Time, Kaelan learned, moved differently when trapped in an infant's body.
Days bled into weeks, marked by feeding, sleeping, and the overwhelming tyranny of physical needs. His mind, a sharp blade honed on the whetstone of a darker world, was sheathed in soft, uncooperative flesh. It was a special kind of torture. He could observe, analyze, and catalog with near-perfect recall, but he could not speak, could not walk, could not even control his own bladder.
He became a student of shadows and murmurs.
His nursery was a small room adjacent to his parents' chamber in Vance Hold. The "hold" was a grand term for a fortified stone manor house on the edge of the Verdant Marches, the wild, forested borderlands of Veridia. From his crib, Kaelan memorized the cracks in the ceiling mortar, the path of sunlight across the rough-hewn floor, the way dust motes danced in the evening light from the single narrow window.
And he listened.
"The harvest was poor again," Gareth's voice rumbled through the wall one night, thick with frustration. "Lord Bracken's tithe collector didn't even blink at the shortfall. Just added it to the debt."
"We'll manage, my love," Elara's voice, softer but threaded with steel. "The ember-root from the forest will fetch a price in Riverbend. My father's contacts…"
"Your father's contacts see our marriage as his disgrace," Gareth cut in, not unkindly, but with weary finality. "We are on our own, Elara. A knight with more honor than land, and a merchant's daughter who traded ledgers for a lance. The world smiles on neither."
Kaelan stored the information. Financial precariousness. Social marginalization. Debt to a local lord. Threats were not always wielded with knives. Sometimes they came as parchment and ink, a slow bleed instead of a quick cut.
The household was small. Aside from his parents, there were his two older brothers. Caden, eight, with Gareth's serious eyes and a wooden practice sword permanently in hand. And Tomas, six, a whirlwind of scraped knees and boundless curiosity who liked to poke Kaelan's nose and make silly faces. Kaelan endured it with what he hoped passed for infantile placidity. There was also Old Hilda, the cook and de facto housekeeper, whose joints creaked louder than the floorboards, and Brandt, a grizzled former man-at-arms who served as groundskeeper and Gareth's only retainer.
It was a house perched on the edge of something. Not just the wilderness, but oblivion.
The world beyond his room came in fragments. Servants from the nearby village spoke of "mana-lights" in the capital, of "aura-charged" knights who could leap castle walls. Gareth trained Caden in the muddy yard, drills of thrust and parry that were brutally practical, not elegant. Once, Kaelan saw Brandt split a thick log with a single, grunting axe blow, the wood shearing apart as if made of parchment. The old man had then grimaced, rubbing his shoulder. "Aura's not what it was," he'd muttered to Hilda. "Mages get all the glory, but it's aura that keeps the walls standing when the Marches stir."
Mana. Aura. The words were keys. Power systems. The levers of this world.
Kaelan's greatest source of intelligence, however, was his mother.
Elara Vance, née Torren, was a puzzle. She had the gentle hands of a noble lady, but her eyes held the calculating sharpness of the merchant house she'd left behind. She would sing him lullabies of heroic sagas, her voice sweet, but the tales were always of clever heroes who used wit over strength, who found loopholes in prophecies and outmaneuvered dragons with trade agreements.
She also kept a small, locked ledger.
Kaelan saw it only once, when she thought him asleep. She'd taken it from a hidden compartment in her jewelry box (a meager collection of copper and river-pearls) and pored over it by candlelight, her brow furrowed. Her fingers traced columns of numbers, her lips moving silently. It was the look of a general surveying a map of a desperate battle. The household's finances. Their defense.
This woman was not just a mother. She was a strategist, trapped in a world that valued her husband's sword-arm more than her sharp mind. A spark of recognition flickered in Kaelan's soul. He understood being undervalued. Being a tool others misunderstood.
One afternoon, when Kaelan was approximately six months old by his estimation, a visitor came. The air in the hold changed. Hilda's usual grumbling ceased. Brandt stood a little straighter by the gate. Gareth wore his one good tunic.
Lord Kevan Bracken's tax collector was a thin man with a face like a stretched ledger himself, pale and lined with columns of permanent disapproval. He smelled of ink and mild contempt.
"The tithe remains in arrears, Sir Gareth," the man said, not bothering to sit. He held a scroll like a magistrate's sentence.
"The frost came early, Master Rell. The wheat—"
"—is your concern, not Lord Bracken's. His concern is the defense of the Marches, which your land is meant to help fund." Rell's eyes swept the great hall, lingering on the bare stone, the simple tapestries, the fireplace that held more ash than wood. His gaze fell on Elara, who stood silently beside Gareth, holding Kaelan. "Perhaps simpler living arrangements would ease your burdens."
The insult was as clear as it was cruel. Send your wife and newborn away. Live like the bachelor knight you should have remained.
Gareth's knuckles went white on the back of his chair. A muscle ticked in his jaw. Kaelan felt Elara's arms tighten around him, a minuscule tremor running through her. He saw the look that passed between his parents—a silent conversation of fury, fear, and helplessness.
In that moment, something cold and old settled within Kaelan. It was the same calm that descended when he'd faced Greer in the warehouse. A target had been identified. A threat assessed.
Master Rell. Agent of Lord Bracken. Financial pressure point. Emotional terrorist.
The man was not a monster in the way Greer had been. His evil was bureaucratic, genteel. But he was a threat to the warmth. To the fragile stability of this house. He sought to unravel the threads of this new life Kaelan was clinging to.
As Rell turned to leave, his cloak swirling, his eyes momentarily met Kaelan's. The collector offered a thin, perfunctory smile, the kind given to livestock.
Kaelan did not smile back. He stared with the flat, unblinking gaze of his previous life. The gaze that had measured distances to arteries, calculated angles of incision, assessed pain thresholds.
For a fraction of a second, Rell's step faltered. The smug assurance on his face flickered, replaced by a faint, inexplicable unease. He looked away quickly, clearing his throat, and strode out faster than he had entered.
Elara looked down at Kaelan, her brow slightly furrowed. She brushed a finger over his cheek. "You gave that awful man quite a look, my little owl," she whispered, a ghost of amusement in her voice.
Inside his infant prison, Kaelan's mind was a whirlwind of cold calculation. He had no strength, no voice, no power. But he had his mind. And he had his patience.
He watched the door close behind Master Rell, the echo of the man's steps fading.
Never again, the vow whispered in the silence of his soul.
But the path to strength was a long one. For now, he was a silent observer. A student. Gathering every scrap of information, every weakness, every name.
He would learn the rules of this world. He would learn its power. And when the time came, he would apply his own kind of audit.
The ledger of House Vance would not be closed by the likes of Master Rell.
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End of Chapter 2
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