The world did not change all at once.
It happened slowly, in ways that were almost easy to miss if you weren't paying attention — and unfortunately for everyone involved, I had nothing but time to pay attention.
Somewhere between my second birthday and whatever age I was currently pretending to be, the manor had settled into a new rhythm. The halls felt larger now, less like a prison designed specifically for me and more like an obstacle course I had learned to navigate without face-planting every three steps.
Walking was no longer a theoretical concept.
Running… was still under review.
I rounded a corner, nearly collided with a chair that absolutely had not been there yesterday, and caught myself on the wall with all the grace of a damp rag thrown at a problem.
Progress.
From the kitchen came the unmistakable sound of something metallic hitting the floor, followed by a familiar voice.
"…I meant to do that."
Elias.
Alive.
Functional.
And, against all odds, holding a conversation with an inanimate pan as though it had personally betrayed him.
I paused at the doorway.
He looked up, saw me standing there, and grinned — not forced, not careful, just… normal enough that it almost felt unreal.
"Well look who's mobile," he said, crouching slightly as if expecting me to sprint into his arms.
I did not.
History had proven that to be a terrible choice.
Instead I walked in, slow, deliberate steps, watching him the way a soldier watches a battlefield after the dust settles — searching for what had changed, what had been lost, what had quietly survived.
He ruffled my hair anyway.
"Morning, menace."
…Alright.
Seventy percent normal.
Thirty percent something else.
He moved around the kitchen with the same clumsy energy as before, but there was a pause to him now, a slight hesitation before every joke, like he was checking whether he was still allowed to make them.
I noticed.
I didn't comment.
For now, this was enough.
I was happy, he was... probably happy? And questionably safe at best.
But alive.
The kitchen door slowly creaked back to where it had been before I walked in.
Instead of the click of the door's mechanisms locking up, the sound of collision played into our ears instead.
Then the wafting of paper.
The door swung back open, blurring from how quickly it swung open.
Elena barged through the door, her face slightly red from her collision with the door.
"Elias." Elena muttered, barely above a whisper.
"Was. That. You?" She continued, her voice at a threatening low.
She had made no attempt to pick up the paper she had dropped, regardless of its importance.
A clear sign that she was no longer just angry. She was livid.
"It was him! I swear!" Elias pointed at me, frantically waving his hands about.
Really dude?
Instead of taking the blame you pin it on the four-year-old?
What a dad.
Elena turned towards me, having already accepted that Elias wouldn't lie with such ferocity, and that it was more than likely me.
"You have three seconds."
I intended to use those three seconds to the max.
I didn't hesitate, funnelling mana into my legs, my control of it had grown significantly over the last few years.
I wasn't going to risk using Mana Core or anything outlandish of that calibre.
But I could still put up a decent fight.
I pushed into the ground. Hard.
The technique for sprinting had been something I had personally developed, simply because Kaelis, the creator of the Mana Core technique, had already been too physically superior to need anything like that.
And I was going to use it.
I tilted my body, trying my best to recall the angle I preferred to keep my torso at.
The house was already starting to blur around me.
Streaks of light flew by my face, every object looked as if it was replicating infinitely.
BOOM!
The ground beneath me cracked as I pulsed each step stronger than the last.
Wow. This was gonna be hell once she caught me.
Good thing she isn't going to.
At some point I had developed the ability to pulse mana into almost all of my muscles almost instantaneously without the usage of a mana core.
At some point while running, rounding corners I didn't know existed, I felt my feet start to leave the floor.
I glanced down, not spending too much time facing away from what lay ahead to not risk crashing into something and turning myself to red mist, and noticed that the bottoms of my feet were starting to glow.
Every moment the glow they emitted intensified.
Options blurred through my mind.
A new aura colour? Maybe, but not likely.
The glow flared.
The rest of my legs started to glow, pulsing from the bottoms of my feet upward, creating a high-pitched whir.
I tried to ignore it and increase my speed further.
The next step didn't land.
It detonated.
I flew across the room, my footfall just inches above the ground.
I was... flying?
No, couldn't call it that.
I was running on air instead of the ground, albeit barely.
Air Step?
I hadn't tried to use it though?
I felt the energy start draining out of my body, far faster than I could hope to replenish it.
That was the reason I hadn't tried that in this small body yet.
The mana costs were absurd, and the increase in speed it offered wasn't worth it for the short amounts of time I was able to use it.
I tried to recirculate the mana in my body, moving it out of my feet in an attempt to forcefully end the ability.
It failed.
It was as if the mana was locked in my legs.
Well, if I couldn't stop it, I might as well embrace it.
I tilted my body slightly, just as far as I thought I could in this situation, and started moving off of the ground in earnest.
"What?" I could hear Elena screech to a halt behind me.
"Oh really now?" Her voice dripped disbelief. And, weirdly enough, delight.
And then it came to me all at once.
She's a mage.
I'm in the air.
I'm not a mage.
I turned around to see a bright light approaching at impossible speeds.
I'm done for.
***
A few days after that fiasco, the household had cooled back down.
I still flinched every time I saw Elena.
Me. A hero of the past. The final frontier. The strongest human (don't fact check that).
Flinching before what?
Your average mage? A wet behind the eyes sorceress?
Is this what I've come to?
I decided in my head that I would rebel.
I would not tolerate this treatment.
Elena cocked her head nearly 180 degrees to face me, apparently having read my mind.
Her eyes conveyed one single word.
"Don't."
Maybe I wasn't going to rebel.
I was so benevolent as to not rebel and take over the house, thank me for my eternal wisdom and forgiveness.
She turned back around and I let out the breath that had been trapped in my throat.
Why can she do that?
