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Ascendant through time and shadows
Chapter 4 Echoes of Ash and Steel

Chapter 4 Echoes of Ash and Steel

It was such an odd quietness over the typical university mayhem for the evening. Talon couldn't get the short meeting with the figure earlier out of his head; the face somehow pulled out memories that he'd long considered to be buried deep in the dark recesses of his past. Shadows, echoing solitude, seemed to stretch along the walls like ghosts of what once was as Talon entered his dimly lit room.

Talon sat down at his study table, the only thing in his room he had ever called his own. He leaned into the chair, elbows resting upon the wooden surface, hands grasped against his temples. For all his best efforts at shoving memories back into their dark corners, however, it seemed to little avail; the figure had stirred something slumbering—a cascade of recollections he hadn't touched for years.

Memories sent Talon back to the Revas household, where every corner held shadows, and even sunlight struggled to pierce through the heavy curtains that Edrik insisted remain closed. From his earliest days, the house felt more like a cold fortress than a home, its silence oppressive, its walls echoing with his father's unrelenting demands. Talon learned young that warmth, kindness, and freedom were luxuries not afforded to him.

By any definition of the word, Edrik Revas was no father. He was an extreme taskmaster, overly zealous overseer. To him, Talon didn't exist as a son but rather as a project on which to invest himself, to shape to precision. Power was what mattered in his opinion, and he looked upon the boy only as an instrument, as a weapon awaiting his moment of fulfillment to serve the name Revas. For the perfect achievement of success, Edrik did not have time for imperfection or weakness.

When Talon was only five, Edrik started his "training." First of all, he was to sit quiet and silent, sitting there for hours alone in the study while his father worked. No words would be spoken for hours, Edrik looking at Talon with a sharp, measuring look, weighing his worth. No smiles, no encouragement, only the reminder that Talon's existence was conditional upon his cooperation.

One night, after a careless blunder in his work, Edrik's temper snapped. He made Talon stand for hours in silence, his legs screaming in agony, his body straining to remain upright. Every time he gave in to the pain, even by relaxing into a slightly changed position, Edrik hit him across the legs with a cane. The crack of wood against skin became an all-too-familiar sound, punctuating his father's lesson.

Edrik: "Pain is the only thing that molds discipline. Weakness has no place in this house."

As Talon's body took the punishment, so did his mind change. He soon realized there was no scope for a fight, no reason for pleading for mercy. Emotions-fear, pain, sorrow-were vulnerabilities which his father would use with no second thoughts. Edrik's philosophy was not to tolerate weakness. The day Talon proved that he was weak, it would not only mean Talon was a failed son but also a legacy Edrik could not abide to see.

His mother, Selina, had given him a temporary haven; but even that hope was soon snuffed out. At first, Selina tried to protect him. She tried to speak up whenever Edrik's punishment became too harsh. Softly, she would beg him to recall that Talon was just a child.

Selina (whispering): "Edrik, he is only five… let him breathe. Please." But words went unheard by him, hitting the cold stare or a sneer of disdain. For Edrik, Selina's worry was weakness in herself-a softness he loathed. Every time she tried to protect Talon, Edrik retaliated with more harshness, as if to eliminate the slightest hint of gentleness she could plant in him.

Talon often saw himself caught in the middle, as his mother's spirit ebbed away; it was a slow waning that left her but a shadow of the warm, caring woman she once was.

It wasn't long before Edrik's punishments became even harder. Selina started to break down completely. She did not interrupt his activities and wouldn't meet his gaze anymore with the worried look; instead, she covered her face with emptiness every time she passed him.

Talon noticed by the time he was eight how she began to drift away: her presence in the household diminishing to mere background. After a punishment so harsh it had left him crying, once he came to her, she no longer comforted him, no longer tended to his bruises or held him close. She'd look right through him as if he'd become a stranger.

Selina (averting her eyes from him): "This. it has to be this way, Talon.".

It was there that Talon learned his bitter truth of life: nothing, not even his mother, could be counted upon. The warmth once bestowed on him was about as durable as the brief nods by his father for approval.

