop. It continued, across plains, over mountain ranges, past vast, unnamed forests, until it reached a spot on the far, far eastern coastline. It was a small, lonely dot on the edge of a great, blank expanse of ocean.
"This," he said, his voice grim, "is the Grieving Coast."
He tapped the map. The distance was terrifying.
"This world is large, boys," Kaelen said, his voice low. "Do not let these stone walls fool you. This fortress is the center of the Faith's power. It is a beacon in the dark. Where we are going... there is no beacon. Only candlelight."
He traced the route. "From here, it is a four-month journey by carriage, just to reach the port city of Ostia." His finger traced a path south from the port. "From Ostia, another two months by ship, south around the Scylla's Cape, to even reach the first parish. We will not see another major Sanctum for three years."
Asterion's 29-year-old mind processed the logistics. Six months of travel. A three-year posting. This was not a tour. It was an exile.
"Why?" Elian asked. His voice was not curious. It was the demand of an equal.
Kaelen's scarred face tightened. He looked not at Elian, but at the map, as if staring down an old enemy.
"Because the Faith is geography," he said, the words sharp. "Our god, Hepestus, is strongest where his name is spoken, where his chapels stand, where the World's Will recognizes his authority. This is the heartland. The Grieving Coast is the frontier. It is an old, sick place."
"It's called the Grieving Coast because the sea itself seems to be in mourning. The rocks weep. The Tainted there... they are different. The ones we fight here, at the heart of the world, are simple." He spat on the floor. "They are rage. Malice. Hunger. They are physical. They can be broken by steel and will."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble. "The priests at the Coast report something new. The Tainted there are insidious. They don't just break bodies; they infest minds. They whisper. They wear the faces of the dead. They crawl inside a man's grief and hollow him out from the inside. The gaseous Aether of a normal Knight, even a veteran, is useless against it. It's like trying to stop a plague with a breeze. The 'World's Will' is thin out there, the barrier between realities is frayed. The Tainted... imprint... far too easily."
Asterion's mind flashed to his perfect memory. A man's grief. Hollow him out. He felt a cold, sudden kinship with this unseen enemy. He knew what it was to be hollowed out.
"Why us?" Asterion asked, his child's voice cutting through the heavy silence.
Kaelen finally looked at them, his gaze piercing, a flicker of something that might have been pride in his cold eyes. "Because you are the only weapons I have that might work. Gaseous Faith is a 'breeze.' It can be ignored, pushed aside by these... things. But your power... your liquid Faith... it is not just Faith. It is Will. It is Weight."
He tapped his own chest. "A normal Knight's Faith is on his soul, a shield he holds up. Your Faith is in your bones. It is you. You are dense. You are solid. Those... whispers... will find no purchase in you. A mind like yours, Elian," he nodded to the boy, "that is already a fortress of cold steel... A mind like yours, Asterion," he met the boy's ruby eyes, "that is already... full... they will find no room to burrow."
He was sending them, Asterion realized, not as Knights. He was sending them as anchors. As exorcists in all but name.
"This is not a sparring tour," Kaelen said, his voice regaining its full, commanding rumble. "This is not training. This is a quarantine. A plague-wall. We are the three stones being sent to hold back a tide of filth. You will not be squires. You will be Knights of the Shield, in all but name."
He rolled up the map, the leather crackling in the sudden, absolute silence.
"Your training is over. Your service begins."
Kaelen turned and left the room, his heavy footsteps fading down the stone corridor. "Pack your things. We leave at dawn."
Asterion stared at the empty doorway. He felt the old, familiar prickle at the base of his skull—the Curse, his perfect memory, whispering of the farmhouse, of loss, of the vast, terrifying unknown.
But then, he felt something else.
He felt the weight.
He balled his small hand into a fist, feeling the cold, heavy, physical power of the liquid Faith circulating through his forged body. This was not a theory. This was not a memory. It was real. It was the first "piece of lower knowledge" the Being had spoken of, the first true step on the Path.
The fear did not vanish, but it was anchored.
He turned to Elian. His friend was not looking at the map or the door. He was already at his chest, packing. He slid his newly-honed steel sword into its scabbard, the sound a soft, lethal shhhk.
Elian looked up, and in the dim light, Asterion saw a faint, cold, eager smile on his face.
He was not afraid. He was hungry.