For all the clandestine crawling forays, midnight rune deciphering, and co-authored Secret Notebooks Sharath had piled behind his pillows like little paper fortresses, there existed something else—something greater—than kept him grounded. And it wasn't hope of cracking the Lock rune or outwitting the castle's most advanced enchantments. No… it was the immeasurable magic of being home.
The type of magic you couldn't bottle, sell, or transcribe into runic grammar.
That night, the nursery's magical candles burned lower than normal, their fires dancing slowly as if they'd declared it a relaxed Friday. The gentle hum of the night runes wrote themselves across the ceiling in the form of constellations resembling chubby creatures playing cards. Sharath lay in his cradle, swaddled, eyes half-lidded, pretending to be on the verge of sleep—but in truth, he was running a mental debugging session on a new emotional-trigger spell he'd been tinkering with.
[🐧 EMOTIONAL CPU USAGE: 83%. WARNING: YOU'RE ABOUT TO OPTIMIZE A SPELL WHILE TEARY-EYED. HIGH RISK OF SENTIMENTAL OVERFLOW.]
It was then, precisely then, that the door creaked open with its characteristic soft but firm sound. Lady Ishvari stepped in, her entry followed by the fragrance of sandalwood and something Sharath could only identify as pure comfort. She was with her lullaby voice, the one that could melt the will of even the grumpiest infant or grumpiest archmage.
Her voice sang not just—oh no—it wove. Every note was an unseen thread tugging the heat into the room. She sang of dreams under stars, of ships that sailed on moonbeams, of birds who carried wishes (Sharath had a feeling the avian collective might complain about that section), and of a child meant for something amazing, though unspecified.
And with all his higher-order brain structure, all his "infant with a PhD in Runic Syntax" hubris, Sharath experienced the academic machinery within him. slow down. Stop, even. His normally pin-sharp, calculating trains of thought were usurped by something much more basic:
This is nice.
[🐧 EMOTIONAL LOG: STRESS LEVELS AT 4%. HIGHEST RECORDED CONTENTMENT SINCE LAST CUDDLE EVENT.]
Ishvari sat next to the cradle and picked him up, disregarding the swaddle as if it were an optional suggestion in the castle's childcare handbook. She cradled him so his little head nestled beneath her chin, his cheek against the comforting pulse of her heartbeat.
The runes on the wall, normally flickering in their infinite cycle of constellations, slowed. They didn't need to—but magic, Sharath was finding, tended to react to emotion in ways that the books never said.
[🐧 OBSERVATION: ACOUSTIC PATTERNS IN LULLABY PRODUCE EMOTIONAL HARMONICS. NOTE: TRUE MAGIC MAY NOT REQUIRE CODE.]
And there it was—the paradox that both pleased and infuriated him. Here he was, a baby with sufficient magical literacy to deconstruct and reprogram half the nursery magic, and he couldn't reproduce it.
He'd attempted once, within a controlled trial. Ishvari was out for the night, and Sharath had called up a music rune—meticulously written to perfectly reproduce the pitch and cadence of her lullaby. It had succeeded, technically. The music was flawless. The room was filled with gentle light. And yet… no heat in his chest. No home. Just audio data.
[🐧 THEORETICAL CONCLUSION: EMOTIONAL MAGIC = QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT OF HEART AND INTENTION. NOT REPLICABLE WITH CURRENT RESOURCES.]
There was no experiment tonight, no hypothesis. Only raw experience of being held, heard, and sung to as if the world were present in this one place.
"Runatha," he murmured, his voice less than a breath.
To know by sight.
The name did not belong to the lullaby. It wasn't even loud enough for Ishvari to be aware of consciously. But in that instant, Sharath saw. Not with his eyes, but with the intensity of realizing something so completely it loses its mystery.
Love, he understood, was a form of spell. Not the sort you could bind to parchment or bind to a wand, but the sort that altered the very laws of the world around it.
His pendant beat against his breast in harmony with his heart rate—a gentle cadence, as if it, too, were accepting the truth. The nursery runes caught up, their light growing, pulsing in accord with the heat in the room.
[🐧 SYSTEM STATUS: OPTIMAL. HEART-RUNE RESONANCE DETECTED. NEW DATA POINT: CONNECTION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL STATE AND MAGICAL OUTPUT.]
The academic in him wished to record it all straight away. The baby in him simply wished to remain precisely where he was. And for a change, the baby prevailed.
They remained thus for a while—time gauged not in minutes but in slowing breaths of a mother embracing her infant, and in the still quieting of a castle that recognized this was one of those instances that you did not interrupt.
Finally, Ishvari changed positions, setting him back in the cradle with the care of one placing the most valuable relic in the world on a shelf. The last notes of the lullaby lingered in the air like the final light of a dying star, and then dissolved into the pulse of nighttime hush.
Sharath's eyes closed—neither from exhaustion (he could recite mental loops for another three hours if he had to), nor from weariness. But because suddenly sleep seemed the most reasonable progression of this magic.
And so the infant prodigy, scholar, and would-be architect of runic revolutions did not sleep dreaming of magical syntax or strategic counterintelligence. He slept dreaming of her. Of love. Of home.
And somewhere within the very center of his soul, he set down a new truth:
The heart is the biggest spellbook of them all.