The rhythmic sound of metal clanking echoes out of the dimly lit smithy with the only light source being the furnace still burning bright orange. At the walls of the forge laid two elongated silhouettes rhythmically wax and wane as a teacher-student pair are working on the hot metal.

"And hit," the stout elderly deftly turns the metal block with tongs on the anvil and James hits the block squarely and repeatedly with his long hammer, breaking sweats from the heat as well as the laborious task. His worn out tunix that he had carefully washed during his stay in town sticks closely to his now-muscular body, a pale contrast to the scrawny him during the raid.

"Nice. Very nice." Guy stops the lad and takes over forming the blades of a pair of shears with his hammer and anvil. He then heats them up one last time and dunks them into an oil-filled drum and throughout the process, the blacksmith is pleased that James had been attentive to his every motion and explained, "this is called quenching, you heat up the metal piece and once it is red hot, cool it down to make sure it stays hard." 

Nodding his head earnestly, James slowly recalled the process and was amazed by the amount of work just for something simple. In his sheltered childhood, most people just farm, hunt and gather, with other jobs that he would never touch like being guards, healers and even as a teacher. So the jobs in Tradewood had opened his eyes to such fascinating chores like smithing and baking and in a sense, opening his mind to such new experiences. Though not everyone here has fully warmed up to him like the blacksmith as he is still an outsider, so the variety of chores he did were menial at best. From cleaning the gutters, carrying heavy crates, running around town for delivery to mostly helping out in Guy's forge right next to Boss Osward's general store. Like how he is currently sharpening the blades with a grindstone while the blacksmith at the side observing him with acknowledgement.

"Here are the 50 coppers." Guy smiles at the hardworking lad and watches him slowly count his pay before stuffing them into his pouch. While many who hired James before were insulted by his callousness, the blacksmith always felt that this meticulous trait is great to have for a dense person like him. "You might want to do some coin change with Osward again, but first, let me show you how to fix the rivet and handles. Miss Agnes will love these new pairs of shears for her gardening. Did I mention her famous pie at the tavern?"

***

Osward barely registered the lad who went to the counter as usual while the lazy bum in store tsked. With these two weeks of James working inside and out of the store earnestly, Theo had been pissed, so much so he would ruffle his dirty blonde hair as he stares with bloodshot eyes while scowling everytime James is near him.

Osward, who spotted Guy at his store front again, walks to his old neighbor and friend and asked, "how's he doing in the smith?"

"Good, good, good." Knowing how the grumpy stout man reacts to his question, the boss who is fiddling with his pipe is happy for him. After all, James shares a lot of resemblances to Guy's late son; black hair and eyes, the same honest-to-goodness and hardworking attitude. Minus the scars all over his face and body that makes him look like a lightning survivor and that height closing to 5'11", it is a safe bet that Guy is reminiscing the good times he had with his boy.

Initially, Osward didn't know much, or even cared much about Guy when he first moved into Tradewood. After all, this backwater town just serves as a good place to lay low until his time is up, the grumpy blacksmith was just a forgettable stranger.

The first two years spent in this town were uneventful, no assassins, no trouble and no one but Sam, the orphan he picked up when he started his store, and of course Theo being the annoyance since he got the kid.

As for his first few interactions with Guy? Grunts as a response and nothing else. Their relationship was ice cold and considering how the pipe smoker is able to converse with the tailor on the other side of the street, the baker and tavern owners plus a couple more people all over the rural town, it's odd, even for the supposed fugetive. He quite literally knows everyone, except those that he wishes not to engage and then there was his next door neighbor. An opportunity however, came when he required some help in metalworks.

A simple afternoon, a bit cold as winter was coming as Osward came to Guy's forge for a commission. As the both of them discussed the piece that the general store owner wanted to be made, a strange metal statue had caught Osward's eyes, it was an eagle with a wingspan of two metres and the details to it almost made the statue feel alive. The only missing part is the eyes. Trying to start a conversation, Osward walked towards the statue to complement it, only for Guy to fly into rage as he swiftly chased the store owner out, yelling at him to stay away and never come back.