He came to see her as weak, a woman who had folded under Edrik's oppressive might, incapable of even safeguarding herself, much less him. The silence was greater in its offense than her father's cruel nature for it was in this silent retreat that she deserted him altogether.

Not long after Lina's birth had passed before the tide of events took a different turn. Talon watched as his mother, fearful of Edrik's retribution and to spare her daughter from similar pain, began making arrangements to send Lina away to her maternal uncle's when she was four years old. Selina convinced Edrik that it was in Lina's best interest to be "educated elsewhere," playing to his pride in a way that disguised her real motives.

Selina: "Lina should grow up refined, surrounded by opportunities. She'll be a perfect reflection of the Revas legacy."

Edrik nodded, basically ignoring Lina and only concerned himself with Talon's training. Lina was free from the stifling confinement of the Revas home. But Talon gained nothing but increased isolation because of her departure. As he walked out, relief and bitterness mixed in him; she would walk out, but he could not, imprisoned by his father's desires.

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With time, Talon's punishment grew into brutal testing to force him beyond his human endurance. One bitter winter evening, Edrik made him train outdoors into the icy night; and Talon's breath crystallized in the air around him as he fought to get through martial forms of which he was not as yet strong enough. He could not feel his fingers or his toes, his lips were blue, but Edrik merely stood there, all his body icy and unsympathetic in its expression.

Edrik: "You will know pain is a schoolmaster. Fleshly weakness is purged by much anguish." When Talon stumbled and almost fell because of exhaustion, Edrik did not lend him a hand but gave him a frown to remind him that he cannot fail. For all that he had survived was more training, more punishment carved into him as his father instilled the lesson in him: pain is a constant, and any sign of softness was to invite it.

By the time Talon had reached ten, he was nothing more than a shadow of himself. The heart that once could feel warmth turned as cold as the mansion itself. His face grew impassive, his eyes guarded, and his voice a monotone echo of obedience. He learned how to endure his father's tirades without reacting and how to steady his body against the bruises and welts that marked him.

Time went by, and Edrik did not need to ask Talon to be submissive anymore; he has learned the lesson so deeply that he never had to be reminded of the lesson. He would find out what his father wants, his every step a proof of training pounded into him. He will no longer question his father again, nor did he appeal to his mother. For emotion was weakness, which he had deep inside of him. By eleven, he'd changed completely. His heart became a locked vault wherein feeling was suppressed, any trace of warmth buried below layer upon layer of chilling discipline. His mother wasn't there; his father hurt him, and hurt only made him something harder-steel, unbreakable-a young man of emotionless feeling, an abomination to survival in mere strength.

It was dusk, with a smell of rain on that night when the household of Revas fell.

Thunder rumbled above, as if heaven itself was weeping over what was going to come. Thirteen-year-old Talon sat quietly in his room, his mind still replaying the strange encounter he had had that day with the mysterious figure-words full of cryptic messages that had lingered in his mind. But the unease creeping into him since that encounter was about to be justified. It began silently-the slight scratching of boots on stone floors, the hushed whispers that were getting louder with every passing second. And then, one sound of smashing as a glass window cracked, the ringing sound bursting against the quiet. Talon's body stiffened, his instincts-honed over years of his father's brutal survival drills-telling him to hide. Fast, he flattened against the wall and tried to regulate his breathing as he listened intently.

The footsteps sounds seemed to grow heavier, and the steel faintly gleamed in the dim light filtering through the corridors. Edrik had told him of all the various exit routes and hiding places-not from love and care but to prepare for everything. And Edrik reminded him of how the Revas name brought too many enemies to one's door.

Talon slipped out of his room, staying in the shadows, moving along quietly, practicing steps toward a small, secret passage near the servant quarters.

He sprinted down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him, but just before he could slip inside, he heard a scream. This time, it was his father's voice, but full not of fear, but of raw, unbridled fury. Talon dare a glance down the hallway to see Edrik standing his ground, rage carved into every line of his face as he faced the mercenaries head-on. Edrik (defiant, cold): "I've broke men twice your strength. You think you're gonna be any different?

