Being two years old was an exercise in frustration. My mind could calculate the trajectory of a falling leaf, but my hands still struggled to hold a spoon.
However, there was one advantage to being a toddler in a house of mercenaries: people assumed you were sleeping when your eyes were closed.
While Kael and Elena slept, I lay in my small wooden cot, staring into the darkness. I wasn't thinking about the warmth of the hearth or the taste of milk. I was focusing on the "static."
Ever since I arrived, I felt a low-frequency hum in the air. In my old world, this would have been background radiation or electrical interference. Here, it was the breath of the world itself. Mana.
According to the books I had "played" with, most humans had to be taught to feel it through years of meditation or combat. But I had a head start. I had died. I had felt the transition from "Something" to "Nothing," and that void was still inside me.
I held my small hand up in the moonlight.
If magic is just another form of logic, I thought, then it must have a source. A pressure point.
I didn't try to "summon" fire or light like the stories suggested. That felt too much like begging the world for a favor. Instead, I tried to pull the darkness toward me. I imagined the hole in my chest—the one left by the pavement—and I opened it.
The temperature in the room dropped.
The shadows in the corners of the nursery didn't just move; they stretched. They crawled toward my cot like ink flowing uphill. My heart hammered against my ribs—a tiny, fragile pump trying to handle an engine it wasn't built for.
Pressure. Density. Logic.
The air around my palm began to warp. A small, marble-sized sphere of absolute blackness manifested. It wasn't a ball of energy; it was a pocket of "Nothing." It consumed the moonlight.
I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my eyes. My nose began to bleed, the red drops looking black in the dim light. My toddler's body was screaming under the strain. I was a 5-watt bulb trying to hold a lightning bolt.
The sphere flickered and vanished. The shadows snapped back to their corners.
I slumped back against the straw mattress, gasping for air. My vision was swimming.
Too soon, I realized. The vessel is too weak.
"Aris?"
The floorboards creaked. Kael was standing in the doorway, his hand on the hilt of his dagger. He looked around the room, his eyes narrow. He could feel it—the lingering cold, the scent of ozone and copper.
"Strange," he muttered. He walked over to my cot and looked down.
I stayed perfectly still, my eyes closed, forcing my breathing to stay shallow and rhythmic. I felt his rough hand touch my forehead.
"You're freezing, little one," he whispered. He pulled the heavy wool blanket up to my chin. "Maybe the winter is coming early this year."
He stayed there for a long time, watching me. I could feel his gaze—a mixture of love and a growing, subconscious fear he couldn't name. He knew something was wrong with the atmosphere of this house, but he was a man of swords, not spirits. He chose to believe the lie.
I waited until he left and the door clicked shut.
I opened my eyes. The black sphere was gone, but the feeling remained. I didn't need a teacher. I didn't need a temple.
I just needed to grow.
In a world where Dragons ruled the sky and Vampires ruled the night, I had just discovered my own "Logic." It wasn't the magic of creation. It was the magic of the Fall.
I closed my eyes again, this time with a faint, cold smile.
Wait for me, I thought, looking toward the mountains where the "Top of the food chain" lived.