Lucien stood frozen by the window, the weight of two lifetimes pressing down on the small frame of a child. His heart pounded too fast, too loud as if his body couldn't contain the storm he carried. The scent of earth and fresh bread filtered through the breeze, grounding him in a reality that felt like a dream. He turned from the window, footsteps light on wooden floors that once burned in his memories. The cottage was exactly as he remembered rough-hewn walls, a low hearth, sun-faded curtains gently swaying. Time hadn't touched this place yet. Not the fire. Not the blades. Not the blood.
"Lucien?"
The door creaked open, and she stepped in. His mother.
She looked younger than he remembered, her hair tied back in a loose braid, flour dusting her apron. Her eyes, so warm and alive, widened with concern. "You're up early. Did you have another nightmare? "Lucien couldn't speak. His throat closed around the words. He hadn't cried in years not since her death but the tears welled up anyway, hot and silent.
She moved quickly, kneeling beside him. "Sweetheart, it's alright. You're safe." The word hit harder than it should. He had forgotten what that even felt like. He threw his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder. She smelled like wildflowers and dough exactly like before. "I missed you," he whispered.
She laughed gently, brushing his hair back. "I'm right here, silly. I'm not going anywhere." But she would. In one year, they'd come. The Duke's men. The soldiers. The flames. He'd watched her die, and now she held him like nothing had ever happened.
He had one year. One year to prepare.
Later that morning, Lucien stood alone behind the house, beneath the shade of the old elm tree. A rusted wooden training sword lay in the grass nearby a toy for a child. But he wasn't a child. Not truly. He drew in a breath, eyes narrowing. Magic stirred beneath his skin wild, ancient, too powerful for a body this young. He could feel it fighting to escape.
He raised a hand, channeling just a sliver. The wind shifted. Leaves trembled. Sparks crackled across his fingertips. His body ached immediately. Bones strained. Blood pressure spiked. But he didn't stop. He needed to know how much he could handle in this form. How far he could push without breaking. "I won't waste this second chance," he muttered. "Not again."
The past wouldn't repeat itself. Not if he had anything to say about it. Lucien Vale had returned not as a broken man, but as a blade being reforged. And this time, he would strike first.
As noon approached, Lucien sat cross-legged beneath the same elm, a notebook of rough parchment spread before him. Each page he filled was a memory names, faces, key events. Not everything had returned perfectly, but enough had. Enough to change everything. He wrote quickly, sketching maps of noble territories, battle formations, secret vaults, magic seals. He paused only when his hand cramped from writing with the awkward grip of a child's fingers.
"House Draymoor… the southern Duke," he murmured to himself. "First to fall. Weakest defense in the early years. But if I eliminate their heir early—" His voice trailed off. Killing children. Could he really go that far? He clenched his jaw. Yes. If it meant saving his mother. His sister. The hundreds who would die in their wake. He was no longer innocent. The past had burned that out of him.
Just then, the front gate creaked open. Lucien stiffened and looked up. A boy blond-haired, dressed in simple wool clothes stepped into the yard with a wide grin. "Lucien! Come play swords!" the boy shouted, waving a stick. Lucien blinked. His memories caught up a second later.
Julen.
His first and only friend in the village. Killed in the raid a year later while trying to protect Lucien's little sister. Lucien slowly stood, dusted off his pants, and offered a faint smile. "Alright," he said, gripping the wooden toy blade at his side. He could spare a few moments. But even as they clashed playfully beneath the sun, Lucien's eyes remained cold. Calculating. Every movement was measured. Every footstep memorized. His training never truly stopped. Even now, his war had already begun. And soon, the world would remember the name Lucien Vale.
When the sun began to dip behind the treetops, casting long golden shadows over the hills, Lucien excused himself with a tired smile and returned to the woods behind the cottage. No one followed. No one suspected. Beneath the quiet boughs of ancient oaks, far from the eyes of his mother or any wandering villager, Lucien dropped the wooden sword and knelt in the dirt. This was where his real training would begin.