He sprang at one of the attackers, but they were ready. Talon stood there in frozen helplessness in the shadows as one of them raised a dagger, slapping it across his father's chest with a clean stroke. Edrik stumbled but only for an instant, grabbing his attacker by the collar and head-butting him with a desperate snarl.

He was a man on a mission, unmoving even as blood leaked from his wounds. Yet it was still not enough. The other knife plunged deep into his back, and he crumpled to the floor, his body rigid, his eyes remaining icy with rage as he slid lifeless across the floor.

Talon's innards churned. This was hell-but he couldn't awaken from it.

Yet, still, Talon ripped his head free from the mercenaries as he moved forward, keeping his head low this time. He couldn't let himself be seen. Survival was all that counted. His father's death weighed heavily in his chest, but he locked the feeling down, putting it behind the steel wall that built within him. He had no room for weaknesses.

Muffled cries were thrown off the cold stone halls of the Revas estate as Talon crept silently through the dark to gain access to the secret door. His face remained neutral with heavy iron tang in the air and his heart galloping inside his chest; however, his eyes narrowed into single-minded intent. He slid across the floor on a silence born of knowledge that any noise would announce him.

He had turned the corner when he stopped, his eyes finding his mother, Selina, on her knees. A mercenary's hand clamped around her arm. She was pleading with words so desperate and incoherent that Talon couldn't really hear them, but his gaze remained steady as stone. He didn't move.

He felt no impulse to yell out to her or try to assist; he simply stood there, his face expressionless as if watching a scene from another life.

Merc's grip tightens, and Selina's cries grow weak, her pleas changed to faint, broken whisper. He scans her face with his eyes. There is a tear-streaked face and a helplessness that seems to emanate from her gaze.

There was no sorrow, no agony twisting within him. For years, she had looked away at him in silence over the barest attempt to intervene in his suffering. She stepped into the background of his life, just as everything else he learned how to ignore.

The mercenary raised his sword and observed Talon, feeling as though nothing was happening-her cries were cut out in a flash of time by the steel as the body dropped to the earth motionless. Talon blinked once, feeling as though nothing was happening-not a spark of sadness.

He saw that the last thread which held him to his family, to anything at all, was broken. She had been a stranger long before that night; her attempts at kindness were reduced to weakness and drowned by the cold, unforgiving atmosphere his father had nurtured in their home. She had made her choice of blindness, and now, as the last moment of life reached out and took her from the world, Talon felt himself unmoved, too. And Talon moved back into the shadows, disappearing through the secret passage and out into the gardens beyond. Night fell upon him, dark and still, shutting in from the marauders who had burned his life to ashes. He felt nothing of grief or fear, but the cold, implacable resolve remained.

Just as he had crested the far edge of the estate, he heard footsteps closing in. His heart hammered, but he dropped down behind a large stone sculpture, waiting, holding his breath. He could hear the men's voices now, cold and ruthless.

Mercenary #1: "You sure the boy is dead? Edrik wouldn't shut up about him being his. masterpiece or whatever."

Mercenary #2 (snorts): "Like I care. One brat more or less. Let the dogs have him."

They vanished out of sight, their voices traveling into the distance. He took a slow breath; holding his body motionless until he knew they disappeared from the area. He slid out between slats in fencing and was passed outside the estate.

Thence, he plunged himself into forest darkness and came at last to halt between trees as far inside as he went, bracing himself back against the great old trunk of an oak, whose muscles coursed with adrenalin and were yet quivering from controlled indignation. All of the Revas estate was destroyed and his family killed, but there in the heart of him was something that began to stir- a feeling of determination, cold and unyielding as his father's stare. He would be all right. He would not weep for them. There was no room for that in this world.

Present day

And so, sitting in his room, the iron shroud of those memories weighed down on him. Talon clenched fists, feeling the faint surge of anger coursing through him—a leftover of something he had buried long, long ago. It had been his father's heritage, and he had almost perfectly come to embody. Emotions were a luxury he could not afford to have, connections were a liability, and softness was something he could ill afford to display. It was this mystery that stirred something in him, but Talon knew better than to let it rise into a flame. He was a Revas, after all, and no one, not even the dark shadows of his past, could deter him from his own path.