*Aaron*
I couldn't stop staring at his hands.
Thick fingers, calloused from years of chopping wood, hauling sacks of lentils, and planting barley in stubborn soil. But now I saw them differently.
Those hands had broken bones. Slit throats. Torn through goblins like paper.
I watched Father—Durnos—as he calmly ladled stew into our bowls like nothing had changed. The scent of rosemary and cooked onions filled the room, but I couldn't taste anything.
Helios sat beside me, arms crossed, silent. That alone made me nervous. If my brother wasn't cracking jokes, something was wrong.
I finally spoke. "How long have you been able to do that?"
My voice sounded strange to me—smaller, younger.
Father didn't look up. "A long time."
"You fought in the Great War?" I asked.
"No," he said, softly. "That came after."
I blinked. After? But the Great War was the end of an era. What could come after that?
He finally looked at us, the fire reflecting in his eyes. "I was once called Durnos. The One-Pointed Star."
I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.
Helios stiffened beside me. I could practically hear his thoughts grinding together.
"That's… that's a myth," I said. "The One-Pointed Star? That's a name in a bard's song."
"It was," Father replied. "Before I walked away from it."
"But why hide it?" I asked, my voice cracking. "Why not tell us?"
"Because I didn't want you raised in blood," he said. "I didn't want you dreaming of blades and glory. I wanted you to know the warmth of the sun, the quiet of a home. I wanted you to believe peace was real."
Helios stayed quiet, but I could feel the heat in him rising.
I clenched my jaw. "Then why train us like you did?"
He finally looked straight at me. "Because I knew it wouldn't last."
Silence wrapped around us again. Heavy. Dense.
"So we're not normal," I said.
"No," Father said. "You're not. But you're still yourselves. I didn't give you powers, Aaron. Everything you are—you built through your own sweat, your own pain."
I stared into my stew, watching the broth swirl around a slice of carrot. My muscles still ached from the spar. My lip was swollen. And yet… that fight against the goblins—all twenty-six of them—I'd moved like something else. I hadn't thought. I just… acted.
I had thought Helios was going easy on me.
But in the thick of it, when things went wrong—it was me who held the line, while Helios looked at me like he was seeing something new.
Maybe I wasn't the weak one.
"Is that why I pick up moves fast?" I asked, quieter now. "Why it feels like I've done this all before, even when I haven't?"
He gave a faint nod. "You both carry old blood. The kind that remembers. But the strength you showed—that was yours. I didn't give you anything."
"No blessings?" I asked.
"No tricks. No spells. Just discipline. You've earned every step with your own hands, Aaron."
Helios leaned forward finally. "So what now?"
Father's eyes flicked to the window, where the dark was settling like a warning.
"Now… I prepare you."
"For what?" I asked, my heart beating too fast.
He looked at me—really looked—and his face, usually so calm, looked tired.
"For the return of things worse than goblins."
Worse than goblins? My fists clenched under the table.
"Tharok'Nurr?" I asked, afraid of the answer.
He shook his head slowly. "No. Tharok'Nurr is surely dead. I helped end that tale myself."
That last sentence landed like a stone in a still pond.
"But the world doesn't run out of monsters, Aaron," he continued. "It breeds new ones in the dark."
I swallowed hard. The stew was cold now, untouched.
Everything we knew was burning away, like paper too close to flame.
And in the ashes, I realized something else.
I wasn't scared of what we might face.