After Dymas fled, Karya waited three months before finding another sword master. Helios didn't ask why she waited. He knew. She had hoped he would forget about fighting, would settle into being a normal boy, would stop looking at the world like a battlefield.
But Helios couldn't forget. Every morning he sat on the roof and watched the sun rise, and every morning he felt something stir in his chest—not heat, not light, but potential. A coiled spring waiting to release.
He needed to learn how to use it.
The new master's name was Androkles. He was nothing like Dymas. Young—maybe twenty-five—with a scarred face and the kind of quiet confidence that came from actually being good, not just having survived. He had fought in two border wars and walked away from both. The noble houses hired him to train their sons, but he took private students on the side for silver.
Karya paid him in advance. Three months. Enough time, she probably hoped, for Helios to fail or lose interest.
Androkles showed up at the courtyard on a gray morning, carrying a single wooden sword. He looked at Helios. Helios looked back.
"You're the strange one," Androkles said. No malice. Just observation.
"I'm the one who wants to learn," Helios replied.
Androkles grunted. "Wanting isn't enough. Show me what you know."
Helios picked up the wooden sword Dymas had left behind. He took a stance—feet shoulder-width, knees slightly bent, blade held low and forward. It was a hybrid stance, not pure Bronze Age. He had adapted it from memory, blending Kirito's ready posture with the Prince of Persia's low center of gravity.
Androkles tilted his head. "Where did you learn that?"
"I watched. I thought. I moved."
"Show me."
Androkles raised his own wooden sword. He didn't attack—he presented. An opening on the left, a trap. Helios saw it immediately.
Fake opening. He wants me to commit to a cut, then counter.
In his past life, Helios had played chess at a tournament level. He had analyzed market moves that took years to unfold. A feint was just another pattern.
He didn't take the bait. Instead, he stepped back.
Androkles blinked. "You're supposed to attack."
"I'm supposed to survive."
The scarred man's expression shifted. Interest, maybe. Or amusement. "All right, little philosopher. Let's try again."
They circled. Androkles attacked—a real attack this time, fast and controlled. Helios parried. The wooden blades clacked. He felt the impact travel up his arms, but his enhanced body absorbed it easily.
He's holding back, Helios realized. Testing my reflexes, not my strength.
So Helios held back too. He matched Androkles's pace, neither fast nor slow, just there. A wall. A mirror.
After five minutes, Androkles lowered his sword.
"You're not normal."
"I know."
"Do you know why?"
Helios considered lying. Then he considered the truth—or part of it. "I learn fast. I remember everything. And I don't get tired the way I should."
Androkles studied him. Those scarred features were hard to read, but Helios saw something flicker behind his eyes. Not fear. Recognition.
"I've heard stories," Androkles said slowly. "About a boy with golden eyes who sees what's coming. Who survived a fall that should have killed him."
"The stories are exaggerated."
"Are they?"
Helios didn't answer.
Androkles sheathed his wooden sword. "I'll train you. Not because your mother paid me. Because I want to see what you become."
"Is that a compliment or a warning?"
"Both."
---
The lessons began in earnest.
Androkles was a different teacher than Dymas. Where the old mercenary had taught moves, Androkles taught principles. How to read an opponent's weight distribution. How to control distance. How to make your opponent fight your fight, not theirs.
Helios absorbed it all. But he also added.
One afternoon, Androkles demonstrated a standard shield-and-sword formation used by Trojan infantry. Helios watched, nodded, then asked: "What if the second rank dropped their shields and used two-handed spears to stab over the first rank's heads?"
Androkles frowned. "That's not how we fight."
"But would it work?"
The scarred man was quiet for a long moment. Then: "...Maybe. But it's not traditional."
"Tradition gets people killed."
Androkles laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of him. "You're a strange one, boy. But you're not wrong."
Helios didn't tell him that he had seen the formation in a documentary about Alexander's phalanx. Or that he had adapted it from a Total War video game he'd played on sleepless nights. Some knowledge was better left unexplained.
---
The first time Helios held a real sword—bronze, sharp, balanced—he felt something shift inside him.
It was the fifth week of training. Androkles had decided Helios was ready to move past wooden blades. He placed the bronze sword in the boy's hands and stepped back.
"It's not a toy," Androkles said. "One mistake and you'll bleed."
Helios turned the sword over. The edge caught the afternoon light. The metal was warm—warmer than it should have been.
It's just bronze, he told himself. Copper and tin. Nothing magical.
But his fingers tingled.
He swung the sword. A basic cut, horizontal, waist-high. The blade moved faster than it should have. Faster than he should have been able to move it.
Androkles's eyes narrowed. "Again."
Helios swung again. Same speed. Same precision.
"Again."
Ten cuts. Twenty. The sword began to hum—a low vibration that Helios felt in his teeth. The bronze seemed brighter now, almost golden.
Androkles walked over and took the sword from Helios's hands. He examined it. Frowned. Ran his thumb along the flat of the blade.
"It's warm," he said.
"The sun," Helios offered.
Androkles looked at the sky. Cloudy. No direct sunlight.
"The sun," he repeated, unconvinced. But he handed the sword back. "Keep training. But don't show this to anyone else."
"Why not?"
"Because people fear what they don't understand. And fear makes them stupid."
Helios nodded. He had learned that lesson in his past life, watching markets crash because of rumors, watching companies crumble because of panic. Fear was the most dangerous weapon in any world.
