The scullery of Ghostwind Manor was a cavern of shadows and damp stone, far from the polished halls of memory. Kaelan lay swaddled in a worn but clean blanket on a sturdy wooden table, his new family arrayed around him like uncertain lab assistants.
Lyra placed the small iron pot on the hearthstone before the cold fireplace. "Blighted glow-moss," she said, her voice carefully neutral. She tipped a woven basket, and a clump of sickly vegetation tumbled out. It should have been a vibrant, luminous green. Instead, it was a mottled, weeping grey, speckled with ugly orange pustules. A faint, metallic odor of decay and rust filled the air.
`<< Sample Acquired. Initiating Deep Scan. >>
<
<
<
<
<
Arric Ghostwind knelt, striking flint to tinder with practiced ease. Soon, a small, bright fire crackled in the hearth. The light danced over their faces—Lyra's sharp with scrutiny, Arric's heavy with hope, Liara's pale with fearful anticipation as she held Kaelan.
"Now what, little brother?" Lyra asked, her silver eyes fixed on him. It wasn't a tender question. It was a challenge. Prove it.
Kaelan focused. He had no gestures, no incantations. He had will, and he had the Omega Chip.
<< Execute Step One. Direct thermal energy. Focus on pustule clusters. Avoid igniting biomass. >>
He visualized the equations. The Chip translated his intent into a microscopic command, a whisper of power drawn from the ambient mana. It was agonizingly slow, like threading a needle with a trembling, giant's hand.
A collective gasp filled the room.
The fire didn't roar. Instead, tendrils of flame, fine as threads, snaked out from the main blaze. They coiled around the clump of moss on the hearthstone with impossible precision, licking at the orange pustules. One by one, they sizzled and popped, releasing a thin, acrid smoke.
"Precise pyrokinesis… in an infant," Arric murmured, awe warring with disbelief. "That's… not possible."
<< Step Two. Introduce medium. >>
Kaelan's gaze flicked to the clay water jug by the sink. Lyra followed his look, understood, and scooped a cupful. At his continued stare, she slowly poured it over the heated, now-drooping moss. It hissed, creating a murky, foul-smelling slurry.
"This looks like a waste of good water," Lyra stated, but her hand didn't tremble.
<< Step Three: Separation Protocol. Initiate Mana-Sieve Field. >>
This was the core of the synthesis. The most complex calculation yet. Kaelan's tiny body shuddered with the strain. His vision tunneled, the world reducing to the slurry in the pot and the cascading data from the Chip.
A faint, cerulean light emanated from the slurry itself. Not from him, but from the mana he was structuring within it. The particles began to move. The grey organic matter coalesced, rising to the top. A shimmering, rust-colored silt—the concentrated ferroxic toxin—sank and gathered at the bottom of the pot, pulled by an invisible centrifugal force.
"By the Weave," Liara breathed, her arms tightening around him. "He's… he's not just using magic. He's ordering it."
<< Step Four: Evaporation. Apply focused heat. >>
The fine threads of fire returned, weaving a basket of heat under the pot. The water bubbled and steamed away. In minutes, two distinct substances remained.
On top: a small cake of luminous, healthy green moss, pulsing gently with a soft, pure light. It was smaller than the original clump, but its mana signature was clean, vibrant. Tier 1.5 Nutritive Plant Matter.
At the bottom: a teaspoon's worth of fine, metallic-red powder that seemed to drink the light around it. << Concentrated Ferroxic Mana Dust. Tier 2 Corrosive Agent/Weaponized Catalyst. >>
The fire died back to embers. The cerulean light in the pot faded.
Silence, thick and profound, blanketed the scullery.
Kaelan let out a shuddering breath, exhaustion crashing over him. The Chip flashed a caloric warning and suggested immediate sleep. But he forced his eyes to stay open, looking from his father's stunned face to his sister's.
Lyra moved first. With the tip of her dagger, she carefully poked the green moss. It was resilient, spongy. She lifted a tiny piece to her nose. "No blight scent. Pure luminescence." She then looked at the red powder, not touching it. "And this… this feels wrong. Hungry."
Arric reached out a calloused finger towards the green moss. A tear, sudden and unexpected, traced a clean path through the grime on his cheek. "You… you purified it. You cleansed the blight." He looked at Kaelan, his stormy eyes wide. "This moss… we could eat this. We could trade this. A bushel of this is worth ten times the blighted stuff."
<< Objective "Demonstrate Value": Success. Clan Resource Projection Updated. Survival probability increases by 8.3%. >>
"He didn't just purify it," Lyra said, her voice low with dawning realization. She looked from the moss to the red powder. "He separated it. He extracted the poison. And look at it." She met Kaelan's gaze, her earlier suspicion now transformed into intense, burning curiosity. "You knew you could do this. You planned for two products."
It was a statement, not a question. Kaelan gave the tiniest, most imperceptible nod he could manage.
"What do we do with the powder?" Arric asked, eyeing it warily.
Lyra smiled. It was a thin, sharp thing. "The Gloomwood Stalkers are coming for their 'tithe.' They demand our best, leaving us with scraps. Perhaps their… generosity… should be returned." She carefully scooped the purified moss into a clean linen cloth, then, using a scrap of parchment, collected every grain of the red powder into a tiny horn vial. "Father, prepare the three sky-rams. But only two. We keep the healthiest one. We offer this moss and the third ram. It is more than fair."
"And the powder?" Arric pressed.
"A… contingency," Lyra said, tucking the vial into her belt. "Little brother has given us our first true asset and our first real weapon." She leaned over the table, her face close to Kaelan's. Her voice dropped to a whisper only he could hear. "No more words in the ash. Not where others might see. A blink for yes. A stare for no. Do you understand?"
Kaelan blinked. Once. Slowly.
Lyra nodded, satisfaction in her eyes. "Good. Rest now. You've earned it." She turned to her parents. "We have work to do. And we must never speak of how this was made. He is spirit-touched, blessed by a curious ancestor. That is all."
As Liara carried him back towards the nursery, Kaelan's heavy-lidded eyes took in the manor corridors. He saw the cracks in the stone, the missing sconces, the air of desperate poverty. But now, he also saw variables. Resources. A foundation upon which to build.
`<< Project: Phoenix Protocol. Step One: Complete. >>
<
<
But as they passed a heavy, iron-bound door at the end of the hall, something else pinged against his senses. Not the ambient mana, but a deep, spatial tremor. A faint, almost imperceptible warping in the fabric of reality, humming from behind the door. It was cold, vast, and ancient. The Chip, for the first time, issued a query without prompt.
<< Anomaly Detected. Spatial/Temporal Distortion Detected within 20 meters. Scan? Y/N >>
Kaelan's exhausted mind filed it away. A priority, but not the immediate one. He selected N.
The vault, and the secret petrified egg within, could wait. For now, he had given his clan a flicker of hope. And he had taken the first, crucial step in solving the greatest equation of his new life: the Omega Synthesis.
Sleep took him, his dreams filled not with memories of a lost Earth, but with swirling data streams of mana particles, chemical bonds, and the infinite possibilities of a world waiting to be calculated.