Seven years passed.
To the outside world, to the matrons who scrubbed the stone floors and the scribes who tallied the grain, Asterion was a marvel. He was not the silent, brooding "God-touched" child the rumors described—the one found in a basket of dead wood. He was bright. He was social. He was helpful.
The common room of the orphanage wing was a chaotic storm of fifty children, but in the center of it, there was a calm eye.
"It's about the supply lines, Jonus," Asterion said, his voice pitched perfectly between patience and encouragement.
He sat at a low wooden table, surrounded by four younger orphans who were struggling with their logistics homework. In the Aegis Sanctum, even the children learned the mathematics of war.
"If a legion marches twenty miles a day," Asterion explained, tapping the slate with a piece of chalk, "they need a wagon train that moves at ten miles a day. That means the food arrives after the soldiers. So, what do they carry?"
"Dried meat?" a small girl named Elara guessed, chewing on her thumb.
"Exactly," Asterion beamed at her, a smile that crinkled his eyes just the right amount. "Hardtack and dried meat for three days. You have to calculate the weight of that versus the weight of their arrows."
He walked them through the equation, his small hand moving confidentially over the slate. To the other children, he was a genius friend helping them avoid a scolding.
Inside, Asterion was screaming.
His 29-year-old mind found the exercise agonizingly simple, but the subject matter—calculating starvation rations for a siege—triggered the background noise of his Perfect Memory. As he wrote the numbers, his mind flashed images of his own starvation in the forest, the taste of the thin broth his second mother had fed him, the feeling of his ribs rubbing against his skin.
He felt a wave of nausea, but he didn't let his hand shake. He kept the smile fixed. He patted Jonus on the head when the boy finally got the answer right.
"You're amazing, Asterion," Jonus breathed, looking at him with hero-worship. "How do you know all this?"
"I just read a lot," Asterion lied smoothly. "And I listen to the Quartermaster when he complains."
The children laughed. It was a perfect performance.
When the bell rang for the midday meal, Asterion excused himself. He walked out of the common room, his posture relaxed and open until he turned the corner into the empty corridor.
Then, he slumped against the wall, closing his eyes for three seconds. Just three.
It was exhausting. Being a child was a full-time job. Being a prodigy was another. But being a man trapped in a child's body, forced to relive every trauma of his past while teaching arithmetic to orphans, was a torture that left him spiritually hollowed out by noon.
He pushed off the wall. He couldn't rest. He had earned a specific privilege, and he intended to use it.
He headed for the library.
Unlike the other children, who were restricted to the basic schoolroom texts, Asterion had been granted a heavy iron key on a chain around his neck. He hadn't stolen it, and he didn't need to sneak.
At age four, he had "deciphered" a complex theological text by cross-referencing it with three others, a feat that had stunned the senior scribes. They believed he was a vessel of divine intellect. In truth, he was just a researcher who knew how to index data. But the result was the same: Father Gregor had granted him authorized access to the Wandering Knight and Acolyte Archive.
It wasn't the High Archives—those were sealed behind wards only a High Priest could open—but it was exactly what he needed. It was the dusty, practical section where itinerant knights dumped their travel logs, field manuals, and confiscated heretical texts before heading back out on patrol.
It was a treasure trove of the world's reality, unfiltered by high church dogma.
He unlocked the heavy oak door and slipped inside. The smell of old paper, leather binding, and dry dust washed over him. Usually, this scent was a comfort, a reminder of his old life as a scientist.
But today, the library would be a battlefield.
He moved to a table near the back, where a scribe was organizing new ink pots. Asterion nodded politely, projecting the image of the studious "God-touched" child.
Then, the accident happened.
The scribe's elbow clipped a clay pot of fresh crimson ink.
Crash.
The sound cracked the air like a gunshot. The crimson liquid splashed across the parchment, soaking into the fibers, dripping onto the floor in a widening, jagged pool.
For a split second, the mental barrier didn't just strain; it cracked.
