Twelve years ago. In Samael's memories.
Samael's grandfather looked up to observe how the large rock had been pierced. There hadn't even been time for rubble to form. It just smoked. A thin, persistent wisp of smoke that seemed to want to rise toward the heavens like an offering, carrying with it the residual heat of the impact.
"And you dare tell me I cheated," said the old man, sheathing his sword with a smooth, fluid motion, like someone who had repeated that gesture thousands of times and no longer needed to think about it. The metal gave a satisfied click as it settled into the scabbard. "You are a real scoundrel," he added.
But his tone was steeped in a pride so deep it could almost be tasted in the air. Like thick honey. Like the first sip of wine after a long day.
Little Samael, still sitting on the ground, leaned on his tiny arms, pushing himself backward to stand up. The palms of his hands left damp marks on the earth, small traces of sweat and effort. He shook his hands, covered with dirt and small pebbles that had embedded in his skin during the fall.
With one hand on his forehead as a visor, he looked up.
The midday sun was an incandescent white-gold coin, brutal in its intensity. During the battle, adrenaline and the constant overflow of spiritual energy had protected him like an invisible shield, creating a bubble of focus where heat didn't exist. Now, with his blood cooled and his power retracted deep into his core, the heat fell upon him like a cloak of molten lead.
A fine sweat beaded on his forehead, mixing with the dried blood on his cheek.
"It really burns a lot," Samael murmured, as the sweat, mingling with the dry blood on his cheek, began to trickle down in small, salty streams that found their way to the corner of his lips. The taste was metallic, strange. "If I hadn't finished, I wouldn't have noticed how intensely it stings."
"What are you talking about, son?" said Samael's grandfather, and a wide smile spread across his face, weathered by decades of sun and battle. "You worry about the sun, about the heat burning you. But not about this bag of bones."
Samael's grandfather referred to himself like that from time to time. It was a recurring joke, a peculiar way of teasing his grandson after hundreds of training sessions. And the same number of victories achieved.
"But you hadn't told me anything, Grandpa," Samael murmured, turning toward him. The child's expression, which until a moment ago had been one of concentration and fatigue, changed completely. Now it was genuine concern. "Are you okay? The sun isn't burning you, is it?"
Little Samael asked this with the mindset of a child his age, as any other three-year-old would ask. Samael was a monster, yes—not literally—but the amount of spiritual energy he harbored was immense compared to other children. He was an ocean in a tiny glass. But despite everything, he was still a child. A little one who worried about the well-being of his only family.
His grandfather looked at him. That concern, so simple, so pure, touched his soul.
"Ha, ha, ha," the grandfather laughed, and the laughter echoed through the empty valley. Then, with a tenderness that contrasted with the fierceness of his training, he reached out and began to stroke Samael's black hair, slightly disheveled and tangled from exertion and sweat.
It was a warm, genuine smile. The kind reserved only for the people who truly mattered.
"What things you say, boy," the grandfather finally said.
Samael looked up, turning toward the old man. His grandfather still wore that smile, that large, calloused hand stroking his head with a delicacy astonishing for someone who moments ago was splitting rocks with a sword.
"Don't worry so much about me. The sun didn't do anything to me. I'm fine, really."
"Really, Grandpa?" Samael replied, and he let out a sigh so deep it seemed he had been holding his breath since the fight ended. As if the answer had been different from what his three-year-old mind feared hearing. As if he had been waiting for his grandfather to tell him that something bad, very bad, was going to happen to him. "Then, if that's so... I'm very glad."
He said this, bringing his two tiny hands to his chest, where his circular pendant rested. Another unconscious gesture. A "thank goodness, you almost scared me to death, Grandpa. You really almost did."
"You are a good boy," his grandfather continued, still stroking his head.
Little Samael closed his eyes, like when you pet a small kitten and it purrs with pleasure. His whole body, tense until a moment ago from the battle, began to relax under that caress.
"Too good for this world."
Samael, who was only thinking about his grandfather's caress and the warmth it conveyed, didn't hear these last words. They floated in the air, but he was elsewhere. In a safe place.
"But that's why you're unique," his grandfather continued speaking, just as he continued his caress. His eyes, old but still penetrating, looked at the child with a mixture of love and something else. Something that seemed to weigh. "Never change."
He paused. He searched for the right words, the ones he really wanted to say. The ones he had been keeping inside for a long time.
"No. Never let them make you change."
His face adopted an expression that wasn't meant for Samael, but for the universe itself. It was a silent threat, a promise etched into the air: if something or someone tried to harm that child, they would have to face him. Even if he was no longer there.
"Never let this world change you. Never."
---
Back to the present. In the tavern.
"It's true. You were only three years old," Ed Tonor said in the tavern, his voice laden with disbelief. He downed the rest of his beer in one gulp and slammed the empty glass against the table harder than necessary. The clunk of glass against wood was lost in the hubbub. "If it weren't like that, they wouldn't even have to call you a human being," he murmured, almost to himself, as if the very idea intimidated him. "You're like... I don't know. Something else."
Samael didn't respond immediately.
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, filled only by the distant bustle of the tavern: the clinking of glasses, the laughter from a nearby table, the piano still playing that melancholy melody. His dark eyes seemed to look through Ed, toward something only he could see. Toward twelve years ago. Toward that large hand stroking his head.
"I... I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Ed stammered, feeling he had crossed an invisible line. That his comment, however innocent, had broken something. "Sorry for interrupting."
Samael blinked. Once. Twice. And slowly returned to the present, like someone emerging from deep waters.