The last thing Argus remembered from his first life was not the blade.
It was the sound.
Stone cracking. Metal screaming. The kind of noise a home makes when it stops being a home.
He had been running through corridors he knew by heart, corridors he had walked a thousand times as a child and a hundred times as a man, and every step had felt wrong because the air had changed. It tasted like ash and wet iron. People were shouting names that meant nothing anymore. Orders. Prayers. Warnings.
Then the blade came, fast and clean, from an angle he never expected.
He tried to turn.
He was too late.
Pain flared once, sharp enough to empty his lungs. The world tilted. He hit the floor, cheek pressed to cold stone that was already vibrating from impacts above.
Someone ran past him. Someone stepped on his hand.
He did not have the strength to be angry.
His vision narrowed to a slit. In that slit, he saw a banner fall. The crest that had ruled his life, and the lives of everyone he had ever known, crumpled into the dust like it was cloth and not history.
House Aethra.
Gone.
Not today, a part of him tried to insist, not like this. There was supposed to be time. There were supposed to be moves, counters, plans that he never got to make.
He felt something colder than fear settle in his chest.
Regret.
Not regret that he died. Regret that he had lived wrong.
He had been average. He had been cautious. He had been polite to people who would later smile as they watched his world burn. He had assumed strength would show up when it mattered.
Strength did not show up.
The stone beneath him was warming with his blood. His heartbeat slowed, stubbornly, like it wanted to argue with the end.
In the final breath he managed, Argus thought of one thing.
If I ever get another chance…
His eyes tried to focus on the falling banner.
I will not waste it.
The world went dark.
He woke to sunlight and the smell of boiled herbs.
For a moment, he thought he was dreaming. The light was too soft. The air was too clean. There was no ash. No screams. No iron.
His body felt wrong. Too small. Too light. His arms were short. His fingers looked like a child's fingers.
He tried to sit up and discovered he could barely lift his head.
Panic rose, fast and ugly, but it had nowhere to go. His chest didn't have the capacity for it. His lungs were shallow. His throat made a sound that was closer to a whimper than a word.
A shadow moved beside the bed.
A woman leaned into view, and Argus froze.
Her face was familiar in the way a memory is familiar. Not because he had seen her often, but because her absence had shaped him. A warmth he had forgotten existed pressed against his ribs, so sudden it hurt.
"Argus?" she whispered, as if the name might break him. Her hand brushed his forehead. Her palm was calloused, not soft like noblewomen's. "Easy. You're safe."
Safe.
The word struck him harder than any blade. His mind scrambled for anchors.
The room was modest. No gilded pillars. No carved marble. A small window with simple cloth curtains. A wooden basin. A single candle.
Not the main house.
Branch quarters.
His eyes flicked to her clothes. Plain, worn, carefully mended. No crest.
His mother.
Alive.
His throat tightened. The feeling was too large for his small body to hold. He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't obey.
She smiled anyway, the kind of tired smile someone gives when they are trying to make a harsh world look gentle.
"You scared me," she said, smoothing his hair. "You stopped crying. Just stared. Like you were listening to something I couldn't hear."
Argus stared back, unblinking.
He was in the past.
Not just any past, either. He knew the smell of these rooms. He knew the exact angle of sunlight in the mornings. He knew where the floor creaked near the door because he had learned to step around it when he was older and didn't want anyone to hear him leave.
His mind, despite being trapped in a child's skull, moved with terrifying clarity. He counted details the way he always had when he was afraid.
The basin had a crack on the left side. The candle was burned down to a stub. The curtain had a tear at the bottom corner.
This was real.
His heart began to race, and this time it was not panic.
It was a possibility.
He tried to breathe slowly, the way he had trained himself to in his first life. It didn't work as well with a small body, but the effort grounded him.
Another chance.
Not a dream. Not a hallucination. A real chance.
His mother pressed the back of her fingers to his cheek, checking for fever. "Still warm," she murmured, more to herself. "I'll get more water."
She stood, and for a second Argus wanted to grab her wrist. To hold her there. To make sure she didn't vanish like everything else had.
But he couldn't. His hands barely clenched.
She left the room, and the quiet returned.
Argus lay still, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and tried to think like a person who had not died.
How old am I?
He searched his memory, not the distant memory of his first life, but the old familiar timeline of his childhood. The fever. The weak body. The endless remarks from servants who thought he couldn't understand.
He was five. Maybe six.
That meant the House was intact. The Patriarch was alive. His siblings were already beginning to separate into factions.
It also meant the rules were already in motion.
In his first life, he had stumbled through childhood like someone walking in fog, always assuming the fog would lift later. He had believed if he worked hard, if he endured, he would eventually be acknowledged.
He had been wrong.
Acknowledgment in House Aethra was not earned by effort. It was granted by usefulness.
And usefulness was decided early.
The door creaked. His mother returned with a cup. She eased him up, careful, supporting his head like she had done countless times. He hated how weak he felt.
