Time stretched, like hot plastic.
It began to burn slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the days blurred into a monotonous gray mass of training sessions, lessons, and strange, fragmented conversations with Lianna. And then it caught fire, and molten droplets, like tiny, dying suns, began to fall. Each drop—a week. A month. A season.
He woke up with ghosts. Images from his past life came to him in the first rays of the sun. Sometimes with tears. Sometimes with a cold stupor. But most often, with the quiet, exhausting hum of thoughts. His mind, accustomed to working nonstop, didn't know how to turn off. In his old world, he only fell asleep when his body refused to obey, collapsing from sheer fatigue.
Here, he had found something better.
Every night, he performed a ritual. He drained his reservoir to the last spark, until the world began to blur at the edges. The pain of emptying his mana channels had long become mundane, a sensation as familiar as breathing. It was the price. The price for a gift that would have been priceless in his past life—the ability to simply press a button and fall asleep at ten p.m., guaranteeing himself eight hours of deep, black, dreamless sleep.
The first day of winter arrived, and with it, the New Year. The Festival of Light. Legend told that on this day, the Hero Asterion had sacrificed himself, and his pure soul had covered the land in the first snow, washing away the blood of the Great War. The house emptied. The Duke, Auriya, Darian, and even Elias left for the capital. Caelan was left behind. With Lianna, and with Elisia, silent as a shadow. He had resigned himself to her cold respect, an invisible wall he no longer tried to breach.
His sanctuary became the library.
Here, in the silence, the droplets of molten time began to glow brighter. Every book, every scroll, was a spark that ignited his intellect, keeping sleep at bay. He consumed history, searching for the patterns and laws of this world. He dissected tactics, turning ancient battles into data sets. He devoured scientific works, and it was here, among the dusty tomes, that the puzzle of his own fate finally clicked into place.
"Trauma as a Catalyst: A Study of Anomalous Mana Surges." Author: Magister Ellard.
"The Theory of Mana: On the Nature of Soul Energy." Authors: Magister Ellard, Duke Valerius.
He understood. His trauma, his uniqueness—it wasn't just a coincidence. It was the living confirmation of their most audacious theories. He wasn't just a key to their work; he was the proof that could overturn the entire magical scientific community. That was why he had been raised from the dirt to the status of a son. He wasn't a child; he was a breakthrough.
But all these books were merely a prelude.
His true bible became "The Fundamentals of Runic Syntax" by Baldrim Stonefist. The dwarf master's dry, technical language was poetry to him. He didn't just read it. He memorized it. Every rune, every matrix, every principle of "clear will" was etched into his mind, becoming the foundation for his own, new magic.
The little boy who had wept in terror on the training ground was slowly dying in this quiet flame of knowledge.
In his place, in the silence of the library and the shadow of his own room, a weapon was being forged.
And so, the next molten drop fell.
Just as imperceptibly as autumn had passed, winter melted away. In that time, something strange had been born within the manor's walls. A trio. Caelan, to his own surprise, found himself drawn into the endless doll tea parties hosted by Lianna. He became an anchor in her chaotic sea, and Leo, a quiet observer from a safe harbor who, seeing Caelan's calm, gradually dared to venture into open waters. The fear Leo had once felt for his sister dissolved, transforming into a quiet trust.
But their small world had a shadow. Darian.
The heir had not accepted Caelan. To him, he was… a foreign element. A flaw in the natural order of things. He never spoke to him, never threw insults. His weapon was silence. Once, as Caelan sat alone in the library, engrossed in another treatise, Darian walked past. His shadow fell across the book's pages for a moment, and Caelan felt his gaze upon him—cold, appraising, filled with a silent disdain. A look that said without words: "You are temporary. You are merely Father's whim."
But winter, like Darian's presence, could not last forever. When the first snows melted and the first flowers pushed through the earth, the day of departure arrived. Auriya, Darian, Leo, and even Elisia, who was to accompany the Duchess, were leaving for the capital. For both brothers, a new stage was beginning—their studies at the Royal Academy.
For the Duke, it was a day of quiet sorrow. He stood on the porch, watching the carriage disappear around the bend, his powerful figure seeming weary. The house, which had once again filled with life upon the family's return, was suddenly empty.
Caelan felt it instantly. The distant echoes of voices in the corridors were gone. The patter of feet on the stairs was gone. The very presence of life was gone. The house plunged into the same silence he remembered from his first days. But this time, the silence wasn't calming. It was deafening.
He stood by the window in his room, staring at the empty road. The relief that the shadow was gone mingled with a sharp, cold feeling of desolation. He was left behind again. And he realized that, despite everything, he had grown used to the noisy, unpredictable chaos that was called "family."
And so, a long, slow drop of molten time began to fall, taking spring and summer with it.
The silence in the house was new, but not absolute. Lianna's presence was a strange, chaotic anchor in the emptiness. Nothing changed: training, lessons, tea parties. But Caelan had changed. He began to experiment. Stones from the garden and the training grounds began to disappear, settling in his pockets.
And so, in this quiet routine, he didn't even notice as the date approached.
[Date: 04.09.1651]
[Days Since Reincarnation: 365]
One year. He expected nothing.
That was why, when Elias appeared at his doorway and announced, "The Duke awaits you in the small dining hall, Young Master," Caelan simply followed obediently.
But something else awaited him in the dining hall. The Duke sat at the table, and beside him, Lianna, staring with curiosity at a small cake with a single, lit candle.
