Eternum.
A forbidden material.
It had been created by a blacksmith who once dreamed of forging the heavens themselves into a weapon, a man who had walked beside Axiros through one of his most turbulent lives. Eternum had been the embodiment of that dream, forged from a single drop of heaven's origin. A substance that should never have existed.
And yet, it did.
From the very beginning, something had been wrong. Eternum did not obey the laws, it condemned them. It was not chaos in the conventional sense, nor was it simple destruction. It was negation. The absolute inverse of all known order. Everything it touched was stripped down to nothingness, erased not only in form, but in meaning.
Even Axiros had been shaken by it.
At that time, the heavens stood for harmony, balance, and continuity. They were not tyrants, not destroyers. And yet the weapon born from their origin embodied only destruction and anarchy. A contradiction so severe that existence itself seemed to reject it.
He had been bound to that wretched thing.
The only one in existence.
That bond had marked him. It had painted a target across every world he stepped into. He had been hunted relentlessly, chased by those who claimed to be the representatives of the heavens. In the end, he had killed them, but victory had come far too late.
They had taken everything first.
His family.
His friends.
Every anchor he had left.
They had even executed the blacksmith, the creator of Eternum, erasing him as if he were nothing more than a mistake.
The memory tightened around Axiros's chest, and tears slipped free, slow and silent.
And now… it's here? he thought bitterly.
That cursed, utterly damned material, being used as part of a house. A hollow, humorless laugh echoed through his mind.
What an absurd joke.
Then he stopped.
The realization settled in, cold and sharp.
This wasn't a house.
Not truly.
As he had suspected earlier, it was a weapon, most likely a transfiguration weapon of terrifying scale. Something designed to conceal, reshape, and masquerade as something benign while retaining its true nature beneath the surface.
And it was in his mother's possession.
'What is something so condemnable doing here?' he wondered. 'And how did it come into her hands?'
A more troubling thought followed.
'Is she… that powerful? How did she even manage to convince that stubborn thing to take on the shape of a house? How?' He was absolutely shocked.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Axiros felt genuine unease. Not fear, but the unmistakable sense that the calm he had found was built atop something ancient, dangerous, and very much awake.
This world was not as gentle as it appeared.
'I have to grow stronger-fast. This world is more dangerous that I thought it would be. So many secrets. Just what are you?' He thought.
The world was filled with dangers he could not see at first glance, hidden beneath calm surfaces and familiar forms. They lingered quietly, waiting, capable of swallowing him whole if he let his guard down.
His mother was living proof of that.
A human, nothing more, nothing less, had taken one of the most feared substances in existence and bent it to her will. She hadn't merely contained it. She had tamed it, reshaped its purpose, and reduced something born for annihilation into something as ordinary as shelter.
That alone was staggering.
It overturned everything Axiros believed about power in this world. Not raw destruction, not overwhelming force, but control. Precision. The ability to take something condemnable and make it harmless.
The realization settled heavily in his mind.
This world did not announce its dangers. It hid them in plain sight!
'Fuck! I am stuck in a child's body. If I was atleast reincarnated as an adult, at the least I would be able employ my techniques to grow stronger-faster.' He cursed.
He couldn't do anything for now.
Manipulating time to accelerate his growth did cross his mind, but he dismissed it almost immediately. It wasn't practical. Not here. Not yet. There were too many variables, too many ways such interference could spiral out of control.
A single misalignment could fracture his body.
A minor desynchronization could damage his soul.
And worse, such distortions would not go unnoticed.
For now, restraint was the wiser choice.
So he waited, watching, learning, letting time move at its own pace.
'Hahhh. I have to wait till I grow up. Even two or three more years of growth is enough development to carry out my basic techniques.' He thought as he turned around in his crib.
'For now, I have to look out for this wretched material and pass time.' He sighed and turned over once again.
Days turned into weeks, and the time slipped by faster than he expected. Axiros found himself settling into this new life with surprising ease. Being with his mother felt natural, comfortable in a way he rarely allowed himself to acknowledge. There was warmth here, stability, something he had lost too many times before.
As for his father, there wasn't a single word.
He hadn't asked, and his mother hadn't offered any explanation. The absence was noted, then dismissed. Axiros didn't particularly care, not unless the man became a thorn in his path to freedom. Until then, it was irrelevant.
Life, for now, was peaceful.
Too peaceful.
