The world, as Stars had understood it for the first twelve months of his life, was built on causality.
If he dropped a wooden block, it fell. If he touched the stone wall in winter, it leeched heat from his skin. Objects did not move unless acted upon. Light did not exist without a source. These were the foundational laws of the reality he was mapping.
But on a morning draped in the heavy blue of pre-dawn, the laws broke.
He was awake before the sun. Sleep was a necessity he indulged in only sparingly; his mind was too restless, a spinning engine that resented the downtime. He lay in his crib, listening to the house inhale. The silence was ending. He felt the vibrations in the floorboards—the rhythmic thrum of footsteps hurrying through the corridors. The servants were moving. The great machine of the Myers household was beginning its cycle.
The door to his nursery creaked open.
He did not cry out. He remained still, his breathing shallow, observing through the slit of half-closed eyelids. It was a maid, a young girl whose name he had not yet catalogued. She moved with the frantic energy of someone late for duty, shivering slightly in the chill of the room.
The oil lamps on the walls were dark, cold glass globes waiting for the morning ritual. Stars watched, expecting the usual tool—the strike of flint, the friction of a match, the transfer of fire from one source to another.
The girl did not reach for a match.
She stopped before the sconce nearest his crib. She took a breath, her posture shifting, her spine straightening. She raised a single hand, her index finger pointing at the wick.
The air around her hand warped.
Stars' eyes widened, abandoning the pretense of sleep. He saw it—a shimmer in the atmosphere, like heat rising from pavement, but concentrated at the tip of her finger. There was a sound, not a click or a scrape, but a low, resonant thrum, like a plucked string inside a deep well.
Snap.
A small, crimson spark did not strike the wick; it materialized from the air. It blossomed instantly into a steady, golden flame.
Stars gripped the bars of his crib, his knuckles white.
Impossible.
His mind reeled, frantically running calculations that returned error after error. There was no friction. There was no fuel source for the ignition. Energy had been created from nothing. Matter had been manipulated by... what? Will? Intent?
The girl moved to the next lamp. Snap. Another flame. Then another.
She was rewriting the rules of the universe with a gesture.
Stars stared at the flames. They looked normal—yellow converting oil to heat—but their origin was an anomaly. He realized then that his map of the world was woefully incomplete. There was a hidden layer, a sub-routine running beneath the physical world. A power that could bypass the laws of nature.
Magic. The word didn't exist in his vocabulary yet, but the concept settled into his mind as The Variable.
Before he could process this revelation, a shadow fell across the doorway.
The maid froze. The air in the room grew instantly heavier, dense with a pressure that made the newly lit flames flicker nervously.
"You are late, Martha."
The voice was not loud, but it carried the weight of a falling mountain.
An old man stepped into the room. This was the Head Butler. Stars had seen him before, a specter in a pristine black coat who hovered at the edge of his vision, but he had never focused on him. He was older than Darran, his hair the color of polished steel, combed back with severe precision. His face was a map of deep lines, but his eyes were sharp, devoid of the milky haze of age.
"I—I apologize, Mr. Greyson," the maid stammered, shrinking back. "The kindling in the kitchen was damp, I was delayed..."
"Excuses are a waste of breath, Martha. Efficiency is the currency of this house. Go."
The maid fled. The old man, Greyson, did not watch her go. He turned his gaze to the crib.
For the first time, Stars felt truly seen. When his parents looked at him, they saw a miracle, a child.
When Greyson looked at him, Stars felt like he was being scanned.
The Butler walked to the crib, his movements fluid and silent. There was no creaking of joints, no shuffling of feet. He moved like smoke.
Stars looked up at him, and his instincts—usually so analytical—screamed a warning. Danger. Power. Safety. It was a contradictory signal. This old man was terrifying. The air around him felt charged, humming with a frequency far more intense than the small spark the maid had conjured. If the maid held a candle, this man held a bonfire behind his ribs.
Yet, as Greyson reached out a gloved hand to adjust the blanket Stars had kicked off, the touch was impossibly gentle.
"Awake already, Young Master?" Greyson murmured.
Stars stared at the gloved hand. He sensed the potential for violence in those fingers, but also an absolute, unshakeable control.
"You have the eyes of the Patriarch," Greyson noted, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a secret pact. "But you are watching the lamps, not me."
The Butler glanced at the flickering light, then back to the boy. A corner of his mouth twitched upward —not a smile, but an acknowledgement.
"Curious about the Art, are we?" Greyson smoothed the blanket, his presence feeling like a shield wall erected around the crib. "Patience, Little Star. The world is full of invisible things. You will learn to command them all in time. But for now... I keep the wolves at bay."
He bowed, a sharp, perfect angle of servitude that somehow commanded more respect than a king's decree.
"Rest. I am here."
Greyson turned and stood by the door, a statue in the shadows. Stars watched him, his heart rate slowly returning to normal. He didn't understand what "The Art" was. He didn't know what "wolves" the Butler spoke of. But he understood two things with crystal clarity:
First, reality was malleable. Second, the old man in the black coat was the most dangerous thing in the house—and he belonged to Stars.