Ezra spent the next few days playing a very dangerous game of "How much can I think before I fall over?"
The answer shifted by the hour.
Sometimes a thin breath of mana made the world cooperate: tidy numbers over falling toys, vectors sprouting from moving bodies, formulas stitching themselves to the edges of things. Other times he did the same thing and, minutes later, his vision smeared, his stomach rolled, and he woke hours later with Aerwyna hovering over him.
The ability wasn't stable.
On gentle days he could hold it close to an hour—if he tracked one or two variables, rested between tests, and kept greed on a leash.
On bad days, five minutes of overreach wrung him dry.
The first time he tried to track everyone in the training courtyard from Aerwyna's arms on a balcony, he lasted three minutes.
Three minutes of numbers.
Guards marching: mass, speed, impact from boots on stone. Practice dummies absorbing blows: transferred energy, rotational momentum off swinging swords. Spear arcs. Even the vibration in the wall under Aerwyna's feet.
Too much. Too fast.
He tried to hold it anyway.
Then he woke in his crib eighteen hours later with a skull-splitting headache and a furious mother.
At least it taught him the rules.
More targets meant more cost. More cost meant less time. Push too far and he lost the whole day.
He couldn't tell whether the fragility was permanent or just the six-month-old hardware. One pattern stayed consistent: after each crash, his "tank" came back slightly larger. The same load that wiped him out on day one left him only woozy by day five.
Mana pool rising. Duration stretching.
Slow.
His favorite testing ground was the private gardens.
When Aerwyna took him there—just the two of them, plus the politely distant guards—he had space to push without servants underfoot.
He toddled over the grass, wobbling but stubborn. The fountain gurgled behind him, scattering sunlight across his feet.
"All right," he muttered. "Let's see."
He pulled on his magic with care.
No rush. A trickle.
Warmth settled behind his eyes, a faint pressure behind the pupils.
He gave the ability one instruction.
Speed.
The garden stayed intact. No storm of symbols. No everywhere-at-once assault.
A single narrow arrow hovered over his chest as he moved. It shifted with each step. When he stopped, it shrank. When he lurched, it stretched and wobbled with his gait.
He took a few deliberate steps and watched it respond.
He almost flipped everything else on—force, heat, air resistance, the traces he'd glimpsed during his early disasters.
A quiet throb formed behind his eyes.
"Don't be stupid," he told himself.
Even this came with a drain, like water seeping through a hairline crack. Manageable. The garden stayed level. His vision stayed clean.
He tried another setting.
Only impact force.
The arrow vanished.
When he kicked a pebble, a small number flashed beside his foot—an estimate of strike force. When he drifted into a low stone border because he wasn't watching his path, a higher value blinked and faded. The world's verdict was clear enough.
He cycled through single variables.
Speed. Force. Distance.
He even asked for heat and got a faint haze hugging his skin.
I can segregate it, he realized. Turn things on and off.
That explained the early crashes. He'd been trying to watch everything.
He stopped in the middle of the lawn, breathing a little hard, and ran the comparison.
Full-spectrum experiments? Ten minutes before nausea.
Single-variable runs like this? He'd been at it close to an hour. Tired, but upright.
"A five-fold increase," he whispered. "Give or take."
He still hadn't named it. Naming a half-built machine felt like tempting fate.
Useful in a fight? he wondered. If I can estimate where something will be, not just where it is…
He closed his eyes and tried something new.
Instead of sight, he pushed his awareness outward the way he did when he swept a room with his Field. He felt the fountain, the hedges, the guards, Aerwyna's steady presence on the bench.
"Trial one," he murmured. "Numbers… on the feeling."
He tried to make the overlay attach to that vague sense. For a moment something twitched—an impression that the guard on the left weighed more than the one on the right—then it washed out.
Just intuition.
"Trial two," he said, closing his eyes tighter. "No sight. Only aura."
He felt the fountain again. He felt Aerwyna shift as she crossed one leg over the other. He tried to summon speed vectors and mass estimates to match the sensed shapes.
Nothing.
"It's like trying to count with my hands tied," he muttered, opening his eyes.
The gold scribbles snapped back near the moving water immediately, happy to offer velocities and angles.
Sight was the anchor.
"Fine," he said, swaying. "Lesson learned. Eyes first. Aura second."
He stayed upright another minute out of spite, then the tiredness rose all at once.
His legs folded.
He didn't hit the grass.
Aerwyna had been watching him. She crossed the lawn fast for someone in a gown and caught him before his face met the ground.
"Honestly, Ezra," she sighed, settling him against her shoulder. "You were fine a moment ago."
