One and a half years had passed since the incident at the water's edge.
To Kael and Elena, I was a four-year-old prodigy. To myself, I was a growing storm trapped in a porcelain jar. My physical body was finally catching up to my intent, and Kael had begun to train me—not with steel yet, but with the basics of movement, balance, and breathing.
But while Kael taught me how to live in the light, I was teaching myself how to command the dark.
The "grain" of darkness that once flickered in my mind had grown. It was now a solid marble of void, tucked neatly behind my ribs. I didn't know where it came from or which god—if any—had granted it to me. I only knew that it responded to my "Logic." It was the only thing in this world that felt like it belonged to me.
"Focus, Satan! Keep your weight on your heels!" Kael shouted from across the clearing.
I was holding a heavy stone at arm's length, my small muscles burning. Kael was testing my endurance. I didn't complain. Every ounce of strength this body gained was a larger battery for the darkness to feed on.
"That's enough for today," Kael said, his face softening. "Go find your brother. He's been looking for you."
Joran.
My elder brother was a creature of pure sunlight. At nine years old, he was the embodiment of everything I found illogical. He was kind—not because it gained him anything, but because he genuinely felt the pain of others. It was a fascinating, beautiful weakness.
I found him near the edge of the woods, kneeling in the dirt. He was crying quietly.
"Satan! Look..." he whispered as I approached.
He opened his cupped hands. Inside was a sparrow. Its wing was snapped, the bone a jagged white needle poking through grey feathers. It was shivering, its tiny heart beating in a frantic, useless rhythm.
"It fell from the nest," Joran sobbed. "I tried to put it back, but it keeps falling. We have to save it, Satan. We have to make it okay."
I looked at the bird. In my old world, this was a tragedy. Here, it was a data point.
"It is broken, Joran," I said. My voice was steady, the words coming easier now that I was four. "The logic of the fall has already claimed it."
"No! Don't say that!" Joran wiped his eyes, his voice desperate. "Everything deserves a chance to live. Feel how warm it is... it's fighting!"
He reached out and took my hand, pressing my small fingers against the bird's shivering chest. He wanted me to feel the life. He wanted me to "connect."
Instead, I felt the marble in my chest pulse.
The darkness didn't want to save the bird. It wanted to understand the end. As Joran looked away to grab some soft grass for a nest, I let a microscopic thread of that marble leak through my fingertips.
I didn't kill the bird. I simply... accelerated its logic.
The shivering stopped. The frantic heartbeat slowed, then went silent. The warmth drained out of the feathers, replaced by the same cold slush I had felt in the puddle a year ago.
Joran turned back, his face lighting up with a hopeful smile. "I think I found some—"
He stopped. He looked at the bird, lying perfectly still in his palms. The life was gone. There was no struggle, no blood. Just a sudden, absolute emptiness.
"It's... it's dead?" Joran's voice broke. He looked at me, his eyes wide with confusion. "But it was just... you just touched it..."
"It was its time to fall," I said quietly.
Joran backed away from me, the dead bird still in his hands. He looked at me not as a brother, but as something he didn't recognize. My "kind" brother felt a chill that the summer sun couldn't warm.
I didn't feel guilty. I felt... clear.
The darkness was growing. And as I watched Joran weep over a pile of feathers, I realized that I would never be like him. I wouldn't fight the fall. I would become the ground that everything eventually hits.