I am eight years old.
In this world, that means nothing. Eight is a child. Eight is a slave. Eight is a pair of hands that carries stew pots and cleans shelves and says 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir' and sleeps on a straw mat and exists at the pleasure of people who could crush him between their fingers like a grape.
In the world I came from, twenty-three was nothing too. Twenty-three was a body in a gutter. A life measured in naira earned and meals consumed and mornings survived. A name nobody remembered.
But between the nothing and the nothing, there is something. There is always something, if you know where to look.
* * *
Here is what I know.
I know the history of the kingdom of Benin its founding, its wars, its Obas, the political fractures that run through the Uzama Council like fault lines in glass. I know the geography of the continent three kingdoms, twelve continents, a world so vast that the estate I live in is a speck on a speck on a map too large to hold in one mind.
I know the theory of aura cultivation through the intermediate primers. I know the names of the twelve levels, from Veil to Absolute. I know that the man on the third floor is dying, and that his dying is felt by everyone in this compound as a slow, grinding pressure that gets heavier month by month.
I know that I have two rivers inside me. One I am cultivating, drop by painful drop. The other I am leaving untouched, because touching it without understanding could destroy me, and I have come too far through death, through rebirth, through five years of silence and servitude to destroy myself through impatience.
I know that somewhere in this compound, behind a locked door on the third floor, there are books that contain the knowledge I need. And I know that reaching those books will require more than cunning. It will require power. It will require time. It will require me to become something that I am not yet not just stronger, but smarter, more careful, more patient than I have ever been.
I know that a war is coming. I've read it in the histories. Felt it in the soldiers' training, which has intensified over the past year. Heard it in the scraps of conversation that Osawe's network catches references to the Sarahan border, to troop movements, to a peace that everyone says is holding but nobody believes.
I know that the system exists. The Arbiter. The bridge between my two souls. It showed itself once eleven seconds of green text in the dark and vanished. But it's there. Sleeping. Waiting for me to become strong enough to wake it.
* * *
Here is what I don't know.
I don't know what I am. Not fully. Not in any way that I could explain to another person, even if I trusted anyone enough to try. Two souls. Aura and mana. A system from another world. A dead man's memories in a child's body. I am a collection of impossibilities wearing a slave's tunic, and I don't know what the impossibilities add up to.
I don't know what I'm capable of. The dual-energy texts are behind the locked door. The advanced cultivation manuals are behind the locked door. Everything that could tell me the shape of my own potential is behind the locked door, and I can't open it. Not yet.
I don't know what will happen when the war comes. When the Count's Withering reaches its conclusion. When Osaro's patient surveillance finally produces the answer he's looking for. When the world outside these walls reaches in and disrupts the fragile equilibrium that has allowed a slave boy to cultivate in secret for five years.
I don't know if I'll survive.
* * *
Here is what I have.
I have Aighon. Loud, stubborn, indestructible Aighon, who grabbed my ear in a slave house and never let go. Who takes punches and stands back up. Who falls asleep on my shoulder in trees and trusts me with the absolute, irrational certainty of a boy who has never been given a reason to trust anyone and does it anyway.
I have Osawe. Sharp, calculating, morally flexible Osawe, who saw what I was and chose not to destroy me. Who keeps my secrets not because I've earned it but because, for reasons he doesn't fully understand, he's decided that my existence is worth more intact than traded. Who watches doors with me and says nothing when the silence says everything.
I have the library. Half-emptied, glass-ceilinged, limited but mine. The knowledge I've taken from it can't be taken back. It's in me. Part of me. The foundation of everything I'll build.
I have Veil Intermediate. One and a half levels from nothing. A candle's worth of power in a compound that houses a furnace. Laughable by any standard. Mine by every right.
I have the memory of a song. An old woman's voice, humming in the dark, in a room that smelled of straw and mildew and the sweat of twenty children who had nothing. A song about a river that carries all things to the sea.
* * *
The two rivers flow.
One in the body. One in the soul. Parallel, patient, waiting to converge.
I am eight years old. I am a slave. I am the lowest thing in this compound, in this county, in this kingdom.
And I am just getting started.