The years had passed, scoring the dried mud walls of Shadizar with new cracks, but doing nothing to change the city's rotten soul. In the pleasure district, life followed its immutable course, rhythmed by forced laughter and the clink of copper coins.
Brannok, now seven winters old, was an unusually quiet boy. While the other children of the brothel – a small band of bastards with eyes too old for their faces – ran and fought with the savagery required for survival, he often preferred to sit in the shade of an awning, observing. His grey eyes, the heritage of the unknown father his mother Lyra never spoke of, seemed to absorb every detail. He was calm, thoughtful, an island of silence in the perpetual chaos.
But in Shadizar, tranquility was seen as weakness. And the weak were prey.
"Look at the son of a whore! He thinks he's a princess!"
Three older boys, the sons of a notoriously cruel slaver, blocked his path as he returned from the cistern, a water jug in his hands. It was a ritual. Brannok, as a prostitute's bastard, was a prime target for those seeking to assert their own shaky superiority.
At first, it was just insults. Then shoves. Brannok absorbed them, his face impassive. He didn't feel fear, only a cold assessment. These boys were a minor nuisance, at best. The real danger in Shadizar lurked in the adjacent alleys, in the form of drunk men or cutpurses.
"He doesn't even speak! He looks like a mute!" one of them sneered, giving him a harder shove.
The jug slipped from Brannok's hands and shattered on the stone floor, the water spreading like tears too scarce. It was at that precise moment that something changed. A spark, tiny, ignited deep within his being. It wasn't anger. It was a certainty.
One of the boys, emboldened by his silence, stepped forward to punch him in the face.
Brannok's world slowed down.
The fist's movement became a soft, predictable trajectory. The noise of the street – the merchants, the laughter, the whinnies – stretched into a deep drone. And his sense of smell was suddenly flooded with a torrent of information: the sour stench of fear beneath his attacker's sweat, the cheap perfume of the girl in the window across the street, the musky scent of a stray dog three alleys away.
Without thinking, his own body responded. He dodged the blow with a fluidity that was anything but childlike, a simple shift of his torso that seemed almost lazy. His own hand, small but already hard, closed around the fist that had missed its target. The pressure he exerted was not that of a seven-year-old boy. A dry crack, barely audible, was heard.
The boy screamed, more from surprise than pain, snatching back his bruised hand.
The other two stood gaping, bewildered. The scene had lasted less than two seconds. Brannok looked at them, still silent. His expression was not threatening, simply... attentive. As if he were studying them. Like a hunter studies new prey.
That coldness, that strangeness, was more terrifying than a loud rage. They backed away, dragging their whimpering friend, and disappeared into the crowd, throwing dark looks over their shoulders.
Brannok stood still for a moment, looking at his own hands. He had felt the strength flow through him, a warm, powerful wave that did not belong to the boy he was supposed to be. He had seen the movement before it happened, heard the change in his attacker's breath. It was the first time it had manifested so clearly.
"So, discovering what you're made of, little one?"
The voice was hoarse, worn by age and kohl, but full of undeniable authority. It was Granny, the keeper of the brothel's children. An old woman, wrinkled like a forgotten parchment, but whose eyes sparkled with sharp intelligence. She stood on the threshold, a shawl over her shoulders, watching the scene with a small smile.
Everyone in Shadizar, or nearly so, had once passed through her expert hands to enter the world. And everyone, from the prostitutes to the city guards, loved and feared her a little. She had a fierce character and a wisdom that smelled of earth and blood.
Brannok looked up at her. He said nothing, but his gaze spoke volumes.
"Your mother told me about your birth," she said, approaching. "Eyes that saw right away. Strength in your little fists... and a heat, like a banked furnace." She leaned in, her smell of dried herbs and harsh soap overwhelming Brannok's senses. "You are not like the others, boy. It is not a curse. It is a burden. And a weapon."
She took his hand, examining his fingers as if they held a secret.
"You must learn to know this fire inside you. To control it. Because if you let it control you, one day, you'll just be another noise in the dark. And in Shadizar, noises in the dark are soon forgotten."
Brannok nodded slowly. Granny's words resonated with the sensation he had just experienced. It wasn't magic, not like the Stygian sorcerers the sailors whispered about. It was deeper, more visceral. It was a part of him, a muscle he had never learned to flex.
That night, nestled against his mother Lyra, who stroked his hair humming an old Cimmerian lullaby, Brannok did not sleep. He listened. He listened to the steady, soothing beat of his mother's heart. He listened to the muffled conversations from the neighboring rooms. He listened to the scratching of rats behind the walls.
And he felt. The strength, dormant, lurking in the hollow of his bones. The speed, ready to burst from his muscles. The senses, deployed like invisible nets catching the world.
He was no longer Marc, the ordinary man. He was not yet the hunter he sensed he would become. He was Brannok, the son of Conan and Lyra, the child with the eyes of a wolf. And his true education had just begun. He had to discover himself, and discover his abilities, one by one. The hunt, after all, began with the tracking of his own nature.