The great gates of the Paragon's Rest closed behind them with the sound of a tomb sealing. The thud of the iron-banded bar locking into place echoed in the cold dawn air, a final, percussive end to their old lives.
In front of them was the road. It was two deep, muddy ruts cutting through the northern wilderness, a thin, brown scar disappearing into a forest of black-barked pines.
Their new home was a fortified carriage, a heavy, iron-banded wagon built less for comfort and more for survival. Its axles were reinforced, and the driver's box was lined with thick steel plates, scarred from old conflicts. It was a rolling fortress, pulled by four massive drafthorses that snorted plumes of steam in the chill.
Asterion, his 29-year-old mind taking a cold inventory, noted their supplies. Crates of hardtack, dried meat, and water skins were lashed to the roof. Inside, secured in padded boxes, were the tools of their trade: kegs of lesser holy water, bags of pure rock salt for barriers, and quivers of heavy iron bolts. These bolts were quenched in salt-brine and blessed oils, substances meant to clog the Aether that lesser Tainted clung to.
Sir Kaelen, already at the reins, looked like a mountain carved from black steel. A heavy, practical longsword, its hilt wrapped in black leather, hung at his left hip. At his right was the lever-crank for the siege crossbow mounted inside the driver's box. He was an arsenal unto himself. He didn't look back.
"The rules are simple," he rumbled, his voice cutting through the wind. "You are not squires; you are sentries. We are a bubble of faith in a world that wishes to pop us. You will rotate watch. Two hours on, four hours off. Around the clock. When you are off-watch, you rest or you maintain the gear. At night, your meditation is not optional. The forge must never go cold."
He snapped the reins. "Asterion. You have first watch."
The carriage lurched forward, its iron-shod wheels biting into the mud. Asterion climbed onto the driver's box, his small, 9-year-old body dwarfed by the high-backed seat. Elian, his equal and his opposite, simply disappeared into the carriage's dark interior to take the first rest shift.
Asterion sat beside Kaelen, his new steel sword at his hip, his eyes scanning the tree line. His 29-year-old mind was a paranoid machine, cataloging every rustle in the trees, every distant bird call, every snap of a twig. The Sanctum had been a fortress. This... this was a tiny, fragile shell.
Two weeks later, they reached the first major town, a timber-and-thatch sprawl called "Grayfen." It was a chaotic, muddy place smelling of wet wool, woodsmoke, and the sharp tang of tanning hides.
As they rolled down the main thoroughfare, Kaelen's reputation preceded him. The "Iron Bastion" was a legend, and the sight of his black armor and scarred face made the local militia give the carriage a wide, respectful berth. But while the townsfolk feared Kaelen, they were simply baffled by Asterion and Elian, two small boys, armed with steel, who sat with the posture of veteran soldiers.
Kaelen stopped them in the market square to resupply. Asterion, his watch shift over, stood guard by the carriage, his ruby eyes scanning the crowd.
Then, the attack came. It wasn't a Tainted. It was a smell.
The rich, warm, yeasty scent of fresh bread, cut with the sweetness of baked apples, wafted from a bakery window.
Asterion's 29-year-old mind was instantly, brutally, transported.
He saw the farmhouse kitchen, bathed in yellow afternoon light. He saw Mishel, her cheek smudged with flour, laughing as she pulled a slightly-burnt apple pie from the oven. She had that same laugh, a high, bright sound that he hadn't realized his perfect memory had preserved with such agonizing clarity. He saw her turn, her eyes bright, her hand resting on her stomach, and he remembered.
The 22-year-old's grief was not a memory. It was a hot, physical spike driven straight into his chest. A profound, bottomless longing and emptiness ripped through him. His nine-year-old lungs couldn't get enough air. The market, the mud, Kaelen—it all dissolved into a roaring, sensory-deprived panic.
Mishel.
His hand, small and scarred from a year of sparring, gripped the iron rail of the carriage. His knuckles went white. He was shaking.
Breathe. Breathe, damn you. Breathe the forge.
