The weeks that followed blurred into months, solidifying into half a year.
To the outside world, nothing had changed. Asterion and Elian were still the "Twin Miracles," the pride of the Sanctum. They smiled, helped the younger children, and recited scripture with perfect piety.
But in the quiet moments—hidden in the back of the library or huddled on the roof of the barracks under the starlight—they were simply two people who could finally breathe. They were brothers in the dark.
Elian became Asterion's comprehensive guide to the survival of the fittest. He taught the brutal truth of the outside world: how a noble's etiquette was a language of calculated submission—the depth of the bow indicating exactly how much respect (or fear) they wished to project. He detailed how small towns without a Church presence were treated as little more than livestock pens, their lives entirely dependent on the whims of a noble family's private army.
In return, Asterion gave Elian the clarity of science and logic. He taught him the basics of biology—why a fever was the body's attempt to burn out infection rather than a curse, how leverage and physics could allow a smaller frame to topple a larger opponent, and the practical chemistry of battlefield sanitation.
They sparred daily, their movements efficient and brutal, having surpassed the other children long ago. Their bond was one of cynical, weary trust, a shared understanding that they were grown adults trapped in the bodies of children.
And so, on a crisp morning, they were summoned.
They stood in Father Gregor's office. Beside the priest stood a man who radiated a quiet, potent power.
He was tall and broad, clad in the heavy, unadorned plate armor of a veteran Knight of the Shield. His face was a testament to the power of Faith-based healing. His features were perfectly symmetrical, possessing a statuesque beauty devoid of any flaw or scar, a subtle marker of his mastery over the physical vessel—proof that his flesh itself had been refined as thoroughly as his spirit. His iron-grey hair was cropped short, and his eyes were the color of a winter sky—cold, clear, and commanding.
This was Sir Kaelen, the "Iron Bastion" of the Aegis Sanctum.
"These are the two I spoke of," Father Gregor said, his voice firm. "Asterion and Elian. They have surpassed every other child in the Sanctum, even those twice their age. They are excellent in all subjects. They possess a clarity and maturity I have never seen in children so young."
Sir Kaelen grunted, his gaze fixed on them. "They are quite young."
"They are ready," Gregor insisted. "Their potential is being wasted here. They need a teacher who can handle what they are."
Kaelen stepped forward. "I will test them."
He lifted a gauntleted hand and placed one thick thumb on Asterion's forehead. "Brace yourself."
A spark of pure, focused Faith, hot as a forge-ember, lanced into Asterion's skull. It was a diagnostic sweep, meant to check the density of his vessel and the maturity of his internal energy system. The pain was merely the friction of high-density energy meeting a low-density body.
But for Asterion, the mental intrusion forced his defenses down.
All of his memories—from the first breath of his first life to the moment of his death—surged against the breach. The agony, the screams, the betrayal; the full weight of his curse threatened to swallow him whole.
Hold it, he commanded, his internal voice screaming.
He forced his body to stand rigid, meeting Kaelen's gaze.
The Faith returned to Kaelen, carrying its data.
"Hmph," Kaelen grunted, withdrawing his hand. "Your vessel is strong. But your spirit... it is dampened. I sense a profound reserve of control—a great deal of hate you are using to clamp down on yourself."
Kaelen moved to Elian and repeated the test. Elian didn't flinch. He stood perfectly calm, having undergone similar invasive procedures before. He simply allowed the energy to pass through him, his face smooth and unreadable.
Kaelen stared at them both. "You are no longer orphans of the Sanctum. You are my squires. Your old life is done."
They did not stay in the barracks. Kaelen led them out through the main gates and along a high, windy path that hugged the mountain. Built into a sharp spur of rock was a small, isolated tower keep.
The quarters were well-maintained: warm, dry, and clean, with thick blankets on their cots—the high-quality gear of a senior Knight. This isolation was the first sign of their new status.
Their training began at once in the private yard, a flat circle of stone overlooking the valley.
"Sir," Asterion asked, rubbing the spot on his forehead where Kaelen had touched him. "That technique you used in the office. To read us. Can we learn that?"
Kaelen paused, looking over his shoulder. "That is the Divine Resonance. And no. You cannot."
"Is it forbidden for a young squire?" Elian asked.
"It is physically impossible for you," Kaelen stated flatly. "It requires incredibly high and precise control, usually only found in Priests, experienced Holy Knights, and newly minted Great Knights. But the absolute requirement is Liquid Faith."