Curious more than offended as well as Guy being the only blacksmith in town, it was impossible to do as the guy said. Instead, Osward spent time trying to understand the man older than him by a decade or so. After chit-chatting with some of the folks around, it turned out to be a mistake that opened some unwanted memories for the store owner.

Guy had a son, his wife died a few years later after the child was born and the father-son duo were well known in town. Then one day when the boy turned 18 while crafting out the magnificent eagle with his father, the lord of Tradewood suddenly decreed an enlistment order to help the kingdom of Imetish on something. It was a five year plan and Guy, who initially volunteered, had to watch his son Gien march out of town, hoping to see him soon.

He never did.

"Hic… you know what that bastard told me when I asked? He said MY SON IS A CRIMINAL! THEY DIDN'T EVEN TAKE HIS DOG TAG! THEY TORTURED HIM AND LEFT HIM TO DIE!"

Osward had already known the important bits of the story before he came to Guy with mead to mend their ties; some info he had to pay the men who got sent off due to that order, the baron's order to deal with his former acquaintances, or as Osward knew it, trying to profit from the chaos.

It was even more ironic that he and his acquaintances had been a nuisance to stop such an abuse of power, yet here he was hearing the sobs of a father losing his son due to some petty squabble of nobles and jealousy of men, the air felt even more chilly as Guy spilled his hearts out, the eyeless eagle that was waiting to be finished by his boy seemed to cry out the same pain at that moment.

It was at this exact moment of moving down memory lane did the sound of a heavy thud coupling by smaller items dropping did snap Osward back, as Guy already bolts into the store trying to help James who had fallen over.

The cashier Sam, who was by James' side as he fell, is trying to drag him up alongside the old blacksmith while the unconscious lad himself is bleeding out from his nose. 

'Maybe I shouldn't have hired him,' Osward has a flash of thought as he walks right behind the duo who are carrying James by his arms and onto the bench where Theo usually naps on. Seeing the blonde lad fuming however, his thoughts brightened, 'nah, it's a good choice.'

***

Right before James was faceplanting to the ground while taking the trinket-filled rack with him, he was talking to the redhead about the coin exchange, whose head only reaches his chest height.

"So you have 251 copper over here, separating it out the 51 coppers and here are your 2 silvers." The monotonous and bored tone of the cashier stated as matter of fact to the lad who still can't count past 100.

"Ha! Sam, why help out this musclehead? Isn't he supposed to be the capable one?" 

Ignoring the taunts coming out from Theo, James slowly did his counting before going with the exchange.

"Remember that you still need to take out the garbage and help clear the trash from behind the alley." Sam reminded him once the transaction was done.

"Wait Sam, didn't I clear the alley already?"

"No, you didn't, you said that you would get it done yesterday before bolting off to other shops." 

"Right, sorry." Scratching his cheek for his scatterbrain, he peeks into his pouch and counts its content to be 12 silvers and some copper. '500 means five groups of 100, which means I still need… darn my slow brain!'

As though hearing his plight, the familiar box popped up once more into his face. With a new word of course.

Destreza was gained while James was struggling in the forge. At first, he only helped by pumping the bellows and subsequently, he got asked to help Guy in hammering the heated workpiece. Unlike Guy's meticulous hammering that sounded like beautiful music slowly crafted with its clinks, James' sounded like an accident between two runaway horse carriages, which was painful to hear for both parties involved.

As Guy began to glum, the word popped out as though to save the lad from embarrassment and with the number up to ten, things got better for the lad.

For James who was feeling the effect, it was as though his senses got sharper, like how he could see and hear a bit clearer and grasp his movements better. The effects were instantaneous, with his blows suddenly becoming more rhythmic and stable, not random blows with random strength. 

At least at that time, the blacksmith's face stopped being gloomy.

