Soft sheets. A familiar ceiling. Morning light slanting through the same window.
The day of his tenth birthday.
Again.
Even knowing he had caused this outcome deliberately—precisely because he wanted it—it still felt insulting. Like being patted on the head by reality itself. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment and exhaled slowly.
“Wonderful,” he muttered.
He would have blamed the gods, out of habit if nothing else, but he knew better. None of them were capable of rewinding time like this. Not even the more ambitious ones who enjoyed meddling where they shouldn’t.
Actually…
Now that he thought about it, none of the gods had been responsible for his immortality either. That shrine he had stumbled upon hadn’t been dedicated to anything or anyone.
Orestis shook his head and dismissed the thought. Not important right now.
Right now, he needed to decide what to do next. With the first rule being no acting like a child.
Wait, no, scratch that.
The first rule absolutely had to be no miracles!
He had learned that lesson explosively. Gods, temples, and institutions reacted very poorly to being reminded they were neither omniscient nor secure. They took it personally. Or worse, they took an interest.
No miracles, then. Not acting like a child could be rule two.
“So,” he murmured. “Options.”
Act childish? Unacceptable. Years of being talked down to, ordered around, praised for mediocrity. He would snap within a week.
Act withdrawn? Suspicious. Withdrawn children invited concern; concern invited tutors, priests, neighbours, and interventions.
Act ordinary? Even worse. Ordinary came with expectations, expectations came with supervision, and supervision came with questions.
Act exceptional?
That… could work.
Exceptional children were tolerated. Encouraged, even. Adults excused arrogance if it came wrapped in diligence and quiet productivity. No one questioned a child who preferred books to play. No one worried about a boy who asked too many questions—so long as they sounded academic.
A prodigy was allowed space.
Yes. Low noise, low risk.
Orestis sat up, the decision settling into place with the comfortable weight of inevitability.
He would start with the reading room.
But first, breakfast. He rather enjoyed his mother’s cooking.
***
The reading room was down the east corridor, just past the sitting room where the light was best in the mornings. Orestis remembered it only vaguely—a polite, underused space with a desk, a few chairs, and a small shelf of books his father had insisted were ‘good to have around’.
He opened the door.
And stopped.
The room was… not what he remembered.
Shelves lined the walls—every wall. Floor to ceiling, polished wood packed so tightly with books there was barely space between volumes. Leather bindings. Treated cloth. Titles stamped in careful script. A ladder rested against one wall, its rungs worn smooth by use. Near the window sat a heavy globe, hand-etched with coastlines and trade routes.
Orestis stood there for a long moment.
“… That’s new.”
Books were expensive. Not nice-to-have expensive; wealth-signalling expensive. Even copied texts demanded time, skill, and materials. A collection like this wasn’t built casually. Or by a family barely scraping by.
And yet… that was how he remembered it. Careful meals. Mended clothes. His parents worrying over expenses he had never fully understood at the time.
This room contradicted all of it.
He stepped inside slowly, fingers brushing a spine at random. Philosophy. Trade law. Regional histories. Accounting primers.
He paused.
Accounting.
His brow furrowed. People didn’t slowly lose libraries; they lost them all at once. Fire, confiscation, forced sale. Something sudden. Decisive.
Which meant whatever ruined his family hadn’t happened yet.
Well. This is useful.
If he was going to live quietly, he would much prefer to do it with money. Poverty made everything harder—especially anonymity. And if his family’s decline could be avoided…
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Yes. That was worth investigating. Carefully. Quietly. Preferably without setting anything on fire.
***
He sat at the desk and opened a book. It wasn’t one he remembered reading before, which was encouraging. If he had to repeat childhood, at least he could avoid repeating the syllabus.
He had just reached the second page—something dense about trade routes and seasonal tariffs—when he sensed movement behind him.
His mother paused in the doorway.
Her hands were still dusted with flour, a faint smudge along her wrist where she’d forgotten to wipe them clean. Her expression softened the moment she saw him there.
“Oh,” she said fondly. “You’re reading.”
“Yes,” Orestis replied, eyes on the page.
She crossed the room, leaned over his shoulder, and peered at the text as if she could tell what he was studying just by proximity. Then she smiled, tugged the chair back, and sat down while guiding him—without asking—onto her lap.
Orestis stiffened.
This was extremely undignified! It set a terrible precedent. He should move. Say something. Correct this immediately.
… He didn’t.
I suppose I could allow it.
Right now, he was a child. And children sat on people’s laps. Frequently. Enthusiastically, even. He’d done it himself once. Long ago. Before centuries complicated the idea.
His mother’s arm settled around him with practiced ease, familiar and warm. He could feel her breathing—steady, unhurried—the quiet reassurance of someone who expected nothing from him except that he be there. No expectations. No questions. No fear of what he might become.
Just presence.
It was… unexpectedly tolerable.
Orestis stared at the page, words blurring for a moment as something tight in his chest shifted, then settled into an unfamiliar discomfort.
He adjusted the book and continued reading, pretending this was merely a tactical inconvenience.
He turned the page.
And let it be, just for now.
***
Over the next few days, Orestis committed fully to his chosen role.
He read constantly, but with purpose. He asked questions at appropriate intervals—the sort a bright child might ask. Earnest. Slightly na?ve. Carefully framed to sound curious rather than informed.
