The aqua-blue, eight-pointed star badge exuded the gentle serenity of a still lake.
Each facet and edge of the two star diamonds above reflected the surrounding light.
Like ripples shimmering across a lake beneath the sun.
It was merely an ordinary Level 2 Soul Engineer badge.
The Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, and higher-level badges that followed might all be more beautiful and more valuable than it.
But at least for now, as it rested in his hand, its special meaning was forever irreplaceable.
When he was very young, he heard the people in the residence talking.
His older brother was dead, killed by an Evil Soul Master, leaving not even a corpse behind.
When everyone had become utterly certain of it, casually discussing this news that had already been established as fact as though it were after-dinner gossip, when even his mother had accepted the truth and dragged her broken body out of endless grief and tears, the child, only six years old, still firmly believed in what no one else did.
Even when he and his mother were once again banished to the dilapidated woodshed, even when they were once again poorly clothed and barely fed.
The little boy still believed that one day, his brother would appear by his bedside and use that same gentle tone as before to tell him beautiful fairy tales.
Then he would wake in delighted surprise and give his brother a great big hug.
He no longer cared what kind of life he had, as long as his brother could return.
But it was not until his mother could no longer shield him from the wind and rain with her broken body that the little boy suddenly woke from his dream.
From then on, he lived alone in this cold, withered