Joel didn't remember his mother's voice; he remembered the smell of her hair, warm like the smoke from a recently extinguished candle. He remembered the way her fingers tangled in his cloak, the feeling of being hidden in folds of silk and perfume. But her voice... her voice had faded, perhaps because she never said a word of goodbye.

  He was born in the lower city of Lysgaard, one of the imperial capitals of Velthara, the second of the four sacred worlds. Its streets wound between stone buildings worn by centuries of wind and dust, adorned with opaque glass lanterns and moss-covered roofs. The lower city was a place where the smell of sweat and metal mingled with cheap incense and the intoxicating scent of flowers sold by girls on street corners. There, among damp alleys and markets where everything from spices to secrets was trafficked, he lived his early years.

  His mother, Arisyn, had been a sought-after courtesan at the House of the Black Lotus, a brothel for nobles and lesser mages, a place of intrigue veiled behind purple silk curtains and carefully rehearsed laughter. She was known not only for her beauty, but for her keen intelligence, her dagger-sharp tongue, and a laugh that, they said, could make a man forget war. But Joel retained few distinct memories of her—a fragrance, a glint of gold on her fingers, an embrace that seemed to hold all the warmth in the world.

  His most prized possession was a portrait of his mother, painted in charcoal on a piece of cloth. The drawing was crude, but it captured with surprising precision the soft curve of her face, her large eyes, the delicate shadow of her smile. He slept with it under his pillow. When he felt the world was too cold, too unfair, he would secretly take it out to contemplate it, searching in those dull strokes for the strength to keep him going.

  Arisyn died when Joel was three years old. They said it was an illness, a sudden fever that took her in less than a day; no one mourned at her funeral. Her body was buried without ceremony, in a cemetery where the tombstones were nameless stones. Her family, distant and cold as marble, claimed all her possessions, while Joel was ignored and only the state orphanage accepted him.

  There he grew up, invisible within the walls of the system, eating just enough, sleeping enough, learning to dodge blows and detect lies in the voices of adults. He learned to steal without being seen, to climb walls without leaving a trace, to read lips when words were whispered behind others' backs. He never had friends, because he never wanted them. Every child in the orphanage was a potential traitor, a rival for the last ration of bread or a less freezing corner in winter.

  But Joel had something no other orphan had: dreams, which began the night he turned eight. He dreamed he was an old blacksmith, his hands covered in soot, living in a village with low roofs and strange names. In a nutshell, in a single night, he lived for decades. He felt the weight of the hammer, the heat of the anvil, the sadness of losing his wife, the pride of teaching an apprentice. When he woke up, he cried without knowing why. Every so often, the nights were similar.

  In another life, he was a soldier in a mud-filled trench, with explosions shaking the earth like enraged dragons. In another, a hunched philosopher surrounded by books, writing about freedom as his city burned. Then, a rebel slave who led a revolt in an endless desert; a lonely inventor in a steel tower; a city boy with strange machines in his pockets, living in a time when the skies were filled with metal birds.

  At first, memories were mists, broken echoes, shadows that faded with the light of dawn, but as the dreams grew, so did their clarity. At twelve, Joel could live an entire life in a single night, repeating the event once a month. He had no control over who or where he was, but he woke up with knowledge, emotions, and internal scars. He knew languages ??he'd never heard of, understood technologies impossible for his world, and above all, he felt an indescribable nostalgia for places he'd never set foot in.

  That made him strange. The other children were afraid of him; he talked to himself, drew things no one understood, and wrote in symbols that didn't belong to any known language in Velthara. His caretakers viewed him with suspicion. "Crazy Joel," they said, "The boy who talks like an old man." When they tried to take him to a mind healer, the designated mage looked at him only once and refused to touch him.

  "He's not broken, he just doesn't know who he is," the healer said, but no one understood what he meant.

  Joel, for his part, began keeping a secret diary, in one of the many languages ??he seemed to know, in which he wrote down every fragment he remembered from his dreams: inventions, war strategies, social structures, philosophical thoughts, even recipes for meals that no one in his world knew. Over time, its pages became a chaotic map of other people's memories, as if his mind were a library on loan from another universe. The diary was eventually burned by him when one of his companions accused him of being possessed by evil spirits.

