The rain hadn't stopped since dawn. Thin strands of water traced down the cold stone arches of the Palace of Embers, dripping like liquid time. Kael Arkanos sat at the edge of a marble bench, small legs swinging above the ground, eyes tracing the spiral grooves etched into the floor like veins.
Today was the day of his Core Awakening.
And he couldn't stop shivering.
Not from fear. Not entirely. The air in this place felt wrong. Like something heavy was pressing down on his skin—not with weight, but with judgment.
Three weeks had passed since he woke in this child's body. Three weeks since Kael Shin, seventeen-year-old nobody, science club ghost, died in that collapsing school hallway. Three weeks of silence and stares. No friends. No warmth. Just servants that bowed too quickly, nobles who whispered too loudly, and the looming shadow of the Arkanian imperial court.
This wasn't Earth. This wasn't home. And yet, the laws of motion, the pull of gravity, the curvature of space—those remained constant.
Even here.
He held on to that.
A copper bell chimed in the courtyard. The double doors opened.
"Third Prince Kael Arkanos," a court herald announced. His voice was dry and automatic, as if Kael were another item to be inventoried. "Present yourself before the Flameborne Circle."
Kael stood. His borrowed ceremonial robe dragged slightly on the floor, too long for his five-year-old frame. He caught a flicker of his reflection in the polished stone—a boy with raven-dark hair, skin pale like paper, and eyes far too old for his face.
They led him through a corridor lined with statues—emperors, warriors, mages. Each bore a gemstone embedded in their chest, pulsing faintly in resonance. Fire red. Sky blue. Verdant green. Crystalline white. The Four Primary Forces of the Realm.
"Fire. Water. Wind. Earth," Kael murmured under his breath, recalling the hurried lessons drilled into him by the tutors. "Recognized forces. Core Pulse magic. Internal resonance with natural law…"
"Do not speak during procession," a knight snapped from behind.
Kael shut his mouth, but inside, he kept talking. Thinking.
Every citizen in the Arkanian Empire awakened their Core at the age of five. Some aligned with a primary force, others with secondaries—light, shadow, metal, lightning. Few awakened rarities like blood, mind, or time. The force you awakened with determined your life, your rank, your fate.
So what force did a dead science student from another world awaken?
He was about to find out.
They brought him to a circular chamber under a domed ceiling, open to the storming sky above. The rain didn't touch the floor. A shimmering barrier caught the drops and turned them into mist. Kael squinted up at it, tracking the ripples.
"Force field?" he whispered. "Localized kinetic dampener? Hydrophobic displacement?"
The court magister, a bald man in layered robes, approached the center of the ring. "The Circle stands ready. Begin the rite."
Kael was ushered forward. He stood in the center of a carved sigil—a spoked wheel with lines pointing to eight obelisks arranged in a circle around him.
"Place your hand on the seal, young prince," the magister intoned. "And let the Pulse answer."
Kael hesitated.
There was no turning back. No hiding now.
He laid his palm on the center of the sigil. The stone felt warm.
Then heat exploded through his chest.
It was like lightning, but inward—an electric pulse surging through his nerves, down his arms, into his spine, flooding his mind with—
Weight.
He gasped as the sensation crushed him. Not pain. Density. He could feel the curvature of space around him shifting, like the planet had leaned slightly closer just to whisper something terrifying and ancient into his bones.
The obelisks began to glow, one by one.
Red. Blue. Green. White.
Then they flickered. The lights dimmed.
The air grew… heavy.
A fifth obelisk lit.
Black.
The light wasn't just dark—it consumed all color. The flame at its tip didn't flicker, it collapsed. It bent the nearby light toward itself.
The magister frowned.
Kael's hand fell away. His breath came in ragged gasps. His heart raced, not with exertion—but excitement.
He understood what had happened.
Gravity.
Not just weight. Not just mass.
The force that governed all others.
"Affirmed," the magister said after a long silence. His voice didn't rise; it dropped. "Prince Kael Arkanos… affinity: gravity."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
A murmur rolled through the chamber like distant thunder.
"Gravity?"
"Is that… even recognized?"
"Void-touched. Cursed."
Kael blinked, the weight in his chest still humming, like a distant engine beginning to turn.
He opened his mouth. "Gravity isn't an element," he said, too quietly for most to hear. "It's a fundamental force. Binding mass. Curving space. Holding stars in orbit."
The magister didn't respond. He turned away.
The guards didn't cheer. They stepped back.
And the noble observers didn't bow.
They sneered.
One voice, a high noble from a side balcony, scoffed openly. "Another broken Core. The third cursed prince. Just like the last one."
Kael stood there, alone in the circle, rain mist settling into his robe.
No congratulations. No applause.
No one waited to escort him back.
He walked, alone, down the same corridor of statues—but now their faces seemed to turn away from him.
He didn't cry.
But he didn't smile, either.
That night, Kael sat in his assigned chambers, staring at the orb of polished metal he'd taken from the ruined tower—an old iron bearing from a shattered device, rusted and useless.
He placed it on the floor.
Stared at it.
Focused.
He remembered the sensation during the Core Awakening—the inward pull, the shifting pressure. The moment when the obelisks dimmed.
It wasn't just a Core. It was a singularity seed.
A gravitational well. A vector of compression.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's try."
He extended his hand toward the orb. Not with magic—but with math.
Force equals mass times acceleration.
He visualized a vector from his chest to the ball. A directed field. An increase in the attraction constant. Not movement—pressure.
The ball shivered. Just slightly.
Then it rolled.
Kael exhaled.
Not because the spell had worked.
Because it wasn't a spell.
It was gravity.
And now, he could feel it.
Outside, in the starless sky above the dome, something old and vast turned its attention toward the Empire of Arkanos.
It did not speak. It did not move.
But it remembered the last time a gravity-touched soul had awakened.
And it watched.
To be continued…