He forced his lungs into the pattern of the Inner Crucible. He dragged in the air, not as a gasp, but as a command. He compressed it. He felt the cold, heavy weight of the Liquid Faith in his core, a tiny, dense star of pure will. He used it. He physically pushed the grief down, suppressed the panic attack, anchored his screaming, 22-year-old soul to his 9-year-old body.
The shaking subsided. His breathing evened out. The market swam back into focus. It had taken ten seconds. It felt like ten years.
"Fix your breathing."
Elian's cold, hollow voice came from beside him. He hadn't even seen him approach. Elian wasn't looking at him; he was watching the baker with analytical contempt.
"You're drawing attention," Elian whispered.
Asterion didn't reply.
"They're so loud," Elian said, his voice laced with disgust. "And for nothing. Their lives are... thin."
"They're... normal," Asterion said, his voice tight.
Elian finally looked at him, his gaze sharp and knowing. "Is that what you still want to be? Normal? That's a luxury you don't have."
They were in the wilderness, two months into the journey. The Heartwoods had given way to a desolate, rocky scrubland. It was just after dusk. Kaelen was briefing them as he drove.
"We are entering Grave-kin territory," he rumbled. "They are not born. They are made. A stronger Tainted, a Carrion-Host, finds a place of mass starvation or a fresh battlefield. It seeds its own flesh into the dead, mixing with their agony. It twists them into mindless, hunting packs. They have human characteristics, but they are just puppets of hunger."
As if summoned, the horses screamed.
They reared in their harnesses, eyes rolling, their breath fogging in the not-cold air. At Kaelen's hip, his Sanctum-blessed longsword emitted a low, discordant hum.
"Contacts!" Kaelen roared, his voice a thunderclap. He was already spinning the lever on the siege crossbow. "Formation! Now!"
Asterion and Elian were out of the carriage before the word was finished. They landed in the mud on either side, swords drawn.
They came out of the gloom. Four of them. Pale, long-limbed, hunched quadrupeds with human-like hands and long, iron-like claws, their faces distorted masks of starvation. Grave-kin.
The largest one, its eyes glowing with a faint, greasy light, ignored the mountain of steel that was Kaelen. It ignored the cold, still predator that was Elian. It lunged at what it perceived as the weakest link: the 9-year-old boy.
It leaped at Asterion.
Asterion's 29-year-old mind had no time for analysis. His Curse, triggered by the monstrous, mocking face, flashed an image of his family's killer, the glint of the knife, the blood.
A hot, primal rage boiled over.
He didn't dodge. He roared—a high, thin, terrifying sound from a child's throat. He channeled that burning hatred directly into his Liquid Faith, anchoring himself in pure, focused will.
He overcommitted.
He met the Tainted's charge, not as a boy, but as a stone pylon. His forged body took the impact with a sickening thud, the creature's iron-like claws skidding off his skin. He didn't just block. He punished. He drove his small sword up, under its jaw, and through its skull, the blade sinking to the hilt. He held it there, his arm shaking with fury, pinning the dying thing to the ground.
While Asterion was lost in his rage, Elian worked.
He was a scalpel. He didn't waste a single movement. He sidestepped the lunge of the second Grave-kin, his sword a blur, severing its spine at the neck. He didn't even look at it as it fell. In the same motion, he ripped his own longknife from its sheath and threw it, sinking it hilt-deep into the eye of the third, which was circling Kaelen.
A sound like a giant axe splitting wood. Kaelen fired the siege crossbow. The sanctified iron bolt, big as a spear-tip, hit the fourth Grave-kin mid-leap, obliterating its torso in a spray of black ichor.
Silence.
The fight had lasted less than ten seconds.
Asterion, his breath coming in hot gasps, ripped his sword free from the Tainted's skull.
"Elian. Retrieve your blade." Kaelen's voice was cold, already reloading the crossbow. "Asterion. You were three centimeters off your footwork. Your rage made you a target. You were open for a full second. The one Elian killed would have gutted you."
The words landed like a physical blow, cutting through the adrenaline, leaving Asterion shaking and cold.
The next two months were a monotonous, gray blur. They left the scrublands, crossed the wide, sluggish Grey-Wash River on a massive, crumbling toll-bridge, and entered the Ash-Plains, an endless expanse of volcanic dust. They skirted the ruins of a town by the Broken-Tooth Mountains; Kaelen noted it wasn't Tainted, but a casualty of a human border war.
