It happened three months after his second nameday, on a pleasant spring evening. Phoebe collapsed to the floor while working in the backyard. A strange fever had consumed her.
Many more in the village were afflicted by the same ailment and displayed the same symptoms. The latter included weakness, shivering, and depigmentation. The afflicted would enter a comatose sleep, their skin would be drained of color, and within twenty-four hours, the afflicted would perish.
This was the fate that befell Phoebe and dozens of others in the village. A mass funeral was held for them on the seacliff beyond. Their demise did not invoke as much sorrow as it did shock.
Asterion had forgotten what grief felt like, or at least his idea of grief. Without actually realizing it, he found that he had formed quite an attachment with his new family. His parents were modest and simple people, living a modest and simple life. Although they were poor, they had made sure that Asterion never suffered even in the slightest.
Phoebe was a kind woman and a very loving mother, almost to the point of being somewhat overprotective. Asterion did not mind it since it was just a result of natural maternal instincts. On the contrary, he liked the attention despite it contradicting his solitary nature.
Although he could not remember much of his previous life, he was sure that maternal love was something that he lacked. And by the time he realized that he had found it in this new world, it was lost.
But that was just the beginning. A few weeks after the mass funeral, a party of knights came to the village. They were sent by Earl to levy troops and that they did. Every able-bodied man and woman between the ages of twenty and thirty who looked strong enough to hold a pike were taken from Grenville, reducing its population furthermore. Among these levied recruits was Nathan, who was still recovering from the loss of his wife.
Naivete had blinded Asterion from the reality of the primitive nature of this feudal society that he was reborn in. He should have expected this all. Of course, there were plagues and petty wars in this world, in which the ones who suffered the most were the common folk. No amount of magic and paranormality could change that.
The villagers who were levied by the Earl's knights returned six months later. Their numbers were reduced to less than half. And Nathan among those who did not return. There was no funeral held for them. There was no ceremony or remembrance. All they received was a quiet and mournful acknowledgment. This was the final straw.
With both his parents gone, Asterion was by all means now an orphan. For the days to come, he was cared for by his neighbors and stayed with Tilde at the chapel. She wrote letters to his extended family who supposedly lived in Kalvyrn, in the Capital. That was the legal procedure. The orphaned child was the responsibility of the next of kin.
No reply came. Tilde arranged for Asterion to shift to the Tydestone monastery, where better care would be taken of him. She also enticed him with the prospect of studying in the sizeable library which was present there.
However, that was not to be. Not long after the end of the war, a team of officials had come to Grenville with a royal decree. They were under the banner of an organization or movement called Her Majesty's Benevolence. Their main mission was to help the people who were troubled by the war and the subsequent shortage of resources and also to care for the kin of the perished.
Well, Asterion met the latter criteria. When it was found out that he had lost his father in the war and had no relatives to look after him, they arranged for him to be adopted. It was a centralized procedure, carried out by the Royal Administration to ensure efficiency and speed. Soon enough, they had found one candidate.
Tilde was quite delighted to hear that, but Asterion was not so sure. But then again, in the eyes of the world, he was just a two-year-old child, and his opinion didn't carry any weight.
The officials sent him to a convent in Savensau, a port city on the southern coast of Estfal, with two of their number to conduct the legal proceedings. At the convent, the documentation and other formalities were cleared up and Asterion learned the location of his new family.
Two days later, he was aboard a ship bound for the port of Reginton, in the continent of Narrikon, in the New World.