"Young Master, what are you talking about? I need to take you to a healer right away!" Sebas cried, his voice trembling with a mix of adrenaline and terror. He reached out to scoop the boy up, but Lucien’s reaction was a flash of pure malice.

  Lucien’s fingers shot out, driving hard into Sebas’s eyes. The butler let out a choked scream, falling back and rolling on the damp forest floor, clutching his face.

  "Shut up," Lucien spat, his voice rasping from his bruised throat. "Help me lean against that tree."

  He pointed to an ancient oak with roots that curved into a natural seat. It looked more comfortable than the jagged rocks he’d been slammed against. Stunned by the cold, authoritative bite in the boy’s tone, Sebas stopped writhing. He blinked away tears and stinging pain, staring at Lucien as if he were seeing a ghost. Confusion warred with fear in his mind. Who is this? What was that strength?

  Sebas moved on autopilot, lifting Lucien with trembling hands and setting him against the oak. As he opened his mouth to ask the first of a thousand questions, Lucien cut him off.

  "Do you know what your first mistake was, Sebas?"

  Sebas tilted his head, the blood from the fight still drying on his cheeks.

  "It was trusting those two dullards in the first place," Lucien said, his eyes tracking a beetle crawling over a nearby root.

  Sebas opened his mouth, then closed it, a hollow feeling growing in his chest.

  "Your second," Lucien continued, "was revealing the location of the Aether Stone mine."

  The mention of the mine acted like a spark in a powder keg. The shock faded, replaced by a surge of defensive anger. Sebas’s face twisted into a complex mask of loyalty and betrayal.

  "Young Master... were you the one who took down Barbaros?"

  "Who?" Lucien asked blankly.

  "The man lying down," Sebas whispered. "The one you hit with the stone."

  "Ah. Yes. It was me," Lucien said, his tone as casual as if he were admitting to stealing a tart from the kitchen.

  "Young Master, how could you?" Sebas’s voice cracked. "We were so close! We were making a deal that would save the family! And the way you killed that man..."

  Sebas shivered; the image of Lucien’s cold, locked-on grip burned into his retinas. This wasn't the boy he had raised. His Young Master was cute, polite, and full of life. The thing sitting against the tree felt like an ancient, freezing wind wearing a child's skin.

  "You should be thanking me, Sebas," Lucien said, his gaze finally snapping up to meet the butler’s eyes. "If it wasn't for me, you would be a corpse, and the estate would be cinders."

  "What do you mean?" Sebas stammered.

  "I mean, those men were about to slaughter you," Lucien said, leaning his head back against the bark. "While you were busy daydreaming and holding that stone like a buffoon, you didn't notice the 'balding fool' reaching for his steel. He wasn't going to sign a contract, Sebas. He was going to cut you down and take the rest for free."

  Sebas opened and closed his mouth, the words dying in his throat. He looked at the boy and saw a stranger. Lucien, meanwhile, took a long, measured look at his butler. He had been testing Sebas, weighing his loyalty against his incompetence, struggling with a decision that could change everything.

  Why hesitate? his Teacher’s voice echoed in his mind. Weighing pros and cons just makes the decision heavier. If one path fails, carve a new one through the wreckage.

  "Sebas," Lucien called out, his voice dropping to a low, haunting register. "I have something to tell you."

  Sebas, still dazed, responded absent-mindedly, "What is it, Young Master?"

  "I am from the future," Lucien said flatly. "And I have come back to stop the destruction of the world."

  The silence that followed was so thick it felt like the forest itself had stopped breathing. A branch snapped in the distance, but neither of them moved. Finally, Sebas exhaled, his expression softening into one of heartbreaking concern.

  "Young Master... I think it’s best that I go get a healer immediately."

  "You don't believe me," Lucien stated. It wasn't a question.

  Sebas couldn’t help but look at him with pure pity. The boy had been slammed against a rock wall; he had exhibited strength beyond his years. Clearly, the trauma had fractured his mind. He probably had a concussion—or worse.

  "Stop looking at me with pity!" Lucien snapped, his eyes flashing with a cold fire that made Sebas flinch. "Do you know that in my previous life, your 'deal' failed in a spectacular manner? The village was razed. Everyone died. I was sold into the slave pits."

  He leaned forward, his small face twisting with the ghost of a man’s agony.

  "And Mom and Dad... I never found out exactly what they endured. But even after I found them, I could see the permanent darkness stuck in their eyes. They relived those moments every single day."

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Sebas stood frozen. The skepticism was still there—who could truly believe in a regression?—but the sheer vividness of Lucien’s grief was staggering. It wasn't the imagination of a child. It was the testimony of a survivor.

  "Young Master..." Sebas whispered, his heart hammering. He wanted to dismiss it as a delusion, but he couldn't explain the boy's combat prowess or the way the Earth user's sigil had suddenly flickered and died. "How could... how could you possibly know these things?"

  Lucien leaned back against the tree, his energy spent. "Because I've already watched you fail once, Sebas. I was not going to let you do it again."

  Sebas swallowed hard, the words "I am from the future" sitting in his stomach like lead. Lucien saw the flicker of doubt in the butler’s eyes and sighed, leaning his head back against the rough bark.

  "Well, it doesn't matter," Lucien said, his voice weary but sharp. "I know you won't believe me right away. Showing is better than telling. For now, clean up this mess. Search their pockets, hide the mine entrance, and then throw the bodies deep into the brush for nature to enjoy."

