[Evening of the Day Aetron Was Found - From Aetron's Perspective]
Evening filled the Selenae Clan's main tent with a warm orange light. Around the large fire in the center, the cheerful murmurs of clan members mingled with the crackling of wood. This was a feeling Epsilon had never tasted in his life. Family. The warmth of a real family. And this feeling warmed his inside and burned him with guilt.
The smell of spiced meat rising from the stew bowl, Niyara extended, shocked my senses, which had been accustomed to canned mush for months. Kadros sat beside me, exaggeratingly recounting the story of a beast he'd caught hunting. But all my attention was on the small, warm weight in my lap.
"Brother, I saw a Liyrai bird today! Its wings shone just like Mother's Edgium!"
As Thera's thin voice rang in my ear, her small fingers tried to sneak a piece of carrot from the stew. With each utterance of "brother," two different emotions clashed in my heart: The indescribable warmth brought by that pure love, and that cold, sharp feeling of fraud gnawing at my being. I wasn't her brother. I was a stranger who had taken the place of her dying brother.
"This feels wrong, Null," I whispered in my mind. "I stole their son, their brother."
"Their son was dying, Epsilon," Null's voice said from that calm corner of the shelter in my mind. She paused for a moment. "No. I'm correcting myself. I should call you Aetron now. You need to get used to this, too." Her voice softened further. "You're continuing his last wish and his life, Aetron. This isn't theft, it's a legacy."
Kadros finished his story and turned to me. "Don't worry about the tournament, son. When you get there, do the best you can. Your reaching Resonance level at this age is already the greatest victory for our clan."
This... this was so strange. Epsilon's father would never stop after a success. "Great," he would say. "Now what's your next goal?" Appreciation always remained in the shadow of the next expectation. But in Kadros's eyes was pure pride. He was proud of me, of his son. And I wasn't him.
"Aetron? Are you alright, dear? You seem distracted."
Niyara's gentle voice pulled me from my thoughts. But my reaction to my name was delayed by a second. Aetron. This was my name. But Epsilon's memories were so dominant that I still couldn't identify with that name.
"Ah, yes. I'm fine... mother." The word caught on my tongue. It was foreign. A lie. "Just... tired from the three days, I think."
Niyara smiled. She hadn't suspected. She placed her hand on my forehead. That faint, healing Edgium energy radiating from her fingers momentarily calmed the chaos inside me. "You don't have a fever. You need rest."
Toward the end of the meal, Thera fell asleep in my lap. I carefully picked her up and took her to her small bed. As I covered her, she murmured. "Good night, brother."
At that moment, guilt hit my chest like a punch. I stepped out of the tent into the cool night air. This world's twin guardians, Nyra and Syra, shone in the sky with silver and pale blue lights. Everything was so beautiful that this beauty rubbed my fraud even more in my face.
"I don't deserve this," I thought. "This love, this family... I'm a fraud."
"You're someone who made a difficult choice to survive," Null's voice replied, softer this time. "And that choice didn't completely deprive this family of a son. It gave them another chance. Perhaps you need to focus on not deserving this family's love, but giving that love back to them."
I looked at my hands. They were now in the hands of a 14-year-old child. Then I raised my head and looked at the twin moons. Null was right. I couldn't bring back the past, that child who died in the forest. But I could keep the promise I made to him. I could stop Thanar. I could protect this family.
"You're right," I said, with a new determination filling me. "I won't disappoint them. Him... myself... I won't disappoint."
I still didn't know who I was. Was I Aetron, or Epsilon? Maybe I was both. But whoever I was, I now had a purpose. And this purpose was strong enough to suppress that feeling of fraud inside me—for now.