Tommy couldn’t remember when he had started getting up in the middle of the night.
It had probably been last month, when Mrs.
Cole reduced their dinner portions, claiming the orphanage was tight on funds.
Too hungry to sleep, he had to crawl out of bed at midnight just to drink water.
Tonight was no different.
Holding his enamel mug, he walked over to the window and looked outside as he drank.
The moon wasn’t particularly large, but the weeds in the backyard gleamed so white under the moonlight that they looked covered in a layer of frost.
Then he saw Aaron.
That new kid who had arrived three days ago—the weird, thin-as-a-bamboo-pole Aaron—was standing all by himself right in the middle of the backyard.
*What is that guy doing running out there in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?*
Tommy raised his hand, intending to tap on the glass and mock him, but his arm froze halfway up.
Bugs.
They were pouring out of the grass, not just one or two, but a massive wave.
Swarming in pitch-black tides, they surged toward Aaron from all directions.
Ants, beetles, centipedes, and moths swooping down from the sky merged into a rapidly shrinking vortex in the moonlight.
When they reached Aaron’s feet, they vanished.
They didn’t burrow into the dirt, nor did they fly away.
They simply vanished into thin air, as if pinched up by an invisible hand and stuffed away into somewhere else.
The enamel mug slipped from Tommy’s fingers.
It hit the windowsill, bounced once, and clattered onto the floor, snapping into two halves.
The sharp cracking sound rang with terrifying clarity down the silent corridor.
Tommy didn’t look down at the broken mug.
His eyes were glued to the figure down below.
Hearing the noise, Aaron raised his head.
The moonlight caught him from the side, illuminating half of his face.
It was that single glance.
Tommy would later spend a long time trying to recall what he had seen in that moment, but he could never describe it clearly.
Aaron’s face hadn’t deformed, nor were his features contorted.
He was still that thin, ten-year-old boy with gray-blue eyes.
Yet the instant the moonlight lit up his face, Tommy’s brain received a red alert that completely contradicted his visual senses.
His eyes told him that a child was standing there.
His soul told him that what stood there was not human.
It was like walking down the street, looking down at a flower, and suddenly having every hair on your body stand on end as icy chills rushed up your spine—because your deepest instinct was telling you that it wasn’t a flower at all, but something you should never have laid eyes upon.
Tommy’s knees buckled.
It wasn’t the kind of weak-kneed weakness born of ordinary fear.
It was a fundamental, soul-deep reaction.
Like standing before the grandest mountain range in heaven and earth, your body automatically commanded you: *Kneel.*
He slammed heavily onto the floorboards.
His knees hit the broken shards of the mug, sending a surge of pain through him, but he couldn’t even manage a scream.
His throat was locked.
It wasn’t that some force was choking him, but rather that his vocal cords had lost all function amidst violent tremors.
Sprawled on the floor, Tommy shuddered uncontrollably as tears and snot poured down his face.
He didn’t know why he was crying, nor why he was trembling.
Only a single thought echoed repeatedly in his mind:
*Don’t look.*
*Don’t look at him.*
*Don’t look at him don’t look at him don’t look at him don’t look at him.*
Down below, Aaron stood where he was, gazing up at the horror-stricken, contorted face behind the second-floor window.
He wasn’t angry.
What had Tommy seen?
Nothing more than a swarm gathering and vanishing.
In a Muggle’s cognitive framework, such a sight would only be categorized as a hallucination or a nightmare. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
What had truly broken Tommy wasn’t the bugs, but the fact that he had looked directly at Aaron.
The Divine Gaze.
If any mortal stared directly at a god for more than three seconds, their soul would produce an instinctive repulsion and terror.
This wasn’t something Aaron did intentionally, but rather a passive effect of his divinity.
Much like how the sun never actively tried to burn someone’s eyes—if you insisted on staring directly at the sun, that was entirely your own problem.
Aaron let out a soft sigh.
He hadn’t wanted to expose anything unusual so early, but what had happened couldn’t be undone.
Fortunately, there was another passive effect: Divine Shielding.
After a mortal averted their gaze, they would subconsciously blur all memories related to the deity.
It wasn’t complete amnesia, but rather that those memories would turn into something akin to a dream—a dream where you knew the contents were terrifying, but you could never recall the actual details.
Tommy would likely treat tonight as nothing more than a nightmare.
Aaron looked up at the boy who was on the verge of fainting behind the second-floor window, and spoke four words calmly:
“Go back to sleep.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but every single word carried into Tommy’s ears with absolute clarity.
It was not transmitted through ordinary hearing.
Those four words felt directly branded into Tommy’s mind, bypassing his eardrums and auditory nerves, acting directly upon his consciousness.
A Divine Edict.
Tommy’s body immediately executed the command.
He scrambled up from the floor, turned around, walked over to his bed, lay down, pulled the blanket over his head, and closed his eyes.
