The marble tiles were cold beneath Kael's bare feet. A wind swept across the training yard, carrying with it the sharp scent of oil from polished weapons and the sour perfume of anticipation.
Noble eyes watched from the elevated pavilions—smiling, sneering, squinting through jeweled monocles. The court had gathered not for justice, but for spectacle. And Kael knew it.
At eight years old, he stood alone at the center of a ring drawn in gold chalk, facing his elder brother, Prince Rovan Arkanos—the golden boy of the Empire.
Rovan rolled his shoulders, armored in ceremonial mail, his practice sword gleaming with runes of kinetic reinforcement. It pulsed faintly with his fire-aligned Core Pulse, every inch a prince, every breath a predator.
Kael, by contrast, wore only the simple brown tunic of a servant, his hands bandaged where his experiments had burned him, and his body still recovering from nights spent calculating weight equations by candlelight.
No armor. No support. Not even a proper weapon.
Just expectation.
A cruel one.
Kael knew the duel was staged. His brother had whispered as much that morning, lips close to his ear: "Don't resist too hard, little void. Try to make it look good when I humiliate you. Father enjoys theatrics."
Kael hadn't responded then.
He didn't now.
Instead, he stared at the dirt-scuffed ring beneath him, and at the faint distortion he had already placed near Rovan's right foot. A Gravipoint—small, precise, imperceptible. It wouldn't break anything yet. But force was a patient thing. And gravity... gravity never forgot.
"Begin!"
The court herald's cry cut through the yard like a blade.
Rovan moved first, as expected—three long strides forward, aggressive, performative. Kael shifted sideways, slow, calculating, like a boy about to flee. Let him believe that. Let them all believe it.
A flash of light erupted from Rovan's blade as he brought it down. Kael ducked low. Fire scraped air, not flesh, but the heat kissed his cheek.
Pain. Real.
His brother was not pulling the strikes.
Not entirely.
Kael staggered back, feigning panic. His lungs burned, but his eyes remained sharp. Every movement measured. Every footstep remembered. The location of the chalk ring, the tilt of the sun, the position of the invisible Gravipoint he had placed.
"Come on, brother!" Rovan taunted, voice amplified by a subtle spell. "Use that 'magic' of yours. Show the Empire the might of gravity!"
Laughter rippled through the court. Nobles sipped wine. A minister clapped mockingly.
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't afford to.
His Core was still weak—less a burning star than a flickering ember—but it obeyed him now, even if only in whispers. And in that silence, he calculated.
Force equals mass times acceleration.
Weight equals mass times gravity.
His eyes flicked to the stone paver beneath Rovan's rear heel. A subtle shift. The Gravipoint thickened—not much, only a fraction, but enough. Enough to begin the fatigue. The imbalance.
But not yet.
Not now.
He had to endure first.
And Rovan was happy to oblige.
The prince launched a flurry of feints, each strike designed not to wound but to shame. A sweep that tripped Kael to his knees. A backhand that sent him tumbling. Laughter echoed louder with each fall.
Kael tasted blood. His head rang. But he held on—one hand behind his back, brushing the old silver coin he'd kept hidden.
A test piece.
His latest experiment. Not for now. For later.
Rovan raised his blade for the final strike. "Let this be a lesson to all who pretend at power."
Kael stared up at him, not blinking. "Power pretends nothing. It just is."
Then the blade descended.
And Kael's world went black.
He awoke in the Dust Tower again—his prison and sanctuary.
The ceiling above him swam in moonlight, dust motes drifting like stars. Pain throbbed in every bone. His ribs ached. His left arm refused to move.
He smiled anyway.
Because he'd felt it.
Right before unconsciousness claimed him, his Gravipoint had pulsed.
Right as Rovan's foot shifted for the final blow, the distortion snapped. The pressure beneath the prince's foot had doubled for a moment—enough to strain the ankle, misalign the strike. Enough to warp the balance of his stance.
He'd seen the stumble. The falter. A tiny, unnoticed twitch in Rovan's sword hand.
Kael had passed out smiling.
And when Rovan returned to his quarters, he would find something else: a hairline crack along the inner core of his rune-forged sword. So small it wouldn't be visible until the blade next saw stress.
And when it did?
The weapon would shatter.
Quiet vengeance.
Scientific precision.
Kael sat up slowly, grimacing as his body protested. He reached for his notebook—the leather-bound journal where Project Graviton had begun.
He flipped past pages of acceleration charts, energy decay models, and Core Pulse resonance drafts.
At the bottom of the last page, he wrote a new entry:
Observation: Gravipoint can destabilize structural equilibrium when placed beneath solid objects.
Test subject: Prince Rovan's blade.
Result: Micro-stress fracture achieved.
Conclusion: Gravity may be invisible, but it leaves fingerprints.
He paused.
Then added one more line:
I will never win their games. But I will rewrite the rules.
Outside the Dust Tower, the empire turned without him. Nobles feasted. Princes trained. The court laughed.
But in the attic above the forgotten wing, Kael Arkanos calculated.
And the pull of something vast—something unseen—slowly shifted.
The game had started.
They just didn't know it yet.
To be continued…