---
By the second month, Helios could match Androkles in speed.
Not in experience. Not in cunning. But in reaction time, he was already faster than the grown man. Androkles noticed. Of course he noticed. He started pushing harder, throwing combinations that would have overwhelmed any other child.
Helios parried. Dodged. Countered.
His body moved like water. Not because he had practiced those specific movements—he hadn't. But because he had spent hours in his past life watching anime fight scenes, breaking down the choreography, wondering what it would feel like to move that way.
Now he knew.
Kirito would have spun here, he thought during one exchange, and his body spun—a full rotation, the wooden sword slicing horizontally, forcing Androkles to jump back.
The Prince would have used the wall, he thought in another moment, and he planted his foot against the courtyard wall, pushed off, and came down behind Androkles with the blade at the man's back.
Androkles froze.
They both stood there, breathing hard. Helios's heart was pounding—not from exertion, but from excitement. A feeling he hadn't allowed himself in years.
"You're not just fast," Androkles said quietly. "You're thinking differently. Those moves—I've never seen them."
Helios lowered his sword. "I told you. I watch. I think. I move."
"Where did you learn to watch like that?"
Helios thought of his past life. The boardrooms. The negotiation tables. The way he had learned to read micro-expressions, to predict the next move before his opponent knew they were going to make it.
"I had a good teacher," he said. "Someone who taught me that most people are predictable. They just don't know it."
Androkles studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.
"Whoever that teacher was, I owe them a drink."
"He's dead," Helios said. It wasn't a lie. The man he had been was dead. Buried somewhere in the wreckage of his old life.
"I'm sorry," Androkles said.
Helios shrugged. "I'm not. He taught me everything I needed to survive."
---
The incident happened on a rest day.
Helios was walking through the agora, alone, when a soldier stumbled out of a wine shop. He was drunk—not pleasantly drunk, but the kind of drunk that made men stupid and violent. His sword was drawn. He was shouting at a merchant about a debt, real or imagined.
The merchant backed away, hands raised. "I paid you. Last week. I have witnesses—"
"Liar!" The soldier swung his sword. Not at the merchant—just into the air, a threat. But the blade was sharp, and the street was crowded.
Helios watched. Calculated.
If I do nothing, someone gets hurt. If I intervene, I expose myself.
He thought of Theron. Of the chariot. Of the way his body had moved before his brain caught up.
Damn it.
He walked toward the soldier.
"Put the sword down," Helios said.
The soldier turned. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, with a red face and bloodshot eyes. He looked down at Helios and laughed.
"Go home, boy. This is men's business."
"I'm not asking," Helios said. His voice was calm. Quiet. The same voice he had used in boardrooms when a deal was about to collapse. "Put it down."
The soldier's laugh faded. Something in the boy's eyes made him hesitate. The golden irises, maybe. The absolute stillness.
"Who are you?" the soldier muttered.
Helios didn't answer. He stepped closer.
The soldier raised his sword. Not to attack—to warn. "Back off, or I'll—"
Helios moved.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He just acted.
His left hand shot out, grabbed the soldier's wrist. His right hand struck the base of the man's thumb—a pressure point he had learned from watching judo tutorials on YouTube, years ago, in a life that no longer existed. The soldier's fingers spasmed. The sword fell.
Helios caught it.
Not by the blade. By the hilt. He held it point-down, relaxed, as though he had been holding swords his whole life.
The soldier stared at his empty hand. Then at Helios. His face went from red to white.
"You—"
"Go home," Helios said. "Sleep it off. And don't threaten merchants again."
The soldier stumbled backward. Tripped over a crate. Scrambled to his feet and fled into the crowd.
Silence.
Everyone in the agora was staring at Helios. The merchant. The shoppers. The other soldiers. A woman dropped a basket of apples. They rolled across the cobblestones, unnoticed.
Helios looked down at the sword in his hand. Bronze. Ordinary. But it felt right.
I just disarmed an adult warrior, he thought. In front of witnesses. That was stupid.
But he didn't feel stupid. He felt alive.
He tossed the sword to the merchant. "Here. Sell it. Use the money to leave the city for a few days. That soldier might come back with friends."
The merchant caught the sword awkwardly. "Who—who are you?"
Helios turned and walked away.
"A traveler," he said over his shoulder. "Still learning the road."
---
Karya was waiting for him when he got home.
She didn't shout. She didn't cry. She just stood in the doorway, arms crossed, and looked at him.
"I heard what happened."
"Word travels fast."
"You disarmed a grown man. A soldier. In front of half the agora."
Helios shrugged. "He was drunk. It wasn't hard."
Karya stepped closer. She reached out and touched his face—his cheek, his jaw, as though checking that he was real.
"You're not a child," she whispered. "I don't know what you are. But you're not a child."
Helios leaned into her touch. For a moment, he let himself be small. Let himself be her son, not a reincarnated investor, not a warrior in training. Just a boy who was loved.
"I'm still yours," he said.
Karya's eyes filled with tears. She pulled him into a hug—tight, desperate, the way she had held him the night he was born.
"I know," she said. "That's what scares me."
They stood there in the doorway, mother and son, while the sun set over Troy. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Somewhere beyond the walls, the sea kept whispering.
Helios closed his eyes.
I'm not ready for what's coming, he thought. But I'm learning.
And for now, that was enough.
---
END OF CHAPTER FOUR