The entire process was seamless, executed without a shred of hesitation, like a marionette controlled by invisible strings.
Three seconds later, his breathing evened out, and he fell fast asleep.
When he woke up tomorrow morning, he would only remember having had a bad dream.
The contents of the dream would be vague, leaving only the memory of bitter moonlight and a host of crawling insects.
As for Aaron…
He wouldn’t even remember Aaron’s name appearing in that dream.
Aaron climbed through the window back into his room, kicked off his shoes, and lay on the bed.
Beneath his pillow rested the Hogwarts acceptance letter he had brought back from Diagon Alley.
His fingers brushed against the rough edges of the parchment as he closed his eyes to review today’s gains.
The total number of believers had broken past three hundred, predominantly insects.
The Divine Kingdom space had expanded to eight hundred meters, and initial ecological simulation had been activated.
Three core talents: Proportional Strength (Ant), Sensory Network (Garden Spider), and Invisibility (Demiguise).
Two newly acquired talents: Parseltongue (Horned Snake) and Hyper-Speed Nerves (Centipede Fusion).
As for an evaluation of his power…
Judging purely by reaction speed and sensory range, he had already surpassed ordinary adult wizards.
But on a purely magical level, he was still far off.
He hadn’t even officially cast a single spell.
Not because he couldn’t, but because it wasn’t necessary.
His power system was completely distinct from that of a wizard; a wand and incantations were merely disguise tools to him.
However, at Hogwarts, he needed to put on a performance.
He had to play the part of a gifted yet still learning, ordinary young wizard.
Being too strong would draw undue attention, while being too weak would invite pity.
The best position to hold was upper-middle tier: shining occasionally, remaining silent and low-key most of the time.
A presence that wouldn’t raise anyone’s alarm.
Aaron let out a yawn and stuffed the acceptance letter back under his pillow.
Time to sleep.
***
Early the next morning.
Over twenty children crowded around long wooden tables, scrambling for slices of bread and watery oatmeal.
Mrs.
Cole stood at the doorway maintaining order, her voice louder than anyone else’s.
Aaron sat in his usual spot in the corner, a bowl of porridge and a single slice of bread set before him.
Tommy walked past him carrying a meal tray.
Aaron looked up at him.
Tommy looked awful, his eyes ringed with dark circles as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night.
The instant his eyes met Aaron’s, his entire body shuddered.
That reaction wasn’t simple fear; it was more like a conditioned reflex.
Like a finger that had been burned by fire, it would involuntarily flinch away the next time it drew close to a heat source.
Tommy stumbled mid-stride, quickly lowered his head, swept around the perimeter of the room along the wall, and took a seat as far away from Aaron as humanly possible.
His two little sidekicks noticed.
“Boss? Why aren’t you sitting over here?”
“Shut up. I’ll sit wherever I want.”
“But they’ve already finished dividing the bread over there.”
“I said shut up!”
Tommy kept his head down, shoveling porridge into his mouth, not daring to cast even a single glance in Aaron’s direction.
Aaron withdrew his gaze and resumed eating his bread.
Divine Shielding had indeed taken effect.
Tommy couldn’t recall the specific details of last night, but the mark left on his soul remained.
That imprint would cause him to instinctively avoid Aaron whenever they met, much like an animal’s territorial boundary.
You wouldn’t know what the danger was, but you knew you couldn’t get close.
Halfway through his bread, a screech owl flew in through the window.
It wasn’t an ordinary barn owl like the one that had delivered the acceptance letter, but a noticeably smaller screech owl wearing a miniature golden collar around its neck.
Engraved on the golden collar was a symbol:
Two crossed axes.
The crest of Gringotts.
The screech owl circled over the dining hall once, plunged downward with precision, dropped a black-and-gold envelope into Aaron’s oatmeal bowl, and then flapped its wings and flew off.
Oatmeal splashed all over Aaron’s hand.
“…”
Aaron fished the envelope out of the bowl and wiped off the oatmeal residue with his sleeve.
A black envelope with a gold wax seal.
No signature, no recipient address.
Only that Gringotts crest of crossed axes stamped directly into the center of the wax seal.
Aaron didn’t open the letter in the dining hall.
With over twenty children and Mrs.
Cole present, even though they most likely wouldn’t understand wizarding items, there was no need to take unnecessary risks.
He stuffed the envelope into his pocket, finished his last bite of porridge, got up, and returned to his room.
Closing the door behind him, he sat on the edge of his bed and broke the seal.
Inside, there was no parchment and no written words—only a single metallic component.
It was roughly the size of a copper button, shaped like a gear, its surface densely inscribed with microscopic runes.
Goblin craftsmanship.
Aaron picked up the gear and flipped it over to check the back.
On the back were only two tiny letters: G.R.
Griphook.
The goblin at Gringotts—the one who had attended to him.
What was this gear?
Aaron tried injecting a thread of divine power into it.
Nothing happened; the gear didn’t react.
What about magic power?