Termo woke to a ceiling he didn't recognize—old wood, cracked and uneven, carrying the faint smell of smoke. His body felt heavier than it ever had, as if the cold had settled inside his bones during the night and refused to leave. His breath shivered in his chest. For a moment he didn't move.
He stared. He listened.
He remembered.
And the memory burned.
The world around him was quiet, too quiet for a place where a child should wake. No familiar voices. No warmth. Just an empty room and a silence that pressed against him like a weight.
Outside, sunlight slid across the snow. Ravann stood there, waiting. He had been waiting since dawn, arms crossed, posture rigid. He wasn't worried—Ravann was not the type to worry—but his eyes were sharp, and his expression remained unreadable in a way that made everything about him feel distant.
When he finally stepped into the hut, he didn't ask how Termo felt. He didn't offer comfort or soft words. Ravann simply looked at him, with that calm, cold seriousness that made Termo feel less like a child and more like something broken on the ground.
Termo didn't care.
He didn't want pity.
He wanted answers—real ones.
But Ravann didn't give any.
Days passed. Snow fell. The cold carved itself deeper into the world around them. Ravann didn't try to get close to Termo, and Termo didn't try to get close to him. They existed beside one another—silent, cautious, watching. A kind of understanding formed, but not the warm kind. More like two animals sharing the same territory, testing each other's boundaries.
Ravann began teaching Termo to fish. He never phrased it as "teaching"—he simply forced Termo to do it, pushing him toward the river, handing him tools, expecting him to figure it out. It felt less like care and more like a challenge to survive. Termo didn't complain. Survival was something he already understood too well.
Soon after came combat.
Sword forms, footwork, balance.
Ravann never explained why.
Termo never asked.
Every strike, every push, every correction carried a brutal sharpness. Ravann's training didn't feel like discipline—it felt like pressure, like he was trying to crush something out of Termo or force something hidden to surface.
Termo understood.
He felt it too.
A heat lived inside him—quiet, buried deep, but real. Anger that never burned out. Memories he couldn't erase. And a strange sensation he didn't understand… something in his body reacting, tightening, sparking whenever that anger rose.
Ravann noticed. He always noticed.
But he said nothing.
And Termo, for his part, didn't care about Ravann's approval.
Didn't care about becoming stronger.
Didn't care about "training."
He cared about one thing:
Why?
Why everything happened.
Why he survived.
Why his past was filled with shadow and blood.
Every day, that question pulled at him like a hook in his chest.
Months passed. Termo learned quickly—faster than a boy his age should. His body hardened. His movements sharpened. The cold didn't bother him the way it once had. The forest, the river, the snow… all of it grew familiar, as if the world itself was forcing him to adapt.
Ravann didn't treat him like a monster.
But he didn't treat him like a child either.
He watched Termo with an analytical stillness. Not fear—never fear—but something closer to calculation. He wanted to understand Termo. To read him. To see the shape of the thing growing inside that quiet anger.
Still, he pushed him harder.
Harder every day.
The training shifted from difficult to brutal. Termo never broke, never asked to stop. Pain meant nothing to him compared to the fire inside his chest.
The Incident
One evening, while chopping wood outside the hut—Ravann paused. His breath fogged the air. His injured arm hung stiff at his side. The cold had worsened his condition; he could feel his strength slipping day by day.
That was when he heard it.
The faint crunch of snow.
A sound out of place.
He turned.
A small demon—distorted, misshapen, eyes dull and animal-like—crept out from between the trees. It wasn't smart, barely conscious, but hunger glinted in its movements.
Ravann reacted instantly, leaping back despite his weakened arm. His heart pounded. With one arm broken, he couldn't fight properly—not against anything with claws.
Before the demon lunged, a shadow flashed between them.
Termo.
He moved faster than Ravann expected, driven by something raw, sharp, and boiling. The sight of the creature triggered something in him—memories of death, screams, flame, and a world that had been torn apart before he even understood it.
The anger hit him like a storm.
His body exploded forward.
He kicked—once—
A powerful, human kick, not supernatural, but fueled with every ounce of fury buried in his chest.
The demon flew, slammed into a tree, and staggered with a trembling whimper. Confusion twisted in its broken face. It didn't understand what had hit it.
Termo didn't notice.
The heat inside him surged, threatening to swallow his thoughts. His vision tightened. The world dimmed at the edges. Something shimmered in his eye—not an ability, not yet, but a spark responding to the storm in his blood.
"TERMÓ!"
Ravann's shout cracked the air.
The sound cut through everything.
Termo blinked… and the moment shattered.
The demon scrambled away into the trees, disappearing as fast as it could.
Five Months Later
The incident changed nothing on the surface—but everything beneath it.
Ravann became more observant, not out of fear… but curiosity. He watched Termo with the quiet intensity of someone studying a dangerous truth. He trained him harder, pushed him further, tested the edges of his endurance and will.
And Termo?
He didn't resist.
The anger made the training feel natural.
Almost comforting.
But inside, something else grew.
A coldness.
A quiet flame wrapped in ice.
A hunger to understand everything—the past, the demons, the world, himself.
Winter deepened, and Ravann's body weakened under the cold. His arm healed poorly, and the isolation made every day heavier than the last. He finally realized they couldn't stay.
One night, by the dying fire, he said quietly:
"We're leaving. South. To the Great Market."
A wide, crowded place—alive, human, unpredictable. A place Termo had never seen. A place where the world was bigger, louder, and crueler than the snowy quiet they lived in.
Termo didn't answer.
He simply stared at the door of the hut—the place where he had changed, grown, hardened.
The place that felt like a cage.
And a forge.
He turned away.
Without a word, he stepped into the cold, ready to leave.
Inside him, a purpose stirred—unformed, unspoken, dangerous.
Something that would reveal itself in the chapters to come.