Rita's table was covered with papers, worn parchments, and books that smelled of centuries. I, curled up in a chair far too big for my eight-year-old body, watched her as I had so many times before. She turned the pages with infinite patience, scribbled symbols on loose sheets, murmured words that did not belong to the villagers' tongue.
At first, it fascinated me. I thought I was witnessing the secrets of a forgotten world. But soon I gave up: I could barely read fluently, and the strokes of her writing were older than the language of the men around us. So I limited myself to watching, trying to decipher the woman who had raised me.
I knew she wasn't normal. No old woman in a village of a hundred people carries three books under her arm as if they were sacks of feathers. No ordinary woman moves with the lightness of a soldier when she thinks no one is watching. I had seen the scars on her arms when the summer heat forced her to shed her sleeves. And I had also seen the sword hidden under the floorboards of her room, wrapped in cloth, oiled, as if still waiting to be used again.
But Rita never spoke of it. To the others she was the midwife, the healer, the wise old woman. To me… she was more than a mother, the woman.
One day, while I meditated to fight the boredom, something different happened. I closed my eyes and tried to empty my mind. And then the lights appeared.At first, there were few, just sparks in the darkness. Then there were hundreds, thousands, until my whole being was surrounded by an ocean of shining particles dancing as if following an invisible pattern.
I felt peace. A peace I did not remember even in my past life.But it was not only in my mind. I knew it because Rita burst into the room. Her steps halted abruptly, and I heard a sob escape her. When I opened my eyes, her face was bathed in tears, and the room still seemed to glow faintly, as if the lights resisted disappearing.
"I thought I lost you!" she wailed, hugging me tightly. "Don't breathe!… oh, Eru, I am a bad woman!"
It took me a while to realize I had stopped breathing. The trance had halted my lungs. I tried to calm her, but the only thing that came from my lips was a babble. And then, for the first time, I uttered a word:
"…Mita."
The word came out clumsy, broken, but enough to stop her tears. Her eyes widened with a glimmer of astonishment and relief. She held me against her chest as if fearing I might vanish at any moment. She held me and cried with a grief I had never seen in her before.
"Dirhaël," she whispered through sobs. "That is what you will be called. You are my grandson, and I will protect you, even if the whole world falls upon me."
That was the day I stopped being Clark and became Dirhaël.
The years passed, and my growth surprised even myself. In one year, I learned to read, in two I devoured all of Rita's books, and in three I was already debating with her about geography, botany, and mathematics. The villagers looked at me with twisted eyes, but she… she seemed pleased, even proud.
It didn't take me long to notice something else: Rita secretly traded with the elves. It wasn't an exchange of bread or wool. She gave them reports, notes written in a strange code, and they brought her new parchments. A dangerous alliance, disguised as simple barter.
I too kept growing. The system I had brought with me allowed me to advance faster than any child should. My body grew stronger, my senses sharper, and my thoughts raced faster than I could express. But my stats advanced with frustrating slowness.
Dirhaël (Level 1)
Race: Human (Elf 36.5%, ???)
— Vitality: 9
— Strength: 6
— Agility: 5
— Endurance: 3
— Mana: 1
— Intelligence: 34
— Wisdom: 19
It wasn't much, but it was enough to set me apart from ordinary humans. I had confirmed it with my own eyes: I saw an elf bring down a bear with a single move. Men could never match that. And yet, I felt I was drawing a little closer to them with each day of effort.
My days followed a rhythm, almost like the ticking of a clock. At dawn, while the mist still clung to the grass, I forced my body to move—running up the slopes until my lungs burned, lifting stones until my arms shook, and practicing strikes with a wooden staff until blisters formed.
When the sun reached its peak, I would sit under the old oak, letting my mind sharpen with books, puzzles, and quiet meditation, drawing strength not only from muscle but from thought. At night, when most slept, I practiced breathing and channeling the strange energy inside me, willing it to flow smoother each time.
It wasn't glorious, nor easy. But day after day, I could feel it: my steps grew lighter, my strikes sharper, my thoughts quicker. Little by little, I was becoming something more than human.
Like every day, I found myself in the shed next to my grandmother, helping her care for the plants. Over time, I had learned what she called "the basics" enough that, from time to time, she let me prepare simple medicines under her strict supervision. It wasn't that the ingredients were hazardous, but the use of certain tools required precision, and at the slightest cut on a finger, she forbade me from touching mortars or blades for an entire week.
