The morning arrived not with a trumpet but with a beak.
Aelius stirred in his cradle as a crow perched outside the window let out a rusty caw. It had returned three days in a row now. Same ledge. Same posture. Same judgmental tilt of the head.
'Persistent little bastard,' he thought. 'Either it's my spirit animal or someone's running surveillance on the house using birds. Wouldn't put it past them. Spy-crows: an underrated threat in magical societies.'
He shifted slightly, pretending to sleep, gauging the sounds in the room. Footsteps outside, muffled conversation… then quiet. The world seemed to hold its breath. It was the day.
They were bringing the crystal.
Yesterday had ended with Orren's warning. "Don't let them turn you into something you're not." Aelius appreciated the sentiment, though he doubted the young scholar had any idea what Aelius already was. He wasn't some clean-souled miracle child waiting to be corrupted.
He was the corruption. Gift-wrapped in diapers.
His limbs twitched—faintly, like fragments of command that hadn't fully formed. The internal "stack" in his head—his mysterious, growing processor—was already whispering possibilities, running basic mana logic trees, parsing concepts of alignment, energy resonance, elemental affinity.
No full spellcasting yet, of course. The stack was in its infancy. But it was… curious.
His eyes opened slowly.
Morning light filtered through pale blue curtains, and with it came the subtle warmth of a presence nearby. Aelius didn't need to look. He felt her there—the stepmother. Lady Caelia Virelith.
She sat by the crib, posture flawless, like someone born knowing how to command a room.
Her hair was a dark chestnut, braided loosely over one shoulder, elegant but not fussy. She wore a soft blue gown with silver trim, simple yet unmistakably noble.
Her features were sharp—high cheekbones, calm gray eyes, and lips that rarely smiled. She looked more like a statue of a queen than a mother.
'She looks like she negotiates with kings, not raises children,' Aelius thought. 'But she's the one wiping spit off my chin, so… maybe both.'
Her hand reached into the crib and gently brushed his forehead.
No words. Just that.
Aelius blinked. 'Well damn. That felt… maternal.'
He didn't know how to respond.
He wasn't used to the idea of being cared for unconditionally. His own mother—the one from before—was a blurry, unreliable memory. Sweet voice, tired eyes, always busy. His father? A shout behind a newspaper. Distance in human form.
'Maybe they were doing their best,' he thought dryly. 'Or maybe they were just slightly more intelligent dogs.'
At least dogs show affection when they sniff your face. Parents tend to just lecture you about life choices you didn't choose.
He let out a tiny, involuntary giggle.
Caelia raised an eyebrow.
She leaned forward, amused. "What's so funny, little one?"
If only she knew. If only any of them did.
---
A knock interrupted the moment.
It was deliberate—too soft to be urgent, too sharp to be casual. Orren entered, eyes more serious than usual, his scholar's robes darker than yesterday's.
Orren looked like a man who had read more books than he had slept hours.
He wore dark scholar's robes laced with tiny runes, half-glowing with stored mana. His hair was messy, brown and wind-tossed, and his glasses kept sliding down his nose.
His eyes, quick and storm-gray, scanned the room like he was solving an equation no one else saw.
'Too young to be a master, too smart to be dismissed,' Aelius noted. 'Bet he alphabetizes his nightmares.'
"They've arrived," Orren said quietly. "The Tier-Four crystal."
Caelia stood. "Bring them in."
Aelius didn't move. He just watched. Observed. Every adult in this room thought this moment would define him.
But it would define them more. How they reacted. What they expected. How easily they'd accept a miracle if it was gift-wrapped in something they didn't understand.
The double doors creaked open.
Two men entered, robed in deep violet and gold. Clerics of the Crystal Hall—keepers of the Resonant Order. Between them, carried with reverence and excessive pageantry, was a crystalline pedestal. Upon it rested the Tier-Four mainline crystal.
It pulsed faintly, like a heart.
It was... beautiful. But also, somehow, underwhelming.
'Looks like someone fused a quartz geode with an overachieving heartbeat monitor,' Aelius noted, unimpressed.
Caelia stepped aside to let them approach the crib.
"This is the child?" one cleric asked, voice flat.
"This is Aelius," Caelia confirmed.
The crystal was lowered slowly, inches from Aelius's face. It shimmered in response to proximity. Pale blue veins of energy flickered within it, subtly shifting hues as if searching for a resonance.
The cleric chanted a phrase in Old Ceran.
The crystal's glow intensified.
Aelius felt the pressure in the room change, like static tension building in a thundercloud. The stack in his mind activated without him consciously calling it. It wasn't control—more like the reflexive twitch of a growing limb.
Suddenly, images—not memories, but abstract mana diagrams—flickered in his mind. Core nodes, flowlines, overclock limits.
Then… nothing.
The crystal dimmed.
The clerics leaned in, adjusting something on the base. "No reaction beyond baseline fluctuation."
"That's impossible," muttered the second. "He's a mainline-born. There should be… something."
Aelius stayed still, but his thoughts raced.
'So they can't read me. Good. Either I'm too complex, or the crystal's just not qualified to interpret me. I'll take either.'
The silence grew uncomfortable.
Caelia finally broke it. "What does this mean?"
"It means…" the elder cleric hesitated, "either the child has no attunement… or something is interfering with the reading."
Orren spoke up. "Interference isn't unheard of. There are cases—rare cases—where a subject's internal structure deflects resonance or adapts too quickly."
The clerics looked unconvinced. But Caelia said nothing. She only stepped back toward the crib and gazed at Aelius again. Her voice was quiet, but firm:
"Then we'll observe. Watch. Learn."
Aelius met her eyes.
She didn't look disappointed.
That surprised him more than anything else today.