The hills rolled out in dusty gold beneath a sky turning pale with dusk. The courier road was quiet, just Kael and the man assigned as their temporary partner for the task: Torren, a weathered Trunk-ranked adventurer.
Torren had spoken little during the day's travel. That suited Kael fine. The mission was straightforward—deliver a sealed package to a village on the edge of the valley—and quiet meant time to think. Time to train.
---
That evening, after they'd eaten their trail rations and the fire had burned down to a low glow, Torren stretched out on his blanket. Kael stayed awake, pulling a slim notebook from their pack.
He had been carrying a thought for weeks now. Something about spellcasting had changed: spells were coming easier, costing less mana. At first, he'd chalked it up to practice. But the pattern was too precise for that.
Kael tapped the page with their pencil, closed their eyes, and began to whisper.
---
What came out of their mouth wasn't the common tongue. It was the magic language—the so-called Language of the Gods.
To Torren, the sounds would be meaningless, just syllables strung together in a cadence he'd been taught to repeat without ever knowing why.
But Kael understood every word.
> "Hold fast and steady.
I will not let them break through.
Wind stands here with me."
As the words left Kael's mouth, a faint barrier formed in front of them, its edges shimmering. It cost then almost nothing.
---
Kael frowned. That wasn't enough proof. They rewrote the spell on the page in neat, tight lines—still in the magic language—and changed the way it ended:
> "Walls stand unmoving.
They will not bend, break, or fall.
I will hold them all."
This time the barrier sprang up faster. Cleaner. No hesitation in the flow.
---
"What are you doing?" Torren's voice was low and steady in the dark.
Kael didn't look back. "Testing phrasing," they said. "Trying to see how the words listen."
"The words?" Torren asked.
"They have meaning," Kael replied. "You just don't know what they mean."
Torren snorted softly. "You sound like an old priest."
---
Kael ignored him and kept writing. Dozens of small variations. And then, on a whim, they let the last words of each line rhyme as they shaped them in the magic language:
> "Stone stands unbroken.
I will hold as breakers fall.
I will stand through all."
The mana surged so fast Kael almost lost their breath. It felt weightless. Free.
---
Kael dismissed the barrier and recited the same lines again. Same effortless rush. Then they tried another spell, a simple one, and made the rhymes fit:
> "Brighten now the night.
Turn the dark to gentle light.
Keep it clean and bright."
The glow burst into being so smoothly it startled Torren.
"Twice as fast," Torren murmured, leaning forward. "And that second one… I didn't even see you pull from your core."
"You heard the words," Kael said. "Did you understand them?"
"Not a word," Torren admitted.
---
Kael knew he wouldn't. To everyone else, the magic language was just sounds—things to be copied, memorized. It had been that way for centuries.
But to Kael? Every sound had meaning. And those meanings could be shaped.
---
The rest of the night passed with Kael experimenting, Torren watching. Kael found that even clumsy rhymes smoothed the flow, but clean rhymes—lines that fit together like music—reduced the cost to almost nothing. Powerful spells still drained him, but far less than before.
"You know," Torren said finally, "most of us just recite what we were taught. Never thought to change a thing."
"I noticed," Kael said. They didn't explain more.
---
By the end of the mission, with the package delivered and the ledger signed, Torren lingered a moment before they parted.
"Whatever you're doing with those words," he said, "keep it close. That's the kind of thing people would kill to own."
"I know," Kael said simply.
---
That night, alone again, Kael sat by the faint glow of a campfire and wrote in their notebook, in their own handwriting:
> Rhyme the flow. The world listens.
Kael closed the book and looked up at the stars. The language had rules. Kael was only just beginning to uncover them.
---
The next day, the valley road gave way to broad grasslands. They camped near a shallow river, where frogs croaked from the reeds and the night air smelled of water and moss.
Torren had spent most of the day pretending not to watch Kael. He wasn't a talker, but his eyes missed nothing. When Kael pulled out the notebook that evening, Torren sat a little way back, arms folded, waiting.
---
Kael started with small spells again, testing the limits of what rhyme could do. Every time, the result was the same: the mana cost slipped away, like a heavy door suddenly swinging on oiled hinges.
