The first thing I was aware of was the smell of sawdust and pine resin. It was a clean, sharp smell, one that spoke of hard work and simple things. The second was an ache in my lower back, a familiar protest from a body used to bending over a workbench.
I blinked, and the world resolved itself. Not my world. His world.
My name was Alex. At least, it was now. The memories were still settling, like two different colored sands swirling in an hourglass. One stream was from a man who'd lived a life of screens and concrete. The other was from a boy who'd lived a life of wood and simple magic.
I was both, and I was neither.
"Alex! Stop daydreaming and hold this steady! The sun's not going to wait on us."
The voice belonged to Kael, my—his—father. A broad-shouldered man with a carpenter's strong hands and a face weathered by a lifetime of honest labor. He was fitting a new door for Old Man Hemlock's bakery, a job that should have been straightforward.
It wasn't.
"Sorry, Da," I said, my voice still feeling foreign in my throat. I leaned my weight against the doorframe, holding the heavy oak door in place. Kael muttered a low incantation, his fingers tracing a rune on the hinge. A soft, bronze light glowed from the metal as he invoked the Law of Sealing. It was a simple, common spell, one of a hundred minor magics that made life in Oakhaven run smoothly. It would bind the hinge to the wood permanently, making it stronger than any iron nail.
The light flared, then died. Kael frowned. He tried again, his voice more forceful. The rune glowed, sputtered, and faded like a dying ember.
"Blast it," he grumbled, wiping his brow. "The Aether must be thin today. Or this oak is more stubborn than a mule."
I looked at the hinge. And then I saw it. It wasn't something my eyes perceived, but something my new mind did. A shimmering, intricate pattern of light, like a ghostly lock, hovering over the hinge. The Law of Sealing, active but… incomplete. Flawed. I could see the weak points in its structure, the places where the logical sequence frayed.
Without thinking, driven by an instinct I didn't understand, I reached out and pressed my thumb against the center of the shimmering pattern.
"Null," I whispered in my mind.
The pattern didn't just break. It was unwoven. It came apart like a knitted sweater catching on a nail, the threads of light dissolving into nothingness with a soft, inaudible sigh.
Kael, oblivious to the cosmic event that had just occurred on his door hinge, chose that moment to try the spell a third time. This time, the rune flared with a healthy, steady light. The Law took hold instantly, fusing the hinge to the wood with a final, solid thump.
"Ha! There we are," he said, a grin splitting his face. "I just needed a bit of persistence. Good work, son."
I could only nod, my heart hammering against my ribs. I pulled my hand back as if it was burning.
What had I just done?
The rest of the day passed in a blur of manual labor and internal panic. I tested it, cautiously, on small things. A pot of glue, kept warm by a minor Law of Thermal Conservation. A touch of my finger, a mental "Null," and the pot went cold. A cartwheel enchanted with a faint Law of Durability to prevent splintering. A brush of my hand, and I could feel the enchantment vanish, leaving behind ordinary, vulnerable wood.
I wasn't casting magic. I was un-casting it. I was erasing it.
By the time we packed our tools and started the walk home, the fear had begun to curdle into a strange, terrifying excitement. I had nothing in this world. No status, no rare talent, no hidden royal blood. Just a strong back and a decent family. I was utterly, completely average.
Except for this.
As we turned onto our street, we found a small crowd gathered. In the center was Mallory, the town's best weaver, sobbing over a large, hand-operated loom. A young man in the fine, grey robes of a junior Regulator stood over it, looking smug.
"clearly in violation of the Standardized Weaving Act, subsection four," the Regulator was saying, his voice nasal and self-important. "Your enchantment is non-compliant. I've placed a Law of Stasis upon it. It is frozen, as per the penalty."
The loom was shrouded in a visible, shimmering grey field. The Law of Stasis. It looked like a perfect, unbreakable crystal coffin.
Mallory wrung her hands. "But sir, without it, I can't fill my orders! My family…"
"Should have considered the law before using unlicensed enchantments," the Regulator sniffed.
I saw my father's jaw tighten. He hated bullies. But he was a carpenter, and this was a Regulator. There was nothing he could do.
The crowd murmured, helpless.
Then, everyone's eyes turned to me.
I hadn't realized I'd stepped forward. My feet had moved on their own. The Regulator looked at me, a bored expression on his face. "Yes? Do you have something to add, boy?"
I didn't. But I had to do something.
I walked past him, right up to the frozen loom. The Law of Stasis was a far more complex structure than the Law of Sealing. It was a dense, interlocking web of logic, a cage of pure order. To everyone else, it was an immutable fact. To me, it was a puzzle. And I could see the keyhole.
I placed my palm flat against the shimmering grey field.
"Null."
It wasn't a whisper this time. It was a command.
The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. The grey field didn't fade. It shattered. It exploded inward into a million motes of dissolving light with a sound like a giant pane of glass breaking. The loom, freed, gave a loud CRACK as the tension in its mechanisms released, and the shuttle jumped forward an inch.
A dead silence fell over the street.
The Regulator's smugness vanished, replaced by pure, uncomprehending shock. He stared at the now-normal loom, then at me, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.
Mallory stopped crying, her hands frozen in mid-wrinkle.
My father was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen before–not pride, not anger, but sheer, undiluted confusion.
I lowered my hand. The excitement was gone, replaced by a cold knot of dread in my stomach. I had just publicly, and spectacularly, broken a Law enforced by a Regulator.
I was no longer Alex, the carpenter's son.
I was an anomaly. And everyone knew it.