The cold air had begun biting at Alexander’s face after long hours of failed training on the right hand, the leftover sting of disappointment still hanging in his chest like a gray cloud that refused to leave. His hands had gone numb from the cold, his fingers slowly losing feeling, but he didn’t complain — he knew his brother wouldn’t go easy on him if he saw him whining over a bit of morning frost.
He noticed Daron suddenly stop laughing, his face growing more serious than Alexander had seen all morning, as though a heavy cloud had settled over his usually cheerful features.
Daron stood up in the cold and slowly began peeling the leather glove off his left hand — a motion that felt more ritual than routine, his fingers pulling at the leather with great care, as though revealing something he normally showed no one, something he’d rather keep hidden even from himself. The glove came off to reveal a hand covered in old scars and burns, its skin cracked in places, dark patches spreading along the fingers like the trace of an old fire that had never fully healed — as though the fire itself had been carved into that hand years ago and never left.
But he didn’t seem to hate that hand, or hate looking at it. There was something in the way he studied it closer to a man looking at an old scar he’d survived, not a flaw he was ashamed of. Alexander didn’t know why his brother kept it hidden... after all, he could control it, unlike Alexander himself. That thought alone was enough to stir his curiosity more than anything else he’d seen in this new world.
For a moment, Alexander remembered that day he’d fought Daron — that distant morning that now seemed to carry an entirely different meaning.
(That’s why he never used his left hand that day... he only fought me with his right. One hand was enough for this man to beat me with. If he’d used the left one too, I wonder how long I would’ve lasted.)
Daron stepped forward and grabbed the remaining pig, the animal trembling slightly in his grip as though sensing something it couldn’t understand, its small eyes rolling with a primal animal unease, its body warning it of a danger its simple mind couldn’t process. Daron began speaking with unusual calm, his voice lower than his usual tone, as though weighing every word carefully before letting it out:
"The left hand... the hand of ruin. Everything I’m about to show you is forbidden to use on another human being. The Church executes anyone who uses this kind of burning..."
He took hold of the pig with his left hand, and without hesitation or regret, said:
"Ruin."
The pig didn’t scream, didn’t show any pain — it simply began crumbling apart into ash, fine gray particles scattering with the cold breeze, mixing with the white clouds of Daron’s breath rising into the frigid air. There was no reaction, no trick to it; this wasn’t some chemical process. It was just a touch — a simple touch, like a handshake — but one that ended a life without any resistance or struggle.
Alexander watched in complete silence, his eyes not on the scattering ash but on the strange calm on his brother’s face, as though the act meant no more to him than cutting bread or hauling water from a well — just another daily chore he completed without it leaving a mark on him.
"Is that how it happened with the witch?" Daron asked.
"Yeah."
The same touch, the same feeling Alexander had felt under the moonlight that distant night. But he didn’t see the same hunger on his brother Daron’s face — Daron looked tired from using that hand, the way a man looks tired after finishing a chore he hates doing, not the way a man looks after savoring a moment of victory or the taste of power.
(Strange... I felt something like fire in my chest when I killed that witch, something like winning a hard-fought round after years of losing. But Daron... he looks at this like he’s washing dirt off his hands, not showing off strength. Does he genuinely hate it? Or has he just learned to hide what he really feels?)
"Can I try?"
"Yeah, but not on an animal... we can’t afford to lose every pig on this farm."
Alexander gave a faint smile despite the biting cold, silently wondering how many pigs would even be left on this farm if training kept going this way.
Daron handed Alexander a long stick, its wood rough and cold between his fingers, the morning dampness still clinging to its surface, and told him to try it on that instead.
The whole idea seemed pointless to him; he didn’t like practicing on inanimate objects — a stick was never going to fight him one day, and there wouldn’t be an opponent made of wood standing in front of him in that upcoming competition.
But he didn’t dwell on it. Instead of focusing purely on the training, he found himself paying more attention to his brother’s left hand than to the stick in his own, his eyes darting between Daron’s fingers and that cracked skin. It looked to him like the result of some battle or fire, because the hand was disturbing enough — worse than any scar he’d ever seen back in his old life on the boxing circuit, where the worst injuries were just blue bruises that faded after a few weeks.
"What happened to your hand... when did this happen to it?"
Daron pulled the glove back on quickly, a motion more defensive than casual, his fingers trembling slightly as he tightened the leather over his hand, and he said nothing more, just telling his brother to keep training, ignoring the question entirely as though it had never been asked.
(What’s up with this guy... did I say something wrong or what? Maybe I touched a nerve deeper than I expected.)
Alexander didn’t dwell on it and kept training, trying to push his curiosity aside for the moment, though it kept creeping back into his mind every so often like an annoying fly that refused to leave.
