One morning, I woke up screaming.
Well, not screaming exactly, more like choking on my own voice. Because the face staring back at me in the cracked mirror wasn't thirty. Wasn't lined or weary. It was twenty. Again.
I touched my jaw, smooth as a boy's. My hair thick, black, not a hint of gray. My body lean, not the creaking frame that had been polishing rings last night.
"Saints preserve me…" I whispered. "Not again. Not here."
From the other room came the sound of snoring. Heavy, content, the kind of snore that said, I've got centuries of gold and no worries. My master. My tormentor. My… teacher, in his own twisted way.
"If he saw me like this, he'd know. He'd know I wasn't normal. He'd know I was like him. And God help me, I wasn't ready for that."
So I did the only sensible thing.
I panicked.
I tore open the floorboard under my cot, pulled out the little pouch I'd been stashing coin in for years. Tiny wages, tips, the odd coin he didn't notice missing when I "polished" too close to his purse. Pathetic compared to his mountain of wealth, but it was mine.
My hands shook as I stuffed it into my coat. Every creak of the floor sounded like thunder. Every breath of his snore sounded like it would stop any second.
I paused at the door. Looked back once at the velvet curtains, the shelves lined with treasures from a dozen empires. For a heartbeat, I wondered what it would be like to stay. To learn. To admit what I was.
Then his snore turned into a cough.
I bolted.
Down the stairs, into the alley, clutching my pouch like it was the Holy Grail. I didn't stop running until the market swallowed me whole.
Only then did I breathe, shaking, twenty again, free again, broke again.
And for the first time in years, alone again.
---
By midday, the townhouse was in chaos.
"WHERE is he?!" my master roared, velvet robe flapping like a battle flag. Servants scattered, guards searched the alleys, even the tavern wenches got interrogated.
They dragged back reports: "No one's seen him, my lord. Vanished like smoke."
"Smoke doesn't polish sixteen rings and then run off before breakfast!" he bellowed. His eyes swept the room like a hawk. "Search the coffers! The chest! The ledgers!"
They did. Hours of counting coins, stacking jewels, pawing through silks. Finally, the steward cleared his throat. "My lord… nothing's missing."
My master froze. "Nothing?"
"Not a copper."
He blinked, once, twice, then slammed his goblet down so hard wine splattered the tapestry. "Then why would a wretch leave without stealing?!"
The room went silent.
Meanwhile, I was across the city, in a rat-infested inn, staring at my young face in a cracked mirror and nearly laughing myself sick. Nobody would connect the vanished thirty-year-old servant with this twenty-year-old stranger.
,
Years later, in Seville, I found myself wandering the plaza, watching the crowd press around a raised platform. A condemned man knelt before the executioner, the sun glaring off polished steel.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw him, my master, calm as ever, hands folded neatly in front of him like he was about to sip tea instead of lose his head. The crowd murmured, uneasy, but he didn't flinch. Not even a twitch.
Then his eyes found me.
Locking onto me in the throng like a hawk spotting prey. I froze, heart hammering, praying the city wouldn't notice.
The executioner cleared his throat. "Any last wish?"
He smiled faintly, voice smooth and unsettling: "I want to see… Ewan MacLeod. The one wearing the green coat, the patched gloves, and the boots caked with mud from the docks."
A hush fell over the crowd. People turned, trying to spot me. My stomach twisted. I had thought I'd slipped through time, through faces, unnoticed… but apparently, he had always known.
I swallowed. Well, isn't this convenient… and terrifying.
---
I ducked behind a fruit stall, pretending to fumble with a coin purse. My eyes darted everywhere, trying to look like any other gawking bystander. Not me. Definitely not me. Just another poor fool watching a public spectacle.
But fate, or whatever twisted sense of humor the universe had, wasn't buying it.
Two guards spotted me lingering too close.
"Hey! You! Step forward!"
Before I could protest, hands grabbed my arms and yanked me toward the platform. The crowd parted like a river around a rock. My boots scraped the wood, and the crowd's murmurs swelled into confusion and anticipation.
I froze at the top, heart hammering. Then I saw him.
My master. Calm. Impossibly calm. Velvet robe brushing the platform. Hands folded, eyes like steel.
He blinked once, and I swear, just for a second, recognition flickered.
"You… still the same," he murmured to himself. His lips curved into a faint smirk. Could it be? His eyes scanned me, sharp, piercing. Immortal too?
The executioner's axe gleamed. Crowd hushed. He raised a hand slightly, voice clear and casual:
"After this… you and I will have a drink."
I gaped. A drink? After that?
I tried to keep my act, looking around, flustered, like I had no idea who he was. But the guards were still holding me firmly, nudging me toward the edge.
And there it was. That surreal, terrifying, absurd certainty: I wasn't escaping. Not now. Not ever.
---
I took a careful step back, keeping my head down, pretending not to notice him. Just a stranger in the crowd. Nothing to see here.
The guards didn't care. They nudged me forward again, pressing me closer to the edge of the platform. My stomach churned, but I kept up the act, wide-eyed, helpless, ordinary.
Then the axe fell.
I blinked.
And the sound… it wasn't muffled, it wasn't shocking, it wasn't even cinematic. Just final.
His head separated clean from his body. For the first time, I saw it. Really saw it. The body went limp. Still. Cold.
Nothing stirred afterward. No miraculous rise, no twitch, no spark of life.
The crowd gasped, recoiled, whispered. I froze, staring.
And in that instant, the truth slammed into me with the force of a battering ram:
The head… must be separated.
Everything else, every poison, every fall, every stab, every fire, I could survive. But this… this was the only way.
I swallowed hard, heart hammering. My hands shook. For the first time in centuries, fear was sharp, real, undeniable.
Not invisible. Not eternal. Not untouchable.
Just a man who could finally understand the rules of the game he'd been playing his whole life.
---