The weeks after the battle changed everything.
Helios could not walk through the city without being recognized. Soldiers saluted him. Merchants offered him free bread. Children followed him at a distance, whispering, pointing at his eyes. He had become a symbol—the Sun of Troy, the boy who could not be touched.
He hated it.
"I'm not a hero," he told Androkles one morning. They were in the courtyard, training. Helios moved through his forms with mechanical precision—cut, parry, pivot, thrust. His bronze sword gleamed in the early light.
"The city disagrees," Androkles said. "The soldiers disagree. The Achaeans definitely disagree."
"The Achaeans are wrong."
"Doesn't matter. They're scared of you. That's useful."
Helios stopped. He lowered his sword. "I don't want to be useful. I want to survive."
Androkles looked at him for a long moment. "Then you need to stop fighting like a lone wolf. You need to learn to lead."
---
The next day, Helios was assigned to a unit.
Not as a commander—he was still ten years old. But as a tactical asset. The officers had learned that putting Helios in the front line was like putting a scythe in a wheat field. He killed. He broke formations. He inspired the men around him.
But he also took risks. He moved alone. He left gaps behind him.
Dorus, the sergeant from the western gate, was given the task of teaching him discipline.
"You're fast," Dorus said. "Fastest I've ever seen. But you fight like you're the only man on the battlefield."
"I fight to survive."
"You fight to kill. There's a difference." Dorus pointed at a group of soldiers practicing shield drills. "Watch them. See how they move together. One man's weakness is covered by his neighbor's strength. That's how you win wars. Not by being a hero."
Helios watched. The soldiers moved in unison—shields locked, spears thrusting in rhythm. It was slow. Clumsy. Nothing like the fluid dance he had imagined.
But it works, he thought. They survive.
"Teach me," he said.
---
The next Achaean assault came at dawn.
This time, Helios stayed in formation.
It was hard. Every instinct screamed at him to break free, to run, to leap, to move. The press of bodies around him felt like a cage. The locked shields blocked his vision. The rhythmic thrust of spears felt like a slow death.
But he stayed.
An Achaean spearman lunged at the man to Helios's left. The Trojan soldier's shield was too slow. Helios stepped into the gap—not breaking formation, just extending—and his sword took the spearman in the throat. Then he stepped back. The gap closed. The formation held.
Dorus glanced at him. Nodded.
"Again," the sergeant said.
Helios did it again. And again. And again.
He killed seven men that morning without ever leaving the shield wall.
After the battle, Dorus pulled him aside.
"You're learning," the sergeant said. "But you're wasted in the line. You see things before they happen. You move faster than anyone. We need you where the line is breaking."
"What do you mean?"
Dorus pointed at the battlefield. "I mean you're not a shield. You're a knife. And knives go where the armor is thin."
---
Helios became a problem solver.
When a Trojan formation began to buckle, he was there. When an Achaean officer exposed himself, Helios's sword found him. When a gap opened in the enemy line, Helios was the wedge that drove through.
He did not lead. He flowed. Like water finding the cracks in a dam.
The soldiers began to trust him. Not as a commander—he was still a boy. But as a luck. A charm. A piece of the sun that walked beside them.
"The Sun is with us," they said. "We won't fall."
Helios heard the whispers. He wanted to tell them that the sun didn't care about their battle. That he was just a boy with a sword and a warm pendant. That luck ran out.
But he didn't. Because they needed to believe.
And maybe, somewhere deep inside, he needed to believe too.
---
The first time Helios led men into battle, it was not by choice.
A Trojan scouting party had been ambushed on the western plain. Twelve men, surrounded by twice their number of Achaeans. The main army could not reach them in time.
"We need someone fast," Dorus said. "Someone who can get through."
Helios looked at the scout's map. The ambush site was near a dry riverbed—a maze of gullies and dead ground.
"I can do it," he said.
"Alone?"
"No." He pointed at four soldiers—the fastest, the quietest, the ones who had fought beside him before. "With them."
Dorus hesitated. "They're not trained for—"
"They're trained to follow. That's enough."
The sergeant stared at him. Then he nodded. "Go. Bring them back."
---
Helios led the five men across the plain at a run.
He moved like a shadow—low, fast, silent. The soldiers struggled to keep up. One of them, a young man named Telamon, whispered: "How does he move like that?"
"Don't ask," another replied. "Just follow."
They reached the dry riverbed. Below, the Trojan scouts were fighting for their lives—a ring of shields, spears jabbing at the Achaeans who pressed from all sides.
Helios studied the enemy formation. Twelve Achaeans, maybe fifteen. Spread thin, focused on the scouts.
They don't know we're here, he thought. We have surprise. We have speed. We have me.
He turned to his men.
"I'm going to break their line. When I do, you hit them from both sides. Don't stop. Don't hesitate. Just kill."
Telamon swallowed. "How many are you going to kill?"
"Enough."
---
Helios dropped into the riverbed.
He did not run straight. He ran like water—sliding down the bank, leaping over a boulder, ducking under a low-hanging branch. The Achaeans at the edge of the formation saw him at the last moment.
A boy. Golden eyes. A single sword.
