Ten years is a long time to wait.
For a normal boy, it's the time it takes to learn to walk, to talk, to read, and to dream of becoming a knight or a great mage. For Kaelen, it was ten years of pretending to be that normal boy, all while an adult mind watched from behind his eyes. It was ten years spent in a comfortable, loving prison.
His life was quiet. He was the Duke's second son, the smart one. While his older brother, Damien, was out in the training yards, Kaelen was usually found in the castle's vast library. It was his only real escape. The room was always cold, smelling of old paper and the cedarwood logs that crackled in the massive fireplace. Here, he could travel the world through books without ever leaving his chair.
Today, like most days, he was with his tutor, Master Elric. Elric was a kind man with a fringe of grey hair and fingers stained with ink. He was a good teacher, but he often found his most promising student to be a little strange.
"We will now move on to the great campaigns of your ancestor, General Vorlag," Elric said, unrolling a heavy map across the large oak table. It showed the jagged mountains of the North. "Here, at Dragon's Tooth Pass, he held off fifty thousand Orcs with only five thousand men. A true miracle."
Kaelen looked at the map. To Elric, it was a piece of history. To Kaelen, the lines and shapes were a puzzle, and the pieces didn't fit right.
"Master Elric," he asked, his voice soft. "Why do the books call it a miracle?"
Elric smiled patiently. "Because, my Lord, the odds were impossible. Ten to one. It was his masterful use of ice magic to block the pass that saved them."
"I know, but that's not the part that doesn't make sense," Kaelen said, pointing a small finger at the map. "He attacked them on the twentieth day. Everyone says it was a desperate final move, but why would he do that? The Orcs were running out of food. If he just waited, they would have had to leave on their own."
Master Elric blinked. He'd taught this lesson a hundred times, and no one had ever asked that. "Well… it was to seize the moment, to strike with honor."
"But the weather reports from that month said a warm front was coming," Kaelen continued, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "His ice walls would have melted in a few days. He didn't attack because he was desperate. He attacked because he was out of time. He had to hit their shamans before his best defense disappeared completely. It wasn't a miracle. It was just… the only thing he could do."
The old tutor stared at the ten-year-old boy. It wasn't the arrogance of a know-it-all child. Kaelen looked truly puzzled, as if he couldn't understand how everyone else had missed something so obvious. Elric slowly rolled up the map, a thoughtful, and slightly unsettled, look on his face. Every lesson with the young lord felt less like teaching and more like being gently shown that he'd been looking at the world upside down his whole life.
Later that afternoon, the dull quiet of the library was broken by shouts from the training yard below. Kaelen went to the arched window and looked down.
The yard was a wide, open space of hard-packed earth, currently littered with training dummies bristling with ice spears. In the center of it all was his brother, Damien. At fifteen, Damien was already tall and strong, the pride of the family. He'd had his Awakening five years ago, revealing a top-tier A-Rank talent. Now, he was a powerful C-Rank mage, and he never let anyone forget it.
"Again!" Damien yelled, and slammed his palms together. The air around him shimmered, and a dozen new spears of ice burst into existence, sharp and deadly. He flung them forward, and they shot through the air, punching deep into the wooden dummies with a series of heavy thunks. The household guards watching him let out a cheer.
Kaelen watched, his face expressionless. But inside, he felt the familiar stir of observation. He saw it all. The way Damien pulled moisture from the air was clumsy, like using a net to catch fog. So much was wasted. The ice spears looked deadly, but Kaelen could see the tiny, almost invisible fractures in them; they were brittle, formed too quickly.
He's strong, Kaelen thought, but he's wasting so much power. He felt a strange sort of ache in his chest. It was the feeling of a master craftsman watching a clumsy apprentice. He knew, with a certainty that was as natural as breathing, that he could do it better. So much better.
Damien saw him in the window and grinned, jogging over. "Hey, little brother! Taking a break from your books to see what real power looks like?"
His voice wasn't mean. It was the friendly, condescending tone of an older brother who had already decided what Kaelen's future would be.
"Your spears are very fast, brother," Kaelen said honestly.
Damien's chest puffed out with pride. "You bet they are. Soon enough, it'll be your turn for the Awakening. Don't worry if your talent isn't as good as mine. Not everyone can be a genius like me." He laughed, ruffling Kaelen's hair before running back to his friends.
Kaelen watched him go, his hands resting on the cold stone of the windowsill. He didn't feel anger or jealousy. He just felt… tired. Tired of waiting. Tired of being the quiet, bookish boy in the background.
His tenth birthday was only a few weeks away.
The day of his Awakening was coming. The day he could finally stop watching and start doing. The day the world would learn that the quiet observer in the library was not the boy they thought he was at all.