"Wait."
Aerwyna's voice snapped across the nursery.
Reitz froze mid-syllable. The chant died in his mouth. His right hand hung in the air, fingers half-curled in the grip he used for the [Flame Sabre].
Ezra lay there in the crib, right arm raised, Field coiled thick and hot from shoulder to wrist, waiting for direction.
Aerwyna stepped closer, eyes sharp. Her braid slid over one shoulder like a drawn line.
"You are not going to make him chant without a proper visualization first."
Reitz turned his head slowly, like a child caught with a stolen sweet. "I was getting to that."
"After you made him light his arm like a beacon," she shot back, sweet only the way ice was sweet—cold and lethal. "Do you remember what Maesters drilled into our heads? No visualization, no safe Activation. Or were you too busy setting your own hair on fire to listen?"
"I only did that twice," Reitz muttered, eyes flicking away.
"Four times," Aerwyna corrected.
Ezra watched them bicker, heat thumping in his arm. He only felt the Field packed into the limb—heavy, wrong, pressing against soft tissue and bone.
If they're this nervous, I really don't want to misfire this.
Reitz exhaled and scrubbed a hand over his face, the motion dragging him out of pride and back into fatherhood. He leaned over the crib again, expression set.
"Right. Properly, then." He pointed at Ezra's wrist. "Hold that. Don't let it disperse."
Ezra obeyed.
Keeping the Field from relaxing back into the rest of his body took effort—real effort. Instinct wanted to loosen and let the pressure bleed away. He clenched down internally and forced the warmth to stay in the limb.
Aerwyna folded her arms. "What are you even trying to do, Reitz? You explained Condensation, then jumped straight to chanting. Did you tell him how the aura turns into an element at all?"
"I was getting there!" Reitz protested.
"You skipped the part where he doesn't explode," she said, smile bright as a blade.
Reitz opened his mouth, shut it, then let out a slow breath through his nose. His eyes slid to Ezra, and apology softened him.
"Lesson one," he said, voice dropping into a subversive cadence. "Your mother is terrifying."
Ezra's lips twitched.
"Lesson two," Reitz continued, humor waned into a teacher's focus, "visualization."
He straightened and raised two fingers.
"There are two things you always visualize when you cast," he said. "First: the outcome—what you want to actually appear or happen. Second: the Path—the chant."
Aerwyna nodded once. "Good. Start there."
Reitz held his hand out as if gripping an invisible hilt, thumb angled up.
"For the [Flame Sabre], the outcome is simple. You already saw it."
Ezra replayed the demonstration: Reitz's fist turning sideways; that abrupt snap of coherent fire erupting from the back of his hand. Not a plume. Not a torch. A straight bar like a weapon.
Reitz tapped the top of Ezra's fist lightly.
"Picture this," he said. "From your hand. A blade of fire starting here—and extending out. As long as your forearm for now."
He leaned closer, eyes intent.
"Not vague fire," he said. "A sword. Edge, spine, weight. You're not calling a campfire; you're drawing a weapon."
Ezra closed his eyes for a heartbeat and set the image.
His small hand, fingers curled around a grip he didn't have. From the back of his fist, a straight blade of white-hot flame: narrow, coherent, almost rigid. Forearm length. Behavior—heat that warped the air, a faint hiss, the sense it could bite.
"Now add a wall," Reitz said. "Stone. Thick. Old. See it."
Ezra obliged.
A grey wall rose in his mind—rough blocks, dark mortar in the seams, the kind of stubborn mass that existed to say no. He raised the flaming blade and slashed right to left.
Slow enough to watch.
The sword bit into stone like hot iron into wax. Dust. A clean glowing line. The top half shuddered, then slid down with a grinding groan, breaking as it fell.
"Good," Reitz murmured, studying Ezra's face as if he could see the image. "Hold that. Keep it sharp."
Ezra held.
The visualization pressed bright and clean against the inside of his skull: sword, wall, cut. He looped it like a mantra.
Sword. Wall. Cut.
"Now," Reitz said, "the Path."
He tapped his temple.
"The chant is just words to people who don't know better," he said. "For us, it's a pattern. It guides the Field into that shape."
A grin surfaced. "Most Maesters will tell you to visualize each line literally. Flames burning, beasts falling, all that nonsense. It works. It's slow. Our ancestors found shortcuts."
Aerwyna sniffed. "You do remember something useful, then."
Reitz shot her a look of swagger and affection. "Of course. I'm not just a pretty face."
Aerwyna lifted the parchment in her hand a fraction. Reitz cleared his throat and pivoted back to Ezra.
"The [Flame Sabre] chant has a full visualization," he said quickly. "But Blackfyres use the optimized version. The outcome image you already have is enough. Sword. Wall. Cut. The meaning is already baked in."
He lifted both hands, palms out, framing Ezra's raised arm.
"So the pattern is this," Reitz said. "Outcome—chant—outcome. Picture the cut. Speak the words. Picture the cut again, but harder. Then you let go."
Ezra took it to heart.
Outcome. Chant. Outcome.
Sword. Words. Sword.
"Now," Reitz said quietly, and the room seemed to lean toward him, "we try it for real."