He gripped the stick with his left hand, feeling its rough texture against his frozen fingertips, while Daron stood nearby watching in silence, his gloved left arm hanging motionless at his side, as though it were a burden he carried rather than a limb of his own body — something he endured against his will, not something he was proud to own.
Alexander closed his eyes and tried to ignore the faint sound of wind moving through the bare trees, summoning that feeling that had visited him the night he faced the witch — that delicious cold that came just before the explosion, that strange rush that had made him feel, for the first time since arriving in this world, like more than just a spectator standing at the edge of a life that wasn’t his — like someone finally capable of leaving a real mark.
"Ruin."
Nothing happened, except a faint tremble running through his fingers, then a slight coldness that vanished as quickly as it came, leaving behind a hollow feeling like a punch that never landed.
He looked at Daron with disappointment, but what caught his attention more wasn’t his own failure — it was his brother’s face. There was no sign of tension in Daron’s eyes, no eager anticipation, just that same tired calm Alexander had seen a moment ago when he’d turned the pig to ash — as though whether Alexander succeeded or failed mattered far less to him than simply wanting this training to be over as quickly as possible.
(He doesn’t want to see this succeed... does he? A man with power like this, and yet he looks at it like some disease to be hidden, not a gift to be proud of. If I were him, I’d shout it from the rooftops that I had this power.)
He tried again, focusing harder this time, and this time he felt something a little stronger running through his hand, a faint tremor in the stick, a small crack spreading across its wooden surface like a thin fracture line. It wasn’t full ruin, but it was enough to ignite something in Alexander’s chest — something like a pride he’d never known back in the boxing ring, a pride he’d never felt even on his best days there.
(This is it... this is exactly what I want. Why doesn’t he feel this too? If I were him, I’d train this hand every single day, make it the strongest thing in this world. But he hides it like it’s a curse, like owning this power is a sin to atone for, not a blessing to be used.)
He glanced sideways at his brother’s covered hand, then at the cracked stick in his own, feeling a strange gap widening between them; Daron carried the power of ruin like an old wound he didn’t want reopened, while Alexander had begun carrying it like a promise, like the start of a long road toward something he couldn’t fully name yet.
He didn’t know which of them was right. But he knew exactly which feeling he wanted to keep for himself.
He kept trying, again and again, the stick in his hands cracking further with every touch, his fingers aching from the sustained effort of concentration, while the sun slowly climbed behind the bare trees, casting long thin shadows across the frozen ground, its pale light glinting faintly off the remaining frost between the grass blades. Daron didn’t watch him with pride, not even with relief — he just stood there at a distance, his eyes following every attempt with a heavy silence, as though watching something he was afraid to see succeed completely, something that reminded him of another thing Alexander hadn’t been told about yet.
At one point, when the crack in the stick deepened enough that it nearly split the wood in half with a faint snapping sound, like the groan of an old tree, Alexander caught something fleeting in his brother’s eyes — not surprise, not brotherly pride, but something closer to worry. The worry of a man watching a small fire spark up somewhere it shouldn’t, as though he were remembering another, much larger fire he’d once lit and hadn’t been able to put out so easily.
Daron said nothing about it. He simply tightened the glove over his left hand further, his fingers pressing into the leather with unconscious force, as if reminding himself exactly why he kept it hidden in the first place, then said in a calm voice carrying a faint edge of warning:
"That’s enough for today. We’ll continue tomorrow."
Alexander stopped, the cracked stick still in his hands, its light weight reminding him of the first real victory he’d achieved since arriving here, and he felt a measure of satisfaction spread through his chest despite the morning cold still biting at his fingertips, while Daron gathered up the remaining pig with quick motions and turned toward the house without waiting for him, his steps faster than usual, as though he wanted to get away from that place as quickly as possible — away from that cracked stick and everything it reminded him of.
Alexander stayed there alone for a moment, looking down at the fractured stick between his frozen fingers, turning it over in his hand with curiosity, then at his own left hand, which bore no trace of what it had just done — no burn, no scar, as though the power had come out of it perfectly clean, at no cost at all, unlike that disfigured hand he’d just watched vanish behind the black glove.
(A cost... is that what scares Daron? That my hand, unlike his, doesn’t pay one?)
He looked toward the house where his brother had disappeared among the bare trees, the sound of his footsteps fading gradually beneath the rustle of falling leaves, and felt, for the first time since arriving in this world, that there was something about this power far deeper than he realized — something no one had told him yet, and maybe no one ever would. He stood there a while longer, alone in the rising cold, the cracked stick still gripped in his hand — the sole trace of a success he still didn’t know was a blessing, or the beginning of a road with no way back.