Chapter 3: The Unseen Current
The Skeleton Warrior stood in the Potter's Field, a monument to my new reality. I named him Arran, after the silent, steadfast squire from my second life who had died holding a bridge so I could retreat. The irony was not lost on me. Now, I raised the dead to serve, while the memory of the living served to guide me.
Arran was a drain, a constant, gentle pull on the cold well of power within me. I learned that maintaining him was less taxing than the initial summoning, but it was a perpetual reminder of my limits. I could not yet raise a legion. I was a king with a single, silent guardsman.
I dismissed him before dawn, the skeleton dissolving back into motes of shadow that flowed into me, returning a fraction of the spent energy. The process was instinctive—reabsorption. I returned to the orphanage as the sky lightened, the cold earth of the field clinging to my knees, a secret weight in my soul.
Life in the dormitory continued its dreary cycle. But I was no longer just Kaelan, the dreamer. I was an archivist studying a living text of misery, and the text was boring. The petty cruelties, the bland food, the endless chores—they were beneath the scale of my new purpose. The hunger within yawned, unsatisfied by the emotional scraps of the orphanage. It needed substance.
A week after my visit to the field, an unexpected disruption came. Sister Margot announced a "day of edification." The local chapter of the Arcane Atheneum, a guild for minor mages and scholars, was allowing a public viewing of their lesser halls. It was a charity gesture for the "unfortunate youth," which meant us.
A trip into the city proper. To a place of magic.
A flicker of something akin to nostalgia, sharp and bitter, touched me. In my second life, magic—mana manipulation—had been a part of my knightly training. It was hard. A grueling process of sensing an external energy, wrestling it into your core, and shaping it with will and complex formulae. It required affinity, discipline, and often left the novice exhausted after producing a mere spark. I had possessed a modest talent for light-affinity mana, useful for hardening my blade and armor. It had felt like trying to breathe underwater.
The orphanage wagon rattled through the streets of Valen, past markets and smithies, toward the more respectable district where the Atheneum stood. It was a modest stone building with a brass-bound door and a stylized eye etched above the lintel. The air here tingled. Even the other orphans felt it, their chatter dying down to hushed whispers.
Inside, it was all polished wood and the smell of ozone and old parchment. A junior mage, a young man with a perpetually tired expression, guided our grubby group. He showed us a "thermokinesis chamber" (a room where you could make it snow flurries), a gallery of "resonant crystals" that hummed when you passed, and finally, the "Fundamentals Hall."
This was a simple, circular room with a single, polished lodestone pillar in the center. Around the walls were elemental basins: a brazier of ever-burning low flame, a basin of swirling water, a dish of perpetually shifting sand, and a floating, contained wisp of cloud.
"Here," the mage droned, "neophytes learn to sense and interact with primal elemental mana. It is the first, and for many, the most difficult step. It requires innate affinity, intense focus, and mental fortitude."
He gestured to the basins. "Each represents a core affinity. Most people have a trace of one, if any. True mages are born, not made."
He looked at our awed, dirty faces and sighed. "As a demonstration, you may approach. Place your hand near the element that calls to you. Do not touch. Simply… feel. Do not be disappointed if you feel nothing. It is the norm."
The orphans shuffled forward, a mix of excitement and trepidation. One boy, Elian, a dreamer like Kaelan had been, went to the water basin. He closed his eyes, face scrunched in effort. After a long moment, the water's gentle swirl stuttered, then smoothed out. Nothing else. The mage gave a curt, approving nod. "A faint hydro-affinity. Not enough for casting, but notable."
Others tried. Garret swaggered up to the fire, glaring at it as if to intimidate it into obeying. The flames didn't flicker. He stomped away, red-faced. Most felt nothing but a slight temperature change.
Then it was my turn. The mage watched with disinterest. I walked slowly around the circle. The fire's heat, the water's coolness, the earth's solidity, the air's lightness—they were sensations. But they were… distant. Like hearing a conversation through a thick wall. My core, the well of shadow, remained placid, unmoved by these external elements.
The mage saw my lack of reaction and was about to wave me on when I stopped before the lodestone pillar. It wasn't an element. It was a focus for force mana, for telekinesis. I remembered the strain of trying to manipulate such forces in my past life, the headache that followed a failed attempt to lift a pebble.
Almost idly, driven by a curiosity that was colder than scholarly, I extended a hand, not toward the pillar, but toward my own shadow, cast on the floor by the magelights.
I didn't try to pull on external mana. I simply tapped the smallest fraction of my inner reservoir—the Shadow Monarch's power—and willed it to act like force mana. To exert pressure.
A tendril of darkness, invisible to all, lashed out from my floor-shadow and pushed against the side of the lodestone pillar.
The heavy, polished stone column shuddered. Not much. Just a quarter-inch shift on its base. A low, grinding scrape echoed in the silent room.
The tired mage jolted upright, his eyes wide. The orphans gasped. Garret stared, his mouth hanging open.
I pulled the shadow back, letting my face assume an expression of bewildered surprise, mirroring the others.
"You… you have an affinity for force!" the mage stammered, rushing forward. "A strong one! To affect the primary lodestone without direct contact or training… that's unheard of in a first touch!" He looked at me with entirely new eyes. "What is your name, boy?"
"Kaelan," I said softly, injecting a tremor into my voice.
"Kaelan… This is remarkable. The strain… you don't seem fatigued? No headache?"
I shook my head, feigning confusion. "I just… wanted it to move."
The mage was ecstatic. "A natural! A true natural! The mental fortitude to channel such force without backlash!" He began talking about potential, about tests, about speaking to the Atheneum's master.
As he buzzed around me, I felt nothing but a cold, clinical understanding. I had used no force mana. I had used shadow, commanded it to mimic a physical effect. There had been no strain because I wasn't wrestling with a foreign energy. I was directing a part of myself. The well within me had barely rippled at the expenditure.
The trip back to the orphanage was a whirlwind. Sister Margot looked at me with a strange, calculating expression—no longer just a burden, but a potential asset. The other orphans were a mix of jealousy and awe. Garret's glare was now tinged with something like fear.
That night, in the darkness of the dormitory, I contemplated the revelation. The magic of this world—the elemental mana, the external forces—was like trying to command a wild river from the bank. My power, the Shadow Monarch's inheritance, was the ocean itself, contained within me. I could dip a bucket into my ocean and throw water that looked like a river's flow, but its source was infinitely deeper, colder, and entirely under my command.
The Atheneum saw a prodigy of force magic. They saw a diamond in the rough to be polished.
They were wrong.
They were looking at the ripple, and had no conception of the abyss from which it came. My path was not to learn their magic. It was to learn how to make my shadow mimic all of it. To make the unseen current move the visible world.
And as I lay there, a plan began to form. The Atheneum's interest was a tool. A way out of the orphanage. A place of knowledge, where deaths, though likely quieter than battlefields, still occurred. A new, more refined hunting ground.
A slow, silent smile touched my lips in the dark. Let them think they had found a rare talent. It would make the truth, when it finally emerged from the shadows, all the more devastating.