The smell of garlic hung heavy in the air—sharp, punchy, and on the edge of burned. Just like every morning.
A small clay stove hissed in protest as firewood cracked beneath a battered pot of stew. Inside the humble home, mismatched chairs creaked, shadows danced along chipped walls, and the window shutters flapped lazily in the breeze. Rain had kissed the soil overnight, and the scent of damp earth still clung to the floor like a familiar ghost.
"Rein!"
His mother's voice rang out like a frying pan dropped on tile—sharp, sudden, and promising consequences.
"I swear, boy—if you stole my chili peppers again, I will hang you upside down by your ears!"
Outside, just above the window frame, a head slowly popped into view—upside down. A tousled mop of dark brown hair, a lopsided grin that could melt butter (or get smacked by it), and eyes that sparkled with too much mischief for someone not yet dead.
"Steal is such a violent word, Ma," Rein replied, voice sing-song and innocent as a hymn. "I prefer... liberated. Rescued, really. They were rotting in the shadows of neglect."
His mother—Reeva—leaned out from the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips. Her sleeves were dusted in flour, and her face wore the hardened patience of a woman who had raised a professional menace for seventeen years.
"You little pickpocket," she muttered, turning back to her dough, muttering to herself about reckless sons and the dangers of roof climbing.
Rein swung down from the roof beam and entered through the window with a practiced, one-legged vault. He landed barefoot with a soft thump, shaking dust from his shirt. It was secondhand, oversized, and held together by both thread and stubborn pride.
"I told you not to climb the house again!" Reeva said, not even looking up. "Last time, old man Sarel nearly summoned a priest thinking a ghost was doing aerobics on his chimney."
"Correction," Rein said, already dragging a stool over to the table. "That was 'strategic movement training.' I'm building agility. Stealth. Rogue reflexes."
"You're building a funeral," she snapped. "Now eat before the stew becomes a war crime."
Breakfast in the Rein household was a ritual of organized chaos. Bread toasted unevenly over flame, herbs thrown like confetti, eggs half-boiled with defiance. A plate clattered onto the table beside Rein, decorated with a sprig of basil that had no business being there except for style.
Rein tore a piece of bread and dunked it into the stew. It was hot. Possibly sentient. But gods, it was delicious.
"You know," Reeva said, settling into her chair, "when I was your age, I wasn't juggling rooftops or giving heart attacks to nobles."
"When you were my age," Rein said between bites, "you were already chopping potatoes for a tavern lord who didn't believe in wages. I'm actually aiming upward."
"Ha! Upward. You mean backward somersaults over security fences."
He grinned. She sighed. And for a moment, the room was quiet—just the sounds of chewing, simmering stew, and the occasional chirp of enchanted bugs outside.
Then:
"So," she asked casually, "anything... eventful last night?"
Rein blinked. "Nope. Not even slightly. The most exciting thing that happened was watching a cat chase a floating spoon."
"Hm." She stared at him. He sipped soup with extreme focus.
"Not even a tiny robbery?"
He gasped. "Mother. You wound me."
"Oh, spare me. You smell like castle incense and smugness. I know that look—you've been Foxing again."
She meant The Black Fox—the masked thief who had recently become the quiet talk of Xiros County. Stories whispered in alleyways, passed over cups of weak tea. A figure of myth, some claimed. A symbol of justice, others argued. A pain in the neck, said the nobles.
Rein, of course, wore that title like a badge of honor. Underneath his easy smile and playful banter was a mind sharp as glass—and a tongue even sharper.
"Well," he admitted, "maybe I did slightly visit someone's vault. But I left a thank-you note. And a flower!"
"What kind?"
"A rude one."
Reeva smacked him on the head with a wooden spoon, and he laughed so hard his cheeks turned pink.
They didn't have much—not even a working front door some days—but laughter was cheap and always stocked in abundance.
(Part 2/5 — "The Boy and the County")
Xiros County never quite woke up all the way.
It stirred, yawned, scratched itself under the armpit, and rolled over in the sunlight like an old tomcat that refused to admit it had arthritis.
The village square sat at the lazy heart of it all. Dusty cobblestones, half-cracked lantern poles still strung with leftover winter charms, and a barely-functional fountain that wheezed more than it flowed. A brass bird floated inside the fountain's bowl, enchanted to chirp every hour but now only managed a sad croak that sounded vaguely judgmental.
