Brandt left the infirmary, the memory of its dry, furnace-like heat already fading, replaced by the familiar, damp chill of the keep. His small body felt stiff, his joints protesting with a dull, residual ache.
His steps were hesitant at first, but his body remembered.
He moved into the main artery of the keep, a long, lightless corridor of cold, dark stone. The air was a familiar, heavy, and damp blanket, smelling of ancient dust, cold metal, and the faint, sour tang of unwashed bodies.
His small, leather-soled boots, a fresh, dry pair he'd found by the cot, made a hollow, lonely tapping sound on the uneven, grey flagstones.
His legs, stiff and sore, moved with an ingrained, practised confidence. He knew this turn. He knew, by the faint, almost imperceptible dip in the floor, that he was passing the archway to the main armoury. He knew, by the shift in the air current, that the passage to the lower barracks was three steps ahead on his left.
'This is... my new reality. I am a ghost, haunting a child... who is also me.'
The thought was a passing, useless thing. He was just Brandt. And Brandt knew this keep like the back of his own, small hand. He navigated the labyrinthine, torch-lit gloom not by sight, but by a deep, cellular memory.
He pushed through a heavy, hide-covered archway, the thick, cured leather scraping stiffly against the stone.
He had emerged onto a high, covered walkway, a stone artery that clung to the inner wall of the keep. Below him, the central courtyard lay in a deep, profound shadow, a square of darkness where the well, and his death, waited.
He looked up.
The sky was not black. It was a deep, bruised, and violent purple, the last, dying stain of a sun that had set hours ago. A few, sharp, impossibly bright stars had begun to glitter, cold and indifferent, in the deepening void.
'Hours. I've lost... hours.'
The thought brought a new, pragmatic, and strangely childish concern.
'The evening meal. I've missed it.'
It was a flicker of genuine, nine-year-old annoyance.
'It doesn't matter. Vorin will have handled it.'
He felt a strange, new, and unsettling feeling. The detached, clinical realisation of privilege. In his old life, a problem was a thing he had to solve. Here… his problems were… managed.
He continued along the walkway, his small boots silent on the stone. He saw a figure, a pale smudge of motion in the deepening gloom.
A young woman, perhaps a year or two older than Elara, was hurrying along the lower path, her head down, a large, woven basket of folded linens clutched in her arms.
He didn't say a word. He didn't have to.
She sensed him. Or perhaps she just looked up, a random, unfortunate glance.
She froze.
It was not a polite pause. It was a full, instant, and animalistic stop. Her head snapped up, her eyes, wide and white in the gloom, fixed on his small, shadowy form. The basket in her arms trembled, her body tensed as if to flee.
'She's terrified.'
He stopped. He had to soften his new, childish voice consciously.
"A moment."
His voice was high. Clear. It sounded frail, but in the cold, still air, it cut like a shard of ice.
The girl flinched, as if he had struck her. She dropped the heavy basket, the linens spilling onto the damp stone. She fell into a low, clumsy, and panicked curtsy, her body almost parallel to the ground.
"Young Master!" Her voice was a choked, breathless squeak.
He hated this. It was a new, raw, and ugly power dynamic.
"I... missed the evening meal," he said, his voice measured, polite. "Please, have some leftovers sent to my quarters. Whatever is simple."
"Yes, Young Master! At once, Young Master! Immediately!"
She didn't even retrieve her basket. She didn't look at the spilled linens. She just… fled. She scrambled to her feet, her soft shoes slapping, desperate, on the stone, and vanished back into the dark corridor she had come from.
She was presumably running to the kitchens.
Brandt stood, alone, in the cold, purple twilight.
'How... strange.'
'That wasn't respect. That was terror.'
The thought was chilling.
'This power, this title... it's a tool. A dangerous one. And...' he admitted, as he turned and continued walking, '...deeply, profoundly, unsettling.'
He reached his own door. It was heavy, dark oak, banded with black iron. It was, his memories supplied, identical to his sisters', and to the guest quarters. He lifted the thick, iron latch—there was no lock—and pushed.
The room was a box.
'A luxurious box,' his mind supplied, his gaze sweeping the space.
The walls were not wood or plaster. They were the same, dark, unyielding, two-foot-thick granite blocks as the keep's outer shell. It was a cell, but a large one.
A massive, four-poster bed dominated the far wall, its heavy, dark wood frame piled high with thick, cured, fur-pelt blankets. A heavy, dark, and practical wooden desk and chair sat in one corner. A large, empty-looking wardrobe stood in the other.