His head lolled in protest.
By the time they reached the nursery tower, he was half-asleep for real—baby fatigue stacked on magical strain.
Catalyna opened the door and dipped in a neat curtsey.
"Another long day for the young master?" she asked, eyes flicking over Ezra's limp form.
"He was crawling in the garden and simply stopped," Aerwyna said, sharper than she meant. "One moment he's scurrying about like a squirrel, the next he's—"
She cut herself off, lips pressed tight.
Catalyna kept her expression smooth.
"Are babies this sleepy all the time?" Aerwyna pressed. "I keep thinking I should drag him to a physician, then he wakes up and glares at me for fussing."
Ezra, half-conscious, caught it like distant thunder.
"Of course, Milady," Catalyna said. "Children his age have sudden rhythms. Bursts of energy. Sudden stops. The body takes what it needs. Sleep is when bones lengthen and muscles knit."
"But he was fine, and then he almost fell on his face," Aerwyna insisted. After a beat she lowered her voice. "It's as if something inside him just… drains."
"That means he is using it," Catalyna replied. "Whatever gifts he has. Stronger children burn harder. Allow him his rest. You will do him more harm dragging him to some dusty old man who'll poke him with smelly herbs."
Aerwyna huffed.
"I do hate physicians," she admitted.
"Everyone does," Catalyna said lightly. "Please, Milady. You fret yourself thin on enough things. Let this one be ordinary."
Aerwyna looked down at Ezra.
His lashes lay dark against his cheeks. His mouth had gone slack in a way it never did when he performed. His hand clutched her shoulder fabric even in sleep.
"Maybe," she said softly. "Maybe you're right."
She kept the rest to herself.
Ezra woke in the dark and knew it was late.
Night gave the keep a different texture. Daytime bustle dulled into slower echoes: wall guards' deliberate tread, the occasional clink of armor, wind sighing along stone.
Crib bars framed his view. Moonlight slanted across the floor.
Aerwyna's chair sat empty.
He turned his head.
Catalyna sat by the window instead, profile washed in silver, fingers loosely knitted in her lap.
Weird. No Aerwyna tonight.
It happened—late council sessions, paperwork, exhaustion—but he'd gotten used to waking to Aerwyna's steady breathing nearby. The absence left a wrong taste.
He pulled himself upright and gripped the rail for balance.
His body felt annoyingly awake.
Maybe if I drain my mana, I'll knock myself out again. That usually works.
He scowled at himself.
A healthy plan, Michael. Excellent habits.
A faint sound touched the outer wall.
Clink.
Catalyna stiffened, then rose with unhurried grace. She unlatched the window and opened it with practiced care.
Ezra let his eyes droop, performing sleep.
A gauntleted hand reached in from outside with a folded scrap of paper.
Not a casual visitor.
Catalyna took it. Their fingers brushed. A whisper followed—too soft even for Ezra to catch cleanly, just the cadence of a question and a short reply.
Then the hand withdrew.
Catalyna shut the window and tucked the note into her bodice before returning to her chair.
Ezra watched through lashes.
Secret letter in the middle of the night.
A moment of impulse rose—say something, report it, be useful.
He let it die.
She feeds me. She changes me. If she wants a life, that's hers. As long as no one is stabbing my parents, I'll mind my own.
Catalyna settled, posture relaxed again.
Good.
Back to the real problem.
He lay down. Then sat up again when his mind refused to quiet.
"All right," he whispered. "Trial four. Perception."
He closed his eyes and reached inward.
Mana gathered at the base of his skull, near the point where awareness seemed to spring from. He pushed gently and let it seep in.
The effect came like a slow tide.
Sound sharpened first.
A distant drip became a steady metronome. Cooling stone popped like faint knuckles. Catalyna's breathing separated into countable cycles.
He opened his eyes.
The world hadn't slowed.
It felt like it had more room.
Dust motes in the moonbeam crawled instead of flicking past. The curtain's sway turned smooth and drawn-out.
"It's working," he whispered.
His heartbeat stayed steady.
Between beats he had time to notice the rise of his chest, the creak of the crib, a guard outside shifting weight on the wall-walk.
Subjective time. Still useful.
Now came the dangerous part.
"Let's see if you can handle a friend," he muttered.
He invited the numbers back.
He thought of falling objects, the clean formulas from the library, and asked the world to show him the math on top of this stretched-out perception.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then faint gold lines crawled into place.
They clung to the crib edge, trying to shape estimates of height and distance. They flickered near the curtain, reaching for its arc.
His brain protested immediately.
The ache wasn't a dull throb; it stabbed behind his eyes. The perception buzz rose into a roar. The two effects amplified each other into something physical.
