The first few months of life in this world passed like slow ripples across a still pond—quiet, but far from empty. While the body of a child remained soft and small, Viren's soul stirred like a tide beneath the surface. And day by day, that tide swelled.
His parents—Aurex and Lysara Virelin—were not ordinary nobles, nor were they simple scholars. They were pillars of the Astradahl Conclave, figures of deep power and influence across multiple realms. Their estate was no mere mansion—it was a living arcology, nested in the roots of a starlit mountain whose peak pierced the upper atmosphere. From its crystal balconies, the endless veil of cosmos stretched in every direction, stars drifting like embers across deep purple skies.
And within that estate, Viren began to learn—quietly, subtly.
The nursery wasn't just a room—it was a sanctuary of soft magelights, shifting harmonic wards, and constant monitoring glyphs designed to soothe and study. His crib levitated gently above woven mana silk, and his toys weren't idle baubles but early activation constructs: harmless glyph-emitters, minor spark-responders, tone-imbued threads that changed color with emotion.
To a normal child, it was play.
To Viren, it was data.
He absorbed everything.
Not just visually, but energetically. Sounds became patterns. Lights, equations. The resonance of each object tickled something inside him—something that remembered what it meant to seek, to understand, to reshape.
And eventually, it responded.
It began with a flicker.
A glyph-construct hovering beside his crib—a soft blue spiral meant to lull infants to sleep—had dimmed earlier than usual. Its core had run low on passive ether. Normally it would have simply faded and rematerialized the next day, once recharged.
But something inside Viren stirred.
He didn't reach for it physically.
He felt toward it.
And it answered.
The glyph's last remnants of energy unraveled like silk drawn from water. That loose strand of magic, once dying, flowed into Viren's chest—into a space within him that suddenly pulsed with heat and clarity.
A strange warmth coursed through him. Then—
[Devourflux Activated]
Target: Lesser Ether Construct
Assimilated: Passive Illusory Spark Matrix
Adaptation Status: Inert Storage Initialized
It was subtle.
No system windows popped open in front of him. No dramatic announcement echoed in his mind.
It was a whisper. A shift.
An awareness that a new space now existed within him. A chamber of sorts—raw, unformed, hungry. The first spark of his true ability.
He had absorbed.
And something inside him had kept it.
---
The ability wasn't called Absorption here.
Not in this world.
Here, it was called Devourflux.
A power as old as the realms themselves, once sealed beneath ancient laws and feared by the custodians of balance. It had many forms throughout history. But at its heart, it remained the same: the ability to take in, internalize, and eventually evolve anything one could survive consuming.
Energy. Skill. Matter. Magic. Memory.
The devourer rewrote them into the self.
But Viren's Devourflux was not fully awakened. Not yet. What he had done was a spark—small, instinctive, unnoticed by most.
But not by all.
---
Aurex stood silently just beyond the threshold of the nursery, cloaked by a thin veil of refractive ether. He had seen the glyph die. And he had seen it re-stabilize within Viren's crib.
He didn't speak. Not yet.
Instead, he placed one hand against the wall—against the embedded script lines of the nursery's structure—and whispered a spell woven of observation and reverence.
Then he turned and walked away.
In his private study, he recorded the event without judgment:
> Subject: Viren Virelin — Instance #1 of instinctive ether absorption. Apparent consumption and stabilization of minor spell construct. Possible early expression of transdisciplinary convergence. Continue passive monitoring. Do not restrict.
Addendum: No outward manifestation of Synthesis yet. Devourflux suspected. Await further proof.
---
The second event occurred only days later.
Another toy. This time, a ring of resonance bands—simple cords that hummed when touched, teaching infants the basics of magical rhythm. Viren listened to the notes, memorizing the frequency shifts, the color changes, the subtle way that pressure altered pitch.
He didn't absorb this one.
He refined it.
A soft buzz rippled through the ring, and the band shifted its hum from a repeating three-tone to a continuous six-note echo—a complexity well beyond its design.
And again, something within him stirred.
[Arcanoforge Dormant Potential Detected]
Source Signature: Rhythmic Etheric Feedback
Outcome: Conceptual Synthesis Initiated (Unconscious)
He didn't know the name yet. But this was the early touch of his second gift.
Arcanoforge.
The ability to fuse, adapt, and evolve things—not by stealing, but by shaping.
It would not fully awaken for months yet. But in that quiet moment, the first step had been taken.
---
Outside the nursery, in the sanctum of knowledge beneath the estate, Lysara stood before a floating crystal archive, her face unreadable.
She had just watched the surveillance memory.
"I know that pulse," she murmured to the glowing library-keeper, a sentient sphere of information known as Saelin.
"It is not part of the toy's script," Saelin replied. "But it did not originate from the construct."
"No," Lysara said softly, eyes narrowing. "It originated from my son."
She didn't tell Aurex immediately.
Not because she feared what it meant.
But because she needed to be sure.
---
By his fourth month, Viren had begun to recognize patterns in voices, not just in sound but in intention.
Some visitors spoke with curiosity. Some with subtle dread. A few with hunger.
One, an older woman cloaked in shimmering white and crimson, leaned too close one day and whispered not to the child—but to herself.
> "Stars that rise too early burn too bright. Let's see how long this one lasts."
Viren remembered her scent.
Remembered her aura.
And filed it away.
---
He continued experimenting in secret—absorbing bits of residual magic from the walls, from dust particles heavy with spell remnants. He didn't overreach. Didn't reveal. But with every slow, steady draw, the core of Devourflux inside him grew more structured.
And one night, beneath the flicker of Astradahl's twin moons, his dreams shifted again.
He saw not his parents.
Not his crib.
But himself—older, surrounded by hovering constructs made of flame, crystal, and thought. Threads of pure will connected them to his fingers. Before him stood a massive gate carved from broken stars.
And behind it, something waited.
Something vast.
Something watching.
---
Viren awoke with his fingers curled slightly into the air.
The glyph-lanterns near his crib flickered in unison.
And then, as if acknowledging something unspoken—
They dimmed.
And bowed.