So for Mente to appear, James wasted no time to max the number out, only for something else to pop up right in his face immediately after that.

His visions blackened before he even reads the incomprehensible text on the new box.

Throughout James' unconsciousness, those around him seem to be either panicking like Guy, nonchalant like Osward and Sam and straight up joyous like Theo. The blondie even jumped up and down as though he had won the lottery while spouting "throw him out! Throw him out!"

"Shut up Theo! I said he is fine, no fever, the nosebleed stopped and he is just asleep, stop chanting!" Osward barked at the jubilant lad, controlling himself to not slap the back of his head.

"But uncle Ossy, he is a liability!" 

"And he is somehow still better than you." The sudden words from Sam and sharp nodding from the store owner infuriates Theo and he stomps out of the store after kicking over some boxes lying around. The action only made the duo shake their heads while the blacksmith is still pacing around.

As for the sleeping beauty himself, he is dreaming of something that he has never seen or heard of before.

***

"Wait up!" A young boy no older than eight with a black backpack is running towards his two friends who are about to board the yellow bus to the elementary school. 

Still stunned from the sudden lapse, James watches the faceless boy run past him and meet up with his friends, a boy and a girl as the former is wearing a simple uniform and pants just like the faceless boy while the latter is wearing skirts.

'Bus? Uniform? Elementary school?' It took awhile for James to notice the oddity in understanding the weird names of things as he follows the child to the gigantic stone building known as school. He wants to walk to one of those houses as the child rides the bus to school, only to discover that he is being dragged along the ride to the gigantic stone building. James tried to go around its premises or even touch the surroundings, only to discover that he cannot even move past a fixed perimeter around the boy and everything just passed him like shadows.

As the time went on, James got a grasp of the boy's standing. He witnessed the boy quietly taking notes while the teacher questioned the class, he saw him alone in his seat while the classroom burst with life when the teacher was gone and the next one had not yet arrived. Even without the facial features, James could tell that the boy was staring at his jubilant classmates chattering on and it seemed that the two people he was close to were not in the same class as him.

The bell then rang loudly and everyone was now bolting out of the classroom for recess, another weird term that got lodged into James. The boy took his time to leave the now empty room while the farmer was being dragged along into the strangely filled but eerie hallway as it was rather long and only murmurs were heard from the crowd that the boy had to waddle through. Accompanied mostly by the boy's unsteady footsteps, the bored specter continued to try and find something that would tickle him and got his wish when he spotted a huge figure occupying the entire hallway.

Billy, now wearing the rather tight-looking uniform as the faceless boy, had this menacing grin that James never knew he had in him. 

Whilst the farmer was pondering his appearance, he failed to notice the boy's shivering in front of him and only moved to block Billy when he was stomping towards them. Though just like the rest, James phased past the charging bully and a resounding smack was heard when Billy's hand made contact with the boy's face.

Flamed by his own past with the bully, the farmer tried, and failed, to grab hold of Billy as his hands went through as expected, all while the mumbling voices sped up.

"Run away you little rat!" Shouted Billy in a high pitched tone at the boy who bolted into one of the toilet stalls, bawling his eyes out as he hurled into the bowl. All the while, James was pulled to see the miserable state of his and only when the male friend appeared did the crying stop. 

James can barely keep up the conversation at the increased speed as the crying boy is sent into the teacher's office to talk with village teacher William, the two friends who he met outside are no longer faceless like when they first boarded the bus. Now they look exactly like Alex and Cecilia with the telltale concern plastering their faces at the still faceless and crying runt.

An out-of-nowhere skip occurs that left James dazed as the boy is now walking back with the duo by his side. Though from his view, the two are more preoccupied with one another instead of the boy himself.

The boy's swift trip home has James now looking at the hut he has been living since birth, in fact the stone houses he initially saw before the bus trip have turned into those houses in his village. James is then knocked back at the entrance when the boy enters the hut as though an invisible wall is erected and this time, he is forced to stand on a spot outside, barely able to see in. 

