Chapter 2: The Crumbling House of Nobles
My world, at first, was narrow. A cradle. A faded chamber with high beams and the scent of dust that clung stubbornly to the air. Stone walls sweated in the night, seeping damp into the tapestries my mother had hung to chase it away. The air carried a cocktail of candle smoke, lavender sachets, and mildew. A nursery, yes, but one draped more in resignation than comfort.
My body remained a prison soft, unresponsive, bound to instincts I could neither master nor silence. But my mind had not dulled. Even in helplessness, it sought patterns, sketching equations out of fragments. The way light spilled through cracks in shutters, the rhythm of footsteps across floorboards, the creak of timber when the wind pushed at the manor's bones each was data, pieces of a puzzle that would one day form a whole.
And as the months dragged, I began to see the truth: House Alistair was not a bastion of nobility. It was a relic, polished just enough to fool the untrained eye, while rot gnawed from within.
A Noble House in Ruin
On the surface, the chamber of my birth had the trappings of lineage. High ceilings. A fireplace carved with a falcon in flight, wings outstretched as if forever suspended above prey. Wool tapestries lined the walls, thick enough to block drafts and woven with scenes of hunts, battles, and forgotten triumphs.
But look closer as I did, endlessly, with the scrutiny of a trapped mind and the façade fractured. The falcon's beak was chipped, a sliver of stone lost to careless years. The tapestries sagged, their colors faded by sun and patched clumsily with mismatched thread. The fireplace's gilt trim was worn to dull bronze, rough beneath a hand that had once polished gold. The falcon's eyes, meant to gleam with pride, now stared blankly into the hearth like a memory too long forgotten.
Decay, dressed in nobleman's clothes.
The very air smelled of defeat: lavender sachets straining against the stench of mildew, the faint acrid tang of wax burned to its last stub, dust motes lingering like ghosts. I had lived in laboratories of clean steel, where perfection was demanded. Now I lived in a mausoleum pretending to be a manor, and the contrast gnawed at me.
The Retainers
Every noble house, no matter how diminished, is defined by its people. I studied them as one studies moving parts of a machine each role a variable, each habit a pattern.
There was Sir Cedric, the house's knight. Tall, but stooped with age, his hair more silver than iron. His left leg dragged faintly with every step, armor clinking out of rhythm when he bothered to wear it. He still trained in the yard, his gravel-voiced commands echoing as he corrected my brother's sloppy swings with a wooden sword. His armor gleamed when polished, but the dents were old, unaddressed. He was no longer the sword of the house he was its memory.
There was Marta, the steward. A woman of sharp cheekbones and sharper words, always muttering about accounts and shortages. "Three barrels short again," I heard once, her voice acidic as she scolded servants. "The Marquis's tithe won't wait. And gods help us if the Duke's collector comes this season." She smelled of ink, cold iron keys, and the metallic tang of worry. Yet when her eyes flicked to me, her tone softened against her will, as if even bitterness yielded to the helplessness of an infant.
And Tomas—a boy of fourteen who ran errands with the scowl of one who thought himself above labor. He swept with resentment, hauled buckets with curses, and spat when Marta's back was turned. But he gossiped freely, never noticing my ears were sharper than his judgment. From his careless tongue I pieced together truths of taxes, quarrels, and the names of neighbors.
These were the gears of House Alistair rusted, grinding, but still moving.
Mother and Father
My mother, Elara, was warmth against the cold stone. Her touch was gentle, her voice patient, though shadows lingered under her eyes. She tried to shield me from the household's decay, humming lullabies, hanging lavender, smiling even when her tone carried the edge of worry. She was the heart of this crumbling machine, steady even as the walls sighed with wear.
My father, Julian, was a scholar masquerading as a lord. Ink stained his fingers, maps and scrolls crowded his desk. I glimpsed his library once when a door cracked open candles burning low, charts pinned with strings, ledgers stacked like ramparts. He wrestled with parchment as others wrestled with steel. To the servants, he was too soft, too kind, too hesitant. Their whispers named him weak, and I could not disagree.
My Brother, the Heir
Julien, my brother, was six years older and every inch the boyish heir. He laughed in the yard, swinging wooden blades under Sir Cedric's watchful eye. His stance was unsteady, his grip wrong, his footwork sloppy but he swung freely.
And I? I lay silent in my crib, fists clenched in frustration. Knowledge burned in me. I could correct him in a heartbeat adjust his weight, fix his stance, guide his blade. But no words would leave my lips, only pitiful cries. My mind, sharp as ever, was bottled inside a body that refused to obey.
I envied him. Not his skill he had none but his freedom. He could stumble and try again. I could only watch, helpless, while my fury simmered like acid in my chest.
Gossip in the Shadows
The servants' whispers were my first education. Words half-hidden in kitchens, muttered in corridors, told more truth than books.
"The Duke's tithe will bleed us dry this winter."
"Lord Julian ,kind, yes, but kindness won't fill the granaries."
"House Alistair, once proud falcons, reduced to carrion scavengers. All because of the old betrayal."
Each whisper was a thread. Slowly, the tapestry of feudal hierarchy took shape in my mind: barons beneath marquises, marquises beneath dukes, dukes beneath the Empire itself. A rigid ladder of power, each rung pressing on the one below.
And at the lowest rung of nobility clung us: House Alistair.
The Word That Chilled
But one whisper cut deeper than all the rest.
"The boy might be unblessed."
Marta's voice, low, edged with pity and scorn, yet close enough to my cradle that the syllables burned into me.
Unblessed.
The word carried weight far heavier than taxes or tithes. I did not yet know its full meaning, but the tone was enough. Pity. Fear. Dismissal. In this world, to be unblessed was to be lesser. To lack something unseen, something vital.
My old life had dealt in certainties numbers, formulas, laws of physics. Here, a single word suggested a hidden variable, a force beyond reason. Blessings. Magic. Fate.
And what if I lacked it? What if the world had already written me off as worthless?
Panic surged. My heart hammered, small and fragile. Each breath came shallow, each exhale a drum of dread.
Night Thoughts
Nights were worst of all.
The manor sank into silence, broken only by the drip of water in distant stone or the moan of wind through cracked shutters. From my crib, I stared at the beams above, silvered by moonlight. Cold seeped into my tiny bones, and the helplessness of my state pressed heavier than the blankets.
I thought of containment fields, of equations once bent to my will. I thought of strategies played on glowing screens. I had been Dr. Kaito Ren, master of logic, slayer of problems.
Now I could not even roll onto my side without effort.
And yet when my mother came to check on me, when her hand lingered on mine, when her warmth pressed against my panic—the terror dulled. Not vanished, but dulled. Shame burned at my dependence, but I clung anyway.
The unseen fief revealed itself to me in fragments: a knight's limp, a steward's muttering, a servant boy's curses, a father's exhaustion, a mother's sigh. House Alistair was an equation with too many unknowns, too many broken variables.
And the word "unblessed" hung over it all like a storm.
Cliff
One night, a servant whispered outside my door, not knowing I listened.
"They say the Duke's son was born with fire in his veins. Flames danced in his crib before he could walk."
The other hushed her quickly, but the words echoed in me.
Blessed. Flames. Power from birth.
And I? I could barely raise my hand.
For the first time since my death, fear was joined by something else , something sharp, raw, and dangerous.
Not resignation.
Not despair.
But defiance.
If blessings ruled this world, then I would find its rules. And I would break them.
End of Chapter 2