Caelan froze. It was... illogical.
"To your first year in your new home, Caelan," the Duke said calmly.
Elias placed a small, but visibly heavy, package on the table. Caelan unwrapped it.
Inside was a small cauldron of dark, matte metal. He lifted it with both hands—it was heavy, at the very limit of what he could manage. On the bottom, inside, was a single word engraved in clear Aetherian script: HEAT.
"An artifact," the Duke explained. "A simple one. Its instruction is to 'heat the contents.' Pour your mana into it."
He looked Caelan directly in the eye, and his voice grew quieter.
"You've been exhausted lately. More so than usual. I've also noticed your new interest in artificing. I deduced you were conducting your own experiments. And I decided you would need a more effective tool than random stones."
Shock.
His secret, clumsy experiments… they weren't a secret. He was being watched. Analyzed. And instead of punishment or interrogation, he had been given a better tool. This wasn't just a gift. It was a silent message: "I know. Continue."
Inside him, something faintly cracked—the wall he had so carefully been building.
"...Thank you," he whispered.
This small drop changed everything. His visits to the Duke's study became more frequent. And it was then that their "King's Gambit" began.
But this drop was merely a prelude. The next one was waiting—a giant one, ready to swallow an entire year.
When the fallen leaves covered the ground, chaos returned without knocking. Caelan was standing at the top of the grand staircase when the main doors swung open, and the world rushed in. Not just sunlight, but a clamor of voices, the scent of road dust and city perfumes, the bustle of servants carrying trunks. After months of measured silence, it felt like a shockwave.
Leo spotted him first. He ran to the bottom of the stairs, his face glowing with excitement. "Caelan! I brought you a book about underwater plants! There are ones that glow!"
But before Caelan could respond, Darian walked past them. He didn't stop. He merely cast a fleeting, cold glance that slid over Caelan as if he were part of the architecture, and headed for his father's wing. Leo flinched slightly at the cold passage, but then looked back up at Caelan with renewed hope.
Caelan, who had grown accustomed to the measured quiet, needed the entire autumn to adapt once more to the fact that the house was alive.
And then, life left it again.
When the last of the snow melted, carriages lined up before the porch once more. This time, as he watched them leave, his eyes were on Lianna. She had turned seven. It was her turn.
The silence that followed hit harder than ever before. It was absolute.
And it was in this emptiness that the Duke found him. Or perhaps, Caelan found the Duke. One evening, the Duke simply nodded toward the chessboard in his study.
"Do you know the rules?"
Caelan did.
Their "King's Gambit" became his most important lesson. At first, the Duke played mercilessly, cornering Caelan in a dozen moves. He wasn't just winning. He was teaching.
"You focus too much on overt strength, Caelan," he'd say, capturing his "officer." "The aristocracy is not a battlefield. It is a swamp. Sometimes, the shortest path is the one where you get bogged down first."
The turning point came half a year into his solitude.
Caelan sacrificed his "horse" to lure the Duke's "queen" into an open position. The move was risky, almost foolish.
The Duke raised an eyebrow. "A dangerous game. You're exposing your king."
"Sometimes you must feign weakness to make your enemy overreach," Caelan replied quietly, echoing a lesson he'd learned a month prior. He moved an unremarkable pawn.
The Duke froze. He saw the trap. It wasn't brilliant, but it was patient. By taking the horse, his queen had walked into a pincer from which there was now no escape. He was losing. Not because of a genius move, but because of his own overconfidence. He expected Caelan to play against him, but Caelan had made him play against himself.
The Duke leaned back in his chair. And the same sound Caelan had heard only once before, on the day they first met, escaped his lips. Not the laugh of a victor, but the quiet, genuine chuckle of a man who has witnessed something unexpected and beautiful. A laugh of respect.
"A clean move... You made me defeat myself," he said, looking at the board with admiration. Then his smile faded, replaced by irritation. He rubbed his temple. "Unlike some messes. I thought you might be interested," he added, his tone becoming serious. "The Martinus affair is going nowhere. The Church's 'Cleaners' are very good at sweeping things under the rug. They operate just like this—they don't attack directly. They create the conditions for their enemies to destroy themselves."
It was said quietly, bitterly, and the topic was never raised again. But Caelan heard. And he understood far more than just the words. He understood that the game on this board was merely practice for another, much larger one.
The year of solitude flowed like hot plastic, but this time, Caelan was the one giving it shape. Each day was a hammer strike, honing one of the three facets of his being.
His mind—at the chessboard in the Duke's study, where every match tempered his strategic thinking.
His body—on the training grounds, where spars with Kira forged him into a living weapon.
And his will—in the silence of his own room, where he plunged his hands into the fire of his own experiments. There, above the surface of the artifact cauldron, he learned to give his mana a form harder than the metal from which it was made.
It ended one morning on the training grounds.
After another spar, Kira lowered her wooden sword.
"That's it," she said. "I've taught you all the fundamentals of magic that I can. Our sword lessons will continue, of course, but there is nothing more I can give you when it comes to magic."
She stepped closer, a rare, faint, warm smile touching her lips.
"Honestly? You don't need magic to be a great warrior. You hold a sword as if you were born with it in your hand. You have a gift for it."
She became serious again.
"I will report to the Duke that your preliminary training is complete. Prepare yourself. Your next instructor will be Magister Ellard."
[Date: 01.09.1652]
[Days Since Reincarnation: 728]