He didn't lower his guard for a moment. He knew better than anyone how quickly things could spiral, from calm to catastrophe in the span of days. He had lived through that escalation more times than he cared to remember.
His eyes told him everything they could.
He observed the world constantly, tracing currents of energy, mapping structures invisible to ordinary perception. Yet no matter how closely he watched, he couldn't discern the extent of his mother's power. There were no clear fluctuations, no obvious signatures to latch onto.
At first, he suspected his own limitations.
But the more he observed, the clearer the truth became.
She was hiding it.
His eyes revealed everything, regardless of power or scale. What mattered was mastery, and in that regard, Axiros had none who could surpass him. If he couldn't see her strength, it wasn't because it was beyond him.
It was because she didn't want it to be seen.
The realization lingered in his thoughts, heavy and unresolved. The woman who held him with warmth and affection was far more than she appeared, and the world she had brought him into was quietly, patiently waiting to reveal its teeth.
'What kind of mastery does my mother have in this 'energy'? It's is immaculate and utterly impressive.' He thought.
Revealing not a single strand of energy from one's body was an insane feat. It required control so precise it bordered on the surgical, a level of refinement most practitioners could not even approach, let alone comprehend.
To suppress power so completely, to leave no residue, no fluctuation, no subconscious leak, was far more difficult than simply wielding it.
And yet, she did it effortlessly.
His mother loved him dearly. That much was undeniable. There was no trace of calculation in her touch, no hidden contempt behind her gaze. Every smile she gave him was genuine, every gesture warm and unguarded.
That truth, at least, was clear.
His eyes revealed everything.
They stripped away illusion and pretense, laying bare the underlying truths of the world around him. Structures, energies, intentions, nothing escaped their sight. Through them, reality itself stood exposed, honest in a way few could ever endure.
And in that clarity, one thing was certain.
Whatever this world was, whatever dangers it hid, it was far deeper, and far more dangerous, than it first appeared.
----
Slowly, months slipped by.
His first birthday crept closer with alarming speed, a milestone the world seemed to care far more about than he ever could. Axiros, on the other hand, couldn't have been less bothered.
Such landmarks meant nothing to him. He had lived through too many lives, crossed too many thresholds for the passage of a single year to hold any weight.
What unsettled him wasn't time.
It was himself.
He found his thoughts drifting inward more often than he liked, questioning things he had long since believed resolved.
He wondered why he still held onto emotions at all, why they hadn't been eroded by the countless deaths, betrayals, and endings he had endured.
More troubling still was how raw they felt.
Not dulled. Not distant. But immediate, sharp, and vivid, as though this body, this life, refused to let him retreat behind the detachment he had cultivated over eternity. Joy came too easily.
Fear lingered longer than it should have. Affection, unwanted, unguarded, crept in through cracks he hadn't realized were still there.
It was unfamiliar. Uncomfortable.
And for the first time in a very long while, Axiros found himself wondering whether this life was changing him… or simply reminding him of what he had tried so desperately to forget.
On the other hand-
"My little Axiros, you are going to turn one soon!" She squealed in joy.
"Yweah." He replied with a lisp.
"Aww. You are so cute." She said as she leaned forward to pull his cheeks.
"Noo.." He tried. He tried but he couldn't resist against the mighty force of an adult human.
His vocal cords had developed enough to function, though still imperfect. He could form words now, simple, halting sentences, softened by a childish lisp. To the world, it was merely an early bloom of intelligence. Nothing more.
What truly stood out was not him, but what surrounded him.
The energy of this world was strange. Miraculous, even.
It was not something that resided within living beings alone, nor something that had to be forcibly drawn out. It existed everywhere, woven into space, matter, sound, and silence alike.
It permeated the air, seeped through walls, flowed beneath the ground, and lingered in the smallest gaps between things.
Potent, yet not violent.
Powerful, yet not rigid.
Incredibly flexible, as though reality itself was willing to be reshaped, if approached correctly.
Axiros observed it quietly, from behind the mask of a child.
This world's energy did not clash with existence; it supported it. It behaved less like fuel and more like a framework, a medium through which laws expressed themselves.
Compared to many worlds he had lived in, where energy was either oppressive or chaotic, this one felt as if it was one of the accommodating ones.
Axiros did not attempt to touch it yet. He only watched, studied, listened. How it flowed when his mother moved. How it responded to emotion, intent, and will. How it subtly bent around certain materials, especially the walls of the house.
This energy was not passive.
It was aware.
Every detail was laid before his Absolute Apertured eyes.