Life in the village was monotonous, like the steady drumming of rain on a leaky roof.
Each day began the same — with the cry of roosters and the sound of my father rising before dawn to head for the fields. My mother fed the hearth with scraps of wood, stirred a pot of water with a handful of barley grains that would become our morning porridge.
For me, who had once commanded armies and feasted upon the corpses of fallen kings, this was an insult. To eat watery porridge, to hear my mother say, "Eat, my son, it will make you strong."
And yet I ate. Not because I needed such pitiful nourishment — the power that slumbered within me could sustain me without it. But because I saw how my mother saved every grain, denying herself, so that I might have more.
---
Day after day, I went with the other children. They had duties — herding geese, gathering wood, guarding livestock. I pretended to belong among them, to be one of them.
Sometimes I sat on the fence, listening to their meaningless chatter: who had seen a fox, who had caught the bigger fish, who dared step deeper into the forest. They laughed, threw clumps of mud at one another, and I sat in silence. They thought me strange, too serious.
And they were right.
Their worries were laughable. I thought of other things — of the empires I had built on rivers of blood, of the palaces that burned in my name. And yet, when their laughter echoed through the village, I felt a hollow space within me. As if I had lost something I had never possessed.
---
I learned most from my father.
A silent man, he spoke little, but each of his movements was a lesson.
He taught me how to hold an axe, though I was still small. "Not with strength," he said, "but with balance." He showed me how a tree could be felled not by brute force, but by a precise strike at the right place.
I saw more in it — I saw the reflection of my own magic. It was never necessary to scream or strike wildly. You only needed to know where to cut.
Sometimes we worked together in silence for hours. I carried logs while repeating runes in my mind. He thought I was learning to work. And perhaps he was right.
---
My mother showed me another world. A world of songs, small joys, and festivals.
I remember the first time she took me to the market in the neighboring village. For me, a ruler who had once owned markets bursting with gold and slaves, it was humiliating to walk among shabby stalls with nothing but a few chunks of cheese and lumps of salt.
But her eyes shone.
She showed me a gingerbread, small, ordinary. She bought it for me, and when I tasted it, sweetness flooded my mouth. For a moment I forgot everything — power, past, vengeance. I was only a child, eating gingerbread and listening to my mother laugh.
And that terrified me more than any enemy ever had.
---
But the nights were mine.
When the village slept and the hearths grew cold, I went into the forest. There I drew runes into the earth, whispered incantations, tested the limits of this new body.
At first, small things — a flame that burned on my palm, a breeze that bent to my will.
Then more — a wind strong enough to topple a tree, a shadow that moved though there was no light.
My body was weak, but my soul strong. Each day I felt more of myself awaken.
But every time I returned to the hut and saw my mother sleeping peacefully beside my father, I felt a strange weakness. As if their presence kept me from turning again into the monster I once was.
---
Once more, I played with the children by the stream. The boy I had nearly killed years before was there. He had avoided me since, but this time he dared speak: "You… you're different. But maybe… that doesn't mean you're bad."
I wanted to sneer, to tell him he had no idea what true evil was. But his eyes were honest, without deceit. And instead of words, I simply nodded.
It was a small, meaningless moment. Yet it etched itself into my memory.
---
Thus the days flowed. In labor, in games, in the silence of night.
The villagers still whispered that I was strange. But my parents defended me, stood by me, even if they too sensed something was not right.
And I began to understand that their love and sacrifice were shaping me — against my will, against my plans.
I was a shadow among them, a lord hidden in the body of a child.
And yet I was beginning to learn what it meant to be human.
And that was a lesson I had never known before.