I swore I saw a grin on her face as she turned around, but for the safety of my mental health, I was going to pretend I didn't, because a grin would've been scarier than her shouting. And by a lot.
"Bye." I said, solely for the purpose of aggravating her slightly more.
I was four. What could she possibly have been planning to do to me?
Where'd she go?
Just as the words leave my mouth, she vanishes from in front of me.
The next thing I felt was a hand on my shoulder, and a shadow looming over me.
Fuck.
"What. Was. That. Buddy?" Her voice struck a single chord in my heart. Fear. A kind of fear no four-year-old should have to experience.
I tried desperately to say something. To defend myself. To argue that I meant something else, but I was so paralysed by fear that I couldn't get my vocal cords to do anything.
"Guh." I had been returned my previous state of infancy by force.
God.
"Let's have a talk." She stared into my soul, trying to break my spirit with sight alone.
And worse? It was working.
***
Time passed, as it always does, ignoring the wills of people (namely, me) in its unwavering strides
By the time I turned eight, I had mostly stopped tripping over invisible furniture, running through walls, or accidentally demolishing parts of the manor. Elena still kept a sharp eye on me, but her scoldings had become… predictable enough that I could navigate them without permanent damage. Mostly.
The manor had quieted down to something approaching normal, though I remained hyper-aware of every flicker of shadow, every creak of the floorboards. Old instincts die hard. Every corner might hide something—or someone.
I had no issues. Except from overwhelming boredom. This wouldn't have bothered me in my previous life. A boring day was a good day. But not here. There was no threat looming down my spine, forcing me to exist for a sole purpose.
And so, one afternoon, curiosity finally got the better of me. The manor gates, normally forbidden, were open just enough that I could glimpse beyond them. A small crowd had gathered outside: older children, but not much bigger than me, laughing and shouting in a language of magic I didn't fully understand. I grasped a word every now and then, but the times were just too different. Their uniforms bore the sigils of the academy Elias and Elena were always whispering about.
I crouched behind the single low wall and watched silently. I didn't know any of their names. I didn't know what I would say if they noticed me hiding back there. I only knew that I had never seen this kind of energy outside the manor's walls—and it made my chest thrum with something dangerously like envy.
A boy caught my eye. Slightly younger than the others, smaller, quieter. Even in his smaller frame, he moved like he owned the space, I assumed he was the instigator of their rowdy chatter, a shining beacon of nonsense and childish joy. But behind that, he was watching them with sharp eyes, never relenting in his determination. I didn't know him. I didn't know his name. But there was something about him—strong, confident, untouchable in a way I recognized, that I had encountered more than once in the past.
People like him died first in every battle I'd ever seen, rushing into battle, ignoring commands, forfeiting their lives. But something about him, something I couldn't put my finger on, made me think that he was unique. That he could survive.
In the midst of my thoughts, a high-pitched voice called out.
"Hey you. Yes you behind that wall. Get up." The small voice had called out to me.
How had he seen me?
Had he sensed me?
That was well past the realm of basic sensitivity.
No shot. He couldn't have been more than eight.
Maybe even seven.
"I don't care if you don't understand how I sensed you, get out here."
Could he read minds?
I had never encountered anybody who could, but I had heard tales in my previous life, brief anecdotes that came up in passing, speaking about mystical sorcerers who could read minds.
"No, I can't read your damn mind. Get out here before I drag you out myself."
Yeah… something like that?
I decided I wasn't going to get attacked by what looked like a dozen people.
I slowly rose out from behind the wall, my hands above my head in resignation.
"You look strong. Fight me." The boy declared, pointing his wooden sword at me.
What?
What? Dude, you're like five—what are you on about?
"Why?" I responded, trying to get some vague idea of what he was talking about.
"I need to prove to these guys that I'm in charge around here."
Oh. One of those then.
"Alright then. Do you have any other swords or do I need to fight you barehanded?" It didn't really matter which, I was confident in my strength.
"Boys, throw him a weapon." He declared, probably expecting one of them too.
...
After about 20 seconds of them just staring at him and me trying to stifle a laugh, he eventually got up, picked up one of the swords lying beside his feet, walked over to me in disappointment, and handed me a weapon, not forgetting to grumble all the way.
The scowl on his face made it very clear that he truly believed they would've just agreed.
Before he returned to where he was, he looked back at me, apparently having remembered something important.
"What's your name?"
"Aren." I responded nonchalantly.
"Like the great hero?" His eyes lit up.
"Yes, like the great hero." I responded, exasperated.
I reached my pinky finger into my ear, pulled a small amount of ear wax, and blew it off.
He has to get the memo that I don't care, right? He has to be less oblivious than that, right?
"Oh my god Aren is so amazing!"
Nope.
"He's my favourite hero he's always shown as super cool."
Dude shut up.
"I think Aren was the strongest hero, even though everyone else disagrees-"
"What's your name?" I cut him off.
"Lonan," he said, eyes still shining. "Lonan Arvane." He hoisted his sword onto his shoulder as he said this.
"The man who'll be number one—mark my words." His confidence snapped back, just as before. Raising his off-hand to the sky, he seemed to stake his claim among the stars.
Motivated? I like to see it.
Let's do this.
They had a large circle marked out, maybe 90 meters in diameter.
This wouldn't take long.
One of the older kids, the largest there, walked into the middle with us, putting his hand down.
"Three." The kid declared.
"Two."
"One."
"Fight!" His hands flew up like a blur, and he immediately backed up (ran) out of the circle.
"You get three hits." I stated, crossing my arms over.
This would be easy.
"Got it! Don't regret it," Lonan said, practically bouncing with excitement.
What's the worst that could happen. Right?