Romus browsed his Codex of Gifts. As the name stated, it was a book recording every Gift bestowed in the last centuries with details regarding their nature and what they did. ‘Archon’ wasn’t difficult to find since the Gifts were sorted by alphabetical order.

His eyes quickly ran over the small paragraph. ‘Increases little by little the mana pool of the bearer. Exponential growth. Rules unknown, none of the two bearers recorded were able to tell. Allowed the great mage Astrus to confirm his theory around how the normal human body reacts to an excess of mana. They become monsters and die in around ten years after their awakening.’

Romus’ hands were shaking. ‘This brat is bad news. I hope the process is not too quick. What should I do, what should I do, what should I do… Perhaps if I gave him to them? Yes. That’s right, I would get rid of him and please my Goddess, two birds with one stone! For now, let’s pretend everything is alright.’

“It has not been recorded.” He then slowly turned his head toward Arion and the kid, pretending everything was fine, only to see the shocked face of the apprentice mage.

“H-his m-mana.”

“What?” ‘What the heck, did Arion lose it? He is too young to become senile.’

The apprentice rubbed his sweaty palms against his coat. “It just increased a bit.”

“WHAT!?” ‘WHAT!? The process is way too quick! Think Romus, think!’

“I-humm, it must be the effect of his Gift.”

“...You must be right.”

“Well, let’s wrap it up. Two Gift bearers the same day is good news!” ‘I need to end it soon and think. I can’t make an error, not now.’

“Y-Yesh! Once again, congratulations to Lumilia and Ciaran for their Gifts. You will soon receive an invitation to go to Swordhold’s school. Be honoured, you will study in the best school of the capital city.”

The girl with grey eyes was jumping around, as happy as she could be, while the children were leaving the church.

Romus thought to himself. ‘That boy, Ciaran, his complexion never changed. He is too strange.’

He turned his back to the children and returned to his office while Arion was waving goodbye to the kids. ‘I have work to do, and quickly.’

*****

‘So my Gift is about gradually increasing my mana pool? It will help in the future.’ Those were the thoughts that Ciaran had while watching the little bubble of mayhem Arion’s words started. The quantity of mana one had was set at birth so it wasn’t surprising to see shocked faces at the discovery of his growing reserve.

‘Now I just need to wait for this letter. My progenitor shouldn’t be against it since she will not need to care about me anymore.’ Ciaran refused to call Tara his mother. His real parents held a place way too important in his heart and she didn’t give him any reason to love her anyway.

His steps gained a little skipping motion when he realized that he would be soon out of the slums. He was looking forward to his brightened future.

Tara looked strangely at him, her gaze expressing her surprise. It wasn’t often that she saw her offspring let out a bit of his feelings. The pair arrived to their home without realizing, being deep in thoughts seemingly made the time go faster.

“I’m going to my bedroom, mother.”

Ciaran’s mother grunted while he was pushing aside the wind-breaker separating the house into two different spaces. He rummaged under his futon-styled bed and got out a pile of rough paper sheets and a piece of charcoal. Those were his researches in magic.

Probably due to his huge amount of mana, he had numerous sleepless night, and the boy spent them theorizing on magic. His informations were scarce, so his writings were nothing more than hypothesis. Still, Ciaran believed that his researches would help him in his future endeavor.

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The former student realized soon enough that people seemed to put magic into cases. Fire, frost, thunder, space, they all affirmed that raw mana had to be converted before being used, had to fit one of those categories.

But Ciaran thought those were outdated doctrines. Nothing affirmed that raw mana could be used as it was, without bothersome chants and theorizations behind them. Still, he couldn’t blame the people of this world. It was simply a concept out of their common sense. And perhaps that if Ciaran was born in this world without anterior memories, he wouldn’t even consider raw mana use as a possibility.

Ciaran was writing in his upteenth page when a suspicious sound echoed outside. The night was deep, nobody should be around outside aside from some drunkards and outlaws. And judging by the muffled sounds of steps, the people in question weren’t the former.