  But it wasn't just his intelligence that made him stand out. Joel had a peculiar way of looking at the world, as if every tragedy were a cosmic joke badly told. He was sarcastic to the core, a survivor who disguised his pain with irony. When one of the caretakers asked him if he thought about his future, he replied that he did, that he hoped to become a statue so he would never have to move again. When a classmate asked him for help studying, Joel offered him a blank sheet of paper and said, "Here's the secret to success, straight from the stars." His cynicism was his shield, his way of keeping the world at a distance. He didn't believe in gratuitous kindness or happy endings. He had learned, too early, that the universe didn't reward the good, only the useful.

  One of those nights, before he turned fourteen, Joel dreamed he was a warrior from another era—not one of the children's stories some caregivers used to tell him, but a real one, made of flesh and blood, his face furrowed by years of war and his gaze hardened by loss. His name was Hoshinobu, and he served a feudal lord in a distant province, where the mountains were covered in mist and the cherry trees blossomed with the fragility of ephemerality.

  He wore simple, unadorned armor, made for duty, not ostentation. His sword was curved, single-edged, with a blade as sharp as the responsibility he carried. Hoshinobu walked lonely paths in the rain, guarding his lord, facing ambushes, defending villagers, and sometimes simply gazing at the moon as if his destiny could be read there.

  He lived by an ancestral code, a philosophy where life was dedicated to rectitude, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Honor was everything: more important than gold, power, or even life itself. Joel, inhabiting the soul of that warrior, felt every decision as if it were his own. He remembered when Hoshinobu forgave a defeated enemy who mourned for his children; when he refused a promotion because it had been obtained through the betrayal of a comrade; when, mortally wounded, he crawled to deliver a message that saved his clan.

  He remembered the wind whistling through the bamboo canes, the pain of a wound that had not healed properly, the bitter taste of hot liquor on the last night before a battle, and above all, the silence of a death accepted without rancor, because life only had meaning when it was offered for something greater than oneself.

  On another night, the dream was more difficult. Joel dreamed he was a gem merchant in a hot, reddish land, where the valleys glittered with crystals buried beneath the bloody earth. He was a rich, cunning man, accustomed to negotiating with smooth words and dirty hands. He had bodyguards, caravans, and connections with local lords and also with those who claimed to represent them in distant governments.

  But his wealth wasn't clean; it didn't come from fair trade or honest work. It came from the pain of hundreds, thousands of enslaved children and men, forced to dig with their bare hands through dangerous tunnels, breathing dust and death. Joel, trapped in that life, felt every rotten decision, every bribe paid to silence voices, every falsified accounting that hid suffering behind prosperous figures.

  He saw how governments, those who were supposed to protect their people, preferred to look the other way. Sometimes they even collaborated, handing over entire areas to private companies, ignoring the cries of the exploited. Speeches spoke of development, but Joel saw only chains, broken bones, and blank stares. He was a helpless witness to a machine built on human sacrifice, where the guilty were applauded and the innocent buried nameless.

  He woke up feeling nauseous, his fists clenched, his eyes dry from so much hatred. That dream brought neither glory nor honor, only shame, only truth. He couldn't explain why, but that life, more than all his others, had left a deep mark, an echo that continued to vibrate within him.

  On another occasion, Joel dreamed he was a factory worker in a city covered in soot and steam. His hands were hardened by repetitive labor, screwing together pieces of metal on an endless production line. Every day was the same as the one before: waking up before dawn, walking among smoking cranes and factories that roared like insatiable beasts. His coworkers were dull-eyed men, weathered by sweat, routine, and broken promises.

  But something in him refused to accept this fate without changing. At night, he studied in secret, reading stolen manuals, learning about engines, pulleys, and structures. He drew sketches of machines no one had yet imagined. He dreamed of inventing, of changing the world. His mind was a blazing furnace, always producing ideas, formulas, and plans.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Over time, he managed to found his own workshop, and then a company. He moved from the assembly line to the design of revolutionary products: tools that facilitated human labor, mechanical prosthetics, irrigation systems, and more efficient ovens. He wasn't just seeking wealth—although he obtained it—but rather to leave a useful mark on the world. He inspired entire generations to build, to improve, to never settle.

  Joel woke from that dream with his fingers throbbing, as if they were still holding a wrench. And he felt something new: the impulse to create, not just to learn, but to transform. For the first time in his dull world, he wanted to invent something that would last longer than a lifetime.

  On another occasion, Joel dreamed he was a man who had lived for decades seeking satisfaction in all things earthly. Wealth, women, food, wine, fame. He had sampled every pleasure his world had to offer, with desperate intensity, trying to fill a void in his chest that never went away. The man was cunning, attractive, successful... and completely alone.

