(Kael, Age 5 — Elyndria)
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Morning sunlight spilled across the Varos home like a golden blessing, warming the clay walls and gliding over the worn wooden floorboards. The little house sat at the edge of a quiet village in eastern Elyndria—far from capital intrigues, far from Solis, far from the blood-soaked fields where Kael had died in another life.
Here, the world smelled of fresh bread, wet earth, and peace.
A peace he knew wouldn't last.
Kael sat at the small wooden table, legs dangling far above the floor, staring at the bowl of porridge his mother had set before him. Mira Varos hummed as she worked, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, flour dusting her forearms from the morning's baking. To anyone else, she looked like a simple villager.
Kael knew better.
He'd seen the way she moved—precise, balanced, quiet.Seen the scars she hid beneath her sleeves.Seen how her gaze sharpened whenever a stranger passed through the village, measuring threat without ever seeming to stare.
His father was no different.
Outside, Taren Varos split firewood with the unhurried, efficient power of a man who had once commanded soldiers. The axe rose and fell in steady rhythm, each impact echoing through the yard like a heartbeat.
Kael watched them both with a strange ache in his chest.
He had never known parents in his last life. Only commanders. Only comrades. Only the distant approval of a king who had never once spoken his name.
But this man and woman…
They looked at him as if he were their whole world.
That terrified him more than dying ever had.
"Kael?" his mother said softly behind him. "You're very quiet today."
He blinked, realizing he'd been staring at the table for several minutes, porridge untouched and cooling. He forced himself to smile—an expression that still felt unfamiliar on his smaller face.
"Just thinking," he said.
His voice was soft and high, still strange to his own ears.
Mira's hand paused mid-motion. Her brows lifted in gentle surprise.
"Thinking? At this hour?" She laughed. "Most children your age think only of running outside before breakfast."
Kael managed a small shrug. "I like thinking."
"You think too much for someone who still loses his shoes," she teased, tapping his nose.
He let out a quiet huff. He didn't lose his shoes. He took them off on purpose, so he could feel the earth beneath his feet. He liked knowing the direction of the wind, the texture of the soil, the faint tremor of distant footsteps.
His senses were sharper than they had any right to be.
And they were getting sharper.
As if to prove it, his father's axe swung down outside—and Kael felt the impact travel up through the packed earth, into the foundation, along the table leg, into his bones.
Mira didn't react.
Kael's head snapped up.
Every day it grew harder to pretend.
He'd noticed it first a year ago—how he could hear conversations across the yard, or see insects crawling along the far wall without turning his head. At first, he'd assumed every five-year-old remembered battle formations, supply routes, and how to kill a man with a broken spear shaft.
The way the other children stared at him when he asked had quickly corrected that assumption.
Since then, he'd kept quiet.
He had promised the Architect he would rise.He hadn't promised to start by drawing attention to himself at age five.
Still, hiding was getting harder. Especially today.
"Kael," Mira said again, more gently now, "is something wrong?"
He hesitated.
He could lie. That would be easy.But the truth pushed up his throat like a rising tide.
"I heard something," he whispered.
Her expression shifted—alert, focused. The warrior beneath the mother surfaced in an instant.
"What did you hear?"
Kael opened his mouth, then faltered.
Because the truth was…
He didn't know how to explain it.
He hadn't heard footsteps or voices. It wasn't danger—at least, not in the ordinary sense.
It was something else.Something deep.Like the pulse of the world.
A faint hum drifting in and out of his awareness. Warm. Familiar.
Like a memory he hadn't lived yet.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "It was like… wind. Inside my head."
His mother blinked. "Wind?"
Kael nodded. "It was calling to me."
Mira studied him for a long moment, worry and wonder mingling in her eyes. She knelt in front of him, tucking a stray lock of dark-blue hair behind his ear.
"Kael," she murmured, "if anything ever frightens you—anything at all—you tell me. You don't have to be brave all the time."
I do, he thought.
Just not for the reasons she imagined.
Before he could answer, the door slid open and Taren stepped inside, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Morning, little storm," he said with a grin, ruffling Kael's hair.
Kael stiffened at the nickname—not because he disliked it, but because sometimes he wondered if they sensed something in him they couldn't name.
Taren set his axe against the wall. The blade rang softly as it touched stone.
Kael didn't just hear the sound. He felt it—vibration rippling across the floor, up the bench, into his spine.
He flinched.
Taren noticed. "What's wrong? Too loud?"
Kael swallowed. "Everything's loud."
The room went still.
"What do you mean?" Mira asked quietly.
This was it.
He could hide. Pretend nothing was wrong. Keep playing at being a normal child.
Or he could tell them the truth—and trust they wouldn't break under it.
He curled his small hands in his lap and looked up at them.
"I can hear things I shouldn't," he whispered. "See things I shouldn't. Feel… everything."
Mira and Taren shared a glance. Not fear. Not revulsion.
Understanding.
Taren slowly crouched until their eyes were level.
"Son," he said, voice low and steady, "can I ask you something?"
Kael nodded.
"When you feel all of this—does it hurt?"
"No," Kael said. "It's just loud. And big."
Taren's shoulders eased. He let out a slow breath.
Then, to Kael's surprise, he smiled.
"Then it's not something to fear."
Mira cupped Kael's cheek, thumb brushing his skin.
"Every child is different," she said softly. "Some walk early. Some talk early. Some think early." Her gaze softened even further. "Maybe you're meant to see the world more clearly than the rest of us."
Kael's throat tightened.
If only you knew, he thought.
Taren rose and ruffled his hair again. "Come outside after breakfast. I'll show you a breathing exercise my old master taught me. Helps focus the mind when everything feels… too much."
Kael blinked. "You'll… help me?"
His father's expression was something no commander had ever worn for him in his past life. Open. Steady. Unconditional.
"Of course," Taren said. "You're my son."
Something trembled and shifted inside Kael—fragile, unfamiliar.
Warm.
Safe.
A feeling battlefields had never given him.
The wind outside chose that moment to rise, slipping through the shutters, brushing the rafters. Kael felt it tug at something deep in his chest—light and electric, as if a sleeping part of him had reached back.
Mira glanced toward the window. "Storm coming?"
Taren frowned. "Sky was clear ten minutes ago."
Kael stared, breath catching.
He knew this feeling.
He knew that presence braided into the wind.
Not the Architect.
Something wilder. Older.
Something watching him.Waiting.
Calling.
The faint hum returned, stronger now—threaded through the breeze, brushing the back of his mind like a whispered promise.
Soon.
Kael's pulse quickened.
Five years old, sitting in a quiet kitchen in a peaceful village…
…and already the storm was beginning to answer him.
He didn't smile. Didn't gasp. Just watched the sky beyond the open window, where the light seemed to dim ever so slightly, as if some distant cloud no one else could see had passed before the sun.
Mira followed his gaze. "Kael… what are you looking at?"
He whispered:
"…Something that remembers me."