Rein stood behind a wooden cart that might once have been a market stall but had clearly seen war. Scratches, bite marks (don't ask), and a wheel that squeaked like it was plotting rebellion. A hand-painted sign leaned on the side, boasting:
✧ HERB STUFF & HEALING THINGS ✧NO REFUNDS. NO CURSES (PROBABLY). YES, THAT'S MY REAL HAIR.
A small crowd was already forming. Mostly old grannies with enchanted hip braces and brats with bruised elbows. Rein passed out tiny jars of greenish salve and pretended to know what he was doing.
"Oh, this one?" he said, handing a cloudy vial to Mrs. Gellan, who smelled like sour magic and boiled cabbage. "This clears up phantom limb itch in exactly twelve hours, give or take two weeks. Use clockwise."
"My limb ain't phantom," she grunted, squinting suspiciously.
Rein winked. "Then it'll itch retroactively. Technically, that's a refund."
"Hmph." She left him two half-bent coins and a dead beetle for "luck."
He pocketed them with flair.
Beside the stall, a trio of children gathered around Rein's satchel, which was currently snoring. One of them—Tillo, a gap-toothed boy who wore pants three sizes too big—poked it cautiously.
"It's breathing!" he whispered.
Rein leaned down. "Don't feed it gingerbread. It gets prophetic."
The kids gasped, delighted. They didn't know whether he was joking. That was half the fun.
See, in Xiros, everyone had a little magic. Even toddlers. It was like owning cutlery—maybe not pretty, but necessary. People used charms to light candles, spells to hush crying goats, runes to stop cheese from running away (again, don't ask).
But the difference was: the nobles owned real magic. The kind that could rewrite laws of nature and crush cities. Rein? He had a splintered wand he used as a stirring stick and a cracked crystal he wore as a necklace because it buzzed near liars.
Still, he was smarter than most of them. He didn't need explosions. He had timing.
He also had a knack for charming everyone from grumpy vendors to retired mercenaries turned fishmongers. Today was no different.
"Rein, you useless delight!" barked old Harka, who ran a stall that exclusively sold magical socks. "You fix that weasel infestation in my cellar yet?"
He grinned. "Almost. The weasels formed a union. Demanding better cheese."
"They don't even eat cheese!"
"They do now."
Everyone around chuckled.
People liked Rein. Not just because he was funny or helpful, but because he didn't act like a stuck-up mage or scheming noble. He was just there. Present. Loud. Kind in a way that made people forget to be afraid of things for a while.
But they didn't know him.
Not really.
They didn't know that the bandages on his wrist weren't from tree climbing, but from spell backlash. That his late-night 'walks' were actually rooftop runs. That inside his patched cloak, he carried charms carved from smuggled bonewood and notes written in the lost cipher of the Upper Academies.
They didn't know that under his grinning, barefoot boy routine was the infamous Black Fox.
Well, probably infamous. Legends had a way of drifting off course. Just this morning he'd overheard one version in the bakery:
"—they say the Fox can walk through walls! He's seven feet tall and rides a ghost panther—"
Rein nearly choked on his stolen croissant. Seven feet? He was barely five-nine with boots on.
Another version, from a guard off-duty:
"Black Fox? Ain't real. Just a bunch of street kids playin' Robin Mage."
But the one that stuck with him was a whisper from an old man by the well:
"They say he only steals knowledge. Books. Secrets. He leaves gold untouched. That ain't a thief. That's a question waitin' to happen."
Rein had stood very still when he heard that one.
Because that part was true.
He didn't care about jewels or enchanted cutlery. He wanted what nobles kept locked behind blood seals and ten-digit wards: spellbooks, codices, ancient maps that talked when they felt like it. Anything banned. Anything too "dangerous" for common hands.
And last night… oh, last night had been a masterpiece.
He patted the satchel still strapped across his chest. Inside was a dusty tome titled "Foundation Spell Theory: Vol. 0.5 — Unapproved Draft."
Even the title sounded illegal.
A nearby cat glared at him like it knew. He glared back.
By the time the shadows began crawling down the village walls like lazy ink spills, Rein was done pretending to be a good-for-nothing herbalist for the day.
He packed up what little hadn't been stolen by sneaky children or bartered away in exchange for future favors—"I'll tell you where the mayor hides his sweets," one kid had whispered like a spy. Rein had agreed instantly.
His cart squeaked in protest as he dragged it back up the uneven path toward home. It wasn't far—Xiros County didn't have a far. But it still felt like the world shifted slightly the moment he crossed the ridge overlooking his end of the village.
A dirt path flanked by sagging sunflowers. Fences more memory than wood. Crows perched like lazy philosophers, occasionally blinking with suspicion. And at the very end—almost hidden by a flowering bush Rein swore was plotting to eat the house—was their home.
