The raid came at dawn.
Helios was on the roof, watching the sun rise, when he saw the smoke. Three columns of it, black and greasy, rising from the farms outside the western gate. Then came the screams—distant, thin, like birds being pulled apart.
He had read about border raids. In his past life, they were footnotes in history books: "Bronze Age conflict was characterized by small-scale raiding for livestock and captives." Clean words. Sterile.
The screams were not sterile.
Helios climbed down from the roof and ran inside. Karya was already awake, her face pale.
"Lock the door," Helios said. "Don't open it for anyone you don't know."
"What about you?"
"I'm going to the wall."
"Helios—"
But he was already gone.
---
The streets were chaos. People running, shouting, clutching children. A merchant dragged a cart full of amphorae, abandoning half of them in the dust. A soldier ran past, helmet askew, sword drawn.
Helios followed the soldier.
The western gate was open. Guards were forming a shield wall, but they were outnumbered. The raiders had come fast—maybe fifty of them, mounted on rough ponies, armed with swords and axes. They wore no armor, just leather and fur. Their faces were painted with ash.
Luwians, Helios realized. Raiders from the south. They come every few years, but never this deep.
He should have stayed behind the wall. He was nine years old. He had no armor, no shield, no place in a battle.
But his feet kept moving.
He climbed the interior scaffolding to the top of the wall. From there, he could see everything: the raiders circling a burning farmhouse, the guards trying to form a line, a woman running with a child in her arms—
A raider on horseback cut her down.
Helios watched her fall. Watched the child tumble, roll, lie still. Watched the raider wheel his horse and ride toward the gate.
She's dead, Helios thought. That woman is dead. That child might be dead. And I'm standing here doing nothing.
His hands were shaking. Not from fear. From anger.
No. Not anger. Something colder.
He climbed down from the wall.
---
The fighting had spilled inside the gate.
A handful of raiders had broken through the shield wall and were hacking at civilians. A guard was on the ground, clutching his stomach. A woman was screaming over a body.
Helios saw a raider cut down an old man—the fig seller from the agora. The one who had wept when Helios survived the fall.
He was kind, Helios thought. He sold me figs once. He called me "little prince."
The raider turned. Saw Helios. Grinned.
It was not a cruel grin. It was the grin of a man who saw an easy kill. A boy. Alone. Unarmed.
Helios was not unarmed.
He had strapped the bronze sword to his belt before leaving the house. He didn't remember doing it. His body had moved on its own.
He drew the sword.
The raider laughed. "Little boy has a little knife."
Helios didn't answer. He was thinking about the woman with the child. The old fig seller. The guard clutching his stomach.
They're dead because this man chose to kill them.
The raider raised his axe. It was a heavy thing, iron-headed, notched from previous kills. He swung.
Helios moved.
Not fast. Not superhuman. Just correctly. He stepped inside the swing, let the axe pass behind him, and brought his sword up under the raider's arm.
The bronze found the gap between leather and flesh.
The raider's eyes went wide. He made a sound—not a scream, not a gasp. A question. As if he couldn't believe what was happening.
Helios pulled the sword out. The raider fell.
Blood. So much blood. It pooled on the cobblestones, dark and thick. It smelled like copper and salt.
Helios stood over the body. His hands were steady. His breathing was calm.
I just killed a man, he thought.
He waited for the horror. For the guilt. For the shaking.
Nothing came.
He felt... empty. Not cold. Not numb. Just empty. As if the part of him that should have reacted had been replaced by a quiet hum.
He looked at his sword. The bronze was warm. Brighter than before.
A golden glow flickered at the edge of his vision. He blinked. It was gone.
What was that?
Another raider was running toward him. Helios raised his sword.
---
The battle lasted another hour.
Helios fought three more raiders. Killed two. The third ran. He didn't chase. He didn't celebrate. He just stood in the blood-soaked street, breathing, waiting for something to feel.
Nothing did.
When the guards finally pushed the raiders back, Androkles found him.