He drank slowly, swallowing herbal bitterness.
"You'll be alright," she said softly. "Your father's people came by. They asked questions. They always do."
His father's people.
Not his father.
Argus kept his face blank, as much as a child could. Inside, something cold settled into place. That was familiar too.
The Patriarch of House Aethra did not come to sickrooms. Not for branch-born children. Not for problems that did not threaten the House.
Not unless the world was watching.
His mother watched him drink, then dabbed his lips with a cloth. Her eyes lingered on him with an expression Argus recognized. Fear, yes, but also defiance.
She was lower class. She had no family name worth speaking. She had no protection except the fact that the Patriarch had once chosen her.
A choice that created Argus.
A choice that made her a target.
He didn't know yet how she would die in this timeline. He only knew she had died before he was old enough to stop it.
That would not happen again.
Not if he had anything to say about it.
As if the thought summoned the world's cruelty, voices drifted from outside the room. Children. Older. Confident.
His mother stiffened.
The door opened without knocking.
A boy stepped in, flanked by two servants who looked uncomfortable but did not intervene.
He wore fine training clothes with the Aethra crest stitched in silver thread. His hair was neatly tied. His posture was practiced.
Vaelor.
The brother closest in age, the one who learned early that status was a weapon you could swing without getting blood on yourself.
Vaelor's eyes flicked to Argus, then away, like he was checking a stain on a sleeve. "He's awake."
His mother stood straighter, as if her spine could block the boy's gaze. "This is my room. You should knock."
Vaelor smiled. It wasn't warm. It wasn't even cruel. It was the kind of smile someone gives when they're testing how much power they have.
"I'm allowed," he said. "Mother said I should see."
Mother.
Not their mother. The noble matriarch. The woman who had given birth to the eight main heirs. The one who ruled the inner household with quiet authority.
Argus's mother did not have the right to be called that in this place.
Vaelor stepped closer to the bed, hands clasped behind his back, performing politeness. "You looked dead yesterday."
Argus stared at him.
Vaelor's eyes narrowed, sensing something in the stare that didn't fit. "Don't glare. It's rude."
Argus didn't blink.
In his first life, he had flinched. He had looked away. He had played the part of the weak half-blood because he believed resistance would bring punishment.
He understood now that punishment came either way.
Vaelor leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper that was meant to be private. "They're saying you don't have synchronism. They're saying you're a waste. If you cry again and embarrass the House, I'll make sure you regret it."
His mother's hand tightened on the cloth. "Enough," she snapped, sharper than her station allowed. "Leave."
Vaelor glanced at her as if noticing she existed for the first time. The servants behind him shifted, uneasy.
Then he laughed, soft and light. "You can't order me."
He turned his attention back to Argus. "When you're better, you should come outside. The other kids want to see if you can even hold a training blade."
He left, unbothered, like he had not just threatened a sick child.
The door closed. The room felt smaller.
Argus's mother exhaled shakily, then forced herself to breathe evenly. She looked down at Argus, and her eyes were wet.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm trying. I'm trying to keep you safe."
Argus wanted to tell her it wasn't her fault.
He also wanted to tell her it was worse than she knew.
But he couldn't.
So he did the only thing he could.
He lifted his small hand, slow and unsteady, and gripped her finger.
Her breath caught. She squeezed back gently, like she was afraid he would break.
Outside, the courtyard noise returned. Distant shouts. Training calls. The rhythm of a House that raised children like weapons.
Argus listened, mapping the sounds. He could already picture the courtyard. He could picture the practice rings. He could picture where Vaelor would stand, surrounded by children eager to please the main branch.
He could picture which servants would watch without intervening.
He could picture which sibling would pretend not to notice.
And somewhere above it all, he could picture the Patriarch, not watching from a balcony, not judging, not caring. A presence like a mountain that did not move for ants.
Argus closed his eyes.
He had been given another life.
That did not mean he had been given mercy.
His mother brushed his hair back. "Rest," she said. "Please."
Argus let his breathing slow again. He rested, because he needed to. But his mind stayed awake.
If he moved too quickly, he would draw attention.
If he moved too slowly, he would die the same way as before.
He needed time. He needed information. He needed to build a foundation that no one could see until it was too late.
In the quiet behind his eyelids, something flickered. Not a voice, not a dream.
A sensation like a page turning.
A cold, precise awareness pressed against the edge of his thoughts, as if something unseen had opened its eye and looked back at him.
For a heartbeat, Argus felt the urge to reach for it.
Then he stopped himself.
Not yet.
He wasn't going to grab at power like a drowning man this time.
He would learn the current first.
He would learn his enemies.
He would learn his family.
And when the time came, he would choose what to become, not what they allowed him to be.
Argus opened his eyes.
His mother was still there, watching him like she was trying to memorize his face.
He memorized hers instead.
Because this time, he promised himself, he would not let history take her quietly.