  Over the years, loneliness and guilt gnawed at him. His luxuries became repugnant. One day, without knowing why, he climbed a hill in the north of the country and found a temple. There, men dressed in simple robes welcomed him without judgment, and for the first time in his life, no one asked him for anything, no one desired his money, his body, or his accomplishments. He renounced everything, abandoning his name, his past, and his ambition. He spent the rest of his life in that place, meditating, serving, cleaning the soil, and feeding others. Desire gave way to silence; emptiness transformed into space. And when death overtook him, in the midst of deep meditation, his soul bid farewell without regret.

  Joel woke from that dream with dried tears in his eyes. He still remembered the old man's serene face as he died. That man had no physical strength, no supernatural abilities… He only had peace. And that peace, which Joel had never known, struck him harder than any sword.

  In another dream, Joel was a young pilot in the midst of a devastating conflict between nations, a war where the skies filled with smoke and steel. They called him Thomas, and he piloted a roaring machine with metal wings, adorned with emblems of a homeland that spoke of freedom while its enemies burned on the mainland. His country was an island surrounded by enemies, fighting for every inch of sky with the fury of the damned.

  Thomas wasn't a hero at first. His path was long: weeks of training in hidden airfields, where instructors shouted more than they taught and engines failed more than they roared. He learned to fly in impossible conditions, to endure organ-crushing forces, to breathe inside a steel coffin thousands of feet above the ground. He learned to kill without seeing the eyes of the one who fell.

  But beyond the war, Thomas fell in love with the sky, with the feeling of absolute freedom when he ascended above the clouds, with the sacred vertigo of seeing the sunrise from above, with how the roar of the engine silenced his fears. In the air, he was more than human; he was eternal, if only for minutes.

  His last battle came without prior glory. An alarm in the early morning, an enemy squadron crossing the channel, the roar of sirens at the base. He took off with his comrades, knowing the numbers were not in their favor. The sky was a hell of tracer fire, smoke, and crossed contrails. He was hit from behind, without warning. A brief explosion, and then the fall. Thomas didn't scream; he only thought of the sky. He closed his eyes with the peace of one who has lived for what he loves, even if only for stolen moments.

  Joel woke up with his chest heaving, closing his eyes again, searching for the roar of the engine in the silence of his room. For a moment, he heard it, and felt the lost freedom.

  On another occasion, Joel dreamed he was the captain of a warship, which ended during a colossal battle on turbulent waters. The salty wind hit his face as he watched the horizon from the bridge. There was no land in sight, only smoke, enemy sails, and the constant roar of cannon fire.

  His rise wasn't easy. He had started as a cabin boy, barely a boy, cleaning decks under the merciless sun and the relentless rains. He learned to climb the masts with his aching body, to navigate by reading the stars, to repair torn sails while the ship rolled like a wounded beast. Over the years, he survived storms, mutinies, and hunger. He earned the respect of his crew not with shouts, but with firm and fair decisions. His name became a whisper of discipline and courage.

  In the final battle, his fleet was at a severe disadvantage. The enemy ships outnumbered his own, and the sea seemed to conspire against them. But the commander—Joel—devised a bold strategy: he divided his squadron, used the wind to his advantage, and attacked from an angle that broke the enemy formation. The fighting was fierce, with cannon smoke covering the sky and the decks stained with blood and splinters. He was wounded in the abdomen by a splinter, but continued shouting orders until the end.

  When the battle ended, the enemy retreated, leaving a sea littered with shipwrecks and bodies. Joel died at dawn, sitting at the helm, one hand still on the hilt of his saber. He had saved his fleet. He had won with ingenuity, not strength. And his death was mourned by all who lived to tell the tale.

  He awoke with a sharp pain in his chest, as if he still carried the wound. He understood that courage alone was not enough, that a sharp mind could save where a sword failed, and that leadership was, above all, a form of sacrifice.

  And so came the day of the examination of blood and strength, a tradition and ritual of the Empire for all young people who came of age. Every year, all boys and girls who turned fourteen in the Empire's orphanages were subjected to these tests. It was not an act of mercy, but of imperial efficiency. The goal was to identify those with pure blood, heirs, even in a minimal way, to the ancestral lineage that conferred an affinity with mana. Those who possessed that spark could become magi, or at least enhanced soldiers, while the rest were destined for common life: workers, peasants, servants, or worse, expendable fodder for the Empire's wars.

