Chương 5: Winter

More months passed, and winter crept in without announcing itself. At first, it was only breath visible in the mornings, drifting from mouths and nostrils in pale clouds. Then the floor grew colder. The packed earth held the night longer, refusing to give up its chill even when the fire was already burning. The clay chimney was supposed to carry the smoke away. Mostly, it failed. Mark coughed with the others, but no one reacted. Burning eyes and scratchy throats were simply part of winter.

Mari began taking him outside with her more often. Perhaps she disliked hearing him cough, or perhaps she simply wanted the company. Either way, Mark preferred it. The barn was hardly pleasant. The air smelled of hay, manure, and warm animals, but at least he could breathe. Steam curled from the cows' nostrils while Mari milked them or fed the livestock, and frost crunched beneath her boots whenever she carried buckets across the yard. She talked through almost all of it.

Her words came in fragments between movements, with the same names, warnings, and numbers surfacing again and again. From those monologues, Mark slowly pieced together a picture of life beyond the fence: the village on the hill, the lord whose name Mari always spoke with careful respect, and the web of obligations, favors, and bad harvests that seemed to govern everything. What she returned to most often, though, were her children. Dod was the one who put the particular furrow between her brows.

As the second son, he could not inherit the land. That would go to Wod, which meant Dod needed a trade. An apprenticeship. Someone willing to take him in, put a roof over his head, and teach him something worth knowing. She had asked before and would ask again when spring came. She did not sound desperate, only like someone who had been turning the same problem over for far too long. Their mother worried differently about Alia. At six years old, his sister looked four.

She spoke only when spoken to, helped without being asked, and never complained. Sometimes she came to his cradle in the evening and stroked his head. He would try to catch her hand, and she always let him, smiling when he succeeded. The only time her face truly lit up was when Terry began telling stories. She also coughed the most at night, and after those nights Mari sometimes held Mark longer in the morning. He chose not to think about it. Some things were easier when they stayed unnamed.

From what he could piece together, Mari seemed convinced he was an unusually good child. He rarely cried or demanded anything, and his quiet attentiveness seemed to encourage her hopes for him. More than once she had wondered aloud whether he might serve the Pantheon one day. A priest, perhaps. So why did she still pull away whenever the others were near? As if showing him affection were somehow dangerous. Those moments still hurt more than he wanted to admit. He knew he was a grown man wearing the body of a child.

Yet some part of him had already begun to think of this place as home. Sometimes the temptation to reveal himself became almost unbearable. To say something he shouldn't be able to say and finally force the silence open. Who am I? What am I? Is it because of that Abyss thing? But fear stopped him. His mother believed in gods, and in things that were not meant to be named. Whenever she spoke of them, her eyes flicked toward him for a fraction too long. Fear. But of what? Him? Or for him? He never found an answer.

By the time the first snow fell, winter had given the family more immediate things to worry about. Unlike back on Earth, no one seemed particularly happy to see the snow. Some of his siblings' shoes were barely fit for rain, let alone snow, so they spent long days trapped inside. Worse, their food stores were slowly dwindling. Mark felt the difference too. He seemed to be hungry all the time now. Mari had started feeding him small pieces of cheese or egg, but it never felt like enough.

Winter also changed the family's daily rhythm. Terry stopped going into the fields. Instead, he took the older boys into the forest and returned with bundles of wood. On other days, he visited the village and came back later than he should have. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. He also told stories more often, and Mark now understood most of them.

His grasp of the language was improving at a pace that would have seemed impossible in his previous life. The stories were filled with warrior kings, great wars, benevolent gods, and heroes whose levels and Skills were discussed as casually as their weapons. Sometimes his siblings became more invested in the stories than Terry himself. Heated debates would erupt over the smallest details, leaving Mark wondering whether these were legends, history, or something in between.

They had at least confirmed one thing: levels and Skills were real. If everyone else had access to the System, why couldn't he? And what exactly did the Abyss have to do with the way his family treated him? The first question remained unanswered. The second received at least part of an answer in the story of Lucan. The story began like any other, but the room changed before Mark understood why. Mari stopped moving; Wod avoided his gaze, and Alia stared at nothing. Only Sari looked as usual.

It was about a boy hailed as a miracle for wielding magic too early and possessing too much power. Fame led to war, and eventually the gods themselves intervened. Only then was the truth revealed: Lucan had been the Champion of the Abyss. It had taken the combined might of the gods and the Ten Heroes to bring him down. When the story ended, no one spoke. Then Mark realized the silence wasn't directed at Lucan. It was directed at him. It's just a fairy tale. The thought came sharp, almost furious.

So that was what this was. Maybe they weren't afraid of him at all. Maybe they were afraid of whatever they believed might be hiding inside him—a label carried by a story older than anyone in the room. Only Sari reached over to ruffle his hair, smiling as though nothing had changed. Mark leaned into the touch before he could stop himself. He stared at his hands. They were still small and entirely unconvincing. None of that would matter if the priest saw something else.

For months now, the test Varix had mentioned before leaving had hung over him. He wasn't some champion of the Abyss, but he doubted the local clergy would care about the difference between being from Earth and being touched by the Abyss. Would he lose his life over some stupid fairy tale? Or had it stopped being just that? Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, shielding his eyes from the black, collapsing dome of the sky. The Abyss.

Even though it never happened again, he still avoided looking toward the stars of the Abyss. And if he, with all his memories of science and satellites and empty space, was afraid to look up at the sky, how could he blame Mari for her beliefs and superstitions? Fuck it. He had no intention of becoming some Champion of the Abyss, but neither would he let a pack of religious fanatics decide his future. He had no answers, and thinking in circles only made the fear worse.

Thinking about the priest and the Abyss was getting him nowhere. Mark let his attention drift to the faint haze surrounding the others. He had started watching it whenever his thoughts became too loud. He still had no idea what it was, but tracing the slow currents as they rose and disappeared gave him something simple to focus on. For a while, that was enough. Then something flickered at the edge of his awareness. Faint. Irregular. Gone almost as soon as he noticed it. Mark went still. Could it finally be...?

Mark reached for the strange sensation, but it vanished before he could grasp it. Not completely. A barely perceptible echo remained. Name: ▉ Race: Human Profession: Child Traits: Child, Emissary of ▉ Mark remained perfectly still, almost afraid that moving might disturb whatever had just happened. He had waited for this for so long. Why now? What changed? There was no doubt: it was the System, or at least an echo of it. He had often wondered whether the Voice had simply lied about the System.

Worse, perhaps it had told the truth and something foreign to Erador simply had no way to reach it. It wasn't a window floating before his eyes. There was nothing to see at all. The information simply existed in his mind: knowledge without any obvious source. Once his heartbeat finally slowed, he tried to find the sensation again. Nothing responded. He cycled through the familiar commands, concentrated on the faint place where it had appeared, then tried simply waiting. After several fruitless minutes, he stopped.

Months of failure had already taught him that inventing ever more commands was unlikely to solve anything. So he considered what he had actually learned. Race. Profession. Traits. The last one held his attention. Emissary of what? Earth? The Voice? Or... the Abyss? No. Whatever the Trait meant, he would not let it dictate his life. The same went for the Voice, the Abyss, the gods, or anyone else. He didn't know whether he had a month, six months, or a year before the priest returned. It didn't matter.

By then, he could not afford to still be helpless. Outside, winter went on, indifferent to any of it.