Double chapters on your foreheads, also finally added new chapters to the patreon
patreon.com/GodtierSage
support me please
The Quiet Boy
Time, for a child, is a river that flows in fits and starts. It pools in the long, lazy afternoons of summer and rushes forward in the frantic blur of school years. For me, the king of a timeless realm, the passage of four years was measured in more subtle ways.
It was measured in the slow, steady strengthening of the vessel. The headaches that once felled me after a minor manipulation were now a dull, manageable throb. The nosebleeds were a rare occurrence, a warning sign I'd learned to heed long before it became critical. My body, at nine years old, had finally begun to grow into the consciousness it housed. It was like a well-worn pair of gloves; still a constraint, but one I knew the precise limits of.
It was measured in the deepening lines on my parents' faces, lines etched not just by time, but by a quiet, persistent worry they could never quite articulate. Their son was healthy. He was smart—"precociously intelligent," his teachers said. He was kind. But he was… quiet. Too quiet. He had no close friends. He seemed content with his own company, with his books and his models and his long, solitary walks. They had accepted the Quirkless diagnosis, but they watched me sometimes with a look of profound confusion, as if trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece they couldn't name.
And it was measured in the Dreaming. My realm had grown in complexity and beauty, a direct reflection of my own increasing control. The library was now a vast, celestial city of books, with bridges of light connecting soaring towers of knowledge. The obsidian plains were dotted with silent, glass-like lakes that reflected the memory-nebulae above. New dream-creatures had emerged—silent, fox-like beings made of shadow and starlight that would follow me on my patrols, curious and silent.
My work continued. I was a nightly groundskeeper for the city's soul. I soothed exam anxieties, gently untangled creative blocks, and softened the edges of grief. I was particularly attentive to the dreams of the heroes, whose burdens seemed to grow heavier every year. The pressure on them was immense, the public's expectations a constant weight. I couldn't fight their battles, but I could ensure the few hours of sleep they managed were restorative, not torturous.
Ms. Nightingale's presence was a constant, faint hum in the background of my kingdom. Her search for the "Oneironaut" had not ceased; it had become more refined, more sophisticated. She had mapped the patterns of my interventions, creating a psychic profile of a benevolent, highly empathetic, and incredibly elusive individual. She knew I favored heroes. She knew I helped children. She knew I was powerful. But she still looked for a person, a single mind. Her searchlight swept the Dreaming with regular, meticulous precision, and I had become a master at staying in the shadows, of being the stage, not the actor.
The waking world, however, presented a different kind of challenge. School was a study in social dynamics I found both fascinating and exhausting. By the age of nine, Quirks were the absolute cornerstone of identity. They dictated social groups, influenced academic choices, and were the sole topic of conversation in the hallways.
I was Arata Shinsei, the quiet, Quirkless boy. The label had calcified. I was not bullied, not overtly. That would require a level of engagement I didn't invite. I was simply… irrelevant. A neutral piece on the board. I was the one who partnered with whoever was left over in class projects, the one who ate lunch alone with a book, the one whose name was occasionally forgotten by substitute teachers.
It was a perfect camouflage. And most days, I was content within it.
Most days.
There was a boy in my class named Hitoshi Shinso. His Quirk was called Brainwashing. If someone verbally responded to him, he could put them under his control. It was a powerful, insidious ability, and it had made him a pariah. The other children treated him with a fear and suspicion that was far worse than the polite indifference they showed me. They saw a villain in the making.
I saw a boy drowning in loneliness. His dreamscape was a stark, empty place, surrounded by high, invisible walls he'd built to keep everyone out. His nightmares weren't of monsters; they were of his own voice, echoing in a vast emptiness, with no one to answer.
I wanted to help. But my rule was absolute: no direct intervention on a waking mind. So, I did what I could from my side of the veil. In his dreams, I didn't try to break his walls. I nurtured the small, resilient things that grew in their shadow. I encouraged a memory of a kind word from a teacher. I reinforced the feeling of satisfaction from solving a difficult problem on his own. I couldn't give him friends, but I could help him fortify himself against the silence.
One Tuesday afternoon, our teacher, in a well-meaning but ultimately disastrous attempt to foster camaraderie, announced a Quirk-applicable exercise for heroics fundamentals. It was a simple capture-the-flag game in the school gym, with teams encouraged to use their Quirks strategically.
A wave of excited energy buzzed through the class. Everyone except Shinso and me. He slumped lower in his seat, his expression grim. I simply watched, a familiar sense of detachment settling over me. I was used to being a spectator.
The teams were chosen. The captains, naturally, were the most Quirk-gifted children. I was picked last, a afterthought. Shinso was not picked at all. The teacher awkwardly assigned him to a team, whose members groaned in unison.
The game was chaos. A boy with extendable limbs snatched flags from a distance. A girl with minor clairvoyance called out positions. It was loud, energetic, and I was utterly superfluous. My team quickly realized I was best used as a stationary flag guard, a job they could have given to a traffic cone.