  The purity of one's blood defined not only a person's future but also their social value. A child without family, without a name, and without heritage, like Joel, had one chance to escape the fate of the nameless: to shine in these trials. Those who showed aptitude were recruited, trained, and taken to special academies or training camps. Some rose to privileged positions, others simply survived a little longer than their peers. But for the Empire, every body counted; every drop of useful blood could mean a spark of power, a new tool to sustain the fight against rival worlds.

  Joel woke up before dawn, as if his mind had thrown him out of sleep just in time to face his destiny. For weeks, everyone in the orphanage had whispered about the exam, some with hope and others with fear hidden behind a mask of indifference. For many, it was just a formality, another day that would pass without consequence, but for Joel, it was a crack in the wall that enclosed his existence.

  He knew, from what he'd heard in his dream lives and from what he'd learned firsthand, that the world didn't grant opportunities. The Empire had no time for those who didn't offer something useful in return. If he failed, he would return to anonymity, to the empty routine of forced labor, to a life without purpose beyond survival. But if he passed... if he showed something different, if his blood revealed even a spark of ancestral heritage, he could stop being just "Orphan Joel" and he could search for answers. He could discover if his dreams were a gift or a curse. The exam wasn't just a test, it was a door. And Joel, no matter what lay on the other side, was determined to cross it.

  ...

  The stone walls of the orphanage gymnasium exuded dampness and silence. Outside, the sun was just beginning to rise over the rooftops of Lysgaard, shedding a grayish light that didn't quite dispel the cold. The air smelled of damp wood, old sweat, and cheap disinfectant.

  About twenty young men waited in formation, barefoot on the stone floor. Joel stood among them, in the back row, his chin held high, his mother's portrait folded in his inside pocket, like a talisman.

  The examiners, three men dressed in scarlet cloaks and imperial embroidery, advanced slowly in front of the young men. One held a tablet of names; another watched silently, glassy-eyed and bearing a scar across his forehead. The third carried a small metal trunk containing glass vials, syringes, and a shining silver object shaped like an inverted bell: the Chalice of Purity.

  One of the orphanage instructors, a thin, bitter man named Ser Marn, addressed the group in a gruff voice. "Today, gods and men will decide if you are worth more than a piece of bread. Do not ask questions, do not cry, walk when called, bleed when commanded. The Empire does not want cowards or martyrs... It wants results."

  Joel kept his face impassive, even though he felt his stomach tense.

  The exams began with the strength test: lifting three progressively heavier weights, each heavier than the last. The first was manageable for any healthy young man; the second required trained muscles; the third... was something else entirely.

  One by one, the boys passed; some couldn't even lift the second; one fell to his knees while trying to lift the third, vomiting from the effort. The examiners didn't say a word; they just took notes.

  When Joel's turn came, he moved forward silently, feeling the gazes piercing his back like knives. He knelt in front of the first weight; lifting it was like lifting a dry branch. The second offered resistance, but no more than a sack of wheat. The third... he held it for five seconds, his muscles tense but not trembling. There was no applause, just a slight raise of the eyebrow from the examiner at the center, who jotted something down on his paper, without looking at Joel.

  The speed test followed, a simple race through the inner courtyard, marked by torches and imperial flags. Joel ran without apparent effort, his feet barely touching the ground, easily placing among the top three.

  And then came the final part, the blood test. The young men passed one by one into the building, where heavy curtains hid what was happening inside. When Joel was called, he crossed without hesitation.

  The room was lit by a crystal lamp pulsing with a blue light. In the center, the chalice of purity rested on a stone pedestal. One of the examiners signaled for him to extend his arm. The needle entered precisely, and a few drops fell into the chalice. The reaction was subtle; the blood didn't bubble or glow, but a faint, almost imperceptible halo formed on the surface. The three men exchanged a brief glance; one of them approached and spoke in a low voice.

  "Clear traces. Level 1 confirmed. High physical potential. Name?"

  "Joel. No last name," he replied, his voice firm.

  The examiner nodded, without a trace of emotion. "You'll be recruited into the auxiliary training corps. You'll leave today."

  Joel said nothing; he just allowed himself, as he left the room, to take his mother's portrait out of his pocket and look at it for a moment. The charcoal had begun to wear around the edges, but her smile was still there.

  Hours later, as the sun began to set between the towers of the lower city, a black carriage with imperial emblems waited in front of the orphanage gate. Joel climbed in without looking back. As the carriage moved away along the cobblestone streets, he didn't think about the future, or his dreams, or even the exam. He thought about the voice he couldn't remember, a voice that once whispered to him to lull him to sleep, and that now is what he most wants to hear.