The weeks after the raid were strange.
Helios expected whispers. Fear. People crossing the street to avoid him. Instead, the neighbors started nodding at him. The soldiers at the western gate greeted him by name. The merchant who sold figs—the old man's son, now running the stall—gave him free fruit and refused payment.
"You saved us," the young merchant said. "My father... he would have wanted you to have this."
Helios took the figs. He didn't know what to say. In his past life, gratitude had been a transaction—something owed, something collected. This felt different. Heavier.
Lyra noticed the change. "You're famous now," she said one afternoon, kicking a stone down the alley.
"I'm not famous. I'm just the boy who killed some raiders."
"Same thing here." She shrugged. "People need heroes. Even weird ones."
Helios frowned. "I'm not a hero."
"You killed three men to protect strangers. What do you call that?"
"Survival."
Lyra rolled her eyes. "You're impossible."
But she was smiling.
---
Androkles resumed training a week after the raid.
The scarred man said nothing about the killings. He just handed Helios a wooden sword—back to basics—and put him through the drills. Cut, parry, pivot, strike. Over and over.
"You're rushing," Androkles said after Helios finished a sequence.
"I'm not rushing."
"You are. Your cuts are clean, but your footwork is ahead of your blade. You're thinking about the next move before you finish the current one."
Helios stopped. He hadn't noticed. But now that Androkles pointed it out, he felt it—a subtle impatience, a desire to move faster, to be done.
"The raid changed you," Androkles said. "You saw what happens when you hesitate. Now you're overcorrecting."
"What should I do?"
"Slow down."
Helios looked at him. "In a fight, slowing down gets you killed."
"In a fight, rushing gets you killed faster." Androkles picked up his own sword. "Come at me. As fast as you can."
Helios attacked.
He threw everything into it—speed, power, precision. His blade blurred through the air, striking high and low, left and right. Androkles parried each blow, stepping back, not countering.
"Faster," Androkles said.
Helios pushed harder. His arms burned. His lungs ached. But Androkles kept parrying, kept retreating, kept waiting.
Then Helios overextended.
His sword went wide. Androkles stepped inside his guard and tapped his chest with the flat of his blade.
"Dead," Androkles said.
Helios lowered his sword, breathing hard. "You let me exhaust myself."
"I let you expose yourself." Androkles sheathed his blade. "Speed is useless without control. Power is useless without precision. The best fighters don't rush. They wait."
"Wait for what?"
"For the other person to make a mistake." Androkles sat down on a stone bench. "You killed three men because they underestimated you. They rushed. They thought a boy couldn't fight. That was their mistake."
Helios sat down beside him. "So I should let people underestimate me?"
"No. You should let people be what they are. Most people are impatient. Most people are scared. Most people want the fight to be over." He looked at Helios. "You're not most people. Use that."
---
Helios started training differently.
He stopped trying to be fast. He stopped trying to be powerful. He focused on being present—on watching, on breathing, on letting the fight come to him.
Androkles would attack, and Helios would wait. Not frozen. Not passive. Ready. He would watch the angle of the blade, the shift of weight, the flicker in Androkles's eyes. And when the opening came—a half-second, sometimes less—he would move.
Not fast. Exactly.
Androkles started losing exchanges.
Not often. Not dramatically. But the scarred man would pull back from a parry and find Helios's blade already there, waiting. Or he would commit to a cut and realize too late that Helios had already stepped out of range.
"You're reading me," Androkles said one morning, after Helios had countered three attacks in a row.
"You're predictable."
Androkles laughed. "Everyone is predictable. That's not an insult."
"I didn't mean it as one."
"I know." Androkles wiped sweat from his forehead. "You're not just learning to fight. You're learning to see. That's rare."
Helios shrugged. "I had a good teacher."
Androkles looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded. "We'll start dual blades next week."
---
The soldiers at the western gate started inviting Helios to their campfires.
Not as a child. As a peer. They had heard about the raid. Some of them had seen him fight. A boy who killed three grown men—that was worth respecting, even if it was strange.
One evening, a sergeant named Dorus waved him over.
"Come sit, boy. We have wine. Well, watered wine. But it's warm."
Helios sat. The soldiers passed him a clay cup. He drank. It was sour and thin, but he didn't complain.
"You're the one who killed the Luwians," Dorus said. It wasn't a question.
"I helped."
"Humble. That's good." Dorus leaned back against a stone. "Most boys your age would be boasting. Telling everyone how many they killed. You just sit there like it's nothing."
"It's not nothing. I just don't know what to say."
