By the time Orion realised it, ten years had passed since his rebirth.
A full decade since he'd first opened his eyes to this new world, and already, it felt both endless and fleeting.
Time had slipped through his fingers quietly. Not in great leaps or dramatic moments, but in small, uneventful days stacked gently atop one another. Snowfall after snowfall. Meals eaten beside a weak hearth. Long silences broken only by the wind clawing at the walls.
Strangely enough, Orion had enjoyed being a child again.
It was far from luxurious. The cold bit deep into his bones during winter, and no amount of layering truly chased it away. The food was simple, repetitive. The house was small, old, and always creaked as if it might collapse during a bad storm.
But it was peaceful. Almost dangerously so.
No hospital corridors. No blood-stained gloves. No screams echoing in the dark hours of the night.
And most surprisingly, no dark urges... yet.
Life was uneventful, and that terrified him more than violence ever had.
Being a child again was weirdly calming. Too calming.
And yet, even in that calm, there were moments that never quite sat right with him.
Sometimes, rarely, he would see it.
A blur of a man appearing within the house.
The man's face would always be covered, and he would speak quietly to his mother, Selene, his voice always too low for Orion to catch properly. He never stayed long. Never lingered. He would also leave behind what appeared to be medicine, small containers or wrapped packets, and then disappear as if he'd never been there at all.
The man wasn't his father.
Orion was certain of that.
He didn't know who the man was, only that after his visits, his mother would consume what he left behind. Her condition never truly improved, but sometimes… sometimes it stopped worsening for a while.
Those fleeting appearances unsettled him more than they should have - to think people who could move with such speed and elusiveness existed. At any moment, that mysterious man could eliminate them all before he could even react - but that only made Orion more eager to progress his ether core.
Though that man showed up less and less as time went on, almost as if giving up on Selene the same way everyone else had...
-
Orion liked to think of his years since forming his ether core in fragments. Three chapters that built the quiet foundation of who he'd become.
The first three - ages one to four - were confined almost entirely within the walls of his small, frost-bitten home. The rhythm of his early life was simple: the creak of old wood underfoot, the constant hum of wind outside the windows, and the soft scent of herbs that always clung to Marn's small attached infirmary.
Crawling turned to walking. Babbling turned to speech.
And though his body was that of a child, his mind was far from it.
Ether flowed faintly in his veins, an invisible current that set him apart from ordinary infants. It strengthened his muscles, sharpened his senses. He wasn't leaping over mountains or shattering stone - but every step, every breath, felt steadier than it should have been.
Marn just assumed he was a strong child, which made sense considering who his father was.
Orion knew better.
Ether was nurturing him, moulding him.
And he was intent on mastering it.
He felt that while using his eyes, he could command the Ether in his surroundings as he drew it directly into them. Ether Dominion was what he called the ability, and it allowed him to progress rapidly, though he didn't exactly have much to compare to.
But he couldn't maintain the Eyes of Dominion continuously, since they required a constant supply of ether. When he couldn't, he would sit, focus, and breathe in the ambient Ether - channelling it through his pores and into his energy pathways.
That felt like the most logical and instinctively correct way of doing so. It was also something he had spotted Marn doing, though her ether cultivation was very slow compared to his own.
Essentially, the Ether Core acted as a magnet and allowed him to draw in ether from his surroundings - this is Ether Cultivation.
Ether Dominion, something unique to himself, acted as a catalyst for his cultivation for the periods that he could maintain his Eyes of Dominion.
Eventually, he refined the method - learning to maintain a steady supply of Ether to his eyes while still leaving enough to circulate through his pathways and temper his core. It was inefficient and mentally exhausting at first.
But it worked, and as it developed, it allowed him to progress at an alarming rate.
Every spare moment, every hour when his mother was resting, or Marn had stepped away, was devoted to the quiet obsession of cultivation.
Bear in mind, he was still a toddler at this point.
If anyone witnessed the techniques he had developed and the sheer amount of ether that he was accumulating each day, they would collapse from pure shock.
