Cade Wen was born beneath a sky split with lightning.
The storm was a good omen. In the lands ruled by mageblooded dynasties, lightning was more than weather—it was prophecy. For the Wenblood line, whose power had shaped empires and shattered armies, it was sacred. When Cade opened his eyes, streaks of blue shimmered faintly in his lashes. The elders whispered. The court bowed. And his father, Lord Arran Wen, placed a hand upon his brow and said, "This one is born to ascend."
He was the third-born of seven. And from the moment he could stand, he was put through the same trials as all children of his bloodline. Obedience. Control. Precision. Temperance. The Trials of the Wenhood.
He learned swordplay before he could read. He memorized runic theory before his ninth birthday. He beat his older brother, Talek, in a logic duel. He danced with a blade in one hand and a scroll in the other. Everything the tutors gave him, he devoured. He trained harder, studied longer, moved with relentless focus. Everything—except the one thing that mattered.
The lightning never came.
No matter how hard he trained, no matter how deep he meditated, his mana remained still. Not broken—just… silent. He formed his mana heart at six, earlier than expected. The healers praised its density. His conduits were open. His soul was intact. But the ancestral spell within the Wenblood—the Stormline—did not answer.
At first, they said he was a late bloomer, at seven they stopped saying that.
His siblings began to laugh behind his back. Or worse, to his face.
Talek called him "the sparkless heir." Aela, his younger sister, would mockingly flinch when he raised a hand—as if afraid of a lightning bolt that would never come. Even the youngest, barely out of toddlerhood, learned early to mock what they didn't understand.
The halls that once echoed with praise grew quiet when he entered. Tutors focused on his siblings. Servants bowed just enough to stay polite. Cade felt himself shrinking inside a body that only grew taller, stronger—but emptier. The pressure didn't fade. It calcified.
Only his mother, Lady Syra, still looked at him with softness. She would pull him close when no one watched, brush back his storm-marked hair and whisper, "It doesn't matter, Cade. You're still mine."
His father—Lord Arran—offered no such illusions.
There was no public disownment. No grand announcement. Just a quiet meeting in the dusk-lit solar, his father's silhouette framed by a window full of stormlight. Cade remembered every word:
A sword that does not conduct lightning is still a sword. Perhaps it can serve another house.
At the age of ten, Cade Wen was sent away.
The Ironheart family had no gift for spellwork. They had no crystal towers, no arcane academies, no legacy of runes or rituals. But they had steel. Discipline. Bloodlines shaped by war and silence. They ruled their border province not with fear, but with earned respect. When Cade arrived, their halls were colder than the Wenblood's—but more honest.
came with mage-born hands, too smooth. They gave him a training sword too heavy. He was told to swing it until his arms failed.
They watched him fall. Again. And again But he was never asked to stop.
They taught him to stand with his feet rooted in the earth, not the clouds. How to breathe through pain. How to strike with intent and receive without fear. How to stare down a blade and not blink.
He learned how to fight dirty. How to fall smart. How to bleed with pride.
And in all that time, no one called him a disappointment.
The head of the Ironheart family, Lord Rurik, was a stone-faced relic of an older time. His voice cracked like aged leather. His eyes saw too much. And when Cade collapsed during his first full spar, lungs on fire and ribs broken, Rurik stood over him and said only:
"Good. You don't scream."
He grew taller. Broader. His hair darkened with streaks of sapphire that the sun could never burn away. His skin turned bronze under training fields and frozen mornings. His grip no longer trembled. His stance no longer faltered. His breath was measured. His movements clean.
And yet the lightning never came.
It didn't matter anymore he stopped waiting for it, he had no use for borrowed miracles.
There where obviously children of the iron heart bloodline at first they didn't take to kindly to a outsider being accepted when they use to be of rivalry but as time went on most either started to hold their tongue or accept it and embrace him if there where seven of the wenblood there where 5 of the ironheart kids.
On his seventeenth birthday, he was picked up by some of his original family guards and sent back home since it was mostly kept under wraps on why he really left his family that only a few knew. So he spent some months there keeping most of his cards under wraps just enough to the point he wasn't to much of a danger to his siblings but enough to the point they couldn't just bully him like they use to now he could fight back.
Then a letter came. Sealed in silver, marked with the sigil of a spire wrapped in serpents. Virethorn Academy—where the children of kings, champions, and archmages honed their weapons, their magic, and their ambition.
Now it reall begun he wasn't so stuck on what happened years ago to want revenge on his whole family or want to dethrone his father in a brutal manner all he wanted was for those that looked down on him where to be the ones that were now looking up.
But they would be a fool if they thought he forgot about everything and would let them off with just a wave and a kind smile no, he was going to show them that there was a reason he was still one of the eldest of wenblood.