A round-bellied clay structure with crooked windows and smoke gently curling from a mismatched chimney. It looked like it had been built by a baker having a bad day and repaired over the years by someone who preferred chaos to symmetry.
And yet, it was home.
He stepped through the back gate, and his foot caught a loose stone. He didn't fall—just stumbled, caught himself with flair, and immediately pretended he meant to do it.
"Very smooth," came his mother's voice, dry as the desert in mid-July.
She stood by the open kitchen doorway, her arms flour-dusted, one eyebrow arched like a weapon. A rolling pin was tucked into her apron like a dagger in a belt. If Rein was the fox, Reeva—his mother—was the fire that made the den worth returning to.
"I did it on purpose," he said, straightening. "Stumbled to draw out a land hex."
She snorted. "The only curse here is your coordination."
"I'll have you know, I was nearly caught falling by a very large toad."
"Oh? You should've asked it for fashion advice."
Rein made a face and carried the cart past the herb rack. A sleeping charm drooled softly beside a pot of dreamwort. The front door creaked in the exact tone of someone groaning "Not you again," as he pushed it open.
Inside, everything smelled like garlic and herbs and too much effort poured into too little space. Spoons hung from the rafters, some enchanted to sing when stirred clockwise (a mistake Reeva still regretted). A loaf of bread floated just out of reach of the cat, enchanted to resist theft—but not gravity, hence the occasional midair crash.
Rein dropped onto the stool by the hearth. His boots—worn, patched, once kissed by royalty if his story was to be believed (it wasn't)—thudded on the floor.
Reeva turned, squinting. "You smell like burnt ozone and ash. What did you do?"
"I took a nap."
"You nap in fire pits now?"
"Only if I'm cold."
She gave him the Look™. Every mother has it. The one that says, I love you, but I know you're full of more hot air than a dragon with indigestion.
He grinned. "Market was fine. Mrs. Gellan tried to hex me again, but I think she was actually casting a recipe by mistake. Also, I got this."
He fished a tiny locket from his pocket. Inside was a miniature painting of a mushroom holding an umbrella and flipping someone off.
"She called it 'mildly offensive weather art' and said it wards off coughs."
Reeva took it, looked, sighed. "It's flipping off a cloud."
"Maybe it's a metaphor."
"Maybe you're an idiot."
Rein beamed. "A creative one."
They ate in companionable silence, broken only by the occasional pop from a misbehaving spice charm Rein had accidentally sat on.
The soup was thick, hearty, and tasted of smoked lentils, overcooked onions, and something vaguely illegal. Reeva never followed recipes. She followed instinct—that wild, powerful, slightly unhinged cooking instinct that produced food Rein swore once woke the dead (long story, minor village panic, all fine now).
"You're not just wandering about at night again, are you?" she asked suddenly, voice casual.
Rein choked on a chunk of turnip. "W-what?"
She didn't look up, just stirred her bowl. "You know. Wandering rooftops. Robbing the elite. Disrespecting security enchantments. Usual delinquency."
He wiped his mouth, playing it cool. "I would never. Besides, they'd never know I was there."
"Oh, good. That means I can stop pretending I don't know you're the Black Fox."
There was silence.
Then Rein laughed. "Hah! That's rich. Me? The Fox? Come on. The guy's taller, darker, and has at least three more muscles than I do."
"You literally stitched your own wanted poster into your cloak lining."
"…for archival purposes."
"Rein."
He sighed, sinking into his chair like a melting candle. "Okay, maybe I took a few things. But in my defense—"
"You didn't take gold," she cut in. "Didn't touch the weapons. You brought home a book."
"…yes?"
She exhaled slowly. "I raised a disaster. A chaotic, brilliant disaster."
"Thanks, Ma."
Reeva leaned over and flicked his forehead. "You know what this means, don't you?"
"That I need to invest in forehead armor?"
"That you're getting noticed."
Rein sobered. Just slightly. Just enough.
"The nobles?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. But I heard a whisper in the market. New face. Doesn't buy anything. Watches everything. Asked about rooftop footprints."
His spine straightened.
"You think it's a hunter?"
"I think," she said, standing to clear the bowls, "you better stop leaving sarcastic notes."
"But that's the fun part!"
She tossed a dishcloth at his head.
He ducked it, grinning again. "Fine. No more notes."
A pause.
"…unless they're especially clever."
She rolled her eyes. "Get some sleep. And if you die, I'm not resurrecting you unless you clean your room first."