On the walls, thick, woven tapestries depicted a grim, bloody, and heroic-looking battle. His mind knew it was the founding of House Rimescar. His mind also knew they weren't for decoration.
He moved, his body aching, across the thick, woven rugs that covered the cold, stone floor. He walked to the fireplace.
It was a smaller, personal version of the infirmary's, but it was dying. A few, sullen, orange embers pulsed weakly in a thick bed of grey ash. The room's warmth was already gone, replaced by the seeping, tomb-like chill of the stone.
'I'll need to stock that soon.' The thought was automatic, followed, a second later, by a cold correction. '...or a servant will.'
He turned, his gaze falling on the room's single window.
It was not a window, not really. It was a long, narrow, vertical slit cut deep into the thick, granite wall. It was an arrow-slit, designed for an archer to defend the keep, not for a boy to enjoy a view. A heavy, stiff, oiled-hide shutter covered it.
He pushed the shutter aside. It was heavy, and it scraped.
A stream of frigid, clean air poured in, smelling of pine and distant, sharp ice.
The sky, in the time it had taken him to walk here, had finally, fully, turned. It was a deep, perfect, and terrifying black, littered with a spray of cold, white, burning stars.
He let the heavy, hide shutter fall back, the thud of it sealing the room, sealing him in.
And the day… this impossible, new, and endless day… it finally broke him.
The stiffness in his joints. The dull, throbbing ache from the well. The profound, cellular exhaustion of his new body. The mental, screaming, hurricane of the memory-merge. The terror of the Lilith-dream.
It all crested in that one, silent, sealed moment. It became an unbearable, physical wave of pure, absolute exhaustion.
He didn't bother with the fur blankets. He didn't undress. He just stumbled the last few steps, his small legs heavy and useless. He collapsed, face down, onto the rough, fur-pelted bed.
His body was a leaden, useless, aching weight. He buried his face in the cured fur. It smelled of dust, salt, and a faint, animal musk.
He lay there, his mind whirring.
'I'm... not... overwhelmed.'
It was a strange, clinical, and distant observation. He should be. He should be a screaming, catatonic, gibbering wreck. He had died. He had been… reborn. He should be shattered.
But he wasn't.
The shock, the sheer, mind-breaking, impossible shock... it had passed. Or perhaps, his mind had simply done what it always did. It had processed the trauma. It had filed it away.
The facts were the facts.
He was here. She was the cause. And she was still bound to him.
'What... is her game?' he thought, his face still buried in the fur. 'The "reward"? The "fresh start"?' It was a lie. A performance. A bored demon with a new, elaborate toy.
'Is she... listening? Right now?'
He probed his own mind, that dark, familiar, internal space. He braced for her cold, melodic, mocking voice. He waited for the chill.
Silence.
That new, profound, and terrible silence. It was the most terrifying, unnatural, and wrong thing he had ever experienced.
He lay there, face down in the dark, the scent of dust and cured animal hide filling his nostrils. His old life was a lie. This new one was a brutal, unknown, and hostile variable. He was a piece on a board he didn't understand, in a game played by a demon.
He concluded, with a grim, cold finality, that stressing over her unknowable motives was a waste of energy. It didn't matter. He was here. She was the reason. The variables were set.
'For now...' he thought, the decision settling like a block of ice in his gut, '...for this life, I only have three goals.'
Live. Live freely, on his own terms, not as a tool for a police department, a therapist, or a demon.
Explore this new, brutal, magical world.
And somehow, some way, find the power to kill Lilith.
'Power.'
That was the key. The ticket. The only path. And his path, Maester Vorin had just confirmed, had already begun.
He suddenly recalled the sensation from the infirmary. The tingling. The static charge on his skin that had been drowned out by the flood of memories, by the day's sheer exhaustion.
He closed his eyes, his small body still, and focused.
He pushed past the ache in his joints, past the phantom cold of the well, past the swirling, chaotic mess of his two lives, and reached for that single, alien sensation.
It was still there.
A faint, prickling energy, like an invisible fur blanket settling over his skin. But it wasn't just on his skin. He realised, as he focused, that it was in the air. The air was thick with it. It was in the cold granite walls, in the dusty fur blankets, in the very blood humming through his own, new veins.
'Mana.'
The building block. The foundation. And now that he was Awakened, he could… tap into it.
He relaxed his body, letting his mind sink into that feeling.
There was a second, metaphysical network, a system of veins, overlaid on his physical body. And they were… hollow. Empty.