This was where Asterion's real education began. During the long, rattling hours, Kaelen spoke.
"You think the Aegis Sanctum is the world," he rumbled one afternoon. "It is not. It is a pinprick. There are three great continents: This is Aethel, our home. Across the western ocean is Rhaga. And to the south are the Wyrm-Spine Isles. Each is a kingdom, ruled by a royal family so old they claim descent from the first men. Their capitals... those are where Faith is thickest. Not from piety. From people. A million souls crowded into one city generate a sea of Faith, a beacon in the dark, even if they never pray."
"The Church," he continued, "draws from that sea of Faith. But the Argent Hand, the Spiritualists... they draw from the Aether. The Aether is the world's breath, not man's. It's in the wind, the mountains, the rot of an ancient forest. It's weak, thin, but everywhere."
He fell silent for a moment. "And then there are the Old Bloods. The last dregs of the Witchers. Back in the Old Wars, they were living weapons—humans modified with Aether and Tainted blood, built for killing. Now, they're just a few guttering bloodlines, using Aether to fuel their dying, inhuman abilities."
Asterion absorbed the data. Faith was the power of humanity. Aether was the power of the world. Two different sources. Two different paths.
His Curse, too, was finding new ways to torture him. The nightmares were one thing—a hot, sharp, nightly execution.
The memories were worse.
One afternoon, during his off-watch, he was staring at the gray, passing plains. He wasn't tired. He wasn't thinking. He was just... existing.
And his Perfect Memory, unbidden, replayed his 19th birthday.
Not the 22nd. The 19th.
He relived it all. Waking up to the smell of his mother's coffee. The feeling of the rough wool sweater she had knitted for him. The two hours he and Wilhelm spent arguing over a physics problem, his father's brilliant old mind still sharp. The exact taste of the sandwiches Mishel had packed for their walk. The cool, damp air of the park. The feeling of her hand in his. A perfect, simple, lost day.
This was a new kind of torture. The nightmares were a spike. This was a slow, cold, crushing drowning. He had to sit there, a 9-year-old boy in a rattling carriage, and pretend to be half-asleep while his 29-year-old mind was living a perfect, 16-hour day in full-sensory detail.
He was building his calluses. The nightmares taught him to endure pain. The memories taught him to endure sorrow. He learned to function while the internal storm never, ever stopped.
On the 124th day, Kaelen stopped the carriage on a high, windswept pass.
The smell hit them first, a mile away. Salt. Rotting fish. Tar. Sewage. And a hundred "foreign" spices Asterion couldn't name.
Below them, sprawling as far as the eye could see, was the port city of Ostia.
It was a chaotic, filthy, living thing. The harbor was a forest of masts: tall-masted warships from Rhaga, fat-bellied merchant cogs from the Free Cities, and sleek, dark-hulled ships that flew no banner. The world was vast.
The streets were a throng of sailors with strange tattoos, merchants in silks, and priests of different gods. Now, Asterion saw what Kaelen meant by the "Geography of Faith."
The small, soot-stained chapel of Hepestus (known in all scholarly texts as Hephaestus) was dwarfed by its neighbors. To its right stood a grand, white marble temple crowned with a massive, carved trident, its steps crowded with sailors making offerings to Ostenos, the Sea-King (whom Asterion recognized as Poseidon). To its left, a gleaming, golden-roofed shrine to Phobos, the Sun-Lord (known as Apollo), was busy with merchants and city officials praying for luck and prosperity.
Kaelen pointed with his chin at the chaotic harbor.
"There. That is our ship. The Iron Gull. We rest for two days. Resupply. Then, we go... south."
Asterion stood beside Elian, two 9-year-old boys who looked like they hadn't slept in a year. He looked at the chaotic, "normal" city he no longer related to, and then at the endless, grey, churning ocean beyond.
He was a 9-year-old child. He was a 29-year-old man. He felt like a 100-year-old ghost, his grief and his power a single, heavy, cold weight in his core.