The mana leak turned into a flood.
"Stop," he hissed, gripping the mattress.
His fingers felt muffled, like they'd dipped into cold mud. His hand closed a half-beat after his mind demanded it.
Too much.
He cut both effects, slamming mental doors on the flow.
The gold withdrew. The air's sharpness dulled. Sound blended back into the night.
His stomach heaved once, then settled.
He lay there, panting, muscles trembling.
"Twenty seconds," he muttered. "Maybe."
That was all he'd managed—an overloaded overlap before his body delivered a verdict.
"I can't run both at full strength," he whispered. "Not yet."
He flopped onto his back and let sleep take him. This time it came honest—fast and heavy.
Morning brought light, bread, and guilt.
Aerwyna scooped him up the moment she saw him sitting in the crib. Worry sat plain on her face.
"Ezra," she scolded gently, brushing hair from his forehead. "Why do you always look as if you've fought a war in your sleep?"
"I'm fine," he mumbled into her shoulder.
"You faint," she reminded him as she walked. "You go from laughing to nothing. Try to be more careful when you play. I do not want to explain to your father that our son has managed to knock himself unconscious without leaving the room."
"Yes, Mother," he said.
He let her keep the simpler story.
For now.
The library welcomed them with its usual quiet.
High windows poured sunlight across the polished floor. The smell of parchment and ink wrapped around Ezra.
Reitz was elsewhere. Aerwyna took her usual end of the long table, already working through ledgers.
Ezra crawled onto his cushion, sat back on his heels, and stared at the still world.
Motion is useful. What about what doesn't move?
He picked up the brass paperweight. Solid. Familiar. He set it down and drew a careful breath.
"All right," he said softly. "Show me the numbers."
A thin thread of mana slid behind his eyes.
The paperweight fuzzed, then snapped into sharp focus.
A cluster of symbols appeared above it.
Weight. Volume. Density.
The glyphs didn't match anything he'd grown up with, but his mind translated: about half a kilo, slightly denser than common iron, occupying a volume that fit.
He turned it and watched the figures adjust by fractions, then settle.
I don't need a scale, he thought. Or rulers. Just eyes and this.
He tried the inkwell.
Weight. Volume.
Then he pushed.
Chemical. Show me what you're made of.
Nothing changed.
The numbers stayed broad: heavy, small, full.
"Of course," he muttered. "One step at a time."
He asked the table for length.
4.2-something.
The unit marker fuzzed, refusing to resolve into anything he trusted.
Right. Local measurements.
The Empire's habits still made him want to flip the table. Strides and stones and finger-widths. Base twelve here, base sixty there. All glued together by tradition.
"How do you build anything like this?" he whispered.
The castle existing answered for them: carefully, and with a lot of eyeballing.
He decided he'd impose his own frame.
He pictured the lengths in meters and centimeters.
The numbers adjusted—imperfect, but closer to something he could use. His brain filled gaps, nudging approximations into place.
It wasn't the ability doing the translation.
It was him.
"It's using what I already know," he realized. "Plugging into the overlay."
He didn't have every constant anymore. Big chunks of advanced math sat just out of reach, like a word that refused to surface. But the basics held.
Gravity. Simple mechanics. Rough densities.
Enough.
He kept playing—chair leg, book, candle stub—until strain sharpened behind his eyes and the numbers began to wobble.
He stopped.
"Overdoing it in front of Mother would be awkward," he told himself.
His palm rested on the paperweight.
He still hadn't named the ability.
Calling it "the numbers thing" was getting old.
"Augmented… Mathematical…" he murmured. "…Processing."
It fit.
Augmented: something fed him data beyond sight.
Mathematical: it answered in quantities, not vibes.
Processing: it lived in his skull, filtered through what he understood.
"AMP," he said softly.
Small. Sharp. Private.
At the far end of the table, Aerwyna looked up.
"What are you smiling at?" she asked, amused.
Ezra blinked and gave her the safest answer.
"Playing, Mama," he said.
She softened.
"Well," she said, "play quietly. Some of us are trying to keep this House from descending into chaos."
"Yes, Mother," he replied.
He lowered his gaze again, fingers tracing the paperweight's edge.
AMP.
It still hurt to use. It still dropped him when he pushed too far. But it gave him something he hadn't seen anyone else reach for.
A way to see the bones under reality's skin.
Numbers on falling things. Weight on still things. A measure of predictability in a world where men made fire from empty hands and babies got launched into ceilings by touching the wrong stone.
It wasn't fire.
It wasn't water.
But it was his.
And for now, that was enough.