"Love you too, Ma."
As the sky turned deep velvet outside, Rein crawled into the makeshift attic room above the kitchen. It wasn't much—just a mattress stuffed with goose feathers and old maps, a window that liked to stick, and a desk full of doodles and spells he wasn't supposed to know.
He opened his satchel.
The book inside practically hummed. Not with magic—no, it was older than that. It hummed with intention. Like a locked door waiting for a key that only existed in questions.
"Vol 0.5…" he whispered, fingers brushing the cover.
"Let's see what they didn't want us to learn."
There was a little thing in Rein's house called the Morning Duel.
It wasn't with swords or spellbooks. It was with plates.
"You used the good dishes again?" Rein asked, poking at the chipped, but elaborately painted ceramic sitting in front of him like it was holy treasure.
His mom, still dusted in flour and indignation, didn't even look up as she wiped her hands on a cloth that had once been white, possibly during the previous monarch's reign. "So what if I did? You're lucky I don't serve it on a shovel. You leave me two potatoes, one carrot, and a suspiciously unlabelled bottle of mushroom extract, and ask me to make breakfast like I'm some saint."
"Wasn't suspicious. I tested it on a cat."
"Oh my gods—what cat?!"
"…the neighbor's."
She stared at him.
He smiled like he wasn't mentally backpedaling at full speed.
"Rein," she said carefully, "was this before or after you 'borrowed' the mayor's chicken?"
"Technically, I just helped it escape a toxic environment."
"You stuffed it in your cloak and ran."
"It looked unhappy."
"It was squawking like its soul was being auctioned off."
"Well, that's just chicken for 'thank you'."
She closed her eyes. Took a long breath. Then laughed.
The fight was over.
Rein grinned, victorious.
Their home may have been small, the roof may have leaked when it thought about raining, and the door may have creaked like a dying banshee, but these mornings—sprawled at a tiny table, bickering with his mother over burned stew and legal definitions of "borrowing"—these were the parts of life Rein wouldn't trade for any golden staff or kingdom.
Still, his eyes flicked to the satchel lying near the door.
Inside, that spellbook hummed faintly, like a living thing. He hadn't even cracked it open yet. But he knew—knew—just from the way the mana warped subtly around it, that it wasn't ordinary. The runes on its spine didn't align to any of the standard Academy structures. It wasn't registered, sanctioned, or likely even stable.
In other words: Rein's favorite kind of stupid.
His mom caught him staring. "Planning on getting arrested before lunch, are we?"
"Nah. I'll wait until at least sundown. You know. Tradition."
She rolled her eyes so hard Rein swore he heard them squeak.
He slurped some soup.
Outside, the world was already stretching into its usual bizarre self. The floating fish vendor drifted past their window, yelling something about half-price eels. A crow wearing a monocle perched on their chimney. Somewhere in the village, a drunk bard was singing two different songs at once.
Xiros County didn't believe in being normal.
Rein's eyes lit up as he saw a kid outside trying to enchant a broom to walk itself.
"…It's gonna explode," he said with the serene confidence of someone who had made every possible magical mistake before breakfast.
"Rein—no," his mom said.
"I'm not gonna help!"
She raised an eyebrow.
"I'm just gonna watch. Closely. With popcorn. Possibly in a defensive bubble."
He was already halfway to the door when she snapped, "Gloves, boy! If you get hexburn again, I'm not putting balm on your butt this time!"
"You say that like it's happened more than once!"
"It's happened seven times!"
Rein wasn't famous. That was the funny part.
In the village, he was just the eccentric son of a food witch. A little too clever, a little too curious, always with soot on his cheeks and pockets full of cursed trinkets. People liked him in that harmless background-character kind of way. Helpful. Funny. Definitely not secretly the most talented unregistered spellcrafter in the region.
But sometimes, when the sky was just the right shade of lavender before dusk, when the wind came from the East and the magic in the air felt heavier than usual, the townsfolk would whisper.
"Did you hear about the Black Fox?"
They said he could vanish into walls. Walk upside-down. That he once beat a noble's ward system with just a fork and a very convincing chicken impression.
That he left behind mocking notes signed "B.F." in increasingly inconvenient places. (A noble once found one in his bathrobe pocket.)
And Rein? He'd be right there. Laughing along. Selling charm stones that looked like they were made by a squirrel on caffeine. Just a commoner boy with messy hair and jokes to spare.
Except when he wasn't.
Because later that night…
—And this is where the story always split into two.
The story of Rein, the barefoot village clown.
And the story of the boy who wore the fox-shaped mask.