The days passed in a constant routine: light exercises at dawn to keep the body agile and resilient, followed by endless hours of absorbing whatever my grandmother wished to teach me. Her knowledge was vast, impossible to measure. Not only did she master botany and medicine, she also spoke to me of geography, mathematics, astronomy, even culture and etiquette. All things that, in my old world, would have made a woman like her a historical figure, here seemed to be part of her daily life.
It was evident she was not an ordinary woman. There was in her gaze an ancient weight, a secret I did not dare to ask. It would have been hypocritical of me to demand answers when I kept my own.
What puzzled me most was her insistence on teaching me etiquette: how to walk, how to behave in conversation, how to hold a cup or bow my head with respect. When I asked why so much insistence, she always answered the same, with that severity of hers that admitted no reply:"It is what separates us from beasts."
That morning, while I watered the plants with slow and precise movements, she interrupted me with one of her curt phrases:"Dirhaël, I've told you to reduce those moments of introspection… or at least stop putting on that strange look. That's why the children don't come near you."
I raised my head, surprised at the reproach, though it wasn't the first time I had heard it. Her words had some truth: I had seen the fear in others' eyes, even when I did nothing.
"You yourself always warn me how stupid they are," I replied with a hint of irony, "and that if I spend too much time with them, I'll end up catching their behavior."
She clicked her tongue in annoyance and glared at me, as she did whenever I talked back."Rascal," she muttered, though not without a trace of affection. "You are far from having the right to answer without earning a punishment. Go on, trim the bushes… and don't forget to bring firewood. I'll make pork stew today."
I accepted the task without complaint. It was her way of setting limits, but also of keeping me busy. What she never said aloud was that those chores were part of the same training: discipline forged as much in books as in the hands.
The problem wasn't the elves. Not even Rita. The problem was the villagers.
When I went down to the village to leave the firewood, I felt the weight of dozens of eyes following me. The silence was more cruel than any insult. Conversations cut off as I passed, mothers clutched their children to their breasts, and the elders muttered prayers under their breath, as if to ward off my shadow.
"Ignore them," Rita told me, always with that calm mask she wore when she wanted to protect me. "Ignorance is like a disease; if you get too close, it spreads."But in her eyes I saw something else: worry, and even a faint tremor that betrayed that she knew how dangerous a group of frightened fools could be.
They didn't call me cursed out loud, but I read it in their gestures. They spat on the ground after crossing paths with me, made the sign of their superstitions, or pretended not to see me as if I didn't exist. The children were different: they didn't have the filter of adult fear. They were direct. And cruel.
Ilmar and Trodan, above all. Two bullies with no weapon other than the poison of their parents' rumors. For months, they had made me their favorite prey: shoves, insults, rocks thrown in secret. I had endured it all in silence, waiting for them to tire. They didn't.
That day I was at the top of a hill, gazing at the horizon. From there rose the eastern mountains, still green and clean, but I knew that they were destined to rot under fire and shadow. Mordor did not yet exist, but I felt it in my bones: it would be born there, someday.
I was lost in that thought when a rock struck me on the back of the neck. The pain snapped me violently back to the present.
"Hey, freak!" Ilmar mocked, laughing loudly. Trodan imitated him, with that easy laugh of someone who has no courage of his own.
Something in me broke. It wasn't the first time. But it would be the last.
I crouched, picked up the stone, and without thinking, threw it back. I didn't calculate the force. I didn't want to. The projectile hit Ilmar's brow with a wet sound and a brief crack, almost like a branch snapping. The boy collapsed backward, screaming with his hands on his face, blood running between his fingers.
Trodan froze, unable to move. I advanced toward him with firm steps, my body low, my arms ready like in a soldier's charge. It was a movement too clean, too trained… too much like a soldier for an eight-year-old boy.
I saw the terror reflected in his eyes. And it was that, not my will, that saved him. He turned and fled down the hill, screaming like a rabbit chased by a wolf. Ilmar, staggering and bleeding, followed him, leaving a trail of blood on the grass.
I stayed there, standing, breathing heavily. Part of me felt guilt. But another… another enjoyed it. Seeing them run, seeing in their eyes the same fear adults gave me in secret, gave me a strange relief. It was as if, at last, they had dropped the masks: they didn't hate me because I was strange, but because they feared me.
That was the day I understood I could no longer hide. The village had marked me as a dark omen. Now, for the first time, they had a real reason to justify it.