The following morning, the "mask" was back on. Azrakar walked toward the kitchen to collect his daily rations—a meager bowl of thin porridge and a heel of stale bread. As a "disappointment" of the main line and a lowly Archive guard, his status was barely above that of the servants.
The kitchen was a chaotic mess of steam, shouting, and the smell of roasting meat that Azrakar would never taste. In the corner, he saw a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, struggling with a heavy iron pot of boiling water. Her name was Mina. She was a mute orphan who had been brought into the Vileth household years ago.
As she moved, a larger servant, a burly woman with a cruel face, deliberately stuck out a foot.
Mina tripped. The heavy pot tilted, and boiling water splashed across her thin arms. She let out a silent, pained gasp, her face contorting in agony as she fell to the stone floor.
"Clumsy brat!" the large woman barked, looming over her. "Look at the mess you've made! That water was for the Elders' tea. Now get up and scrub the floor before I tell the steward to dock your pay!"
The other servants laughed or looked away. In the Vileth estate, the weak were simply whetstones for the strong.
Azrakar watched from the doorway. He didn't feel a surge of "heroic" rage. Rage was a waste of energy. But he remembered Mina. In his past life, she was one of the few who had ever left a piece of extra bread in the Archive for the "trash" boy he used to be. She had done him good, however small.
Kindness to those who do me good, he reminded himself. And a lesson for those who hinder the order.
Azrakar walked into the kitchen, his head bowed, his eyes looking "scared." He "stumbled" toward Mina, dropping his own bread heel near the large servant's feet.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Azrakar squeaked, his voice cracking.
As he "scrambled" to pick up his bread, his hand moved with a speed no one in the room could track. He didn't punch the large woman. Instead, he pressed two fingers against a specific nerve cluster on her ankle, injecting a tiny, needle-like pulse of Mana.
It was a "Mana-Sting"—a technique that caused the nerves to fire as if they were being touched by molten lead, but left no visible mark.
The woman let out a blood-curdling scream and collapsed, clutching her leg. "My leg! It's on fire! Someone help me!"
In the confusion, Azrakar ignored her. He knelt beside Mina and took her burned arms in his hands.
"Are you okay?" he whispered, his voice soft.
To the onlookers, he was just a worried boy. In reality, he was circulating a cooling stream of Qi through his palms. The golden energy flowed into Mina's skin, instantly soothing the burn and preventing blisters from forming. Within seconds, the redness began to fade.
Mina looked at him, her wide eyes filled with shock. She couldn't speak, but she felt the strange, heavenly cool of his touch.
"Don't worry," Azrakar said, his eyes meeting hers. For a split second, the "mask" slipped, and she saw a depth of ancient, terrifying intelligence in the boy's gaze. "The fire is gone."
He stood up, his face returning to its "frightened" expression as the head cook came over to investigate the screaming servant.
"She just... she just fell," Azrakar told the cook, pointing at the woman who was still writhing on the floor. "I think she stepped on a hot coal."
He helped Mina to her feet and handed her his heel of bread.
"I'm not very hungry today," he lied.
Mina took the bread, her hands trembling. She gave him a small, hesitant bow.
As Azrakar walked out of the kitchen with his bowl of porridge, he felt a strange sensation in his chest. It wasn't the Trinity Circuit. It was something else—a small, vestigial spark of the humanity he had thought he'd burned away centuries ago.
A minor investment, he told himself, his mind already returning to his cultivation. A loyal servant in the kitchen is worth a dozen spies in the court. People talk when they think the help is invisible.