Both were true.
And both were just getting started.
It was midday in Xiros County, which meant two things.
First: the sun was exactly bright enough to make everyone complain about the heat but not bright enough to dry their laundry.
Second: the umbrella trees had started talking again.
Rein leaned against the post outside their house, chewing on a stick of dried sweetroot and watching a parasol with legs chase a goose across the street. The parasol was shouting in Old Common. The goose was winning.
He spat the stick out. "I'm ninety percent sure I dreamed that exact thing last week."
From inside, his mom called, "Then maybe stop using dreamroot as toothpaste, genius."
The woman had hearing like a hawk and sarcasm like a longsword. Rein smiled.
He adjusted his cloak—plain, brown, mended too many times. Not his "Fox" gear, not yet. This was just Rein being Rein. The neighborhood menace. The boy who'd once enchanted their well to burp every time someone used it. The idiot who tried to build a flying broom out of actual brooms.
(It did fly. Once. For eight seconds. Straight into a fruit cart.)
But even as he waved to Old Lady Jinna—who was hauling a bucket full of giggling cucumbers—his mind wasn't in the square.
It was back in the vault.
Back in that moment where his fingers touched the spine of that crumbling, half-finished spellbook and the air had tilted around him.
Most books didn't do that.
Most books didn't resist being touched.
Most books didn't whisper.
He hadn't told his mom that part.
He hadn't told anyone.
Rein knew better than to talk about books that whispered.
Not after what happened the last time.
Still, he couldn't help it. Magic like that—it pulled at him. Like a loose thread in a cloak he had to tug on, even if it unraveled the whole thing.
And honestly?
He liked unraveling things.
There was a restlessness in him. Always had been. Not the kind that came from boredom—but from a hunger. For understanding. For depth. For the secrets beneath the surface that everyone else pretended didn't exist.
That's why he spent hours reading scraps of forbidden theory by candlelight.
Why he'd smuggled old spell diagrams out of dump heaps like they were gold.
Why, when everyone else looked at a locked gate and walked away—Rein looked at it and thought, what if the gate's wrong?
Some part of him never believed in limits.
Some part of him was deeply stupid and probably destined for magical court one day.
A group of kids ran past, one of them holding a staff made from a rolled-up poster and duct tape. "I cast Ultimate Doom Lightning Barrage! You're stunned for a thousand years!"
Rein raised a brow. "Pretty sure that's copyright infringement."
The kid stopped. "What's copyright?"
"Nothing. Don't worry. Just yell louder, the spell gets stronger."
"Ohhh! I cast ULTIMATE DOOM—"
"Okay, okay, don't rupture your throat."
He tossed the kid a coin. "Go buy a popspark. Tell 'em Rein sent you."
The kid gasped like he'd been handed a dragon egg. "You're the coolest adult ever!"
"I'm nineteen."
"Still counts!"
Rein watched them disappear into the alley, then muttered to himself, "I'm the coolest adult ever. Gods help us all."
Back inside the house, the stew pot was empty.
His mom sat at the table, sleeves rolled up, rolling out dough like it had personally insulted her ancestors. Her magic stirred faintly in the air—warm, spicy, like cardamom mixed with kitchen fire and old rebellion.
"Any idea what this is?" she asked without looking up.
Rein glanced at what she held up—a jagged little charm stone, twisted and glowing faintly red.
"Uh," he said. "No clue."
Her eyes narrowed.
"…I might've used that to keep raccoons out of the pantry."
"It exploded."
"…Oh. Then it worked."
She looked like she wanted to argue, but she was too tired to follow his logic all the way into the abyss today.
Instead, she pointed to the dishes. "Help."
"Can't. I have a critical mission."
"You'll have a broken nose."
"Understood."
He helped with the dishes.
In a village like theirs, routine was sacred.
Wanderers passed through, nobles made noise, magic fluctuated like a moody cat—but the Rein household had certain unshakable rituals.
Morning stew.
Midday arguments about common sense.
Evening jokes over burnt bread and laughter too loud for their square footage.
And Rein wouldn't trade that for all the spellbooks in the noble vaults.
Well.
Except that spellbook.
Because it hadn't just whispered.
When he held it?
It knew him.
That was the part he hadn't told even himself.
Not out loud.
Not yet.
But one day, Rein suspected—soon, maybe too soon—someone would come asking questions. About the vault. About the wards. About the boy with too-bright eyes and a suspicious lack of concern for arcane legality.
And when they did?
He'd smile.
Like a fox.
And lie through his teeth.
Like always.