The last thing Arga knew was the groan of overstressed steel and the taste of concrete dust. A brilliant civil engineer, he had pinpointed the critical flaw in the bridge's support structure, a calculation his superiors had dismissed as too costly to address. "Theoretically sound, Arga, but impractical," the project manager had said, patting him on the shoulder with a condescending smile. "We build with budgets, not equations."
Their dismissal was the last thing he heard before the world collapsed on him. There was no light, no peace—just the crushing weight of corporate indifference and the final, futile scream of his own mind against the inevitable.
———
Consciousness returned not with a jolt, but as a slow, painful tide washing into a vessel that felt utterly alien, a cup too fragile to hold the ocean of his being.
The first thing he registered was the softness. The bed beneath him was impossibly plush, the sheets a smooth, cold silk against skin that felt thin, translucent, and strangely sensitive. The air was still and carried the faint, clean scents of lavender and polished oakwood—a stark, almost offensive contrast to the cacophony of diesel fumes, sweat, and dust that had defined his former life.
He tried to sit up, to assert some control over this new reality, and a wave of profound weakness slammed into him. It wasn't just fatigue; it was a deep-seated frailty that seemed to emanate from his very bones, forcing a ragged, pathetic gasp from his lips. This body was a prison of porcelain.
"Easy now, Young Master. Easy."
The voice was soft, feminine, and laced with a genuine concern that felt like a lifeline in the strangeness. He turned his head, a simple effort that felt Herculean, and saw her. A woman in a simple, neat maid's attire, her hair pulled into a strict but elegant bun. Her eyes—a kind, warm brown—watched him with an unwavering attention that held no pity, only a steady, quiet vigilance. She looked to be in her late thirties, her face lined not with age, but with a practiced patience.
"Where...? What is...?" he croaked, his throat a dry, raw desert. The voice that came out was too high, too young, and utterly unfamiliar.
"You are safe, Young Master Kael," she said, her movements efficient and gentle as she brought a carved wooden cup to his lips. The water was cool and blissfully soothing. "You are in your chambers. You've had... a particularly bad episode. The fever was quite high."
Kael. The name echoed in the hollows of his mind, a key turning in a rusty lock. With it came a flood of fractured, confusing memories that were not his own. A young boy with silver-grey hair, always watching from a distance as other children danced with shimmering, tangible light in their palms. A tall, imposing man with a gaze as cold and sharp as granite, looking down at him with unmasked disdain that made the boy feel smaller than an insect. The title they whispered behind his back, in halls too grand and conversations too hushed: The Mana Cripple.
A dizzying nausea, born of existential horror, washed over him. He was Arga, a man forged in the fires of logic and ambition. But he was also Kael, a ghost in his own life, a prince in a gilded cage. A defective.
As if summoned by the darkness of his new thoughts, the heavy oaken door to the chamber swung open with a sound that promised no warmth. The man from the memories stood there, silhouetted against the torchlight of the corridor. Duke Valerius himself. He was every bit as intimidating as the memories suggested, his posture ramrod straight, his face a masterfully carved mask of cold authority. He didn't enter the room so much as occupy it, his presence sucking the air from the space. A physician, a wiry man with a nervous twitch in his eye, scurried in behind him like a startled mouse.
The physician approached the bed, avoiding looking directly at Kael. His examination was swift, impersonal. He placed a cool hand on Kael's forehead, checked his pulse with detached efficiency, and muttered a few words under his breath, a simple diagnostic charm that made the air hum for a second.
"The fever has broken, Your Grace," the physician announced, turning to the Duke and bowing slightly. "His constitution remains... as it was. Frail. The mana channels are…" he hesitated, searching for a clinical term, "...non-conductive. Dormant."
The Duke's eyes, the same shade of steely grey as Kael's own, swept over the boy in the bed. There was no relief in that gaze, no paternal worry. Only a deep, simmering disappointment, a bottomless well of resentment that seemed older than Kael himself.
"See that he doesn't waste any more of the staff's time with these theatrics," the Duke said, his voice a low, cold rumble that offered no room for argument. "His... condition is a burden this House bears with enough difficulty. He would do well to remember his place and remain out of sight."
The words were a physical blow, perfectly mirroring the helpless fury Arga had felt on that collapsing bridge. Once again, he was a problem to be managed, an inconvenient cost on a balance sheet. An eyesore in a world that valued only pristine power.
Without another word, the Duke turned on his heel and left, his boots echoing on the stone floor. The physician offered a final, hurried bow and scrambled after him, leaving the room feeling vast, empty, and infinitely colder in their wake.
The maid—Elara, her name surfaced in his mind with a sudden, comforting clarity—let out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh. The tension in her shoulders relaxed a fraction, a subtle sign that the Duke's presence was a weight she too felt keenly. She moved to the window, drawing back a heavy velvet curtain to allow the pale afternoon light to filter in.
"You must not take his words to heart, Young Master Kael," she said softly, her back to him as she gazed out. Her voice was a balm against the Duke's frost. "The Duke carries… old scars. Your body is different, it's true. The world of mana is not one you can walk. But you are still a son of House Valerius. That counts for something, even if you cannot feel it yet."
*Different. A cripple. An embarrassment.* The words echoed Arga's own life of being the "impractical" genius. The frustration, a feeling as familiar to Arga as his own heartbeat, welled up inside Kael's frail body, a storm of indignation with no outlet. His gaze, sharpened by a lifetime of analyzing stress points and structural integrity, fell upon a simple, enchanted orb of light on his bedside table. It glowed with a soft, steady, magically sustained radiance.
In his past life, he would have seen a convenient lamp. Now, his new, inexplicable instincts screamed at him. He didn't just see light; he saw a structure. A flowing, intricate, but ultimately sloppy latticework of energy. It was a formula given physical form, and to his engineer's eye, it was riddled with inefficiencies—a supporting beam placed a few degrees off true, a circuit prone to catastrophic overload, a glaring design flaw waiting to happen. It was an insult to his sensibilities.
Driven by an impulse he didn't fully understand—a mix of Arga's need to prove a point and Kael's desperate desire to do something—he reached out a trembling hand.
"Young Master?" Elara made a small, concerned sound, turning from the window.
He didn't stop. His fingers, pale and slender, brushed the cool, smooth surface of the orb. He didn't push mana. He had none to give. He didn't cast a spell. Arga, the engineer, simply found the primary flaw in the design—the single weakest point in the truss, the keystone of this magical arch. He applied the slightest pressure of his will, a mental nudge precisely at that point of failure.
The orb flickered violently, its light winking in and out of existence in a frantic, stuttering dance. A faint sizzle, like fat on a fire, emanated from it. For a heart-stopping second, the room was plunged into a deeper shadow before the orb went completely, utterly dark, leaving a phantom afterimage burned into their vision.
Elara gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. But her eyes, when he dared to look at her, were not wide with fear. They were wide with stunned, dawning realization. She looked from the dead orb to his face, seeing not the feeble boy, but something else entirely.
Kael slumped back against the pillows, a crushing exhaustion washing over him a new. The small act had cost him more energy than a day's work on the construction site ever had. But beneath the smothering fatigue, a new, defiant ember glowed to life. The crushing weight of indifference had killed Arga. But here, in this gilded cage of a body, he had just done the impossible. He had deconstructed reality itself with a thought.
He hadn't built anything yet. The very idea seemed a distant dream in this frail form.
---
End of chapter 1....