Time seems to fly as the boy enters and leaves the hut and gets older with every exit, where he went the farmer had no clue. His two friends who had made appearance as he left the hut have slowly disappeared out of the boy's life and by the time the faceless adolescent has reached close to James' age, the view cuts into something new. 

James sees them once again after for a while where he was rooted to a spot. He had a nagging feeling that this time, he had once again been tagged to the lad as he was now standing behind him when the lad spotted the two hugging each other and kissing under a tree. It is weird for James to see Alex and Cecilia doing it since he has never assumed the two are an item, for the lad on the other hand, James can clearly see pain written all over the featureless face as the distance between the couple and the lad seems to widen for dramatic effect.

The two are never seen again as far as James knows, all he does is follow the faceless lad while he is continuously suffering in school, whether it is by the Billy lookalike or someone else.

Then another change occurred abruptly much to James' annoyance as he is slowly getting used to the sped up world and being behind the bullied person. He is once again staring into the hut's entrance whilst standing in the rain that is not soaking him and time seems to flow normally. No longer is he hearing gurgles and high squeaks coming out of people's mouths. Instead he is getting a full assault of shouts from a disappointed middle aged man.

"Get out of this house ⬛⬛⬛! You are no son of mine!"

Out comes the lad dashing out from the darkness of the entrance, now older than James and perhaps closing to Jack's age of mid-twenties. The farmer witnesses the man run past him with a tear stricken face, the rain itself seems to reflect the man's mood as James follows, or gets dragged along, behind the man down the path with no other scenery than grey fields and dark sky.

A metal beast smaller than the "bus" races towards the man from his right and the farmer notices the oddity, 'why can't I know what that thing is?'

"Watch out!" Are the only words that came out of James' mouth. The man, seemingly heard James as he raises his head while staring and standing dumbly in front of the honking beast, the fear on the featureless face becomes a reality as the speeding beast scoops him into the air while the speeding object disappears into the horizon as the man drops hard onto the ground.

James then walks towards the motionless man lying on the ground with his blood pooling out fast thanks to the rain, he does not notice that the wide gray field is slowly shrinking to just a light column, as though highlighting the duo as though on stage.

For the first time ever, James can see his visage well, from the blood pouring out of his orifices to his pain ridden face while staring at the sky in indignity, the man having pa's face is the one thing that causes James to shiver non-stop.

The motionless man who had presumably died in his arms then suddenly lifts his head and stares with bulging eyes, "why didn't you work harder?"

"AHH!" James violently wakes up from the scare, probably a bit too violent as it was followed by a clunk and Sam ends up crouching next to the bench hissing.

"Watch it!" A high pitched scream comes out from the young ward while rubbing the slowly forming bruise.

"sorry sorry, I-" his apologies cut short, earning him a look that he had to ignore as something or someone screaming in his head. In his own original non-raspy voice.

[Shut the fuck up! I just wake, wake, wake… where the hell am I?!]

Sam continues to stare at the silent man who is now upright on the bench and not moving, "what? What's wrong with you now?" 

As Osward walks towards the duo, James is still stunned from the event and mutters a doubt in his head.

'What?'

[What "what?"?! Zip your mouth! Zip it!] The voice hisses and James did as he was told to as he assured the store owner and assistant that everything is fine all while the voice in his head calmed, [ok, I am cool, I am calm and there are manuals. Great.] 

Sounds of paper flipping fill his head as James walks to the water basin to sober up. The voice however proved itself to be not of delirium as it once again pops up, this time with less confusion and more indignation.

[Oh great, nice. Shove a hand up my ass and call me Kermit.] James almost complied and earned the voice's snapping, [MY NAME IS AETHIER! AND. THAT. WAS. A. JOKE!]

Staring at the reflection in the mirror hard, James manages to keep his face straight and says "hi, Aethier" as he braces for a complete mental breakdown.