This time Sam recognized the place of the scene. It was a small room in an old-looking stone building. This Sam recognized—all noble villas had somewhat similar structures to them. The bed, the armor stand—everything in the room was something he recognized.

A kid, some 2–3 years old, was breathing hard. Strange thing, though—his face looked nothing like the kid Sam had just seen in that garden. It was a different kid. Sam bent down and saw the child hiding beneath the bed. He was trying hard to cover his ears too—only then did Sam realize people were arguing outside the room.

They were saying things like, ‘What will his future be?’, ‘Give him a chance, it’s just stats—he can still prove to be a talented kid!’, and ‘Can’t you see? He is a fool. He doesn’t understand a thing we say to him—he just wants to play around all day!’

Sam looked back at Damian—Lucian was holding him. From the look on his face, it seemed like he too had no idea what was happening. Weren’t these his memories?

The scene changed again. This time, a young boy around age 6–7 was walking along with the woman from the garden, dressed in a long black and white dress. The woman had a small straw basket, inside which were many little black things wrapped in paper or something—some kind of food item. They were walking while looking around the paved road, surrounded by big trees, birds chirping on them.

A house appeared on the side of the road, and the kid and the woman entered the gate of the house. The woman looked at the kid with a smile, and he smiled back at her. Holding one of the black things from the basket, the boy stood ready as the woman pressed some button and rang the bell. The woman said as they waited,

“Say it loud and clear. You already know how—I am so proud of you, Ben. You helped me a lot today.”

A strange-looking man opened the door with a curse. He had an unshaved beard, and his eyes—too big for the thin long face—seemed to twitch around the same as the rest of his body. There was something grey and metallic in his hand he was holding tightly. The man licked his lips seeing the woman. She, on the other hand, grabbed the kid’s hand protectively and pushed him to go behind her—clearly the unstable man was not something she was expecting.

“Apologies,” the woman said. “We are from the orphanage—we will leave you alone—”

But the man heard no words and pushed the metallic thing forward, touching the woman’s stomach above her clothes with it. Then, with a mad look in his eyes, the man pushed the metallic thing up slowly, reaching the breasts of the woman. Before it could go any further, the kid suddenly jumped out and bit the man’s leg.

The man screamed—the woman, too shocked, hurriedly lifted the kid in her arms and ran as fast as she could. The man was still cursing and screaming, but he did not give chase more than a few meters.

Once the woman realized she was not being chased, she put the kid down and scolded him non-stop for over ten minutes. The things she said about the kid’s upbringing, parents, low intelligence and whatnot were even worse than those curses of the crazy-looking man. Sam felt fury boiling inside him, seeing the young kid’s face on the verge of tears, listening obediently.

“That’s a lie! She never said those things!”

‘Cough’

‘Cough’

Suddenly Damian spoke up. He was barely standing with Lucian’s support, but the fury in his eyes seemed to give him unknown power—he spoke up even though he had a hard time even breathing.

That confirmed Sam’s suspicion, though—this unknown kid in this memory trap was the same person standing beside him. The new Damian.

Then who was the other kid?

The scene changed again. The kid from before, who was hiding under the bed, was breathing hard, trying to climb up a tree. The place was outside—a garden or something. Same as before, there was nothing here that Sam found odd, unlike the scene before this, in which both the strangely built house and the weird metallic object the man was holding were things Sam had never seen before.

There was no sound or anything except the birds and wind as the boy slowly climbed the tree—there was effort involved, Sam could see that. The boy.. looked somewhat like the real Damian. Then suddenly his leg slipped, and he fell down. Blood pooled beneath his head. The boy didn’t even scream for help. His eyes shook, and after a while, they became still.

He.. died.

The scene stayed the same, all four of them looking down at the dying kid, standing all around him. Nothing happened. The scene stayed the same for seconds, then minutes.. and it even crossed the half-hour mark, but there was no change in the situation—neither did the scene change to another.

What the hell was going on?

Damian finally gave up and sat down beside the dead boy. They too decided to sit.

How could a person die and then still live on?

After some 40 minutes of the boy falling, a man came and lifted the boy in his arms, walking back inside the villa. He put him on a bed. The room was crowded with two women, two teenage boys, and two girls. One of the women was crying continuously, holding the boy’s little hand. The other was trying to comfort her. The man who had carried him looked at the boy with a face filled with complex feelings—there was grief.. but it was not the only thing. Sam did not like the man’s face at all.

At first, it was chaos inside the room as the man brought the boy—everyone speaking at once, asking what had happened—but after a while, only the sobbing voice of the woman remained constant.