Tonight, Kael wanted to try something riskier.
Kael drew a diagram in the dirt—a sphere, layers within layers.
Containment.
This was a spell most wouldn't try outside a controlled space. It could trap something dangerous, but it also drained casters dry. Kael had never attempted it alone before.
---
Kael whispered the spell in the magic language, carefully shaping each line. The syllables came easy; they were words Kael understood, every one of them: bind, hold, keep.
But this time, Kael made them rhyme:
> "Hold what I command.
Bind it fast in earth and sand.
Make it heed my hand."
Mana poured from Kael, but it was smooth. They felt their core pull, the edges of their will shaping something invisible.
The air before Kael twisted, folded in on itself until a faint sphere hung there, spinning like glass.
---
Torren swore under his breath, pushing up to his feet. "I've seen that spell burn a full party down to empty. You're still upright."
Kael dismissed the sphere. It collapsed with a whisper, leaving the night quiet again.
"I'm fine," Kael said, breathing a little heavier but steady.
---
Torren stared. "That… cost you what? A sip?"
Kael thought about it. "Maybe a sip and a half."
"And you're just making this up as you go."
Kael looked down at the lines in the dirt, then back at Torren. "Not making up. Listening."
---
They sat in silence for a long time after that. The frogs croaked. Somewhere far off, a night bird called.
"You know," Torren said eventually, "when I was your age, I thought the language was just nonsense. I still do. We repeat the sounds like idiots because the old books say we should. You're telling me these words mean something."
"They do," Kael said.
"And you know what they mean?"
"Yes."
Torren exhaled through his nose, slowly. "That's dangerous knowledge."
"I know."
---
Kael returned to their notebook. This time they wrote a new variation of the same spell, sharper, with more speed in the words:
> "Chain and hold the foe.
Make it still and keep it slow.
Do not let it go."
The next casting locked into place instantly. The air thickened, as if an invisible hand had clenched around it. For a brief moment, Torren felt his limbs tighten—not enough to hold him, just enough to feel the intent.
Then the pressure eased. Kael cut the spell off deliberately.
"Just a test," Kael said.
---
Torren's voice was low. "If you used that in a fight, they wouldn't even see it coming."
"I know."
---
When Kael finally put the notebook away and rolled up in their blanket, Torren stayed awake a while longer, staring at the dying fire.
He had seen dozens of young adventurers try to reinvent the wheel. Almost all of them failed or died trying. But this one? This strange Noc'thera kid who looked different to everyone who saw them? they were rewriting the rules.
---
The next morning, as they packed to leave, Torren stopped Kael. "One thing."
Kael glanced over.
"If you keep doing that, don't ever do it where people can write it down. You know what happens when someone thinks you have something that no one else does."
"I know," Kael said again.
Torren studied them for a long moment, then nodded. "Good. Then maybe you'll live long enough to do something with it."
---
That afternoon, with the settlement finally visible on the horizon, Kael paused by a patch of tall grass. "I need five minutes."
Torren waited as Kael moved a few steps off the road. Kael pulled their staff free and wrote a new set of words. A flame spell this time—simple, but bigger than anything they had tried with rhyme so far.
> "Kindle, spark, and flame.
Fire, rise and burn the same.
Heat obey my name."
---
Kael whispered it and felt the mana roar, not like a river but like a ribbon snapping to attention. A column of fire burst into the air, bright and controlled. No backlash. No drain.
It burned for three heartbeats before Kael cut it off. Smoke coiled upward into the blue sky.
When Kael came back to the road, Torren didn't speak. He didn't have to. The look on his face said enough: he had seen the future in that fire, and it was dangerous.
---
By the time they reached the settlement that night, Kael's notebook was heavier with new lines. And Torren's silence felt different. Not wary, but weighty.
The kind of silence that meant he had seen something he could never unsee.
---
By the time they reached the outskirts of the settlement, the sun was a dying smear of orange across the low ridge. The Guild annex was little more than a wooden hall with a single watch lantern swaying out front. A few carts stood hitched nearby, their drivers lingering around a cookfire, but most of the town had already gone quiet for the evening.