'Logically, then…'
He did what was only logical. He tried to fill them.
He focused on the ambient mana in the air, that thick, prickling, invisible energy, and he… pulled. It was not a physical act. It was an act of pure, focused, desperate will.
It was like trying to breathe water.
At first, nothing. Then, a resistance. The mana was wild and chaotic, and it did not want to be contained. But he, Brandt, held his focus, his will a cold, sharp, iron spike.
Slowly… agonisingly… it began to move.
A single, cold trickle. It flowed from the air, through his skin, and into one of the empty, waiting channels in his arm. It was a slow, complicated, and deliberate process. He was a dry sponge, trying to soak up an entire, raging ocean, one drop at a time.
He lay there, in the dark, for what felt like an hour. Breathing. Focusing. Pulling.
The channels filled. The trickle became a flow, and the flow settled, until every single, hollow vein was brimming with this new, cold, electric power.
The moment it reached full capacity, he let out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding.
He could feel it.
It wasn't an explosive, divine power. He didn't feel like a god. He felt… whole. He felt a relatively noticeable, undeniable increase in… everything. His small, aching body felt stronger. The exhaustion felt… distant. His mind felt sharp, clear, and cold.
Clack.
A sharp, sudden, hesitant knock at his door.
Brandt sat up, the feeling of the mana thrumming, contained, inside him. The knock came again, harder this time.
"Enter."
The heavy, oaken door scraped open. The same, terrified servant girl from the walkway stood in the frame, silhouetted against the faint torchlight of the hall. She was holding a simple, wooden tray.
She scurried in, her head bowed, her entire body trembling. She didn't dare look at him.
"Young Master..." she whispered, her voice a reedy, panicked thing. "My apologies. This... this was all I could find. Th-the main course was... gone."
She placed the tray on the desk, curtsied, and fled the room, pulling the door shut with a solid, final thud.
Brandt stared at the tray.
It held a small, steaming, earthenware bowl of thin, greyish soup and a single, hard-looking chunk of dark bread. He picked up the bread. It was stale.
'Gone...' he thought, a flicker of Brandt's childish, noble annoyance. 'My sisters. Alara and Alise. They probably beat me to it.'
He sat at the desk.
The soup was watery, tasting of little more than salt and some unidentifiable, stringy root. But it was hot. He ate. He tore the hard bread, dipped it in the soup, and devoured the meal in a dozen, quick, efficient bites.
It wasn't enough. He was still hungry, but at least he was no longer starving.
He pushed the tray away. He was too… energised. Too excited by this new, tangible, real magic to even consider sleep. He needed to test it. He needed to know his limits.
He stood in the centre of the dark, cold room. He started simply. Pushups.
His small, weak arms, which had ached just moments before, now felt... solid. He pushed, his form perfect, his movements clean. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. He felt no fatigue. The mana was feeding him, enhancing the muscle, taking the strain.
He stopped, moving to pace the room. He walked, then broke into a small, silent sprint, his bare feet padding on the rugs. He felt faster. Lighter.
He could feel the mana… depleting. It was a slow, steady drain, like a bucket with a small hole.
And with the depletion came a new sensation.
It started at the base of his skull, a faint, dull throb.
'A migraine.'
He knew this feeling. The start of a familiar, old-world pain. He stopped pacing, his hand going to his head.
He let the mana recover. He sat and, as before, willed the ambient energy back into his channels. It was faster this time, but the headache, the phantom migraine, remained.
'So, that's the warning.'
His body was telling him to stop. But what happened if he didn't? What happened at… empty?
He tried to search his new memories, Brandt's memories. He found… nothing.
'I'll have to go to the keep's library tomorrow. There is... so much... I'm missing.'
But the library was tomorrow. The limit was now.
He was driven by that old, familiar, obsessive need—the need to find the edge. To know the answer. To solve the puzzle.
He stood up. He began to run again, back and forth, in the dark, granite box. He ran until the migraine was a sharp, pounding, white-hot spike behind his eyes.
He ignored it.
He dropped to the floor, forcing his arms to move. Pushup, after pushup. His enhanced strength was fading. His muscles were burning, this time for real. The mana was almost gone.
He could feel his body, his new, small, and fragile body, give him a final, clear, biological choice.
Stop. Stop now, and return to a normal, un-enhanced level of function.
Or... keep going.
He chose the latter.
He pushed himself up, one last time. He put all his will, all his focus, into that single, physical act. He demanded one last, final drop of power.