The chains were taken off his wrists with a dull click. The metal left pale marks on his skin. Aster shivered faintly from the chill wafting in from an open door. He stepped on the staircase carefully, behind the guards, his wrists still bare and raw where the chains had once clung.
The door stood open at the crest of the steep stone stairs, carved into the front wall, slick with mist and torchlight. The stairs alone occupied nearly half the cell, rising three-tenths of a Tartarian meter from floor to door.
...about twelve Trison spans.
Four Trison spans was roughly the height of an adult, the exact measurement varied slightly depending on who or where you asked. The stairs were a patchwork of smooth stones and water pebbles, newer than the black stone of the underground structure itself. To his right, there was no railing. Only a sheer drop back down.
He climbed sluggishly, muscles protesting—not from pain, but from disuse. He kept his gaze on the back of the centurion's dark cuirass, each metal plate whispering as they moved. Trying to suppress a sudden annoyance, he let his mind wander.
He wondered what this place had been, long before the newer structures were built. His eyes briefly passed over a certain stalactite, a streak of wetness reflecting the torch light as it snaked down its cracked contour.
Finally, at the top, the group of four stepped out, one after the other through braced wooden doors into a vast subterranean hall.
The guard moved to lock the door behind them. A soft clink of metal followed as he passed a hand over the mechanism— similar in sound and motion to how he'd undone their chains.
Turning away from the door, a long tunnel stretched before them—wide, cold, and faintly lit by an unseen source.
The space was sonorous and airy; every sound traveled farther than it should, carried by muffled winds that poured in through the carved stone. It was beautiful in a strange, detached way—dark, yes, but nothing Aster wasn't already used to.
The ceiling arched high above, vanishing into shadow—clearly shaped by intelligent design, yet vast enough to rival natural forces.
Aster had heard of hidden spaces within these tunnels; cavernous chambers holding eternal silence. One of the stranger cellmates he'd meet in the years to come once claimed to have nearly found them.
"Vast," he'd said, with wistful awe.
Years of imprisonment had twisted his desires. He longed for the mysterious caves, uncaring about the world outside—as if it were as fake and unreachable place as the world in a novel. Impossible, thus not worth his longing.
In truth, only a few had ever seen those chambers. One of them was Aster's teacher—former, or perhaps future—depending on how one chose to view time before the regression. He struggled to describe them, and instead let Aster spend hours poring over literary accounts in his study, or listening to the stories passed between prisoners when he had to leave.
He pondered it again now. Aster got lost in thought, nearly missing a step. A nascent string of words was forming in his head.
He stopped the thought there—afraid to lose his footing, or his words. An old habit of his, formed by years of the solitary company of his thoughts.
Looking up, brows furrowed, he noticed the younger guard glance back at him again—for the third time.
He leaned toward the centurion, whispering something. Whatever he said was dismissed. Even the old man walking beside Aster threw sidelong glances.
Uncomfortable, Aster ran a hand over his face, feeling the roughness.
Had something changed about him after the awakening?
It shouldn't have. Anything the young guard could notice would not escape the centurion's gaze.
And perhaps the old man was still shaken by the incident with the water. Thankfully, he didn't seem eager to speak of it.
Perhaps the young guard had simply seen something that unnerved him. But Aster couldn't shake the feeling—something had shifted.
His mind felt… clearer. As if the endless noise of despair had been tuned out. The world seemed sharper, like someone had scraped fog off a glass pane. His thoughts flowed easily, connected.
It could've been the awakening, his younger body. Or maybe it was just hope—a fragile thing, but enough to bring lucidity.
There was a pulse deep inside him now. Strong. Tranquil.
He looked at his small, delicate hands, still shaking. He wouldn't say he was fine, but compared to when he had just returned—when his mind was teetering—the difference was stark.
If before he was a spiraling snowflake, whisked away by the slightest of currents, at least now he was a snowflake on a leaf. Grounded.
The prisoners herded together, converging from circular corridors and side paths, each group led by a guard or two. Aster watched them move, the procession swelling with noise and breath, and found himself wondering again why the centurion was here. He was certain he would have remembered. Surely the years hadn't dulled his memory—though, perhaps, Aster was wrong.
Whatever, it would unravel itself soon anyway.
He didn't fool himself into thinking he could remember everything that had happened over eighteen years. That would be absurd. And besides—why would he need to?
