A man stood staring at a pitiful sight: a boy, bloodied and in clear pain, sat without his shirt, his upper body bare. Wounds spread across his back, covering nearly every inch of his pearl-like skin.
His teeth were clenched, but he made no attempt to do anything about his wounds. At this point, it had almost been routine.
Every day, without fail, he would arrive in the damned room, go through torture disguised as conditioning, and get whipped for being weak…for being a child.
His past self knelt in the debris, small and pale and holding himself together with nothing but the particular stubbornness of a boy who had wanted nothing more than to make his parents proud.
The man—Azreil Hector Aristeus—stood with his back to Leonidas and the pilgrim both, facing the kneeling boy like a judge who had already reached his verdict before entering the room.
