The carriage finally rolled to a heavy stop inside the enormous inner courtyard of the Duke's residence.
As the door opened and a liveried servant lowered the folding step, Gill felt a rush of cool, mountain air. The courtyard alone was staggering—a vast plaza of charcoal-grey stone that could have comfortably housed the entirety of the Valencrest manor and still had room for a parade. Rows of armored soldiers stood like iron statues along the edges, their breastplates polished to such a high sheen they looked like mirrors reflecting the afternoon sun.
High above, the blue and silver banners of the Aurelion house snapped in the wind, the sound like distant whip-cracks against the stone walls.
At the center of the courtyard, a small welcoming party waited.
Gill stepped down beside his mother, his boots clicking on the stone. He looked up, and for the first time in his life, he felt truly small. A man stood at the head of the group, his presence so commanding it seemed to pull the light toward him. He wore a deep blue cloak embroidered with silver thread that shimmered with a faint, iridescent light. His hair was dark, salted with strands of gray at the temples, and his eyes held the weight of a man who ruled by both law and sword.
This was Duke Aurelion.
Art Valencrest stepped forward, his own formidable presence bowing in respect. "Your Grace."
The Duke returned the gesture with a shallow, practiced nod. "Lord Valencrest. It has been some time. I trust the trade winds have been kind to your fleet?"
As the adults began the intricate dance of noble pleasantries—discussing tax yields, harbor expansions, and the shifting politics of the capital—Gill's attention drifted. He wasn't interested in the price of spice. He was looking at the girl standing slightly behind the Duke.
She looked to be exactly his age, with long, pale-blonde hair tied back in a practical, neat tail. Her green eyes weren't passive or shy; they were sharp, darting between Gill and his parents with an intensity that matched his own. She wore a dress of fine silk, but it was cut short enough at the hem to allow for running—a detail Gill immediately respected.
She was studying him with the same clinical curiosity he felt.
The Duke noticed the silent stare-down and let out a short, warm laugh. "Ah, and this must be the young hawk I've heard so much about. Gill Valencrest."
Gill offered a polite bow, though his eyes never left the girl's.
"And this," the Duke continued, placing a steady hand on the girl's shoulder, "is my daughter, Lilly von Aurelion."
Lilly tilted her head, her gaze lingering on Gill's messy hair and the ink stain on his sleeve from his morning "research." A small, mischievous smile tugged at her lips. "Do you want to see the castle? Or are you going to stand there and count the stones in the floor all day?"
Gill's eyes lit up. "The castle," he said instantly.
Duke Aurelion chuckled, waving a hand in dismissal. "Go on, then. But stay within the palace grounds. If you fall off a battlement, Art will never let me hear the end of it."
Without waiting for a second command, the two children turned and vanished into the shadows of the grand portico, leaving the adults to their talk of gold and grain.
The interior of the castle was a masterclass in ancient power. High vaulted ceilings stretched into darkness, supported by pillars carved to look like intertwining dragons. Enormous stained-glass windows, some thirty feet tall, transformed the sunlight into a kaleidoscopic mosaic of ruby reds and sapphire blues that danced across the floor.
"This place is huge," Gill whispered, his voice echoing. He was trying to calculate the weight of the stones in the ceiling, but the numbers were getting away from him.
Lilly nodded, her steps light and confident. "My father says it's the strongest castle in the province. The walls are infused with ground-up mana crystals. Even a siege engine couldn't crack them."
She led him through a series of winding corridors until they reached a heavy set of iron-reinforced doors. With a grunt of effort, she pushed one open, revealing a second, hidden courtyard.
This one was not for ceremonies. It was for war.
The training yard was a sprawling expanse of packed dirt and sawdust. On one side, knights in heavy gambesons practiced with blunted steel, the clack-clash of their blades ringing out in a steady rhythm. But Gill's feet stopped moving before he reached the swordsmen.
At the far edge of the yard, near a row of scorched wooden targets, stood three figures in slate-grey robes. They carried no shields, no armor, and no steel.
They carried staffs.
One of the robed figures, a man with a thin beard and a focused expression, stepped forward. He didn't adopt a fighter's stance. He simply stood, his staff held loosely in his right hand.
For a heartbeat, the air in the yard felt like it was being sucked into a vacuum. Gill felt a familiar prickle on his skin—the "ripple."
The man raised his staff. He didn't swing it; he pointed it like a finger of accusation at a wooden dummy thirty yards away. The air around the staff's tip began to shimmer, like heat rising off a summer road.
BOOM.
A sphere of orange-white fire, the size of a human head, erupted from the air in front of the staff. It screamed across the yard in a blur of motion and slammed into the target. The explosion was instantaneous. Pieces of burning wood rained down on the dirt, and the smell of ozone and charred pine filled Gill's nose.
Gill didn't move. He didn't even breathe.
In his old world, fire required fuel, heat, and oxygen. It required a spark and time to grow. Here, a man had simply... commanded it to exist.
Another practitioner, a woman with her hair cropped short, stepped forward. She didn't use a fireball. She swept her staff in a wide arc. The dirt at her feet swirled, and then a violent, focused gust of wind slammed into the remaining targets, snapping the heavy wooden posts as if they were dry twigs.
The soldiers nearby didn't even look up from their sparring. To them, this was just the Tuesday afternoon drill.
But to Gill, it was a total breakdown of reality.
Mana, his mind whispered.
He watched the mages carefully. He noticed that they weren't just waving the sticks. Their eyes were locked on the targets. There was a moment of tension in their bodies right before the magic happened—a "pulling" sensation that Gill could almost feel in his own chest.
"They practice magic here every day," Lilly said, leaning against the stone railing and watching the fire-mage prepare another strike. "The Court Mages. My father says they're the reason our walls stay standing."
Gill barely heard her. He was staring at the air where the fireball had appeared. He wasn't seeing the fire; he was trying to see the mechanism. How did the mana become heat? How did the staff focus the "spill" his father had mentioned?
The analytical part of his brain—the part that loved the patterns on the ceiling and the maps in the study—was on fire. If mana was an energy that existed everywhere, and if some people could pull it in and shape it...
Then it wasn't a miracle. It was a science.
Gill looked down at his own small, pink hands. He didn't have a staff. He didn't have a robe. But as he watched the mages, he felt that same shiver he had felt as an infant. The "invisible currents" his father had described weren't just outside of him. They were around him.
For the first time since his rebirth, Gill Valencrest didn't feel like an adult trapped in a child's body.
He felt like a student standing at the edge of the greatest library ever built. And he was going to learn how to read every single book.