Then, the tide turned. Shinso's team was losing badly. The frustration on his face was palpable. As an opposing player ran past him, laughing, Shinso muttered, "You know, you're not as fast as you think you are."
The player, arrogant and impulsive, snapped back, "Shut up, villain!"
He froze mid-step, his eyes glazing over. Shinso had him.
A silence fell over the gym. The laughter died. The game ground to a halt. Everyone stared as Shinso, his face a mask of cold concentration, commanded the boy to walk to his team's corner and sit down.
The teachers overseeing the game exchanged uneasy glances. This was within the rules, but it felt wrong. It felt… creepy.
Shinso's moment of control was short-lived. Another player, a girl who could create small, concussive bursts of sound, blasted a noise near him, breaking his concentration. The brainwashed boy snapped out of it, blinking in confusion before his face flushed with humiliation and anger.
"Freak!" he yelled, shoving Shinso hard. "Don't you ever do that to me!"
The dam broke. The other children, their fear now morphing into mob mentality, joined in."Villain!""Stay away from me!""That's a evil Quirk!"
Shinso stood there, taking it, his shoulders hunched, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He didn't cry. He didn't fight back. He just absorbed their hatred, his own walls slamming shut tighter than ever.
The teachers finally intervened, calling an end to the game, their voices strained. The children were herded back to the locker rooms, shooting dirty looks at Shinso, who walked alone, a island of misery.
I walked alone too, a few paces behind everyone. I could feel the toxic cloud of their emotions—fear, anger, shame—and underneath it all, Shinso's crushing isolation. It was a familiar song to me, a discordant melody I'd heard in a thousand dreams.
Later, sitting in the quiet of my room, the event played over in my mind. I had done nothing. I had followed my rule. I had been a spectator.
But as the king of dreams, I was a collector of stories. And Shinso's story was one of being perpetually misunderstood, his power feared because of its potential for misuse, never valued for its potential for good. What could a hero do with such a power? Subdue villains without violence. Extract information without torture. End confrontations before they began.
The world only saw the villain. They never saw the hero.
An idea began to form. Not an intervention. A suggestion. But not to a person. To the world itself. To the collective story.
That night, in the Dreaming, I went to the oldest, deepest part of the library. I wasn't looking for a person's dream. I was looking for the archetype. The story of the misunderstood power. The narrative of the outsider who becomes the savior.
I found it. It was a old, well-worn book, its pages thin as parchment. It held the echoes of a thousand such stories, from ancient myths to modern comics. The core of it was there: a power that seems like a curse, a society that fears it, and a choice that defines the individual, not the ability.
I took this archetype, this narrative seed, and I did not bring it to Shinso. He had enough to carry.
Instead, I went to the dreams of the children from my class. Not to command, not to change their minds. But to gently, subtly, suggest a story.
To the boy who'd been brainwashed, I didn't erase his humiliation. Instead, in his dream, I allowed the narrative to play out differently. In the dream, after the initial shock, he saw not a villain, but a strategist. He saw Shinso use his power to de-escalate a dangerous situation, to save a teammate, the brainwash becoming a tool of protection, not control.
To the girl with the sound Quirk, I let her dream of fighting alongside him, her blasts covering his flanks while he issued calm, precise commands to confused civilians.
I didn't force the dreams. I simply nurtured the possibility. I watered the idea that a Quirk was not inherently good or evil. It was a tool. And the story of the tool depended on the hand that held it.
It was a massive, delicate undertaking. Influencing dozens of dreams at once, weaving a new potential narrative into their existing prejudices and fears. By the time I was done, I was exhausted, the familiar throbbing in my temples a testament to the effort.
The next day at school, the air was different. The outright hostility toward Shinso was gone. It was replaced by a wary, confused silence. The children who had hurled insults couldn't quite meet his eyes. Their dreams had left them with a lingering, disorienting sense of cognitive dissonance. The story they'd believed about him had been subtly challenged.
No one apologized. No one became his friend. But the word "villain" was no longer whispered in his wake.
At the end of the day, as we were packing up, Shinso stopped at my desk. He rarely spoke to anyone.
He looked at me, his purple eyes narrowed slightly. "Yesterday," he said, his voice low. "That was… weird."
My heart stuttered. Had he felt it?
"Everything was loud. And angry," he continued, almost to himself. "And then today… it's just quiet." He shook his head, as if clearing a fog. "Weird."
He walked away, leaving me sitting there.
I had not broken my rule. I had not touched his mind. I had touched the minds of those around him. I had changed the ecosystem of his world, not the plant itself.
It was a manipulation. A benevolent one, perhaps. But as I sat there, watching him walk away, still alone but no longer under siege, I wondered where the line truly was. I was not a hero. I was not a villain.
I was a storyteller. And I had just rewritten a small, personal story for a boy who would never know it.
The power was still seductive. And the weight of it, even used for good, was a heavy crown to wear.
.
.
.
drop the stones and comment in the bag now!!!