The library vanished. The scent of old paper was replaced by the phantom smell of copper and iron. The crimson pool wasn't ink. It was blood.
Asterion wasn't looking at a table; he was looking at the farmhouse floor. He saw the pool spreading beneath Mishel's body. He saw the way the light caught the liquid as it seeped into the wood. The scribe moved to clean it up with a rag, but in Asterion's mind, it was the masked man reaching down, his gloved hand stained red.
The rage, the anguish, and the sorrow—usually muffled behind the wall—screamed through the crack. His heart hammered a frantic, bird-like rhythm against his ribs. The room spun. He couldn't breathe.
"Asterion? Child?" the scribe asked, pausing in his cleanup to look at the boy who had gone deathly pale.
Asterion stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the stone floor. He forced a pale, tight smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Apologies," he managed to choke out, his voice thin. "I... I feel unwell. The fumes of the ink."
He turned and walked away. He didn't run—running would draw attention—but he walked too fast, his movements jerky. He made it to a latrine, locked the wooden door, and collapsed against the cold stone wall.
He slid down until he hit the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. He was shaking uncontrollably.
Repair it, he commanded himself. Close the crack. Now.
He visualized the wall in his mind. He took the screaming memories of his previous existence—the gunshot, the screams, the feeling of his own death—and he mentally shoved them back behind the brickwork. It required a physical effort. He dug his nails into his palms until they bled, using the sharp, grounding pain to focus his will.
It took minutes of agonizing mental effort, his small chest heaving as if he had run a marathon, but slowly, the leak stopped. The panic receded, leaving a cold, hollow ache in its wake.
He washed his face in the basin, scrubbing his skin until it was pink. He fixed his smile in the polished metal mirror.
He emerged. He was Asterion the prodigy again. But he knew the crack was still there, a hairline fracture in his soul that would never fully heal.
He returned to the library, bypassing the spill, and went to the dusty lower shelves of the restricted section. He needed to understand the powers of this world—not just to use them, but to know what he was up against.
He pulled down a heavy, leather-bound tome titled The Heresies of the Soul.
He read of the Argent Hand, the Spiritualists. The text described them with disdain, calling them "arrogant godless heathens," but Asterion read between the lines. They were a powerful and secretive order who rejected the worship of external gods like Hephaestus or Poseidon. Instead, they worshipped the potential of the soul itself. They believed the human spirit was a raw material, capable of infinite expansion. They refined their souls directly through brutal mental and physical trials, seeking to achieve a form of godhood on their own terms, bypassing the need for Faith.
It was a path of pure will. Dangerous, lonely, and potent.
He moved to another text, a warning manual for Wandering Knights regarding the Spirit Containers.
This path was described as foolish and strictly heretical. It involved a practitioner using their own soul as a "cage" to trap a Tainted Spirit, seeking to siphon its power. The Church warned that this was a "ticking time bomb." The trapped entity would grow alongside the host, feeding on their emotions, until it inevitably devoured them from within, resulting in a possession far worse than death. It was a path of shortcuts that led only to ruin.
Finally, he found a slim, black-bound volume tucked in the back: The Fate of the Old Bloods.
It spoke of Witchers.
The text was a grim history lesson. It described humans modified in infancy through alchemical potions and brutal spiritual rituals. The process didn't just strengthen the body; it chemically cauterized the emotions. It "burned away" their humanity, dulling their capacity for fear, love, and grief, leaving them as cold, efficient killing machines who used the world's ambient Aether to fuel inhuman reflexes.
Asterion's finger traced the line: ...burned away their humanity.
A sick, traitorous pang of envy twisted in his gut. To feel nothing. To not wake up screaming. To not see Mishel's face every time he closed his eyes. To just be a weapon, cold and empty.
It sounded like peace.
But he was here, in the Sanctum. He was not a Witcher. He was a candidate for the Shield.
He closed the book and replaced it. He had to focus on the path available to him.