One man laughed. "What is—"
Helios's blade took him in the mouth.
He spun—his left hand catching the falling man's shield, his right hand cutting across the throat of a second Achaean. The shield was heavy, unbalanced, but he didn't need it for long. He used it to block a spear thrust, then threw it into the face of a third enemy.
Three men down. Three heartbeats.
The Achaean formation shattered.
Helios's four men hit them from both sides, swords flashing. The scouts, seeing rescue, surged forward. In two minutes, the ambush was over. Twelve Achaeans dead. The Trojan scouts saved.
Telamon stood over a body, breathing hard. He looked at Helios—at the boy standing calm among the corpses—and shook his head.
"You're not human," Telamon said.
Helios wiped his sword on a dead man's cloak.
"I'm human enough," he said. "Let's go home."
---
That night, the Trojan commanders held a meeting.
Helios was not invited. He was ten years old. But Dorus came to him afterward with news.
"They're talking about you," the sergeant said. "The generals. The nobles. They're trying to decide what to do with you."
"What do you mean?"
Dorus sat on the courtyard bench. He looked tired. Old.
"You're too valuable to put in the line. Too dangerous to leave alone. Some want to make you a scout. Some want you as a bodyguard for the king. Some want you dead."
Helios felt a cold knot form in his stomach. "Dead?"
"Not the Trojans. The Achaeans." Dorus rubbed his face. "You've killed forty-three men. That's what the scouts count. Forty-three in less than a month. The Achaeans have a name for you now. The Golden Death."
Helios said nothing. He touched his pendant. It was warm.
"They're going to start hunting you," Dorus continued. "Special units. Champions. Men who want the glory of killing the Sun of Troy."
"When?"
"Soon." Dorus stood. "Be ready."
---
The next morning, Helios found a new scar on the courtyard wall.
Someone had carved a symbol into the stone—a crude sunburst, rays spreading outward. Beneath it, in jagged letters:
THE SUN DOES NOT FALL
Helios stared at it. He didn't know who had carved it. A soldier, maybe. A child. Someone who believed the stories.
They believe in me, he thought. They think I can save them.
He touched the carving. The stone was cold.
I hope they're right.
---
Three days later, the Achaeans came with a new formation.
They had learned. They no longer tried to break the Trojan line with massed infantry. Instead, they sent small teams—fast, deadly, trained to kill a single target.
The target was Helios.
He was fighting in the shield wall when he saw them. Four men, moving through the chaos with unnatural coordination. They wore no crests, no insignia. Their armor was blackened, their faces hidden behind helmets.
Assassins, Helios realized. They sent assassins.
The first one came at him with a curved sword. Helios parried, counter-cut, but the man was fast—faster than any soldier he had faced. The blade glanced off the assassin's shoulder guard.
The second man attacked from the left. Helios twisted, barely avoiding the thrust. His foot slipped on bloody ground. He fell.
The third man raised a spear to finish him.
Telamon appeared out of nowhere. The young soldier threw himself in front of the spear. It took him in the chest.
"Telamon—"
"Kill them," Telamon gasped. "Kill them all."
Helios screamed.
He did not remember the next few seconds. Later, the soldiers would say that he burned—that his sword glowed golden, that his eyes blazed like miniature suns. They would say he moved so fast they could not follow.
When the frenzy passed, the four assassins were dead. Telamon was dying.
Helios knelt beside him. The young soldier's face was pale, his lips blue.
"You saved me," Helios said.
Telamon smiled. "Worth it."
He died with the sun in his eyes.
---
That night, Helios sat alone on the roof.
He did not cry. He had not cried since waking up in this world. But something inside him had cracked—a wall he had built between himself and the people around him.
Telamon is dead because of me, he thought. Because they wanted to kill the Sun of Troy.
He touched his pendant. It was hot—almost too hot to hold.
What am I becoming?
The stars did not answer. They never did.
Lyra climbed onto the roof. She sat beside him without speaking. After a long time, she took his hand.
"Who died?" she asked.
"A soldier. A good one."
"Were you close?"
"No." Helios looked at the sky. "But he saved my life. And I didn't even know his name until today."
Lyra squeezed his hand. "Then remember it. That's what you can do."
Helios nodded slowly. "Telamon," he said. "His name was Telamon."
He said it again, quieter. A prayer. A promise.
I will remember. And I will make sure they pay.
---
In the Achaean camp, the commanders gathered around a map.
"The boy killed four of our best," Agamemnon said. His voice was cold. "How?"
No one answered.
Odysseus leaned back, his eyes thoughtful. "He's not just fast. He's different. The men who saw him fight say his sword glowed. That his eyes burned."
"Superstition," Agamemnon spat.
"Maybe." Odysseus traced a line on the map. "Or maybe we're fighting something we don't understand."
"Then we find someone who does." Agamemnon stood. "Send word to Achilles. Tell him there's a boy who needs killing."
The room fell silent.
Odysseus raised an eyebrow. "You want to send Achilles against a child?"
"I want to send Achilles against a problem." Agamemnon smiled—a thin, cruel smile. "I don't care how old the problem is."
---
END OF CHAPTER TWELVE