The years after his birth passed quietly, but Kael Duskveil was never truly a child. His body grew, his tongue stumbled over words, yet his mind remained sharp with the clarity of two lifetimes. He remembered the flames of his death, the betrayal of his old world, and the vow he had made as his heart stopped. That vow burned within him still.
By the time he could walk, he already knew what others called mana. He had seen it from the moment his eyes opened in this world—threads of light bending around his mother's hands, currents flowing through the runes carved into the manor's walls. He had heard the servants whisper the word in awe, and he had claimed it for himself. Mana. The invisible current that powered this world.
To others, it was mystery. To Kael, it was circuitry. Energy flowing through invisible wires, sometimes efficient, often wasteful. Where others whispered prayers to the unseen, Kael recognized patterns. To him, mana was not miracle but mechanism—an energy that obeyed rules, waiting for the right mind to uncover them.
At first, he only observed. He watched how the threads gathered when his father trained in the courtyard, how they flared when his mother whispered a spell. He noticed how the servants' charms glowed faintly when danger was near, how the wards in the ceiling pulsed like a heartbeat.
Kael had expected only the cold steel of command from his father, the same presence that filled the manor with quiet authority. Yet here, in the stillness of the training hall, Lord Duskveil's voice carried a gentleness Kael had never heard before. It unsettled him almost as much as it reassured him.
One evening, his father sat him on a mat in the training hall. "Close your eyes," Lord Duskveil commanded. "Breathe. Feel the flow within you. That is your mana."
Kael obeyed, though he did not need to. He had felt it since infancy, the faint tug of threads brushing against his skin, seeping into his chest with every breath. Still, he played the role of a child discovering it for the first time. His brow furrowed, his lips parted, and after a long silence he whispered, "I… I feel it."
Lord Duskveil's voice softened. "Most call it magic, but in truth, it is a force like fire or wind. It follows laws, though few have the patience to learn them."
Kael's eyes flickered. Then if it has laws, it can be engineered.
His father's stern face softened with pride. "Good. You are a son of Duskveil. Remember this feeling. It will guide you."
Kael lowered his gaze, hiding the faint smile tugging at his lips. I felt it long before you told me. But if I reveal too much, too soon, they will fear me. And fear is dangerous.
His first true experiment came when he was barely three. In the library, he found a discarded slate and a piece of chalk. He drew a circle, then added lines branching outward, mimicking the runes he had seen etched into the manor's foundation. He placed the slate on the floor, sat before it, and focused.
Mana trickled from his fingertips, clumsy and uneven. The lines glowed faintly, then sputtered out. He frowned, erased part of the circle, and redrew it with sharper angles. Again, he tried. This time, the glow held for a few seconds longer before fading.
The chalk lines glowed faintly, like the first crude diagrams of an inventor. It was not sorcery to him, but the blueprint of a circuit—mana flowing as current, runes as switches.
It was crude, but it was progress.
Elira had only recently been assigned to him, a young apprentice mage eager to prove herself. To the household, she was little more than a caretaker for the heir's early lessons. To Kael, she was a convenient observer—someone whose expectations he could manipulate, whose praise would shield his true progress.
Elira found him crouched over the slate one afternoon. Her eyes widened at the glowing lines. "You… you shouldn't be able to do that yet," she whispered. "You're only three."
Kael tilted his head, feigning innocence. "Is it wrong?"
Elira hesitated, then shook her head. "Not wrong. Just… dangerous. Mana is not a toy. It can burn you if you lose control."
Kael smiled faintly. Dangerous, yes. But so is fire, until you build a furnace to contain it.
The days turned into a rhythm. Lessons in etiquette from his mother, breathing drills from his father—who, to Kael's surprise, showed a gentler side during their sessions—and stolen hours in the library where he sketched crude diagrams of mana circuits. He began to notice patterns. A spell was like a program—an array of instructions written in runes. Most mages cast them instinctively, pouring mana into shapes they memorized. But Kael saw the inefficiencies. Loops that wasted energy. Lines that could be shortened.
One evening, Elira demonstrated a basic Ignite spell, conjuring a small flame above her palm. Kael watched closely, memorizing the rune pattern she traced in the air. Later, alone in his room, he tried it himself.
His first attempt fizzled. His second sparked, then died. On the third, he adjusted the angle of one line, shortened another, and compressed the flow.
A flame bloomed above his palm, steady and bright.
It lasted only a few seconds before vanishing, but Kael's eyes gleamed. Three attempts. And already, I've made it more efficient than hers.
The next day, when Elira asked him to try in her presence, he deliberately let the flame flicker and die almost immediately. She clapped her hands in delight anyway, praising him for succeeding so young. Kael lowered his head, feigning embarrassment, while inside he calculated how much longer the flame could have lasted if he had used his true pattern.
That night, as he lay in bed, Kael stared at the faint blue glow of the wards etched into the ceiling. Mana pulsed through them in steady rhythm, like a coded language waiting to be deciphered.
But then—he noticed something he hadn't before. One rune, tucked into the corner of the ceiling, pulsed out of rhythm. Its lines were sharper, older, unlike the others.
He sat up, heart quickening. That rune doesn't belong here.
Sliding from his bed, he grabbed his slate and copied the strange pattern by moonlight. As his chalk scratched the final line, the wards above him flickered—just once, like an eye opening.
Kael froze, staring at the ceiling.
What did I just awaken?