Three days after he had been named, life fell into a hectic pattern half royal indulgence, half sorcerous surprises. Sharath's mornings started with breakfast—i.e., milk bar treatment—then "physical enrichment," whereby a healer wiggled his limbs as if he was trying out for synchronized swimming. Afternoon activities included sing-alongs meant to instill courtly language; evenings, bedtime stories where Varundar described battles with such fervor the nursery tapestries shook, perhaps questioning life decisions.
But peace is intolerant of high mana surroundings. At lunchtime midweek, a ground-shaking disturbance shook corridors: yelling, clattering armor, and the ear-piercing shriek of terrified peafowl. Sharath was in the middle of a nap when his cradle shuddered. Runes blazed red before settling back into protective teal.
Footsteps thundered. The nursery doors clattered open. Jivran stormed in with the wooden sword—now adorned with what appeared to be mathematically improbable bite marks. "Goblins!" he bellowed, cheeks burning. "Uncle's scouts saw movement past the south ridge. The Forest of Sighs!"
The nursemaids yelled. One swooned so delicately it seemed practiced. The senior matron barked commands: windows covered, braziers lit with sage, latches fastened. She pressed a quartz talisman to Sharath's forehead and muttered prayers. Sharath, bemusedly irritated, spat the talisman out like an unwanted pop-up.
Goblins? He slithered through recollection of Varundar's war stories: green-skinned scavengers who loved steel and jerky from horses, clever but unorganized. Forest of Sighs was two leagues away—close enough to give him a worry.
He concentrated on runes along the cradle. Fresh designs licked across cedar—shields piling upon each other like fish scales. He felt the manor's entire ward system ramping up to heightened state, pathways glowing ghost-blue down corridors far beneath. It was a distributed denial-of-goblins system. Incredibly impressive.
Over the partial crack of the door, he listened to hurried strategizing: scouts, perimeter beacons, backup spells. Varundar's booming voice was calm leadership, and Ishvari countered with planning skills—evacuate cooks, triple herb requests, lock down library tomes. Sharath beamed second-hand pride. His parents were essentially DevOps for medieval emergencies.
The anxiety persisted for hours. At dusk, horns blared the all-clear. Scouts brought word of false alarm—flocks of shadow-geese mistaken for goblin patrol. Shared relief whooshed down corridors. Kitchens cranked out "celebration stew." Nursemaids opened shutters, gossip swung round to whose cousin overreacted most.
But Sharath's pendant throbbed uneasy static. He gazed into the forest visible over nursery terrace—a jagged outline drinking sunset. The presence from naming night seemed nearer now, like an unseen browser tab quietly auto-refreshing.
That night, sleeping on Varundar's shoulder in the solar, Sharath contemplated choices. Waking adults necessitated linguistic skills presently out of reach. He thought of rune-writing but didn't have motor skill; his scribbles looked like encryption hacked by coffee spill. Ultimately he resorted to quiet sabotage: every time a staff member used the term Forest of Sighs, he let out an impeccably placed squeak. The connection wasn't lost on Ishvari; by evening she'd quietly asked the castle's lore-master to double-check on goblin myths. Small wins.
Days passed. The shadow of the forest remained. The seventh night, Sharath dreamed circuit boards overcome with ivy, resistors sprouting leaves, data streams as rivers through moss. On the periphery of the dream stood a gigantic shape—antlers? branches?—glowing byte-green eyes. Upon waking with a start, cradle runes formed a form he had never seen: a sigil uniting tree and lightning.
He concealed the new symbol under his blanket with the intent to draw it later. Alas, early the next morning, all fell apart like spaghetti code.
A merchant caravan came by—silks, spices, rumor. Among offerings was a menagerie cart with caged marvels: a fox feathered, a turtle whose shell rotated like a gyroscope, and, in the corner, a stooped creature wrapped in frayed cloak. Its amber eyes searched courtyard throngs until they landed on Sharath, who watched from the balcony ledge of Lady Ishvari. The creature's eyes bored in like a wild process that hijacks root access. Something old recognized him, then disappeared under the cart's umbra.
Sharath's heart pounded. Pendant overheated, rune filaments flapping. Ishvari, seeing him nervous, commanded curtains to be closed. Still the imprint of those shining eyes seared within his retinas, as if cut by UV laser.
Sharath slept not that night. The cradle rocked soothing incantations, but runes ticked, a mirror to his agitation. Somewhere around moon-rise he slept halfway through, then woke with a jolt to a silence more profound than night. Lamps had burned out, casting the nursery in a silver darkness.
A form appeared by the window. Not a human. Higher, thinner, veiled in folds of dusk. Sharath's breath stopped. The trespasser extended a bony finger to its covered lips—a gesture understood worldwide.
