A month passed.
To the outside world, it was a period of recovery—a noble boy mending from grievous injuries, watched carefully by servants and healers alike. To House Ainsworth, it was an uncomfortable delay before an inconvenient problem could be removed cleanly and without scandal.
To Cassian Ainsworth, it was a month of preparation.
Every day followed a rigid structure, one he maintained with obsessive discipline. He rose early, rested when expected, spoke little, and displayed none of the emotional volatility one might expect from a fourteen-year-old who had leapt from a castle wall and returned from death itself.
This was deliberate.
Any sudden shift in temperament, any spark of ambition or intelligence too sharp for a neglected fourth son, would invite scrutiny. And scrutiny, Cassian understood, was the enemy of long-term plans.
So he wore the mask of quiet obedience.
And worked in secret.
His experiments began small.
Mice caught in the castle cellars. Injured birds brought discreetly to his chambers under the pretense of mercy. Rabbits purchased from servants who never asked questions of nobles.
Cassian documented everything in his mind.
Healing magic, he discovered, was not a singular function. It was a process, governed by rules as rigid as physics—rules no one bothered to study because healers were never expected to innovate.
The first rule was simple:
As long as there was a pulse, healing was possible.
It did not matter how extensive the injury was. Broken spines, crushed organs, severed limbs—if the heart still beat, mana could compel the body to remember what it once was.
Death, however, was final.
Once the pulse stopped, healing failed completely.
This alone separated healers from gods.
The second rule involved poison.
Healing did not negate foreign substances. Venoms and toxins had to be physically removed or neutralized before regeneration could occur. Otherwise, the body would simply repair itself while continuing to be poisoned—an endless loop that resulted in eventual failure.
"Good," Cassian thought. "That means healing follows causality."
The third discovery unsettled him.
Healing did not discriminate between correct and incorrect states—only between damaged and intended.
And intended could be… influenced.
He tested it carefully.
A joint dislocated on purpose.
Healed incorrectly.
The joint fused.
Permanent.
Mobility lost.
A cut healed too aggressively.
Scar tissue grew unchecked.
A living mass.
Tumor.
Cancer.
He tried cartilage next.
With precision, he forced mana to interpret cartilage as incomplete bone.
It ossified.
Turned rigid.
Useless.
Cassian sat back afterward, hands trembling—not from fear, but from understanding.
Healing was not benevolent.
It was absolute authority over biological processes.
"Healers don't lack combat power," he concluded coldly. "They lack imagination."
Physical conditioning came next.
His body was young, malnourished by neglect rather than hunger, and weakened by inactivity. Magic enhanced baseline strength in mages—three to five times that of normal humans—but Cassian refused to rely on magic alone.
Strength that could be taken away was not real strength.
He exercised in secret.
Push-ups.
Sit-ups.
Squats.
Pull-ups using reinforced beams in unused storage rooms.
He pushed his muscles to failure, then healed the micro-tears deliberately, accelerating adaptation beyond what natural growth would allow.
He never overdid it.
No sudden changes.
No visible transformation.
Incremental gains only.
An engineer optimized systems.
Cassian optimized himself.
He also studied.
Maps. Shipping records. Census fragments. Merchant ledgers quietly acquired with noble authority no one questioned.
Kirkwall.
The largest settlement in the Orkney Islands.
Roughly four square miles.
Population: approximately ten thousand, fluctuating heavily with the seasons.
Primary industry: fishing.
Secondary trade: salted fish, whale oil, minor ship repairs.
Winter was its greatest enemy.
Storms cut off supply routes. Fishing fleets sank. Stores ran dry. Each year, starvation thinned the population, driving migration south or into the ground.
A weak system.
But a system nonetheless.
Cassian saw it clearly.
"Food scarcity is not a law of nature," he thought. "It's a logistical failure."
Kirkwall was not poor.
It was mismanaged.
With enough grain storage, preservation methods, controlled fishing quotas, and basic infrastructure—
The Orkney Islands could thrive.
And whoever controlled survival—
Controlled loyalty.
Cassian closed the map.
"But not yet."
Ambition, he understood, was a flame.
Exposed too early, it attracted predators.
So he buried it.
The resources allocated to his exile were… excessive.
One hundred elite knights accompanied him.
Officially, they were his protection.
In reality, they were a convenient dumping ground.
Early recruits who had failed to meet expectations.
Knights who had committed offenses not severe enough to warrant execution, but serious enough to make them liabilities.
Men who owed their lives to House Ainsworth.
Men who would obey orders without question.
Servants accompanied them, along with horses, provisions, and a treasury worth two hundred thousand shillings—gold, silver, and bronze coins packed in reinforced chests.
Cassian understood the implication immediately.
A town like Kirkwall operated on a tax base of five thousand shillings annually.
This sum could reshape the entire island economy.
Either his father was careless—
Or he truly never intended Cassian to return.
Cassian suspected the latter.
"Fine," he thought. "I'll build something that never needs to."
On a cold Tuesday morning, Cassian departed.
There was no ceremony.
No farewell banquet.
No blessings.
He boarded a ship at the port of Edinburgh, its hull bearing the Ainsworth crest. The vessel was technically his property—one of many assets assigned to him as a noble, though he had never set foot on it before.
The sea was gray.
The sky overcast.
Perfect.
As the ship pulled away from the harbor, Cassian stood at the railing, his cloak fluttering in the wind.
Behind him lay Scotland.
His family.
His rejection.
Ahead lay isolation.
Uncertainty.
Opportunity.
The journey would take three to five days, depending on weather.
Cassian turned inward, closing his eyes.
"Rest," he told himself. "Observe. Learn."
Ambition could wait.
For now—
He would bide his time.
Because when he finally acted—
The world would heal itself into something unrecognizable.
And it would thank him for it.