The boy awoke crying.
A child's voice, high and small, nothing like the command that once rolled like thunder over armies. His chest hitched, little hands clutching at the linen sheets as if they were the last thing keeping him from sinking back into the flames of his dreams.
Runes blazing in a council chamber.
A spear sliding between ribs.
A brother's blade, and the taste of iron in his mouth.
Laughter.
Crimson fire.
Silence.
He had died.
Azrael Bloodrend, the Crimson Prince—scourge of kingdoms, terror of the plains, heir to a fallen dream—had died three hundred years ago.
Now, he was Adrian Blackthorn.
The nursery was warm and gentle where the old world had been cold and sharp. Pale morning light seeped through gauzy curtains; the scent of lavender lingered, and the soft pop of a hearth log made the shadows breathe. A cool hand touched his damp forehead. The crying slowed. He blinked up through lashes still beaded with tears.
"Shh," a voice whispered, rich with tenderness. "It's all right, my darling. Just a dream."
The woman's face hovered above him—dark hair swept back, green eyes bright with worry and relief. Lady Elara Blackthorn. His new mother. She had a way of looking at him as if he were both fragile and miraculous, as if love were something that could be given without bargain or blade.
To Azrael, the concept still felt… suspicious.
His body was small, his throat raw, his heart beating too fast in its tiny cage. Yet somewhere in the furnace of his mind, the older voice spoke—cool, controlled, unbowed by panic.
It is not weakness to breathe. Control returns when breath returns.
Elara pressed her forehead to his, as if trading calm for fear. "You startled me," she murmured, smiling despite the worry. "You were so still, then suddenly—well. The whole manor heard you, I think."
Adrian swallowed. The name fit in his mouth now, a softness on the tongue. Adrian. A human sound. The old name tasted of ash and iron.
"You're safe," Elara said. She stroked a stray lock from his brow. "You'll grow strong, little thorn. Stronger than you know."
Strong.
The word rang through him like a struck bell. In the old life, strength had been a blade you pressed to the world's throat until it stopped moving. Here, it sounded like a hearth, like a promise made around a table, like a mother's hand refusing to let go.
I was already strong, the older voice thought, bitter as old blood. Strongest of them all. And they feared it more than they loved it.
Elara tucked the blanket beneath his chin. "Try to sleep a little longer. I'll have Magda bring warm milk."
He nodded because that was what a boy of five would do. She kissed his brow and slipped away, her skirts whispering like leaves. Adrian lay still, listening to the house wake—the steps in the corridor, the distant clang of the yard gate, the murmur of kitchen voices rising with the smell of bread.
In the old life, mornings had smelled of steel and smoke.
He closed his eyes again, and did not dream.
The manor's eastern corridor was his favorite path. The stones were older here, hand-chiseled and slightly uneven, so his feet had to pay attention. Tall windows looked across the inner garden—bare hedges now, frost clinging stubbornly to the thorns. He paused to watch a pair of stable boys wrestle a bale of hay through the arch, laughing as it exploded into golden chaos.
"Careful with that," a deeper voice rumbled.
Adrian's mouth curled, the smallest ghost of a smile. He knew that voice before he turned.
Lord Dorian Blackthorn looked exactly as the whispers described him: broad-shouldered beneath a plain wool surcoat, a soldier's gait, gray beginning to salt the black at his temples. A scar traced from the left brow to the cheek, the kind of mark that never quite forgot what gave it birth. His hands were too big and too calloused for a court noble, and his eyes held the weight of someone who spent his coin in nights without sleep.
"Father," Adrian said, soft.
Dorian's sternness thawed a little. "There you are. I heard you troubled the house with a fierce battle in your bed."
Adrian considered the joke. He let a small sound escape that could pass for a laugh. Dorian crouched—no, knelt—to put his gaze level with his son's. It struck Adrian again how different this world's power looked on its knees. In the demon halls, submission had been extracted like teeth. Here, the baron lowered himself without losing one ounce of authority.
"Bad dreams?" Dorian asked.
Adrian nodded once.
"They pass," Dorian said. "Like winter. And you endure." He ruffled Adrian's hair, then straightened with a small grunt. "Come. Walk with me."
They crossed the small inner court, breath silvering the air. Servants and soldiers inclined their heads as they passed; some smiled, not at the baron but at the boy padding beside him. Adrian watched each face, each posture, the little economies of respect. Not fear. Not coerced obedience. Something stickier. Loyalty.
In the great hall, peasants were already gathering with small grievances and requests: a fence line disputed, a pig missing, a child with a cough that kept the house awake. Dorian heard each matter as if it were a siege to be planned or a gate to be repaired. He did not rush. He asked names and remembered children, and when an old man finished a rambling story that had only needed three sentences, Dorian smiled as if he'd been given a gift instead of time taken.
Strange, Adrian thought, watching from a carved bench, legs dangling. There is power in this. Not the kind that lifts a sword and splits a skull. A different kind that binds without iron. The kind my people never learned.
A gaunt woman with wind-burnt cheeks wrung her hands, eyes flicking to Adrian. "My lord—if it pleases—my boy is the same age. He won't eat. Only stares. I fear he's… wrong."
Dorian's features softened. "Bring him tomorrow. We'll find a remedy." He glanced back at Adrian. "Boys can be like that. They carry storms inside, and forget they can speak."
Adrian's pulse stumbled. He kept his face smooth. The old voice hummed: Be careful. The moment you open your mouth in the wrong way, you betray two lives at once.
When the court dispersed, Dorian found him still on the bench.
"Hungry?" the baron asked.
Adrian nodded.
