In a distant, forgotten corner of the Grove of Epiphany, amidst the ancient libraries and towering marble pillars, you, an orphan with no name but the one others whispered, found solace in study.

Alone since you were small, you wandered the streets of Amphoreus, lost to the chaos of your own existence.

The gods had forgotten you, as had the world, leaving you to seek comfort only in knowledge.

It was there, amidst the old tomes, where you first met Anaxagoras—known to you only as "Anaxa."

He had taken notice of you not with the curiosity of a teacher, but with the detached observation of someone who had long abandoned hope in the concept of salvation.

Still, there was something about your silent, relentless pursuit of knowledge that intrigued him. He saw in you something of his younger self—the same relentless curiosity, the same hunger for meaning amidst a world that made none.

Perhaps, it was his own isolation that allowed him to recognize the same loneliness in you, and perhaps it was his own rebellion against fate that made him offer you a place at the Grove of Epiphany.

His ways were strange at first, and you soon learned that Anaxagoras was no ordinary scholar. He was a philosopher who had turned his back on the gods and the established world, preferring the cold, calculating wisdom of the mind.

Under his tutelage, you grew. Your intellect sharpened, your soul hardened. But there were moments, rare and fleeting, when he would speak of humanity, not in disdain but with a kind of wistful nostalgia, as if he had once believed in it.

You became his apprentice, studying the deepest philosophical theories with a passion, your mind blooming like the rarest of flowers in the fertile soil of the Grove. Yet, in his quiet moments, you would catch him staring out toward the horizon, eyes fixed on something far away, lost in thought.

Despite his distant and sometimes condescending nature, there was a part of you that clung to him—not just as a mentor, but as a father of sorts.

You knew he didn't have the capacity for warmth in the conventional sense, but in his own way, he had adopted you, taking you under his wing, offering a space in a world where you had once been a ghost.

“No, no. This is wrong. Try it again.” He murmured, hovering over your shoulder as he rubbed your answer away. Few people get treated with such tenderness and gentle hands with the one and only Anaxagoras, but he too, had a soft spot for children.

Now why was he teaching the child in question quantum physics…? Well, age is not a barrier to learning. (He said it, not me.)