"Not all strength is loud. Some of it simply endures. Quietly. Without applause."
Nine years had passed since demons had torn through the Lower Tier like a plague of shadow and flame. Nine years since they had murdered his parents in cold blood and dragged his brother away, leaving six-year-old Artha alone with nothing but ash and the echo of his brother's desperate cry: "Artha! Run! Remember what I taught you!"
Nine years of surviving in the orphan shelters, on the streets, in the corners where forgotten children learned to make themselves invisible. Nine years of clinging to his brother's voice—patient, kind, always knowing exactly what to say—even as the memories grew hazier with each passing season.
The sun hung lazily in the sky above the Lower Tier, pouring dusty gold over the cracked streets and crooked alleys of Caelumaris. At fifteen, Artha had grown tall and lean from years of sparse meals and hard survival. His clothes were still patched, his shoes still held together with hope and string, but he'd learned to carry himself with a quiet dignity that kept the worst predators at bay.
He stood behind a weathered stone pillar near the edge of the public training square, watching a group of Academy students practice their spells with the casual arrogance of those who'd never known real loss. One boy, probably younger than Artha, summoned flames that danced like loyal pets. A girl lifted objects with her mind while laughing with friends who would never be torn away by monsters.
Their uniforms were pristine. Their lives were whole. Their eyes held the confidence that came from having families to return to each evening.
"Every day... they grow stronger," Artha whispered, the words carrying nine years of accumulated longing.
"Strength isn't just about magic, little brother," came the familiar voice in his mind, warm with the memory of an eight-year-old boy who had tried to raise him when their parents died. "Remember the stray dog? How feeding it made us both stronger?"
Artha closed his eyes, letting the imagined comfort wash over him. After all these years, he could barely distinguish between true memories and the conversations his desperate mind had constructed to keep his brother alive. Had his brother really said those exact words, or was it just what Artha needed to hear?
"Oi! Stop loitering, you street rat!" A merchant's voice cut through his reverie. "This isn't a place for gutterborn scum!"
The familiar sting of rejection hit him, but instead of the rage that had consumed his younger years, Artha felt something else. His brother's voice, real or imagined: "Don't become them. You're better than their fear."
He smiled softly—that same crooked smile he remembered from before the demons came—and walked away without a word. He'd learned long ago that dignity was often the only wealth the poor could afford.
In a narrow alley, Artha found a small girl crying over a broken toy. She couldn't have been older than he'd been that terrible night, and something in her tears called to the deepest part of his heart.
Without hesitation, he knelt beside her and offered half his daily bread—still warm from the bakery's charity. The gesture felt automatic, as natural as breathing.
"Smiles weigh less than tears," whispered his brother's voice, and Artha repeated the words he'd been hearing in his mind for nine years. "Let's carry the lighter one, okay?"
The girl looked up with wide eyes and slowly managed a trembling smile. In that moment, Artha felt his brother's presence so strongly it was almost like having him back—if only for a heartbeat.
Later, in the abandoned field that had become his sanctuary, Artha stood alone among the tall grass. At fifteen, he'd grown into his lanky frame, but the loneliness remained as sharp as ever. This was where he practiced the breathing exercises his brother had supposedly taught him, where he tried to feel the magic everyone said existed within all living things.
"Don't force it," urged the voice that had guided him through nine years of survival. "Remember what I showed you about finding the warmth inside?"
But when Artha reached for that warmth, all he found was the ice-cold terror that had never truly left him. Even after all these years, he could still smell the sulfur, still hear his parents' screams, still feel his brother's hand slipping from his as the demons dragged him into darkness.
The trauma of that night had shaped every day since. Sometimes he wondered if the gentle wisdom he attributed to his brother was really just his own mind's way of coping—of creating the guidance he'd never received.
Something stirred in response to his pain.
Not the warm tingle of conventional mana, but something deeper, colder. The air around him began to shimmer with wrongness, as if reality itself recoiled from his grief.
Then the world... fractured.
Time split like broken glass. Colors drained away as the universe seemed to bleed. A boy playing in the distance froze mid-step, suspended in a moment that suddenly had too many dimensions.
Artha felt himself slip sideways through existence, his fifteen-year-old body moving through spaces that shouldn't exist. When reality snapped back, the distant boy stumbled exactly where Artha had been standing—would have been standing—in a location that belonged to two different times.
As Artha collapsed, gasping as dual visions overlaid each other, a terrible thought crept in: What if the demons hadn't attacked randomly? What if they'd known something about his family—about him—that he still didn't understand?
What if this power, whatever it was, had been why they'd taken his brother and killed his parents nine years ago?
"You're not broken, little brother," whispered the voice that might have been memory, imagination, or something else entirely. "You're just more than they know how to understand."
But as darkness gathered around him, Artha wondered if his brother's voice was really just in his head—or if, somewhere across the veil between worlds, an eight-year-old boy was still trying to guide his younger brother home.
Far above, Sariya Velantra felt the disturbance ripple through her tower chamber. After nine years of monitoring the city, she'd learned to recognize the signatures of awakening power.
But this was different. Dangerous. And achingly familiar to forbidden arts that had been sealed away for good reason.
The demons' attack nine years ago had been selective, purposeful. They'd taken specific people, killed others, left some untouched. And now, in one of their survivors, this impossible power had finally awakened.
Whatever they'd been planning, it was connected to this boy.
And he had no idea what he'd become.