[World: Unknown]
[Planet: Zenovia]
I remember how dying felt.
The weight in my chest. The fading warmth of my blood. The silence pressing down on the edges of my mind until it all went black.
What came after, I still can't explain. It began like the echo of a dream that refused to end.
At first, there was nothing. No body. No sound. Just a vast, thick darkness stitched together by the rhythm of distant voices — sharp, fast, arguing in a language that shouldn't have meant anything to me. Portuguese, maybe. The syllables scraped against the void like glass on stone.
Then came warmth.
A slow flood of heat spreading through what felt like veins long frozen. I tried to move but couldn't. Tried to speak — and instead, a wet, fragile cry escaped me.
The sound of a newborn.
That was the moment I realized the impossible.
My limbs were small. My chest barely lifted with breath. My eyes stung from the light.
And when I forced them open, I saw her.
A woman with hair white as snow, bent over me, her eyes the deep blue of the sea before a storm. Behind her stood a man with the same crystal eyes and hair so pale it could've been carved from winter itself.
My mind rebelled. This couldn't be real. Heaven didn't look like this, and hell didn't offer comfort. But when the woman whispered softly and lifted an ivory wand from beside her, the air rippled — and I stopped thinking altogether.
Water poured from nothing.
Not droplets, not steam, but liquid life — flowing and folding itself into the shape of a horse. It reared once, glowing faintly, then broke apart into a thousand shards of light that vanished into the air.
No logic could explain what I'd just seen.
No science. No dream.
Just magic.
If this was a hallucination, I thought, then let me never wake.
---
[Ten Years Later]
Dreams, it turns out, can last a lifetime.
I was reborn. That much I've accepted. Not metaphorically — literally. A new body, a new world, one ruled not by physics but by a living current called Flere.
Flere is the pulse beneath all life, the world's breath.
People who can shape it are called Filyn, their power born through heritage and trained through will. The greatest of them can weave fire, water, air, or stone — some rarer few can even bend lightning, light, or gravity itself.
I used to call it magic. Here, it's simply nature.
But like all power, it divides.
The great Houses of Zenovia — Phoenix, Aqua, Terra, Ariel, and Rāz — each trace their bloodline to an elemental ancestor. Once, the Frostbloods belonged to House Aqua, but pride and centuries of betrayal tore them apart. Now, they stand alone — as House Frost, masters of ice and snow.
These are my people.
My new name is Leopoldo Don-Glacier Frost, but everyone calls me Leo Frost.
The name sounds noble, but the truth is simpler: I'm the spare son. The unwanted twin.
Aren Frost — my twinbrother — was born first. Stronger. Colder. Perfect.
When he breathes, the air itself shivers. When he lifts his hand, frost blooms like silver flowers.
And me? When I breathe, nothing happens. When I raise my hand, the air stays still.
We share a face, a bloodline, a destiny. But the family only sees one of us.
---
Being the fourth son of a noble house means irrelevance.
Our eldest brother, Adrian, is heir. Cyrus, the second, is his shadow. Our sisters will marry into other houses, traded like jewels for alliances. My twin is the most magically talented. And me? I exist to fill a chair at dinners and remind my parents of symmetry.
Still, I train. Every night. Every freezing hour that my body will allow.
I sit beneath the glass terrace overlooking the Frost gardens, cross-legged in the snow, trying to feel the pull of Flere within me — the spark every child of Frost is born with. Sometimes I think I sense it, a slow, cold thrum in my chest, like a storm waiting to wake.
Other nights it's gone, leaving only silence.
Tomorrow is my tenth birthday — the day of my official Awakening.
In Zenovia, a child's tenth year determines everything. On that day, each of us stands before the Crystal of Origin. The crystal draws out our innate Flere and reveals our element. There are also rare cases of early awakening. Aren is a perfect example of that.
If I awaken to ice, I'll remain a Frost — a son worth keeping.
If I awaken to water, I'll be sold to House Aqua under the ancient treaty that binds our line.
If I awaken to anything else… no one says what happens, but everyone knows. Failure isn't recorded in the archives. It's erased.
My parents never speak of it aloud, but I see it in their eyes.
They used to hold me close; now they only hold expectations.
Their smiles have become formal, their words rehearsed.
Nobility doesn't allow weakness — not even the love of a parent.
---
Still, I refuse to surrender.
There's one chance left, beyond titles or blood: the Flere Master's Path — a trial held once every thirty-five years to choose the seven who embody the world's will. The next one will come when I'm nineteen. If I can survive long enough to reach it… I could carve my own place into history.
But none of that matters if I fail the Awakening.
---
Sometimes I remember the life before this one — the scent of oil and steel, the glow of neon on rain, the sharp pain of betrayal before the end.
That life ended in fear.
I won't die that way again.
If this world gave me a second chance, I'll fight for it.
I'll tear strength from the marrow of the world if I have to.
Even if my blood never freezes… I'll find a way to make it burn.
Tomorrow, the priests will bless the crystals.
The court will gather.
And I'll stand before the Origin Stone, ready to be judged by gods and men alike.
Maybe I'll rise. Maybe I'll fall. But tonight, under the twin moons of Zenovia, I whisper a promise to myself — one that will carry me through every wound, every failure, every lie to come:
> I will not be weak.
> I will not fade.
> I will master this world —
> even if it kills me first.