Can two completely different people grow the same way?
Can someone raised in warmth truly understand what it means to be born without anyone to love you, and no one who loves you?
Can two races, shaped by different histories, fears, and instincts, feel the same emotions?
Perhaps in fragments.
But the way they were raised, the way they lived, the way they communicated, their ideals, their instincts, their patterns of thought, were entirely different.
Training was no different.
From high above, the burned forest looked still. Ash drifted downward in slow spirals. Smoke coiled upward in thin, exhausted ribbons.
Beneath that silence...
Goblins ran.
They scrambled through the charred undergrowth, fighting for hollows, for collapsed roots, for narrow gaps between stone and ash. One guy wedged themselves beneath a fallen trunk. Another tried to force their way in. Panic turned to shoving. Shoving turned to claws.
Fear made them small.
Except one.
The father.
He was not hiding.
He was searching.
Eyes wide. Breath ragged. Moving not away from danger, but toward it.
He wanted to be seen.
He wanted the knights to notice him.
He wanted his loyalty recorded.
He wanted the Vice Captain to hear of him. The Crown Prince to remember him.
He ran toward approval as if it were salvation.
So consumed by that hunger that he forgot something simpler.
What it meant to have a son.
What it meant to protect him.
What it meant to choose him.
A child dreams of a father who fights for him.
This father fought to destroy the only future that child could inherit.
If he had slowed down, if he had looked carefully, he would have noticed something strange.
The ten knights assigned to sweep the forest were not hunting.
They walked through the ash lazily.
One complained about soot in his armor.
Another laughed at a joke half-swallowed by smoke.
They kicked at debris. They spoke casually.
They had been ordered not to kill.
Only to flush the goblins out. To scatter them. Nothing more.
The only one truly hunting...
Was the father.
He did not see the difference.
He did not notice the absence of urgency.
He did not notice that he alone ran as if survival depended on it.
Pain tore through his body as he moved.
Not fear.
The shackles.
Spirit stones embedded in his flesh pulsed violently with each step. The chain he had willingly wrapped around his own neck tightened, feeding on his devotion.
He wore it proudly.
Called it loyalty.
The pain was constant.
He did not slow.
Because familiar pain was easier than unfamiliar freedom.
And so, he ran...
Blinded.
He was now fighting to destroy the only thing that might one day love him.
Near the forest, Blondie approached the Vice Captain.
"What exactly are your plans?" he asked. "If not to destroy them, then what?"
The Vice Captain did not look at him.
"To nourish."
He waited.
"The current generation is already spent," the Vice Captain said calmly. "Weak in mind. Weak in body. Weak in spirit. They will not produce anything of value."
His gaze rested on the horizon.
"So I cultivate the next."
Blondie's expression hardened slightly. "Through terror?"
"Through divergence."
The Vice Captain turned to him.
"A unique ability does not grow in comfort. It grows under fracture and pressure."
He paused.
"Their grandfather attempted to chain himself."
"That was the catalyst."
Blondie understood immediately.
"You split the inheritance."
"Yes."
"One path tightens the chain further than the grandfather ever did. Pushes devotion into madness."
"And the other?" he asked.
"Learns to break it."
Silence stretched between them.
Two extremes create opportunity.
They increase the probability of the unique ability evolving.
And even if neither of them achieves that evolution, the instability they generate will not disappear. It will carry forward.
Their children will inherit not just the ability, but the fracture.
And with that fracture, the chances of awakening will be higher.
He looked back toward the ash-filled sky.
"Ability does not advance unless the holder undergoes a mental shift severe enough to alter identity. Ordinary suffering does nothing."
Blondie crossed his arms. "It is hereditary."
"It is not singular," the Vice Captain replied evenly.
"I expect little from this generation," he continued. "They have not even stabilized Phase One. They have barely touched it. Nothing more."
"And that guy?" Blondie asked.
The Vice Captain's eyes sharpened.
"If one chooses deeper submission and the other chooses absolute rebellion…"
He let the thought settle.
"Then Phase One may awaken naturally."
"And if they fail?"
"Then they confirm what they already are."
No emotion entered his voice.
"They were never worth investing in."
Blondie studied him.
"You are gambling on psychological collapse."
"No."
The Vice Captain faced the burned forest fully.
"I am cultivating it."
Ash drifted between them.
Behind the smoke and scattered goblins, two extremes were being shaped by forces neither understood.
One tightening the chain.
One feeling its weight.