He silently pushed his researches under the bed and got up to take a knife in the adjacent room. Tara woke up in the process and spoke quietly. “Why are you holding a dangerous tool in the middle of the night?”

Ciaran answered in a whisper, readying himself to welcome warmly the intruders if they revealed themselves as a threat. After all, nobody expected a five years old to stick a knife in their kidneys. “There are intruders outside, I have a bad feeling about them.”

His progenitor quieted down right as the door of the house was forced open, it’s meager lock spectacularly proving its efficiency by doing absolutely nothing against the push. A tall figure clad in black entered, looking around briefly before she -because her curves clearly indicated her gender- focused on Tara. “Where is the boy?”

The relationship between Tara and Ciaran wasn’t strong, she didn’t develop any kind of motherly instinct, so her eyes naturally fell on her son who was hiding behind the opened door.

The gaze didn’t escape the intruders awareness, and she swiftly turned around, ready to abduct a child. It should have been an easy task. But the knife sticking out of her guts as she was leaning forward told another story. The figure screamed, alerting the others intruders who were waiting outside.

“Shit!” “What the fuck is happening?” “Let’s go in quickly!”

Ciaran dislodged his knife from the woman. She was definitely done for, the gaping wound on her stomach too painful to allow her to move. ‘I need to get out now or else I will be trapped here. More importantly, why are they after me?’

He stealthily ran to the window of his room, leaving without regret his shocked mother behind. The boy jumped out of the window, only to get caught by two strong arm. “You’re the priest from the appraisal ceremony!”

The priest tried to pin Ciaran down. “Heh, I knew you weren’t normal, way too decisive and cold for a brat. Waiting for you at the window was the right thin- OWW!”

Ciaran had kicked the priest in his sensitive part. “You brat!” Before the priest could totally restrain him, he stuck the edge of his bloodied knife against the priest’s throat.

“Not a move. You have ‘Detect Lie’, you should know that I’m not lying right now.” Ciaran was frantically speaking. “I don’t want to kill you, I don’t know what I would become afterwards. Leave me alone, you do you, I do me, and we forget what happened tonight.” He stuck his blade a bit deeper, the new blood merging with fluids already on the blade. “Or else…”

A light smirk on the priest’s face alerted Ciaran, but it was too late. A blinding pain hit the base of his skull, colors flashed in his eyes and bells rang in his ears. Finally, his brain shut down and he lost consciousness.

*****

“Thank you Meriyo, seriously, to get dominated by a brat…” Romus was boiling in anger, born from the fear he had felt. The gaze the brat had wasn’t one of a sane human, and the burly man felt genuinely at risk in the last seconds of their fight.

“I told you to this little shit was a demon in disguise.”

“Looks like Myrthe didn’t take your advice seriously, Romus.” The woman named Meriyo answered, her tone sour.

“She is the one who screamed?”

“Yes, the brat somehow stuck a knife in her innards. She will bleed out if we don’t treat her quickly.”

“Then let’s go back to the church. I suppose you will take him to that facility afterwards?” Romus got up while speaking, one of his hands was busy massaging his neck. ‘Damn, that kid.’

“Yes, let’s go back. Hey, Solis!”

A third figure got out of the house, dragging an unconscious woman. “Yes?” His voice was deep.

“No witness.”

“Gotcha.” He drew his short sword and severed the head of the woman he was dragging around. Romus was already walking away, grumbling to himself in an angry tone.

“Was she the mother?” Meriyo asked.

“Dunno, probably not since she didn’t budge after the kid got out.”

“Oh well, doesn’t matter anyway. I’m taking Myrthe with me. You do the usual.”

“Yes, there will be a pyre in the honor of the almighty Goddess Churdilt tonight!”

“Try to make it seem natural. I don’t want to cover up for you again.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Meriyo shook her head before shouldering her fallen comrade like a bag of potatoes and followed the priest from afar.