He tapped his chest, where his core lay. "Without the density of a condensed core, you cannot project your will into another without your energy scattering. The pain you felt? That was merely a side effect. It was the weight of my liquid faith displacing your gaseous aether. It is a hammer striking water. Until you forge your own iron, you cannot wield the hammer."
He walked over to a massive, granite boulder near the cliff edge—a stone the size of a small wagon.
"The Tainted are creatures of pure Corruption. Their malice is material—a foul, sticky reality. To break that, you must be the opposite. You must be solid."
He raised his gauntleted fist and punched the boulder.
CRACK.
A spiderweb of deep fissures exploded outward from his fist, running through the entire stone. Dust rained down.
"You will learn the Method of the Inner Crucible," Kaelen announced. "It is the secret of the Church—the foundational technique for forging a Faith-user's body. The goal is to compress the gaseous energy until it liquefies. It will feel like you are being crushed. It will burn. You have seven months."
The first three months were relentless, spent entirely within the tower.
Mornings were for close-quarters combat. They drilled hand-to-hand techniques and basic swordsmanship, which Kaelen had modified to suit their small size, focusing on speed and balance over raw strength.
Nights were the true battlefield.
For Asterion, it was a war. To compress the energy, he had to relax his mental defenses. As he did, the full, roaring ocean of his past—every betrayal, every death, all of his memories from childhood to his final breath—slammed against his consciousness.
He gasped, losing focus.
"You're fighting it," Elian's quiet voice came from the other cot. "You're trying to push the memories away while you push the energy down. You're fighting yourself."
"I can't stop them," Asterion whispered.
"Then don't," Elian said. "Use them. Take all that grief, all that cold, killing logic... and use it as the crushing force. You have to endure the storm, not defeat it."
Don't just suffer, utilize the pain.
Asterion closed his eyes, summoning the full, terrifying weight of his grief and aimed it at the faith in his core. He stopped trying to be strong; he simply let the weight of two lifetimes collapse inward.
The pressure spiked and held.
They were just shy of the three-month mark when the room's energy swirled toward Elian.
Elian went rigid, his skin flushing red before draining to white. A sharp ozone smell filled the air. Then, silence. Elian had formed his first drop.
"Three months," Kaelen whispered the next morning, shocked. "The youngest Hierophant took seven months."
Elian was a prodigy, but Asterion refused to be left behind. He didn't just redouble his effort; he obsessed over it.
Shortly after, Kaelen declared it was time to move. "The Crucible cannot be completed in comfort. We travel to Paragon's Rest."
The journey that followed redefined Asterion's understanding of this new life. Paragon's Rest was another Sanctum, but it was far, far away.
They traveled for four months, yet they barely crossed a fraction of the Kingdom's territories. The scale was daunting. Forests here were not like the woods of Earth; the trees were titanic pillars of iron-wood, their trunks as wide as houses, creating a canopy that locked out the sky. A distance that would have taken a car a few days on Earth took weeks of hard riding here.
The wildlife, too, was a brutal reminder that he was no longer home. A stray wolf here was not a scavenger; it was a muscle-bound beast capable of tearing through standard leather armor, requiring blessed-enhanced steel to put down. The world was bigger, stronger, and more dangerous in every metric.
Kaelen did not let them rest. The training continued in the saddle and by the campfires. Asterion ground away at the technique while rain lashed against his face, while wind howled through mountain passes, and while the sun beat down on dusty plains. He realized that the training was designed to break the mind, and his mind was already broken.
One night, deep in the wildlands, camped under a sky crowded with unfamiliar stars, he stopped fighting. He let the full, agonizing weight of his sorrow settle on him.
He took that weight and dropped it on the energy in his core.
Click.
The pain vanished, replaced by a profound, solid coldness. A single drop of Crucible Faith formed in his core.
He had done it. Seven months.
He opened his eyes. Elian smiled across the dying fire. "Welcome to the club, old man."
Asterion felt the new power. It felt like he had swallowed a cannonball.
He knew something else now: Once a practitioner forms their first hundred drops of liquid faith, the process becomes exponentially easier. The already condensed energy can be used to exert pressure on the gaseous Aether, effectively letting power crush power.
"We're here," Kaelen said, his back to them.
Asterion stood, feeling strong for the first time in his life. He looked up.
Ahead, silhouetted against the rising sun, was a stark, martial fortress.
"The Paragon's Rest," Kaelen said. "A sanctum dedicated to the test of steel. You have learned to build your foundation. Now... you will learn how to break another's. I was raised here, it has its own beauty."