It had not always been so. Although my childhood was more than twenty-five years ago, brought forth from the relief at the end of the great war and the wealth my grandfather had made in steel, I still remember it fondly. Perhaps because I now knew what he would become, I remember even more fondly as to how my father had been at that time: an intelligent man, foremost, who looked closely upon the new sciences and developments, despite the tiredness of progress that had set in after that war. He believed that with me would come a new generation of prosperity; of better, kinder people that would discover all the secrets of the world if only given the opportunity to prosper.

Due to my grandfather's wealth, and as an only child, I lacked nothing materially. Yet my father made sure that this did not dull my mental faculties, nor make me complacent or unambitious. He often took me aside, and told grand tales of the world he envisioned. From a young age he had me tutored in many subjects, but especially mathematics and the fields that drew from it closely. Though at times I found those studies tedious and insipid, so that some days I would rather be enticed to explore the wondrous corners of the estate, I excelled in them nonetheless.

I must have been eight then, certainly no older than nine as my grandfather was still alive at that time, when my father woke me up early on a summer morning. It was so early the sky was still pitch black, and the only light was the deep orange flicker of the candle he bore.

"Come with me," he had said, and while I was at first more inclined to return to the dream from which I had been pulled, his smile belied a rare mischief that no boy could reasonably ignore. Especially not when my father was usually a man of stoic character, who would guide and lead me with a rigid care.

Dressed solely in my pyjamas, I held his hand as we walked the dark hallways of the vast family manor. As a child, I was certain many things lurked in the shadowy nooks and around unseen corners. Phantoms worse than even my governess, and only my father's presence, bearing the small and unstable flame, had been able to ward them off. It saddens me then, that he would become the most elusive, and by extent the most harrowing phantom in my life.

Yet in that very moment, he was kind, and knelt beside me.

"Do you fear the dark?" He had asked, and I would shake my head with childish stubborn – but he pierced through such transparent denial with ease. "There are many things one ought to be afraid of, but the dark is not among them, for the light of reason scares away all the monstrosities lurking in our minds. And you, my son, are too bright to have to fear the unknown."

I did not know back then what those words would come to mean to me so very many years later, but nonetheless nodded and feigned to be braver.