Torren stepped up to the front desk and signed the delivery log. Kael lingered behind, silent, scanning the open room as the faint smell of smoke clung to their cloak.
The clerk glanced up at them when Torren was done. "Sign, courier," she said briskly. "Then you're both clear."
Kael took the quill and scribbled their name with a calmness that belied the storm running through their mind.
---
When they stepped back into the cooling night, Torren slowed his pace until Kael was beside him. The parcel was done; there would be no shared camp this time, no shared trail back. From here, their paths would separate.
"Strange job," Torren said at last.
Kael tilted their head. "Simple job."
"Not what I meant," Torren said. He stopped in the middle of the road, arms folding across his chest. "I've been doing this long enough to know when someone's not normal."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "Plenty of people say that about me."
"This isn't about your looks," Torren said, unbothered by the sharpness in Kael's tone. "It's about the way you work. The way the spells listen to you. The rest of us are just speaking sounds we don't understand, but you—" He tapped a finger against his temple. "You know."
---
Kael looked away, down the road toward where the horizon turned purple. "That's dangerous to say out loud."
"Which is why I'm saying it out here, with no ears around."
"You think I should stop?"
Torren shook his head. "I think you should hide it better."
Kael glanced back, curious. "You're not going to report it?"
Torren's mouth quirked upward in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Why would I? If I told the Guild you had a trick that made magic cheap, they'd chain you to a desk for the rest of your life. And then you'd never figure out the rest of it."
---
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the grass rustling in the valley wind.
Kael finally asked, "Then why warn me?"
"Because I've seen this kind of thing before," Torren said. "Someone finds something new, and suddenly every major guild, every noble house, every warlord wants it. If you're not careful, you won't even see the net closing."
---
They resumed walking slowly, side by side. Torren's tone was casual again when he said, "What do you call it?"
"Call what?"
"That… thing you do. The rhyming."
Kael thought about it, fingers absently tapping the spine of they're notebook. "Listening," they said at last.
---
By the time they reached the fork in the road, the lantern light from the Guild annex had become a distant glow. Torren shifted his pack and held out a hand.
"Well, Listener," he said, "I won't forget this job. Do us both a favor—stay alive."
Kael took his hand and shook it once, firm. "Same to you."
Torren gave a short nod and turned onto the southern road without looking back.
---
Kael stood there a while after he left, staring down the path ahead. Then Kael found a place under a leaning willow and sat cross-legged, pulling out their notebook.
Kael turned to a blank page and began to write—not the haikus this time, but notes. Observations. Rules Kael was starting to see, written in the same language no one else could read:
Rhymes ease the flow.
Clean endings matter.
Power + precision > raw strength.
Even a wide spell becomes small if the words are shaped right.
At the bottom of the page, Kael wrote a line in large letters:
> Rhyme the flow. The world listens.
---
The thought made Kael pause. What was the world listening to, exactly? To the sound of the words? To the meaning behind them? Or to something deeper—something that only existed because Kael understood?
The question hung with Kael as they packed their notebook away.
---
Kael left the settlement at dawn, alone this time, with a new rhythm in their head. Every few steps they whispered the beginnings of new haikus in the magic language, testing how the endings fell together. Some spells they cast, small things: a flicker of light, a breeze, a shield that shimmered for only a heartbeat. Others they just whispered and stored away for later.
---
By the third day back on the road, the excitement had cooled into something steadier. Torren's warning had taken root. This discovery—this edge—was not something Kael could share. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But Kael could hone it. That much they could do.
---
In the last stretch of the journey home, Kael's reflection flickered faintly in a puddle by the roadside. Not the reflection anyone else would see, but their own. they crouched down, staring at themselves.
"You know what this means," Kael murmured quietly to the reflection. "If I can change the words, the spells themselves change. Not just the cost. Everything."
The reflection didn't answer. It never did. But it didn't need to. Kael had already decided: this secret was Kael's alone, for now.
---
When Kael finally walked into the Guild hall to report the completed delivery, the only sign of what had changed on the road was the calm, steady look in their eyes.
Inside, though, the rhythm of rhyme and the flow of mana had already begun to change everything.