Niklaus Stagin's Log: Entry 001

Date: Day 6 of Third Summer Month, Concordium Year 1447.

Log: Entry 001.

Title: A Stranger with My Name in His Mouth.

"Blood doesn't make someone family. The things they care do."

_______

He arrived near sundown. Not the time decent folk travel, but precisely when shadows stretch long enough to hide a man's intent.

He called himself my son. Said like it held authority over me.

Tall, clean, sharp around the edges like a blade pretending to be a man.

Said he was here for Kaiden.

Said the boy needed "proper guidance" before his traits awakened.

Then, as if it settled everything: "He has my blood."

I said nothing at first. Just watched.

There was a stillness to him. Too still. The kind that doesn't come from discipline, but from absence — like something inside had long since rotted out, and the shell forgot how to twitch.

I asked where he'd been these past two years.

Asked why the boy never once heard his name, never once got a letter.

Asked what Kaiden liked for breakfast, or what made him cry when he was little.

He had no answers.

Only paperwork. A name. A claim.

And then I smelled it.

Not with my nose, no. With something older.

With the part of me that still remembers what darkness did to the southern battalions at Darkwater Trench. That smell of frayed æsther and warped time. That bone-deep wrongness.

I told him he wasn't welcome. That Kaiden would stay.

He didn't flinch. Just looked at me, like one looks at an insect that speaks.

And said:

"You cannot guard him from what he is forever."

That was the mistake.

I stepped between him and the door and made my voice clear:

"I don't give a damn what blood he carries."

"If there's darkness on your breath... You leave."

"Now!"

And he did.

Didn't argue. Didn't threaten. Just turned, quiet as ever.

But by then, Kaiden had heard the raised voices.

He rushed outside, barefoot, wild-eyed with worry, and looked past me.

He saw the man walking away.

Didn't recognize him. Didn't call out. Didn't cry.

Just asked:

"Pops..."

"Was that...?"

And I said:

"No, boy."

"That was no one."

Kaiden looked after him, silent.

He didn't look back.

Neither did the man who claimed to be my son.

I felt a chill settle into my bones after they were both gone — one into the house, the other down the path like a shadow dissolving into dusk.

And now I sit here, writing this by lantern light, wondering:

If that was truly Kaiden's father...

Why did it feel like he'd come to collect something, not someone?

Why did it feel like we were just another stop on his way to somewhere else?

This book is sealed and hidden. For Kaiden, one day, when he's ready to understand that bloodlines lie, but instincts don't.

The boy is all I have left.

And by all the gods, old and broken, I will not let him be taken by things that smell like ruin.

— Niklaus Stagin