  A violent shiver traced Sebas’s spine. He understood the subtext: let the scavengers erase the evidence. The boy was talking about human remains as if they were kitchen scraps. Sebas sat frozen, staring at the small child, until Lucien snapped at him.

  "Get moving, you fool!"

  Sebas scrambled to his feet, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. He worked in a panicked blur, dragging heavy stones to block the cave mouth and weaving brush over the gap until it looked like an untouched hillside. He then moved to the corpses, his hands shaking as he turned out their pockets. Finally, he hoisted the bodies and disappeared into the dark treeline to discard them.

  Silence returned to the clearing.

  Without the distraction of the fight or the conversation, the true weight of the damage hit Lucien. His ribs felt like crushed glass, and his spine throbbed with every shallow breath. He was badly hurt; it would take weeks to recover. But to him, the price was acceptable. The gears were turning. He had the mine, and more importantly, he was breaking Sebas—molding him into the loyal tool he needed him to be. He also now had time to figure out what that power was.

  First, there was the Hearing. He had eavesdropped on the deal as if he were standing inches away, but the cost had been total sensory isolation. The forest had vanished; he had lost his sight, his smell, and his connection to his own limbs. He had become nothing but a pair of floating ears in a void.

  Then, the Physicality. The rock throw and the iron grip. He had funneled his entire existence into a single point of impact and gained a strength that should have belonged to an adult.

  Finally, the nature sense. The most terrifying of all. He had suppressed the bald man’s Earth Sigil—not by overpowering it, but by negotiating with the nature around him. He had felt a massive, primordial connection to the trees and the water, but in exchange, he had lost his "human nature." For those few seconds, he hadn't been Lucien D’Roselle; he had been a fragment of the forest itself.

  His vision began to swim. Consciousness was a fraying thread. Gritting his teeth, Lucien pulled the paring knife from his belt and drove the tip into his thigh. The sharp, hot spike of pain jolted him back to alertness. He couldn't faint yet. He couldn't afford to have Sebas carry him home to his "leecher" father and mother before the secret was secured.

  When Sebas finally returned, pale and covered in dirt, Lucien looked up. "What did those fools have on them?"

  Sebas held out a small pile: a few jagged daggers, some cheap jewelry, and a crumpled piece of parchment. "A letter, Young Master."

  "Give it to me."

  Lucien snatched the letter and scanned the contents. A slow, jagged grin spread across his blood-stained face. "Here. Take it," he said, thrusting it back at the butler. "Read it out loud."

  Sebas took the parchment, his voice trembling as he read the cramped handwriting:

  "I think we found ourselves a real opportunity here. Some fool revealed to us the location of an aether-stone mine. I'm writing this letter beforehand so it can be sent immediately after confirmation. Send everyone over and kill the villagers. Don't want the word to get out."

  The silence that followed was heavy. Sebas’s face went bone-white, the paper fluttering in his hand. The "ugly truth" was staring him in the face: his 'deal' wasn't a salvation for the estate—it was a death warrant for everyone he knew.

  "Now," Lucien whispered, his eyes pinning Sebas to the spot. "Do you still want to go find a healer and tell my father about your 'business deal'?"

  Sebas sat in the dirt, paralyzed, his mind a static-filled void.

  "Stop moping, you fool," Lucien spat. Sebas looked up, his expression blank, his spirit broken by the weight of the letter still clutched in his hand.

  "Sebas, the reason I told you the truth is because I need to start making moves. Now. I have to prevent the end of the world," Lucien said, his voice dropping to a cold, clinical tone. "And I need a pair of hands. I need someone to be my hands and feet. Do not worry about the mine; I already have a buyer in mind."

  In his head, Lucien saw two faces—though, in reality, only one of them truly mattered yet.

  "I need your absolute loyalty, Sebas. I fixed your mess, and now you are going to repay that debt."

  Sebas slowly nodded, a rhythmic, mechanical motion. It was the movement of a man who had no other choice left.

  "Good enough," Lucien muttered. "Do not tell my leecher parents a word. Let them stay in their blissful state of a permanent honeymoon. They don't need to know what happened here."

  A conflicted shadow passed over Sebas’s face. He opened his mouth to protest, but Lucien’s gaze sharpened. Even slumped against a tree, broken and bloodied, the eleven-year-old radiated a murderous pressure that forced Sebas to straighten his spine.

  "Sebas, I am going to need you. You’ve always said you wanted to make this Barony the best it could be, haven't you?"

  Sebas nodded again, more firmly this time.

  "Then I am your only chance. I don’t know what my father did to earn your loyalty, but you can only be loyal to him now by being loyal to me. I can no longer act as the obedient angel they remember. I can’t be the child who... who shits himself and hides his underwear under the bed."

  Sebas blinked, a momentary flash of the old butler returning. "You mean... two months ago, Young Master?"

  Lucien froze. A dull heat crawled up his neck, and his face turned a sudden, furious shade of red.

  Two months ago? He screamed internally. Fuck. I thought that was a lifetime ago.

  The embarrassment was the final blow to his flickering consciousness. The world began to tilt again, but this time, it wasn't a shift in power—it was the darkness of blood loss and exhaustion closing in.

  "This is bad," Lucien wheezed, his head lolling. "Sebas... take me home. Make excuses for the injuries. Lie about the deal... keep my secret. I am counting... on... you..."

  "Young Master!"

  That panicked cry was the last thing Lucien heard before his world went black.