Even if everything ahead unfolded differently, he wouldn't care much. He had already claimed the truths he needed, and back then, his condition had rarely granted him access to real information. He was determined to turn everything over on its head anyway.
A memory stirred—venerable mentarchs and canonists, debating behind hooded cloaks, going on and on about his possessing illogical reasoning. Meanwhile he sat behind a long table, legs swinging far from the floor, his eyes barely reaching its edge.
They spoke of his reasoning as something rare, something they wished to study, to teach—overtaken by fervor, not doubt.
He only came into partial understanding of the matters years later. He felt bitter sweet recollecting those days.
Someone bumped into him, rough and unintentional. He staggered slightly, pulled out of his trance
The long procession of grunts had grown again, menacing figures, sly-eyed wanderers, heretics—each one distinct in their own way. The line swelled, twisting up the central path's gentle incline, and with it rose the noise. And the smell.
Twelve hundred and more miscreants. The Empire really took proving their infamy too seriously. When they reached the outer gates, a wind howled through—cold and dry, carrying the scent of frost and iron.
They were lead into the vertical crack leading to the cave's mouth. The path narrowed the further they went but was still immensely capacious.
The damp stench and stone dust gave way to open air, though behind Portcullis, their group was somewhere near the front. For a moment, Aster had to squint. Not against sunlight—there was none—but against the pale, shifting glow that suffused the world.
The morning light. It bled through the bars, thin and colorless at first, until it struck snow and turned grey and blue.
Aster blinked against it. His eyes, used to the dim, found it too pure. The world felt too wide again—as if the air itself wanted to remind him what he'd lost.
Heavy chains rattled and pulleys groaned, lifting the gates. The prisoners shuffled forward, their breaths fogging in the cold.
Outside, the wind smelled different. Not clean—never clean here—but alive. It carried the taste of ash and something faintly metallic, like oil soaked into the earth.
Aster passed through the gates, then shuddered slightly, the familiar sensation of restrictions being placed on him felt more palpable than usual, disgusting, intrusive. He calmed an odd urge to reach out and pull on something.
They were marched into order, the guards prodding them into queues. Boots scraped against the flagstones of a path that cut through fortifications vast enough to swallow a palace.
Tall sentry towers loomed overhead, draped in imposing scarlet banners. Scattered tents—made from the pure white downy hide of local beasts—huddled against the snow-covered ground. Crates and barrels dotted the terrain, and weapons lay about, half-buried in frost.
Legionnaires moved with headlong purpose, a few of them actual knights, like the centurion, some ate steaming plates of food, others sat around in small groups.
Aster felt eyes on him. Not only from the guards. Passing attendants, even soldiers on the border wall to their right—rising not far from the prison's entrance—lingered when they saw him.
Recognition. Unease. He remembered, right, at this moment—he had not been a prisoner long. His name and bearing still clung to him. The young guard from the cellar seemed to freeze in his step when their gazes met. It made sense now.
Good. That was a weapon.
Realizing this, he stood straighter. His stomach protested the action immediately. Still, he let his presence press outward, a simple modest smile and unwavering eye contact.
Within, he turned his mind back to the thing he had felt in the cellar—the strange pulse within him, the weight in his hand that wasn't there, the whisper too faint to hear. He couldn't wait to test its profundities. His chance would come soon.
For the most part, no one paid him—or the other prisoners—any attention. The few who did offered only a glance before returning to their tasks. Had it been any other crowd, they might have hurled a flurry of slurs. A few stones too. And it wouldn't have been unjust. Most of the prisoners here deserved that and more.
Including Aster.
Regardless of what they deserved, the legionnaires were nothing if not disciplined. It was the one thing he respected about them, but that didn't mean he liked them in any way that mattered. He shook his head again in disappointment for the beaming centurion's immature antics now laid bare.
Looking around, he caught sight of a few unfamiliar, familiar faces. Echoes from years he had no desire to relive.
I wonder if Teacher is around.
The entourage passed by a fortress building that looked to be carved from a single whitish-grey mountain peak. Towering columns made of the same grey stone lined its front, behind them two heavy iron doors.
Like most administrative military buildings, it was unadorned—yet possessed a uniquely breathtaking, stalwart aesthetic.
Aster couldn't peel his eyes from the structure. Not just for its austere grandeur, but for what surrounded it: giant stone statues, each frozen in a distinct pose—most nude or draped in loose, wind-swept garments.
Each statue held a different object, burning within with incorporeal flame.