Drake learned early that mornings had a rhythm.
It began before the sun rose, when the village still belonged to shadows and sleep. The fire would crackle softly in the hearth, coaxed back to life by his father's practiced hands. Outside, birds would hesitate, as if waiting for permission to begin the day.
Drake often woke before either of his parents noticed. He would sit up slowly, listening.
The house was small. Every sound mattered.
The scrape of metal against stone.
The quiet cough his father tried to suppress.
The careful steps of his mother moving from room to room so she wouldn't wake him.
He liked those moments best—when the world existed without asking anything of him.
When he padded into the main room, his father was usually already at work. The man's back was broad but slightly hunched, shaped by years of leaning over benches and furnaces. His hair had begun to gray early, not from age, but from exhaustion.
"You're awake early," his father said one morning without looking up.
Drake nodded and sat on the low stool beside the workbench. He watched sparks leap as the hammer fell. Each strike was deliberate. There was no wasted motion.
"What are you making today?" Drake asked.
His father paused, examined the metal, then answered, "Something someone will break."
Drake tilted his head. "Then why make it?"
His father smiled faintly. "Because broken things still need to exist before they break."
Drake considered that.
As a god, he had created many things knowing they would fail. Civilizations. Systems. Even gods themselves. But failure had always been… distant.
Here, it was personal.
His father let Drake help when he could. Holding tools. Pumping bellows. Fetching water. When Drake made mistakes, his father never raised his voice.
Instead, he asked questions.
"What do you think went wrong?"
"Why did the metal crack there?"
"What would you change next time?"
Drake answered honestly—even when the answer was "I don't know."
"That's fine," his father would say. "Not knowing just means you haven't learned it yet."
Those words settled deep.
His mother's lessons were different.
Where his father shaped metal, his mother shaped people.
Villagers came at all hours—children with fevers, farmers with infected cuts, travelers worn thin by the road. Drake watched her work with limited mana, coaxing life back where she could, accepting failure where she could not.
Sometimes, she sent Drake away.
Sometimes, she let him stay.
He saw blood. Saw pain. Saw gratitude and grief intertwine in ways no divine equation could explain.
One evening, after a particularly long day, Drake found her sitting by the fire, hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had long gone cold.
"Does it hurt?" he asked quietly.
She looked up, surprised. "Does what hurt?"
"Helping people when you know you can't save them all."
She thought for a long time before answering.
"Yes," she said softly. "Every time."
"Then why—"
"Because it hurts more if I don't try."
That answer stayed with him longer than most truths he had learned as a god.
Drake grew older. Taller. Stronger.
He explored the world beyond the village. He followed dirt roads to nearby towns, listened to merchants argue over prices, watched adventurers boast of battles Drake could have ended with a thought.
Mana users fascinated him.
They struggled constantly against limits—born with ceilings they could never see, yet always pushed against. Some trained endlessly for small gains. Others gave up early and lived quietly.
A few—very few—burned brightly enough to crack their limits.
Drake felt mana differently.
It responded to him instantly, obedient and vast, like a sea pretending to be a pond. He never used it openly. When he trained, he trained as a human—muscle, balance, control.
At night, when storms gathered without rain, Drake sat by the window and watched lightning flicker behind clouds.
He never called it.
He never needed to.
Years passed in gentle cycles.
Until sickness returned.