Devourer's Legacy: I Regressed With The Primordial Crest
Chapter 88: Ian (1)

Chapter 88: Ian (1)

Parents are supposed to be the foundation of a child’s world—the safe harbor that shapes everything they become. They’re meant to teach right from wrong, to show love and protection, to guide their children toward becoming good people.

A parent’s love is supposed to be unconditional, unwavering, the one constant that a child can always rely on no matter what storms rage in the world beyond.

Ian had believed that once. He’d trusted in that fundamental promise that every child deserves—that someone, somewhere, would always choose him first.

But promises, he’d learned, were just words that people said when it was convenient for them.

Ian felt something cold and bitter surge through his veins as Aldric’s predatory smile burned itself into his memory. The bastard thought he was clever, didn’t he? Singling him out like that in front of everyone, making him look weak and desperate. It reminded him too much of another moment—a time when someone had pointed at him and decided his fate without caring what he wanted.

Just like his parents had done.

He stood perfectly still as the wagon rolled away, his face carefully neutral while his mind catalogued possibilities like a merchant counting coins. The other children around him were already starting to panic, their whispered conversations filling the air with desperate plans and fragile alliances.

They still believed someone would help them. They still thought this was the kind of place where working together mattered, where being kind and cooperative would somehow unlock a door to salvation.

Ian had thought that way too, once upon a time. Back when he’d helped his mother grind wheat and listened to his father’s stories about heroes who saved villages and rescued princesses. Back when he’d shared his meager portions with stray cats and cried when he accidentally stepped on a beetle.

That version of himself felt like someone else now—someone naive and foolish who’d believed the world was fundamentally good, that it rewarded virtue and punished only the wicked.

How absurdly simple that world had been.

He watched as several children took their first tentative steps toward the stone staircase. A girl with carefully braided hair was trying to convince two younger boys to climb with her, her voice gentle and encouraging like a mother coaxing frightened chicks. An older boy with a constellation of freckles across his nose was stretching his legs, offering to help a smaller child who looked ready to bolt.

They were being kind. They were trying to help each other.

Ian would have done the same thing just a few days ago.

He would have been the one offering encouragement, trying to make sure everyone made it up safely. He’d always been like that—the boy who helped his mother with household chores without being asked, someone who sobbed when his father had to put down their old milk cow.

But now he understood that kindness was a luxury only the strong could afford—and he was no longer strong enough to be kind.

Ian’s eyes swept over the group with the cold assessment of a hunter studying prey. The girl with braids was wasting precious energy trying to manage others instead of focusing on her own survival. The freckled boy would probably exhaust himself helping someone who couldn’t keep up anyway. The smaller children were already showing hairline cracks of fear that would only deepen as the challenge intensified.

’Weak’, he noted.

’All of them.’

It had been just few days ago when he was sitting at their kitchen table, carefully scribing letters on a piece of black slate with a precious white stone. His mother had been preparing their evening meal—thin porridge again, but she hummed while she stirred it, making even poverty seem warm.

His father had come home earlier than usual that day, his weathered face grim and drawn in a way that made the shadows under his eyes look like bruises.

Ian had looked up from his writing, ready to show off the new word he’d learned—family—which felt like a monumental achievement for a commoner’s son who was lucky to know his letters at all.

But that’s when he’d seen the stranger standing behind his father like a specter in expensive robes.

"This is the boy?" Aldric had asked, examining Ian with the same detached interest a farmer might show when evaluating livestock at market.

"Yes," his father had replied, his voice hollow as an empty grain barrel. He wouldn’t meet Ian’s confused gaze. "He’s healthy, smart, does what he’s told."

"Excellent. Here is the promised amount."

The soft clink of coins being exchanged had sounded unnaturally loud in their small kitchen.

Ian had looked between the adults, not understanding what was happening but feeling a growing knot of dread coiling in his stomach like a serpent. "Father? What’s going on?"

His mother had started crying then—not the gentle tears she shed when peeling onions, but the broken, shaking kind that came from somewhere deep and wounded. She turned away so he couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders betrayed her.

His father had knelt down in front of him, his calloused hands trembling as he placed them on Ian’s shoulders. Those hands had always felt so strong before, so capable of fixing anything that broke.

"You’re going to go with this man now, son. He’s going to... take care of you. Give you opportunities we never could."

"But I don’t want to go anywhere," Ian had said, his voice small and confused, the slate still clutched in his hands. "I want to stay here with you and Mother. I was going to show you what I learned to write."

"Sometimes we don’t get what we want," his father had replied, and there had been something broken in his eyes, like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. "Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do."

Sometimes we have to sell our children to survive another winter.

Even now, standing at the base of this magical staircase that hummed with otherworldly power, Ian could remember the exact moment when his world had shattered into pieces too small to ever fit back together.

Not when Aldric had grabbed his arm with fingers like iron and dragged him from the only home he’d ever known. Not when his parents had refused to look at him as he’d screamed for them to help him, to choose him, to fight for him.

But the moment when he’d realized that the people who were supposed to love him more than anything else in the world—more than their own lives—had chosen to save themselves instead.

That’s when he understood that the world didn’t reward kindness or goodness or any of the virtues the village priest had preached about. It rewarded strength, cunning, the willingness to do whatever was necessary to survive.

Everything else was just poetry written by people who’d never been hungry enough to know better.

And now here he was, surrounded by children who still believed in fairness and cooperation and all the other beautiful lies that parents told their children to help them sleep at night.

But Ian wasn’t sleeping anymore.

This wasn’t a test of endurance or willpower or character. This was exactly what Aldric had said it was—a way to separate those who had what it took from those who would be ground into dust beneath the wheels of a world that cared nothing for the weak.

The Silent Monastery didn’t want soft, gentle disciples who would help their fellow students and share their meager resources like saints in children’s stories.

They wanted survivors.

Ian began moving toward the stairs, but he didn’t rush like some of the others who charged forward with more desperation than strategy. He took his time, studying each step and the intricate inscriptions carved into the ancient stone. The magical energy radiating from the symbols was unmistakable once you knew what to look for—it felt like standing too close to a forge, all heat and barely contained power.

This wasn’t going to be a simple climb up some stairs.

Good.

Simple things were for people who still believed the world owed them something.

He stepped forward at last, letting his fingers trail along the carved symbols on the first step. The magic thrummed with restrained power.

He took the first step.

A sharp spike of pain stabbed into his mind—not physical, but spiritual, like something inside him was being scraped raw with a rusty blade. He grunted but kept going, his jaw clenched against the sensation.

The second step hit harder. The magical pressure dug deeper, clawing at his thoughts like a wild animal, twisting emotions, distorting memories until he wasn’t sure what was real and what was the staircase trying to break him. His vision blurred for a moment, and he had to blink furiously to stay upright.

Around him, the staircase came alive with soft glows of blue and silver light, each child’s struggle painted in ethereal colors against the darkening sky. Every step forward was met with its own version of the pain, its own unique torment designed to find exactly what would make them break.

The further they climbed, the more intense it became.

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