Dorus nodded slowly. "That's fair. Killing changes a man. Even a boy." He looked at Helios. "How do you feel about it?"
Helios thought about the question. In his past life, he would have lied. He would have given the expected answer: It was necessary. I did what I had to do.
But he was tired of lying.
"I don't feel much of anything," he said. "That scares me."
Dorus was quiet for a moment. Then he clapped Helios on the shoulder.
"Good. Fear means you're still human. The day you stop being scared is the day you become a monster."
Helios looked at the fire. The flames danced, gold and red, casting shadows on the soldiers' faces.
"Does it get easier?" he asked.
"No," Dorus said. "But you get stronger. That's not the same thing."
---
Lysander was waiting for him when Helios got home.
The boy was sitting on the doorstep, whittling a stick with a dull knife. He looked up when Helios approached.
"You were with the soldiers."
"They invited me."
Lysander's eyes widened. "The soldiers? At the western gate?"
"Yes."
"That's amazing. They never invite anyone."
Helios sat down beside him. "They're just people. Lonely people, mostly. Far from home."
Lysander stared at him. "You're weird."
"So I've been told."
"Can you teach me what they taught you?"
Helios considered it. He had been teaching Lysander the basics—stance, footwork, simple cuts. But maybe it was time for more.
"Tomorrow morning," Helios said. "Be here at dawn. We'll work on something new."
Lysander grinned. "I'll be here."
He ran off into the darkness, leaving Helios alone on the doorstep.
Helios looked up at the stars. The same stars he had seen from a balcony in Manhattan, from a rooftop in Troy. They hadn't changed. Neither had he, really. He was still the same person—just in a different body, a different world, a different life.
Maybe that's the point, he thought. Maybe we don't change. We just learn to carry more.
He went inside to sleep.
---
The notice came a month later.
Helios was in the courtyard, practicing dual-blade forms with wooden swords, when a messenger arrived. The man was young, well-dressed, with the pin of a noble house on his cloak.
"Helios, son of Karya?"
Helios lowered his swords. "Yes."
"Lord Antenor requests your presence at his estate. Tomorrow, at noon."
Helios blinked. Antenor was one of the most powerful men in Troy—an elder of the council, a trusted advisor to King Priam. He had no business with a nine-year-old boy.
"Why?" Helios asked.
The messenger shrugged. "I'm not paid to ask questions. Be there."
He left. Helios stood in the courtyard, wooden swords in hand, heart beating faster than it should.
They've noticed me, he thought. The leadership. Someone told them about the raid.
He didn't know if this was good or bad.
Karya came out of the house. She had heard everything. Her face was pale.
"You don't have to go," she said.
"I think I do."
"We could leave. Go to the countryside. Live somewhere quiet."
Helios looked at his mother. She was afraid. Not of him—for him.
"Running won't help," he said. "They'll just find us. And then we'll have no standing, no protection."
Karya clenched her jaw. "I hate this."
"I know."
"I hate that you're not even ten years old, and you're already being pulled into their games."
Helios put down the swords and hugged her. She was smaller than he remembered. Or maybe he was getting taller.
"I'll be careful," he said.
Karya held him tight. "You'd better."
---
That night, Helios sat on the roof and looked at the city.
Troy spread out below him—torches flickering, dogs barking, the distant sound of a lyre from some noble's party. It was beautiful, in its way. Primitive, but beautiful.
They're going to want something from me, he thought. Nobles always want something.
In his past life, he had dealt with powerful people. CEOs. Politicians. Oligarchs. They all wanted the same thing: advantage. They would smile, offer compliments, make promises. And then they would try to use you.
He had learned to see through them. To play their games better than they could.
I can do this, he told himself. I've done harder things.
But those harder things had been in boardrooms, not palaces. He had been a grown man with resources and allies. Now he was a boy with a bronze sword and a secret.
Lyra climbed onto the roof. She didn't say anything. She just sat down beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Big day tomorrow," she said.
"Big day."
"You're scared."
"A little."
"That's okay." She took his hand. "You're the bravest person I know. Even when you're scared."
Helios squeezed her hand. "Thanks."
They sat in silence, watching the stars. Somewhere below, a mother sang a lullaby. Somewhere beyond the walls, the sea whispered against the shore.
Helios closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he thought. One step at a time.
He could feel the pendant around his neck—the one that held his twin blades, sealed and waiting. It was warm, even in the cool night air.
Not yet, he told it. But soon.
He went down to sleep.
---
END OF CHAPTER EIGHT