The darkness was not the same as before.
For twenty-eight years in his previous life, Kaiser's blindness had been a vast, neutral expanse. It was an empty room waiting to be filled with the vibrations, sounds, and textures of the world. But this new darkness—the one currently pressed against his face by a tightly wound strip of black silk—was suffocating. It felt like a prison.
Because now, he knew what he was missing.
Three seconds. That was exactly how long his vision had lasted. In those three seconds, his brain, starved of visual stimuli for an entire lifetime, had furiously attempted to process the avalanche of information. He remembered the blinding, agonizing beauty of the candlelight. He remembered the harsh, jagged lines of the stone walls. He remembered the face of the giant man—Duke Arthur Warborn—etched with battle scars and a rugged, terrifying majesty.
And then, he remembered the horrific consequence. The purple glow. The maid's mind shattering like fragile glass the moment she made eye contact with him.
Trapped in the fragile, uncoordinated body of a newborn infant, Kaiser lay still in the giant man's arms. His adult mind was fully intact, racing at a thousand miles an hour, but his tiny infant nervous system was wildly overwhelmed. His heart beat like a hummingbird's wings against his ribs. He couldn't control his limbs; they twitched sporadically, heavy and useless.
He tried to use his Absolute Hearing to map the room as he always did, but the physical limitations of a newborn's eardrums distorted the input. The sounds were muffled, swimming in a strange echo chamber. Still, he could pick up the emotional frequencies perfectly.
The room reeked of fear. The metallic tang of blood and sweat hung heavily in the air. He could hear the ragged, terrified breathing of the guards who had rushed in, their hands trembling violently against the leather-wrapped hilts of their swords. He heard the sobbing of the other maids as they dragged their mad, thrashing companion out of the chamber.
And directly beneath his ear, he heard the booming, rhythmic thud of Duke Arthur's heart. It was not the erratic beat of a terrified man. It was the heavy, calculated pounding of a warlord confronting an unpredictable variable.
"Arthur..."
The voice came from the bed across the room. It was fragile, strained to the point of breaking, yet laced with an unbreakable core of defiance. Elara. His new mother.
Kaiser felt the Duke shift his weight. The massive man's boots scraped against the stone floor, the friction sending a clear vibration through Kaiser's tiny spine.
"Stay back, Elara," Arthur's voice rumbled, vibrating deep within his chest. "You saw what just happened. The child... the child possesses the Void Eyes. It is not a myth. It is here. In my hands."
"I do not care what myths you speak of!" Elara cried out, the rustle of heavy blankets indicating she was trying to sit up despite her agonizing exhaustion. "He is my flesh and blood! He has just been born into this cold world, and you wrap his eyes in rags like a criminal? Bring him to me!"
"He nearly killed a servant with a single glance!" Arthur barked, his voice cracking like a whip, causing the armored guards at the door to flinch. "The Void Eyes are an ancient curse, a manifestation of pure abyssal mana that shatters the sanity of any mortal who looks into them. If he looks at you, Elara... I will lose you both."
"He is a baby, Arthur!" Elara's voice broke into a raw, desperate sob. "He is terrified. I can hear him crying. Bring him to me, or by the Gods, I will crawl across this floor and take him from you myself."
Kaiser wasn't crying. He was perfectly silent, analyzing the situation with the cold, calculating detachment of a martial arts grandmaster. But he recognized the raw, maternal desperation in her voice. In his past life, he had been left on the steps of an orphanage, wrapped in a cheap blanket, discarded like trash. No one had ever fought for him. No one had ever screamed for the right to hold him.
The profound weight of Elara's unconditional love struck Kaiser harder than any physical blow he had ever taken in the dojo.
He felt the Duke hesitate. The giant man's breathing hitched slightly. For all his terrifying aura and martial prowess, Arthur Warborn was entirely disarmed by his wife's tears.
Slowly, the heavy footsteps moved toward the bed.
"The blindfold stays on," Arthur ordered, his tone brokering no argument. "It is woven from dark-silk, lined with lead-thread. It should be enough to contain the passive mana radiation. But it does not come off, Elara. Not for a second. Do you understand?"
"Give him to me," she demanded weakly.
