Since then, Desmond no longer cried at night.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Then years.
Every morning, the same freezing bath (which, he eventually got used to).
The same endless chores.
The same voices pushing him, mocking him, calling him "nuisance," "filth," "weak."
He hadn't gone to school since being taken from the only home he'd known with his mother.
He never went out to play.
He never had friends.
He studied at home, in the library, every two hours as required.
Under Cowell's stern and rigid eye-always observing, taking notes from the corner of the room.
Two hours daily with adult tutors who taught him adult subjects:
political history, military strategy, feudal economics, philosophy-concepts far beyond what he could truly understand.
Every mistake was met with a blow, a ruler's strike, or the weight of an encyclopedia dropped into his hands.
Every failure left a scar.
And when his body couldn't take it anymore, when he collapsed from exhaustion...
The Duke would be there to scream:
"¡¿What is this?! You think you can just sleep?!, I didn't take you in just to waste time!
¡¡FOCUS!! You won't disgrace me when you come of age!" he yelled.
...As always. The boy said nothing.
He no longer cried.
He no longer trembled.
He simply obeyed, replying with a quiet:
-"Yes, Father."
---
By the time he was ten, he no longer looked out the window.
He slept four hours a night, then rose to continue the routine.
By twelve, the servants had started to fear him.
The boy's eyes had grown cold, and his replies were curt, sharp-void of softness.
Others ignored him completely, following the Duke's orders.
His birthdays were never celebrated.
Each new year was measured by new challenges-new ways to break him and make him more useful.
He learned to hunt, to shoot, to crawl through mud and survive with barely anything, out in the wilderness far from the mansion.
It was only about breathing.
Surviving.
He couldn't be weak.
He couldn't break.
He couldn't die like this.
Somehow, he only wanted to live one more day.
To see at least that one peach tree behind the mansion past the tangled vines and dying weeds, in a lonely, dry garden...
He watered it himself.
But after that brief moment, he'd be thrown back outside-kicked into continuing the same cycle, day after day, from a mansion he could never call home.
His wounds, as he grew older, turned into scars-ones he knew how to stitch himself with surgical precision.
He learned all of it... alone.
Making his skin seem untouched, as if it had never been torn open.
Inside that icy bathroom, which no longer shocked him. It became his space.
Even if only for moments, even if he couldn't leave often.
So with time, he didn't even blink when his father summoned him.
In the blink of an eye-he was already there.
Ready for the next task.
He never ate until every command had been fulfilled.
By fourteen, his face showed no expression.
His eyes-dead.
His words-scarce.
Until silence became his native tongue.
By sixteen, bruises no longer left marks, as if his bones had learned
how to withstand the blows.
By eighteen... he no longer seemed human.
He was obedient.
Cold.
Precise.
Silent.
Like a machine without a soul.
Without warmth.
...Dangerous.
At twenty, his father sealed his fate.
He was a loyal dog.
With a cutting gaze.
An icy, sharpened soul.
A man forged by beatings like iron set to flame.
---
Inside the Duke's study. Desmond stood before the desk, where a folder was laid out before him.
And with a stern gaze, eyes like steel, his father spoke low as Desmond flipped through the contents.
"Enlisted. You'll go into military service.
It's time you become a real man. A Fontclair.
You'd better make me proud." he smirked.
"Now... go." he finished, dismissing him with a hand gesture like one would command a dog to leave.
Desmond gave a brief bow, stood upright, turned, and left the room with the folder in hand.
Without another word, the Duke sent him off to the military.
The boy he had been.. was gone.
All that remained was a Fontclair, shaped in his father's image.
Paying for it all in blood and stolen youth.
And so, he stood outside waiting, without goodbyes.
Without luggage.
Without memories.
Without a heart.
Just standing.
Matelín and coat over his shoulders, awaiting a carriage or in the midst of the heavy fog.