Orion also skimmed through all the books he could find once he could move around by himself.
He would sit by the infirmary window, small legs dangling from a stool, piles of old books open before him. They were all Marn's books and mostly medical, which made sense since she was a nurse.
She would think the boy was merely pretending to read and would leave him be, not knowing that within the toddler lay a medical mind much more advanced than her own.
The pages contained inked diagrams of Ether pathways, warped anatomy sketches, and fragmented theories written by people who clearly didn't fully understand what they were documenting.
'Crude,' he often thought, flipping through hand-drawn illustrations of organs and meridian channels. 'Compared to Earth's medicine, it's primitive. But then again… who needs antibiotics when magical medicines and ether exist?'
Science and logic belonged to the world he'd left behind.
Here, Ether ruled everything.
And he could feel it pulsing inside him.
His crimson Ether Core had grown stronger - richer, deeper, pulsing like a living organ. He spent years refining his control, learning to draw in ambient Ether with each breath.
The process was agonisingly slow.
But every success filled him with quiet pride.
Then there were the stages of Ether progression. They were mentioned briefly, and almost dismissively, in the medical texts Marn had on her bookshelf.
It fascinated Orion.
Once enough Ether accumulated, once the core reached saturation, it would begin to compress. The weak saw the shrinking of their core as a setback.
The wise knew better.
Compression doubled the potency of Ether and pushed the Ascendant toward the next rank.
Growth through restraint.
Strength through compression.
It was a beautiful paradox.
Orion had noted the pattern immediately.
The colours of the Ether Core followed the visible spectrum of light.
Crimson. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.
Coincidence?
He doubted it.
There was meaning there, something deliberate, something waiting to be uncovered.
Some ranks had different names compared to their colour, which was mildly annoying.
From what he'd gathered, the rankings were as follows:
Low Ascendants: Crimson and Ember.
Mid Ascendants: Radiant and Verdant.
High Ascendants: Azure and Indigo.
Peak Ascendants: Violet.
Each rank had a milestone that marked its attainment, but it didn't specify what they were.
Beyond that?
Nothing.
The books went silent, as if afraid to name what came next.
Within each rank existed the same internal progression - Low, Mid, High, Peak. The gap between those stages widened dramatically at higher ranks.
He could only imagine what a Violet Rank Ascendant was capable of.
Still, none of it fascinated him more than his eyes.
The Eyes of Dominion.
He experimented with it quietly and carefully.
His mother was off-limits; the thought of turning that golden gaze on her made his stomach twist with guilt.
But Marn…
Marn was another matter entirely.
The old woman had become his guinea pig.
Sometimes he'd catch her gaze and whisper, "Bring me another book," Ether flooding into his eyes. Other times, he'd make her sing, dance, or forget what she was doing entirely.
Her reactions fascinated him.
The faint daze. The slackness of her posture. The way awareness faded into obedience.
It was never absolute.
He could only compel her to do things she was already somewhat inclined to do. Any attempt to force harm met immediate resistance.
Still, the control thrilled him.
It felt like pressing his will directly against another's mind.
As such, he dubbed it Mental Dominion.
The prerequisites were simple.
Eye contact and enough ether supplied to his eyes.
When activated, his irises glowed gold, etched with intricate, symmetrical patterns that echoed the designs he'd seen in the void before reincarnation.
Seeing them in the mirror filled him with awe and a chill of recognition.
It only further confirmed the prophecy and the fact that he was a part of something beyond him, which was unnerving to say the least.
But the eyes did more than just bend minds.
They bent Ether itself.
And through them, he could see the living hues of Ether cores.
All the ether around him became visible.
From the particles of ether dancing in the surrounding air, to Marn's mid Crimson Rank Ether Core, to the traces of ether in his mother's body that was damaged and broken.
Even the Ember Rank Ether Cores of the two guards stationed at the nearby Outer Gate were visible.
Each one was stronger than him, for now at least.
But his own Ether core shimmered with the faintest hint of orange already...