The scarred man was bleeding from a cut on his arm. His sword was red to the hilt. He looked at Helios—at the bodies around him, at the bronze sword dripping in his hand—and his face went pale.
"You killed them."
"They were going to kill more people."
"That's not an answer."
Helios looked up at him. "It's the only one I have."
Androkles stared at him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. "Come on. Your mother will be worried."
Helios followed him home. He didn't look back at the bodies.
---
Karya was waiting at the door.
She didn't scream. Didn't cry. She just looked at the blood on his tunic, on his hands, on his face. Then she pulled him inside and held him.
"You're alive," she whispered. "You're alive."
"I killed people," Helios said.
Karya's arms tightened around him. "I know."
"Aren't you angry?"
She pulled back and looked at him. Her eyes were wet, but her voice was steady.
"I'm angry that you had to. I'm angry that the world is like this. But I'm not angry at you." She touched his cheek. "You're my son. I will never be angry at you for surviving."
Helios wanted to cry. He wanted to shake and sob and let out everything that was coiled inside him.
But the tears wouldn't come. The emptiness was still there, humming quietly, waiting.
"I don't feel anything," he said.
Karya pulled him close again. "You will. Give it time."
---
That night, Helios lay on his sleeping mat and stared at the ceiling.
The faces of the men he killed floated behind his eyes. Not haunting him. Just... there. Like photographs in an old album.
He remembered their eyes. The first one—the one who had grinned—had brown eyes, bloodshot, with a small scar on his left cheek. The second had been younger, maybe eighteen, with a gap between his front teeth. The third had been afraid. He had begged, in a language Helios didn't understand, before Helios's sword cut his throat.
I killed them, Helios thought again. And I don't feel bad.
That should have scared him. In his past life, he had never hurt anyone physically. He had caused harm indirectly—through investments, through decisions, through the cold arithmetic of profit and loss. But he had never looked a man in the eye and ended his life.
Now he had. And the only thing he felt was curiosity.
Why don't I feel anything?
He thought about Karya's words: You will. Give it time.
Maybe she was right. Maybe the guilt would come later, when the adrenaline faded, when the emptiness filled with something else.
Or maybe he was broken. Maybe the reincarnation had scrambled something inside him. Maybe the investor who had watched markets crash without flinching had become a boy who watched men die without flinching.
He closed his eyes.
Behind his lids, a golden glow flickered. Warm. Quiet. Present.
He opened his eyes. The glow was gone.
What is happening to me?
He didn't have an answer. He fell asleep with the question echoing in his skull.
---
Lyra found him on the roof the next morning.
She didn't say anything. She just sat down beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
"People are saying you killed four raiders," she said.
"Three. One ran."
"That's not better."
"I know."
They sat in silence. The sun was rising, painting the rooftops gold. Somewhere below, a woman was crying.
"Are you okay?" Lyra asked.
Helios thought about it. "I don't know."
"That's a honest answer."
"I try to be honest. With you, at least."
Lyra took his hand. Her fingers were rough from working leather. Warm.
"You're still my friend," she said. "Even if you're a killer now."
"I don't want to be a killer."
"Then don't kill anymore."
Helios looked at his hands. Clean now. Karya had scrubbed the blood off with lye soap and a cloth.
"It's not that simple," he said. "The world doesn't let you choose."
Lyra was quiet for a moment. Then she squeezed his hand.
"Then change the world."
Helios almost laughed. It was such a child's answer—simple, impossible, beautiful.
"How?" he asked.
"I don't know. You're the smart one." She stood up. "Figure it out."
She climbed down from the roof, leaving Helios alone with the sun.
He watched the light spread across the city. The smoke from yesterday's fires had cleared. The birds were singing again.
Change the world, he thought. Maybe not. But maybe I can change myself.
He didn't know how. He didn't know if it was possible.
But for the first time since killing those men, he felt something.
Hope.
Small. Fragile. But there.
---
END OF CHAPTER SEVEN