He learned of Hephaestus. This was not the simple blacksmith god of Earth mythology. Here, Hephaestus was the God of the Forge, yes, but also the God of Will and Passion. He was the patron of those who endured the fire to be remade. His domain was the stubborn refusal to break under pressure.
This resonated with Asterion. He was living on stubbornness alone.
The world itself was harsh. He learned of the low birth rate that plagued the Empire. Children were rare, precious resources. The orphans in the Sanctum were few, and they were being prepared for a long life of service. They would be trained until the age of thirty before being sent out into the world. They were being groomed to run the Church—not just as knights, but as administrators, scholars, and logicians. They were the future infrastructure of the faith.
Afternoons were for physical training. They were given dull, weighted blades—heavy slabs of iron meant to build wrist strength. They were taught maintenance—how to oil steel to prevent rust, how to patch leather armor—and mathematics for logistics.
Asterion excelled in the training, not because he was the strongest, but because he understood leverage, fulcrums, and momentum better than the instructors. He treated swordplay like a physics equation.
But physical training was also where he discovered the terrible price of his power.
Evenings were for prayer and meditation. This was his true work.
He knelt on the cold stone floor of the minor chapel. The air here was thick, smelling of beeswax and iron. Father Gregor's voice washed over the room, a rhythmic drone.
"Still your thoughts, children. Control your breath. Feel the vessel you inhabit."
Asterion sat in the back, in the shadows. He sank into his consciousness. He felt his heart beat—thump... thump... thump...
He began the Flame Breathing Method.
He visualized the energy around him. It wasn't just the raw, gaseous Aether of the outside world. Here, inside the Sanctum, the air was thick with Faith—Aether that had been processed and refined through the crucible of human will and prayer of the thousands who lived in the city below.
He drew it in.
The Faith in the chapel had taken on the nature of what Hephaestus represented. As it filled his lungs and circulated through his small body, it didn't just provide energy; it possessed a distinct "flavor." It tasted of iron, heat, and stubborn resolve. It strengthened his will, very slightly—a minuscule, almost imperceptible reinforcement of his own determination to survive.
But as the power entered him, his mental barrier loosened.
This was the cruelest joke of his new life. To use the power of Faith—a power born of Passion—he had to open his soul to the world. He had to relax the rigid mental fortitude that held his memories back.
As he inhaled the Faith, the wall thinned.
The ocean of his past surged against the dam. The rage of the raid, the grief of the loss, the overwhelming weight of an entire lifetime lived and lost—it all rose like bile in his throat. The Faith fueled his muscles, but it also fueled his emotions.
His body began to tremble. To hold the energy, he had to feel the pain.
Control it, he thought, sweat beading on his forehead. Don't let the wall break. Just let it bend.
For three years, he had felt nothing. Then, at age four, he'd felt a spark.
Now, three years later, he struggled to manage the current. He could feel the Faith circulating through his body, knitting micro-tears in his muscles, making him denser, but his mind was a storm. He had to quell the rage while channeling the very energy that fed on Passion.
It was a tightrope walk over a pit of madness.
From the front of the chapel, Father Gregor looked back. He saw the small, pale boy trembling, his face a mask of intense, almost painful concentration. The priest saw a child seemingly overwhelmed by the majesty of the God's power, shaking from the sheer holiness of the connection.
He didn't see the man fighting to keep from screaming.
Asterion exhaled, expelling the used breath. He clamped his mental barrier shut again. The memories receded, the rage quieting back to a dull, constant ache.
He opened his eyes. He was exhausted, more so than if he had run ten miles.
He looked at his small, trembling hands. This path—the Path of the Shield—required him to turn his body into a crucible. To do that, he had to stand in the fire of his own past without burning up.
He would master this. He would learn to hold the power and the pain simultaneously. He would get the Holy Bath at fifteen. He would build a wall of power so high, so thick, that no monster and no man could ever scale it to hurt him again.
He would survive. Even if living felt harder than dying.