Five hundred and twelve years was a long time to be dead.
Longer than I ever expected to stay anywhere, honestly.
Yet here I was, named as Aurelian Soul Bourne, twelve years old, staring at my reflection in a cracked washbasin and trying to reconcile the face of a child with fifty-five years of memories crammed into a skull that hadn't even finished growing.
The greatest joke the universe ever played on me wasn't the dying part. Death, I'd accepted.
Death had been the plan, more or less.
Destroy the Merger device, take the Abyssal King with me, save the world.
A fitting end for "the Fool" as they'd called me behind my back.
Bam the Healer. Bam the Background Character. Bam the Man Who Peaked at Being Useful Exactly Once.
As a matter of fact, the punchline was waking up as a child of the Bourne family.
The Bournes
I splashed cold water on my face and watched droplets trail down cheeks that were still soft with baby fat.
My hands small, unmarked, pathetically weak gripped the basin's edge until my knuckles went white.
Back in my day… and gods, wasn't that a strange phrase to think at twelve the Bournes had been court jesters with delusions of greatness.
From memory they were minor nobles who survived on flattery and strategic marriages, always one scandal away from irrelevance.
I remembered them at council meetings, nodding along to whatever the powerful said even with their spines made of something softer than wet bread.
I'd assumed the Abyssal War would have wiped them out just like with natural selection and all that, since parasites rarely survived when their hosts were busy fighting for existence.
But no.
Somehow, impossibly, the Bournes hadn't just survived, they'd thrived.
Five centuries of political maneuvering had elevated them from boot-licking minor nobles to the Ducal House of Eterna, the City of Gold.
The very heart of the continent's wealth and influence now beat to a Bourne rhythm.
The irony was so thick I could choke on it.
Not that any of their genes actually ran through me.
I turned from the basin and surveyed my room, if you could call it that.
Four walls of aging timber, a bed that creaked if I breathed too hard, and a window that let in more draft than light.
The outer-house sat at the edge of the Bourne estate proper, close enough to technically be on family grounds but far enough that the main mansion was just a smear of white marble on the horizon.
"Aurelian! Breakfast!"
My mother's voice drifted up through the floorboards, warm and slightly worried, the way it always was.
Marienne Bourne née nobody-important had married into the weakest branch of an already overdeveloped family tree.
My father, Corwin, was the third son of a fourth son of someone who'd once been relevant three generations ago.
By the time bloodline diluted down to us, we were Bournes in name only.
The main family probably forgot we existed most days.
I certainly hoped they did.
I pushed away from the basin and made my way downstairs.
The kitchen was small, barely large enough for a table that seated three and a hearth that my mother kept burning even in summer.
The smell of fresh bread and something savory… eggs, probably, maybe some of the cured ham father had brought back from the market last week, wrapped around me like a familiar blanket.
"There he is." Marienne turned from the stove, her smile immediate and genuine, though the little crease between her brows never quite smoothed out.
"I was starting to think you'd sleep through the whole morning."
"Growing boys need rest," Corwin said from his seat at the table, not looking up from the letter he was reading.
His voice carried that measured calm I'd come to associate with him, steady as an anchor, even when the waters got rough.
I slid into my usual chair.
"My bad… just had a strange dream."
Although it wasn't entirely a lie. The memories of fire and screaming and the Abyssal King's impossible geometry had a way of bleeding into sleep.
Marienne set a plate in front of me. Eggs, ham, bread still warm from the oven. More food than many families in the outer districts saw in a week, but laughably modest by main-family standards.
"You've been having those often lately." She touched my shoulder as she passed.
"Should I send for a healer? The Ashford boy down the lane, his mother knows someone who—"
"I'm fine." I picked up my fork. "Really."
Corwin finally set down his letter, and I caught the slight tightening around his eyes.
Whatever news it contained wasn't good, though he'd never say so in front of mother.
"The Day of Golden Truth is next week," he said instead, smoothly redirecting.
"We received word this morning. The main family expects all branches to attend the gathering at the mansion."
Marienne's hands stilled over the pot she'd been stirring. "All branches? Even..."
"Even us." Corwin's smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "It seems the Duke wishes to present a unified front this year. Something about honoring the ancestors who survived the Abyssal War."
I nearly choked on my eggs.
Five hundred years, and they were still milking that for political theater. I wondered if any of them even remembered what the war had actually been like?
You know… the smell of burning cities, the sound of physical existence splitting, the way hope had tasted like ash in every survivor's mouth.
Probably not I assume.
I mean, history had a way of sanding down the sharp edges until all that remained was pageantry.
"That will be lovely," Marienne said, though her voice pitched higher than usual.
"I'll need to air out your formal coat, Corwin. And Aurelian, we should see if your good trousers still fit—"
"They fit," I said.
"You've grown two inches since spring," Marienne smiled, as if already planning the alterations.
"I'll check them after breakfast."
I didn't argue. The dutiful son never argued.