Florence, Spring 1501
Elias didn't sleep much anymore.
He didn't need to—not like other children. His body rested, but his mind always ticked forward. Memory was his second heartbeat, always racing. He could still recall the names of presidents not yet born. The formulas of machines that hadn't been invented. The weight of a digital world is now long behind him.
But this night, something new disturbed his thoughts.
A dream, though it didn't feel like one.
---
He stood in a room he didn't recognize. Stone walls. Flickering lamplight.
Before him, a man stood in a mirror.
No—he stood in the mirror.
Only older. Mid-thirties perhaps. Eyes are the same. But the jaw, the posture—different. A new face. Familiar yet foreign.
The man turned to him.
"You thought you'd die and begin again," the man said quietly. "But we don't start over. We continue."
Elias blinked. "Who are you?"
The man smiled.
"I'm your son. Or yourself. It makes no difference."
---
He woke with a gasp, cold sweat soaking the back of his neck.
It wasn't fear.
It was understanding.
---
He waited a day. Then, in the quiet of his room, he looked in the mirror.
And concentrated.
The shift wasn't sudden, or painless. It wasn't bone cracking or magical shimmer.
It was like adjusting a painting in your mind—pulling a chin slightly down, widening the eyes, sharpening cheekbones.
Within five minutes, the face looking back at him was not his own.
Still youthful. Still ten. But different.
He could become someone else.
And if he could do this now… what would happen when he had a child?
---
Over the following weeks, Elias tested the theory. He wrote notes in the third person. Practised walking differently. Even gave the new version of himself a name: Niccolò.
Niccolò had a higher voice, a habit of biting his nails, and a slight stammer.
He had Giovanni mention "his other pupil Niccolò" to one of Luca's clients—an old man named Volterra. Two weeks later, Elias introduced his alter in person, with a changed face.
Volterra never questioned it.
"Clever boy," the man said after a math demonstration. "Luca's raising a nest of minds."
---
Elias didn't tell anyone. Not even Vincenzo.
This wasn't a tool to be shared. This was a secret only immortality needed.
He began writing a private manual, encoded in cypher:
How to fabricate lineage.
How to stagger births across regions.
How to document false identities through Church records.
He'd need birth certificates, baptism papers, apprenticeship records, and someday, noble titles—all pointing to different versions of himself.
Not yet.
But soon.
---
One evening, standing again before his mirror, Elias stared into the face of Niccolò.
He whispered, "You will be the first to leave Florence."
Because Florence would begin to notice. Too many eyes. Too many whispers.
And besides…
Niccolò could go where Elias could not.
He was the perfect tool. A mirror seed. A shadow-self.
And someday, when this body reached its limits—Elias would be born again through his "son."
Not in the soul.
But it will.