He took a deep breath, pressing his palm to the soil. The scent of moss and sap filled his lungs. The world felt raw, alive not like the ash-covered battlefields he once ruled.
"Alright," he murmured. "Let's see what's left of me." He closed his eyes and reached inward. In his past life, he had mastered several forbidden arts bloodcraft, soulburn, echo sigils spells that had broken him just as often as they saved him. But now, even summoning a flicker of that power in a child's body felt like trying to wield a greatsword with a twig for a spine. Still, the knowledge was there.
He whispered the first incantation low, guttural words laced with the resonance of an ancient tongue. Runes shimmered faintly beneath his skin. The veins along his arms darkened. Energy surged chaotic, raw, furious. He gritted his teeth. His limbs trembled, not from fear, but from the strain of containing it all. He let just a thread slip loose. A sigil burned into the ground around him, smoking with pale violet light. The earth shook. A nearby stone cracked down the middle. Then his body gave out.
Except… it didn't.
Lucien's arms buckled, but he caught himself, one knee planted in the soil, muscles screaming. Blood trickled from his nose. A copper taste filled his mouth. But the spell held. He lifted his hand. Floating above it was a flickering mass of dense, swirling shadowfire an unstable fusion of heat and void.
He breathed the words aloud:
"Umbra Noctis."
The Shadow of the Night Flame.
A soulflare spell of the Second Circle reserved for executioners, soulbinders, and high warlocks. Banned under six separate accords. It devoured light, bent sound, and twisted the very nature of causality around it.
Lucien stared into the core of the magic. It spun slowly in his hand, whispering fragments of the old language. Threads of darkness slithered through the air around it like eels in ink. This was no illusion. No half-formed spark of potential.
He had done it.
He had bound forbidden magic to a child's vessel… and survived. The trees leaned away. The shadows thickened. Even the birds had gone silent. Lucien let the spell drift upward, then snapped his fingers.
The orb collapsed in on itself without a sound imploding into nothing, taking a bite of space with it. Where it vanished, the ground remained blackened, scorched into a perfect circle. He sat back against a root, chest heaving, a grin beginning to touch the corner of his mouth. He hadn't lost it. Not entirely. But this body this vessel was too small. Too fragile. He'd need time. Strength. Layers of magical resistance, trained slowly, or his own power would end up killing him.
Still…
He had succeeded where most full-grown mages would have burned to ash. He wiped the blood from under his nose and whispered to the quiet woods, "This world won't be ready for what I'm going to become." And as the last traces of magic dissipated into the twilight air, Lucien reached again deeper.
One spell was not enough. Mastery was not a title earned by a single incantation. His fingers curled into the earth. This time, he did not whisper.
He commanded.
"Infractum Sanguis: Vortis Nocturn."
The Forbidden Oath of the Broken Vein. Third Circle. Bloodbound and unstable.
His skin split open across the forearm in a precise sigil-shaped wound. Blood poured freely but didn't hit the ground it hovered, spiraling in the air, forming a red vortex around his body. Lightning crackled through it. The ground began to hum with pressure.
His body screamed in protest. His mind fractured and refocused in a breath.
But he did not stop.
If he could hold it just one more second—
The vortex twisted. Hardened. Shrank into a knot of molten red etched with black glyphs.
Lucien growled through gritted teeth. His eyes glowed dim violet. Then Silence.
Total silence. The magic obeyed. The second spell was his.
And with it came a rush of memory arcane locks, vault-locations, hidden rites sealed in the Undercrypts of Karveth, where only those who had bled the oath were permitted to walk.
Lucien exhaled, shaking, lips cracked. But the grin returned, sharper this time. Colder.
He had just rewritten the limits of what this second life would be. And in the depths of the dark forest, where no one could see him for what he truly was, a boy laughed.
But it was not the laugh of a child.
It was the laugh of a warlock reborn.