Kaiser felt himself being lowered. The rough, calloused hands of the warrior were replaced by arms that were frail, trembling, but impossibly warm. He was pulled against a soft chest. The scent of sweat, lavender, and sweet milk washed over him.
"Oh, my sweet boy," Elara whispered. Her lips pressed softly against his forehead, right above the edge of the black silk blindfold. "My beautiful, perfect boy."
Kaiser relaxed. The chaotic twitching of his infant limbs ceased. He focused all his limited sensory power on the woman holding him. He could hear her heartbeat—rapid, exhausted, but swelling with a profound, overwhelming affection. He felt the dampness of her tears dropping onto his cheeks.
She doesn't care, Kaiser thought, a strange tightness forming in his tiny chest. I am a monster that drives people mad with a glance, and she only cares that I am cold.
Arthur stood over the bed, casting a massive, dense shadow over them. Kaiser could feel the pressure of the Duke's gaze. It was a heavy, analyzing stare.
"We must send him away, My Lord," whispered an older man from the corner of the room. Based on the rustling of robes and the faint scent of medicinal herbs, Kaiser deduced this was a physician or a mage of some sort. "A child born with the Void Eyes is an omen of calamity. The Holy Church will demand his execution the moment word reaches the capital. For the safety of the Duchy, he must be disposed of... or locked away in the deepest dungeons."
The temperature in the room plummeted.
Kaiser felt an oppressive, suffocating pressure radiate from Arthur. It wasn't just anger; it was an explosive release of physical aura that made the stone walls groan. The physician gasped, choking on the sudden lack of oxygen.
"Say that again, Maester Aemon," Arthur hissed, his voice dropping to a demonic register. "Speak of disposing of my bloodline one more time, and I will tear your tongue from your skull and feed it to the hounds."
"M-My Lord, I only meant to advise—"
"He is a Warborn!" Arthur roared, the sheer volume rattling Kaiser's fragile eardrums. "He is my firstborn son! Let the Holy Church come. Let the Royal Family cower. If they wish to take my son, they will have to march their armies through the mountains of corpses I will leave at the borders of this territory!"
Arthur paced the floor, his armored boots striking the stone with absolute authority.
"A curse? Perhaps," the Duke continued, his voice taking on a darker, sharper edge. "But what is a curse if not raw, untamed power? If a mere glance from an infant can shatter the mind of a grown woman, imagine the devastation he could unleash when he comes of age. He will not be a victim of this world. He will be its apex."
Kaiser listened to the warlord's monologue with a mixture of awe and caution. Duke Arthur Warborn was not a man who operated on morality. He operated on strength. He loved his son, yes, but he also saw him as the ultimate weapon.
"He will be raised here, within the inner sanctum of the estate," Arthur declared, laying down the law of Kaiser's new existence. "All servants who were in this room are to be confined to the lower quarters. If a single whisper of the 'Void Eyes' leaves this keep, I will slaughter every soul within the estate walls. As far as the world is concerned, Kaiser Warborn was born blind. A tragic defect. Nothing more."
"He is not a weapon, Arthur," Elara whispered fiercely, clutching Kaiser tighter against her chest. "He is a child."
"He is both," Arthur replied softly, his heavy hand resting gently on Elara's shoulder. His large thumb brushed against Kaiser's cheek, careful to avoid the silk blindfold. "He is a Warborn. And he will need to be stronger than anyone else to survive what he carries."
Exhaustion finally overtook Kaiser's infant body. The immense mental strain of processing his transmigration, the fleeting moment of sight, the trauma of the curse, and the heavy atmosphere of the room were too much for his underdeveloped brain to handle.
As the edges of his consciousness began to fray, pulling him down into sleep, Kaiser made a silent vow.
He was blind once again. He was trapped behind a veil of black silk, feared by his father and pitied by the world. But he was alive. And unlike his past life, where he was alone, he now had a mother who would defy the world for him, and a father who would wage war to protect him.
I have twenty-eight years of martial mastery, Kaiser thought, his breathing slowing to a deep, rhythmic slumber. I have Absolute Senses. If I must wear this blindfold for the rest of my life to protect them, so be it. I will master the darkness all over again.