The presence hadn't returned.
It had never left. It was simply… patient.
Aelius lay in silence, wrapped in silks and suspicion. He didn't know its shape, its source, or even if it had a body. But the feeling hadn't faded since the night it crept near his crib like breath without lungs. It lingered, just outside of reason—watching.
He couldn't move much. His arms obeyed him like wine-drenched puppets. His neck fatigued in seconds. His eyes, at best, could track motion and blur. But his mind—his mind traced patterns the way rivers trace stone.
And the pattern said one thing: he was being observed.
Not just by the unseen presence he'd sensed in the dark, but by the world around him—nervous eyes, tightened gestures, silence where there should have been sound.
The servants moved around him with too much precision. No idle chatter. No soft cooing. They adjusted his blankets like a ritual, not an act of care. Their hands never lingered.
'They've been told not to speak around me. Not even look too long,' he thought, watching a nurse fold a cloth with militaristic exactness.
The doors to his chamber carried faint murmurs—he could no longer distinguish words, but the rhythm of conversation was there. Tense. Controlled. No laughter. No congratulations.
'Where are the other voices? The proud ones. The foolish ones. The father?'
He hadn't seen him.
Not once.
No one had mentioned a name. No portrait, no pendant, not even a casual remark like "You have his eyes."
'Am I a political liability? A miracle to hide? Or did the father simply vanish from the narrative altogether?'
He filed the question away, added it to the growing list of threads he couldn't yet pull.
---
The sun crept across the walls in slow bands of gold as the day deepened.
And with it, came movement.
Not from within the room—but from the manor itself.
He felt the shift like a change in pressure before a storm. Voices, multiple, filtered through the thick stone walls of House Virelith—too muffled for content, too deliberate to ignore.
Politics had arrived.
---
"…so House Liraeth now seeks to audit our shard reserves?" Caelia's voice echoed through the corridor. Cold. Steady. Measured.
A man responded. Smooth. Polite. "It is merely a formality, Lady Caelia. With your son's recent… non-manifestation, the Council grows curious."
"Curious," she repeated. "How quaint. They smell weakness and call it curiosity."
A second man entered the discussion—this voice younger, less filtered. "You must admit, Lady Virelith, when a highborn child fails the crystal test—"
"Fails?" Caelia cut in. "Interesting word choice. Do you believe the tool incapable of failure?"
A pause.
"No one questions your bloodline, of course," said the first man again, more cautiously. "But silence in the face of tradition breeds speculation. And speculation invites opportunism."
Aelius lay still, listening.
Each word was a blade veiled as civility. Each phrase, a tactical thrust.
'They aren't here for answers,' he thought. 'They're here for leverage. And I'm the opening.'
---
When Caelia returned later, her posture was perfect. Not a hair out of place. But the tension lived in her hands—fingers that tapped the armrest just a fraction too long, a breath held half a second too tight.
She looked at him for a while without speaking. Then finally, "They came to smell blood."
Aelius blinked slowly.
"You won't remember this," she said. "But there are times in a noble's life when perception outweighs reality. Right now, they perceive uncertainty in you. Which means instability in me."
She leaned closer. Her voice dropped to something almost warm. "I don't care what the crystal said. I know there's something in you."
'You don't know the half of it.'
But her words stirred something else in him—guilt, almost. Frustration.
Because he could not help her. Not yet. Not in any way that mattered.
His fingers twitched once under the blanket, a phantom rebellion against powerlessness.
---
That night, he tested a theory.
The crib was positioned beneath a canopy with open slits across the top. If someone wished to observe, they wouldn't need to enter the room. Just stand above. Wait.
He let his face relax. Slowed his breath. Practiced stillness.
And then it came.
Not footsteps. Not shadow.
Stillness.
A weight entered the room—not physically, not magically. It was the absence of movement that defined it. A quiet void with intent.
It didn't reach for him.
It listened.
And then it was gone.
He breathed, slowly.
'Not random. Not curious. Controlled. Someone is waiting for me to reveal something.'
Aelius, despite his mind's speed, had no weapons, no voice, no defenses.
So he decided to become something else:
data they couldn't parse.
---
The next morning, Orren entered again.
He brought no crystal, only scrolls, a copper ring, and a thin brush for rune etching.
Aelius didn't care about the tools. He cared about Orren'seyes.
They darted to the shadows. The corners. The ceiling slats.
He felt it too.
Orren didn't show fear. Just tension. Quiet awareness. He wasn't a warrior—but he noticed things others didn't.
He approached the cradle with scholar's care—measured, respectful, speculative.
Aelius considered.
One gesture.
A test.
He forced a single finger to twitch—a deliberate, minute movement beneath the blanket. Controlled. Barely perceptible.
Orren noticed.
He stepped forward. Not fast, not panicked—curious.
Kneeling beside the cradle, Orren whispered, "You're watching back, aren't you?"
'Always.'
Orren exhaled softly, as if steeling himself. "You're going to shatter everything, aren't you?"
'That depends,' Aelius thought, letting his eyelids grow heavy again.
'Will you give me something to break it with?'