Runes burst aqua bright. Ward glyphs flashed on floorboards, interweaving a cage of light around the cradle. The figure hissed—a tearing sound like parchment underwater—then dissolved into shadow and was gone. Footsteps thundered as guards ran, called by alarm spells. They discovered nothing but Sharath weeping, cradle buzzing like a beehive on espresso.
Varundar bore his son down hall after hall of nervous minions. In the private war-room of the lord, crystal charts blazed red across border markers. Ishvari clutched Sharath so close that flower perfume burned into his lungs. "Whatever seeks him," she breathed, "will not pass our walls again.
But Sharath understood walls never stopped determined code—or predators. The questionable beast from the merchant wagon, the presence in the forest, the new lightning-tree glyph: strands of a single tapestry.
The household went into high alert. Additional wards stacked, torches triple-pitched, archers posting at parapets. Sharath monitored this InfoSec ramping up with professional admiration. Yet, unease stung. He could sense the unknown presence rounding like a hacker scanning ports, searching for entry points.
Two fitful nights later, the storm erupted.
Sharath slept lightly as nurses gossiped: Which shaman made more effective aura-cleansing incense; whether Varundar's captain preferred the blacksmith's daughter. The pendant against Sharath's chest grew cold, then glowed with a light strong enough to blind. A thunderclap boomed although skies were clear. All castle lamps went out together, plunged into darkness so absolute it swallowed breath.
Shrieks resounded. Sharath's cradle jerked into crash lockdown—rune shields piling eight, nine, ten deep. Behind transparent barriers he saw corridors past nursery door, now a battleground of shimmering lanterns and staggering guards.
The presence flooded, no longer willing to hide. It rammed against wards, every impact ringing out like mallet on cathedral bells. Sharath's bassinet split from magic stress, cedar creaking. Fear threatened to overwhelm him, but his logical mind broke through—like debugging a production outage at 3 AM. Find root cause. Apply patch.
He reached—not with muscle, but with that uncertain flame that had ignited the cradle on his birth night. He saw circuit diagrams intertwined with runic spirals—the tree-lightning sigil. He sensed runes beneath fingertips though he did not move physically. He drew power from pendant, melded it into cedar carvings, redirected protective arrays.
The wards rearranged, flowering new sub-glyphs—virtual fingerprints across ancient borders. A shockwave of blue light exploded outward, filling hallway, courtyard, maybe the entire feudal ward. Whatever attacked the manor retreated, screee lost in resonance like feedback shredding fabric of reality's sound system.
Silence followed.
Torches flickered back to life. Rune shields receded to natural thickness. Nurses fell stunned; one muttered she'd seen angels during the flash. Varundar burst in, sword shining, scanning for danger. Seeing none, he let go with a breath that deflated centuries of warbringer tension. Ishvari swept Sharath off his feet, tears on her cheeks glinting rainbow under fading afterglow.
Chandeliers flickered nervously, as if servers booting up after unexpected power cut. At last, Varundar spoke, his voice raw. "Whatever darkness dared to take our son has been turned back." He gestured at the wall where shimmering afterimages faded—the lightning-tree sigil burned into stone. "But it is a war that has just started."
Before dawn, artisans filled fissures, healers attended to guard concussions, scribes wrote desperate letters to sympathetic mages. The nature of the creature was not known; prints ceased where shadow and moonlight met. Some attributed it to a forest spirit outraged by rune-technology. Others spoke of an ancient spyware demon lured by "souls of many lives." Sharath conjectured overlap of both hypotheses with variables unspoken.
One thing was certain: Sharath Virayan Darsha was no run-of-the-mill noble heir. Rumor had bestowed upon him fifty nicknames before lunchtime—Storm-Child, Rune-Singer, Heir of Lightning, Small Terror with Surprisingly Ominous Belch. He hoped they'd choose one brand name for advertising purposes.
Weary, he stretched again in mended cradle as twilight seeped across the horizon. The tumult quieted to tense peace; pendant now subdued, cradle runes humming content. Ishvari and Varundar stood watch at bedside, palms together. Patrolling outside tripled, charms sparking along parapets like neon fences.
But beyond stone and spell, in the gloom-drenched trees afar, a silent observer hid. Sharath felt it the way ancient servers feel impending power outage—a tingle in cables. He countered the forest shadow with infant-but-eternal stare. Battle lines drawn in quiet, each side gauging the other.
His pendant responded with a last, soft flash of blue. And Sharath realized in the silence that his crash into destiny had only just begun installation level. Much code still to compile, many enigmas to debug.
Tonight, however, he let lids slide shut. Tomorrow he would learn more verbs, perhaps entice runes into sandbox mode. Tonight he would dream of quantum lightning and cedar cradles sailing starlit seas.
Outside, the forest whispered… something large prowling the treeline.