"Good. It means you intend to live."
Lucien arrived at the midday meal as if storm and sunlight had been given a body and told to walk. He was ten and already carried the yard's admiration like a well-balanced shield: not too heavy to weigh him down, not so light he forgot what it was for. His dark hair escaped the leather tie at his nape; his cheeks glowed with the cold; his grin flashed without shame when he spotted his brother.
"There you are!" Lucien swooped on Adrian's stool, spun him half a turn, then sat and piled his plate with heroic industry. "Father, we need more straw dummies. I beheaded two this morning."
"We'll send for more heads," Dorian said dryly.
Elara flicked a napkin at both of them. "You'll get straw in the soup."
Lucien leaned toward Adrian. "After we eat, come to the yard. I'll show you the new drill. It makes Sir Hal laugh and then gasp, which is excellent."
Adrian glanced at Elara, who arched a brow that said go on. He looked back at Lucien, at the eagerness that did not know how to hide itself, at the pride that did not need an audience to exist.
"I will watch," Adrian said.
Lucien deflated a little, then rallied. "Watching is the beginning of doing. But I'll wager two honey cakes you swing a stick before the bells."
Adrian contemplated the economics of honey cakes. "One cake," he negotiated.
Lucien whooped. "Done."
Elara hid her smile in a cup.
The yard was a wind-scrubbed rectangle of hard-packed earth, rings of frost clinging in the shaded edges where the sun could not pry loose the night. Lucien danced in the center with a wooden blade, boots sure even where the ground betrayed him. Sir Hal—a middle-aged knight with a belly like a barrel and a heart quick to laugh—barked praise and corrections.
Adrian stood on the lowest step with a smaller practice sword across his lap. The wood was nicked smooth where other hands had held it. He lifted it. It felt like trying to move a bench with two fingers.
Lucien's drill whirled to a halt. "Now you."
Adrian rose. The world was big from down here: men like trees, the sky like a bowl, the sword like a plank. He set his feet the way Sir Hal had shown Lucien—left foot forward, right foot planted.
"Good," Sir Hal said, kindly surprised. "Where'd you learn that, little lord?"
Adrian did not answer. He lifted the sword. It wobbled, then steadied. He swung.
The blade cut air, late and low. Sir Hal stepped in quickly, catching the wooden sword with his own before it dragged Adrian off balance.
"Again," the knight said. "Small moves. Let your feet teach your hands."
Adrian tried. Again. Again. His shoulders burned. His palms stung. His breath ran thin. The old part of him raged at the indignity: once he had wielded Erebus like a thunderbolt, sundering lines, cracking shields, a blade that drank the courage out of men. Now a toy humbled him in front of a kindly knight and a loud brother.
Lucien crowded his space with encouragement, not mockery. "Lift the elbow, like this. Yes! That's it. See? The next bit will be easier."
It was not easier. But Adrian pretended to believe it. He kept swinging until the bell rang two hours past noon and a sheen of sweat slicked his brow.
Sir Hal nodded. "Enough for today. If you do what you did today, every day, you'll become frightening."
Adrian set the sword down. His arms trembled. Lucien pressed a honey cake into his hand with triumph out of proportion to the wager.
"See?" the heir crowed. "One cake well-earned."
Adrian regarded the sticky treasure. He took a precise bite.
It was, against his expectations, very good.
That evening, the manor softened again into warmth: lamps blooming against stone, the kitchen's music of knife and ladle, the low murmur of a song from the laundry girls that wove in and out of the hall's draft. Elara gathered Adrian near the hearth with a blanket and a book. It told a story of the first Blackthorn—a captain who chose to stay on the border rather than bask in the king's court, whose oath had not been to glory but to a line drawn in the earth.
"Is it true?" Adrian asked, the boy's voice fitting around the man's question.
Elara smiled over the top of the page. "Truer than most stories. We embroider, of course. But the thread is sound."
"Why not take glory?" the boy asked.
"Because people don't sleep well without someone at the gate," Elara said. "And sleep is a kind of glory that doesn't tarnish."
He held that in his hands, turned it over, tested the balance. Sleep as treasure. A watch kept without applause. A power that never needs to sharpen itself on terror. It was as alien as mercy, and as dangerous.
Elara's fingers combed through his hair. "You were brave this morning."
"Brave?" he repeated, careful.
"For waking from a hard dream and choosing to live the day anyway," she said. "That's a kind of battle, too."
He looked into the fire as if it were an enemy with whom negotiations had begun.
The house slept. Winter pressed its breath against the windows, trying every latch. Adrian slipped from the warm nest of blankets and padded to the tall window in the corridor. Beyond the glass, the land was a patchwork of frost and stone and thin, silvered water. The border's line was not visible, but he could feel where the world thinned in that direction, where raids came like coughs the body couldn't cure.
He placed his palm against the cold pane. His reflection looked back: a narrow face, big eyes, lashes too long for a boy, the cotton nightshirt too airy for a soldier. But if he looked through himself into the deeper dark, for a heartbeat he saw not Adrian but Azrael—older, taller, iron in his posture and fire in his gaze. The eyes in the glass burned crimson, then dimmed to gray.
He did not flinch.
I was Azrael Bloodrend. I am Adrian Blackthorn. I remember every face that smiled while they sharpened knives.
His small fist closed. The old voice did not rise up to drown the new one. It stood beside it, and the two looked out together at the line where night pooled.
I will endure, he promised the glass, the frost, the unseen teeth beyond the hills. And when I rise, it will not be to rule demons. It will be to end them.
Thus began the second life of the Crimson Prince.