He began appearing beside his father during work hours, offering to ‘help’ in the way only a child could—fetching papers, sorting ledgers by colour or size, sitting quietly and listening while pretending not to understand.
His father indulged him, amused rather than suspicious. There was something comforting about being seen as clever but harmless. People relaxed. They spoke freely.
Orestis watched everything. He read transaction records, trade agreements, tax summaries, expense logs. He traced patterns and searched for anomalies.
And found… nothing.
The numbers were sound—conservative, even. No corruption. No reckless gambles. No glaring debts. His father ran his business the way he lived: carefully, transparently, and with very little room for catastrophe.
Which makes no sense. Something destroyed this family. So where is it?
Orestis frowned at the ledgers one afternoon, pages spread across the desk like an accusation. This was irritating.
He understood numbers. Ratios. Probabilities. Those were familiar territory. But accounting was different. It wasn’t about what could happen; it was about what had—and the story it told was stubbornly mundane.
This wasn’t combat. There were no enemies to identify, no pressure points to exploit.
He stared at the ledger as though it might flinch. It didn’t. He closed it slowly. Whatever was wrong, it wasn’t going to reveal itself to him. Not like this. He needed a new approach—one that didn’t involve staring harder.
Outsource, then.
But first, he needed funds—the untraceable kind. That would take a bit of time, but that was acceptable.
He could not simply produce money. Sudden wealth invited attention, and such attention always cost more than whatever it initially paid.
So, he sold knowledge. Not secrets or revelations; those drew notice and resentment. No—he sold corrections.
During the countless loops he’d spent dying unsuccessfully, he had crossed paths with more than a few people of note: mercenaries, assassins, and mages who had been very certain they were right, and quietly furious when proven otherwise by someone who looked far too young to manage it. None of them remembered him now, of course—which made them infinitely more useful.
He sent two anonymous notes. Each addressed a stalled magical problem. Nothing dramatic: a misplaced assumption in sigil layering, an inefficiency in a spell matrix that wasted power for no reason—the sort of errors that gnawed at competent minds for years.
The kind of thing a capable mage would resent, then pay for.
Payment arrived quietly, routed through intermediaries who never saw his face. He took only what he needed. Anything more would have required explaining where it went.
He disliked explanations. They had a way of becoming conversations.
***
Orestis did not hire an auditor. That would have required names, permissions, and adults asking questions a ten-year-old had no business answering.
Instead, he created a reason. It began with ink and paper.
He chose cheap paper—the sort used for mundane correspondence—and wrote carefully; slow enough that the hand looked uncertain, but not clumsy.
Verification requested for mercantile records belonging to a midsized trading concern. Conservative books. Discreet review preferred. Compensation available. Temple involvement neither required nor desired.
No names. No seals. No identifying marks.
He read it once, frowned, then rewrote it to be less precise. The first version sounded too intentional. Professionals trusted vagueness more than confidence.
The finished letter said just enough to be interesting and not enough to be traced.
***
The meeting took place in a public tea house near the river—not because it was safe, but because it was forgettable.
The man who arrived wore no insignia and carried himself like someone who had once held authority and learned to live better without it. Ink stained his fingers. His boots were clean, but old.
He sat without asking, then let his gaze slide past Orestis, searching the room.
“Your employer is not present,” the man said at last, stirring his cup.
“No,” Orestis said. “He won’t be.”
The man stopped stirring. Looked at him properly. “And you are…?”
“A messenger. And an organizer.” That was the role he’d chosen. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that someone would send a boy when they didn’t want to attend themselves.
The man snorted. “You’re… what, ten?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t deal with children.”
“You deal with books,” Orestis said. “I’m here about those.”
He was silent for a moment, but the amusement was clear on his face. It soon shifted into something more thoughtful. “Fair enough. But you should understand; I won’t testify in disputes.”
That was precisely why Orestis had chosen an independent agency—to verify records without becoming entangled in disputes.
“That’s fine. We don’t need testimony. We only need confirmation.”
“Of what?”
“That the accounts make sense.”
The man studied him while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“Copies only,” he said finally. “No originals. No warehouse access unless requested.”
“We may request them. If it becomes necessary.”
The man smiled. “Then the fee doubles.”
“That’s acceptable.”
The man blinked. “Are you sure you are allowed to make that decision?”
“Yes.”
“If you say so.” He shrugged and turned to stare at the ceiling, weighing something unseen.
Eventually, he said, “You’re not asking me to find fraud. You’re asking me to confirm the absence of it.”
“Yes.”
The man exhaled through his nose. “That’s usually the more dangerous job.”
Orestis met his gaze. “That’s why we came to you.”
The man leaned back. “Someone taught you very carefully.”
Orestis did not answer.
The agreement was finalized without signatures. The man finished his tea, stood, and left without looking back.
***
That evening, Orestis sat beside his father as usual, listening to the soft scratch of quill against parchment. The ledgers balanced. The numbers behaved. Everything still looked exactly as it should. Which meant nothing at all.
If the audit came back clean, then whatever was wrong wasn’t in the books. He could not tackle a problem if it didn’t bother to announce itself.
And problems that stayed quiet, he had learned, were never small; they were patient.