Aerwyna moved closer to the crib. Her hand settled on the railing, light but ready. Jaw tight. Eyes fixed on Ezra's arm like she expected it to do something terrible.
Reitz's gaze met Ezra's.
"Hold your Field to your arm," he said. "Keep it dense."
Ezra focused inward.
Distraction had let the Field leak; he hauled it back together by sheer will. Shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist—the warmth pooled into one limb until it felt stuffed, like bones filled with hot clay.
Sensation, not metaphor: pressure without mass, heat without burning.
His fingers shook.
"Good," Reitz murmured. "Now. Outcome."
Ezra closed his eyes and hauled the sword and wall forward. He sharpened it. Taller wall. Harsher light. A cleaner, more decisive cut.
Sword. Wall. Cut.
"Hold it," Reitz said. "Now chant with me."
He straightened, shoulders squaring. His voice dropped into the measured rhythm spells demanded—each phrase placed like a stepping stone.
"[A flame is sharp and ever burns]"
Ezra took a breath.
His vocal cords were useless jelly without help, tongue too large in his tiny mouth. He'd learned a workaround: push Field into the right muscles and brace them into obedience.
A thin stream rose from his chest into his throat, wrapping the larynx, threading through jaw and tongue—a scaffold built of intent.
Then he spoke.
"[A flame is sharp and ever burns.]"
The words came out clear.
High—an infant's pitch—but articulated. Crisp consonants. Clean vowels.
Aerwyna's spine went rigid.
She had heard him speak before. She had heard him demand a bottle, heard him say things no baby should. An incantation delivered with chapel-level precision from that tiny body hit somewhere primal.
Unnatural, a whisper in her chest hissed. Wrong.
Love crushed it immediately, leaving unease coiled underneath.
Reitz's brows jumped.
"Heh," he breathed, pride breaking through restraint. "That's my boy."
Ezra had no bandwidth for their reactions.
The moment he finished the line, the Field responded.
The knot of warmth in his wrist twisted inward, compressing further. Heat flared up his veins like liquid fire. Skin held, but his bones began to hum as if struck.
"[All is scorched by its frowning blade]" Reitz continued.
"[All is scorched by its frowning blade,]" Ezra echoed, matching the rhythm as closely as he could.
Pressure in his arm worsened. The Field wasn't sitting there anymore; it pulsed with the chant, each phrase tightening the coil. Buzzing crawled along his fingertips. Skin prickled, the air suddenly rough.
He clung to the image.
Sword. Wall. Cut.
Don't lose it.
"[No man, no bird, or beast can stand]"
"[No man, no bird, or beast can stand.]"
His breathing hitched. Sweat beaded at his hairline and slid toward his ear. His hand twitched uncontrollably, body trying to throw the energy even if his mind held.
The Field edged unstable—like a sphere spun one turn too many, ready to splatter. It wanted motion. It wanted shape.
"[The might, the pow'r of it bestow]"
"[The might, the pow'r of it bestow.]"
Ezra swallowed. His throat ran dry. The brace around his vocal cords wobbled; he forced it steady with the same grim insistence he used to make infant muscles obey.
Pressure in his wrist scraped pain. Instinct screamed to release it before it tore free.
Sword. Wall. Cut.
"[Now I shall wield its strength]"
"[Now I shall wield its strength.]"
Reitz's eyes shone; the showman in him had vanished. He watched something sacred and absurd in equal measure.
Even without expanding their Fields, both adults felt the density of Ezra's magic. Air around his fist warped, light blurring like heat above a forge.
This is insane, Aerwyna thought, heart pounding. No infant should be able to hold this much gathered Field.
"[And cut and hack and slash at length]"
Reitz's voice rang with fierce pride as he finished.
Ezra spoke the last line clean.
"[And cut and hack and slash at length.]"
Trigger.
Sequence complete. Condensation—done. Invocation—done. Accumulation—peaking. Sword and wall in his mind vibrated with potential, so vivid it hurt.
Now.
He took everything in his arm—the swirling, compressed, nearly unbearable Field—and shoved.
Not physically. Intentionally. He drove it toward the image: blade from his fist, decisive horizontal cut.
Match, he commanded silently. Be that.
For a heartbeat, reality tightened.
The Field surged. The knot in his wrist spasmed. Something crackled just above his skin—a ghost of heat, a whisper of otherness—like the world was about to split along a line only he could see.
The nursery went taut.
Then—
Nothing.
No explosion. No recoil. No misfired fire.
The crushing pressure in his arm simply let go.
It didn't burst outward or slam back into his chest. It uncoiled and spread through his body in a smooth, anticlimactic rush, like warm water poured into a wider bowl.
Heat faded. Buzzing stopped.
His arm went from loaded cannon to heavy and tired—an infant limb again, small and soft.
Silence.
Ezra opened his eyes.
No sword.
No seared stone. No scorch mark on the crib. No wisp of smoke.
Just his tiny hand held stiff above his head, fingers balled into a trembling fist.
…It failed?
The thought sank.
Confusion followed. Then humiliation—sharp, immediate, irrational.
At the last moment, the magic had refused to materialize.
Only the chubby fist remained, shaking slightly in the air.