The wind clawed at the high tower like a restless spirit. Dust Tower creaked under its touch, the narrow windows whistling as the gusts slipped through. Kael crouched in the attic, arms around his knees, staring at a stone tile he'd cleared of debris hours ago. The glow of a dim mana lamp flickered beside him, casting his shadow long across the floor.
It was time.
He wiped the sweat from his brow, even though the air was cold. The sharp smell of old parchment, iron filings, and dried ink clung to the chamber, layered like the scattered notes around him. His knees ached from kneeling on stone, his fingers raw from scribing countless calculations, diagrams, and failed hypotheses into his notebook — the leather-bound journal he called Project Graviton.
But something had clicked today. The numbers made sense.
Or, at least… enough sense to risk testing.
He exhaled slowly and extended his hand toward the stone tile. "Let's see if the math survives contact with reality."
He visualized the equations in his head — not a spell chant, but a synthesis of gravitational potential energy and mass manipulation. Newton's laws formed the base; his modifications layered atop them like runes carved into raw logic. In his mind's eye, he conjured a region of increased spacetime curvature — localized and intensified.
A ripple passed through his chest, centered on the tiny black node within him. His Core Pulse — the cursed fragment of gravity itself — stirred.
He felt the familiar resistance. Gravity magic didn't flow like water or burn like fire. It pressed, pulled, resisted — a force that had to be negotiated, not wielded. Kael clenched his jaw and mentally pushed again.
The tile groaned.
His eyes widened.
It… dipped.
Just slightly — no more than a fraction of a centimeter. But the stone tile sank into the floor as if some invisible hand pressed down on it. The pressure in the room shifted, like air thickening around a thunderhead.
Kael's heart pounded.
"Gravipoint," he whispered, naming it aloud for the first time.
The effect lasted barely two seconds. Then the pressure snapped, the tile rebounding to its normal place with a faint pop. The spell collapsed like a deflated lung, and Kael slumped back, gasping.
He blinked, stunned by what he'd felt.
It had worked.
For the first time since awakening in this body, something had worked.
Kael dragged himself to the wall and leaned against it, chest rising and falling. "A localized increase in gravitational acceleration… just for a moment," he murmured, his voice trembling with exhilaration. "Maybe 1.5 times Earth's gravity. Radius: ten centimeters. Duration: two seconds. Mana cost... absurd."
He laughed softly — not out of joy, but relief. Cold, tired, desperate relief.
Not a prince. Not a warrior. Not even a proper mage by their standards.
But this… this was science. This was his.
And no one could take it from him.
Two Days Later
Kael stood in the attic again, the window shutters propped open with a broken chair leg. The wind roared outside, scattering loose parchment like birds taking flight. He ignored it all, focused instead on a glass vial balanced precariously on the edge of a warped wooden desk.
He reached out again — this time with greater confidence.
Focus the pull. Target a fixed coordinate. Minimal radius. Short burst.
"Gravipoint."
Mana surged, raw and unwieldy. He'd learned not to fight it, but to shape it — like setting initial conditions in a system and letting the math run its course. The air in front of him shimmered, distorted subtly like heat over asphalt.
The vial slammed against the desk, anchoring itself as though a lead weight had been placed atop it. The wind howled — but the vial held firm.
Kael released the spell, panting. The distortion vanished.
He stepped forward and inspected the surface beneath the vial. A faint dent. Splintered wood.
"Newton would've loved this," he muttered. "A force vector created by manipulating spacetime curvature, using mass as the intermediary. Gravity as a spell... not as an element."
He turned to his notes, scribbling:
Gravipoint v0.2 — Tactical application: anchoring objects under high wind or motion. Potential use in defensive positioning. Flaws: high mana consumption; short duration; limited radius. Further optimization required.
The mana drain was still brutal. He could barely manage two activations before collapsing with a headache. His core — small and underdeveloped — wasn't suited for heavy output. But the spell was a foothold.
Proof that gravity could be used. That the world was wrong.
That he wasn't cursed. Just… misread.
Later That Night
Kael lay awake in his cot, staring at the ceiling beams of the Dust Tower. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the stone, tracing faint silvery lines across the floor.
He thought of his brothers. Of their laughter when his Core Awakening had revealed the mark of gravity — a spiraling black swirl etched into the air like a collapsing star.
"Better to have no magic at all," one of them had sneered.
"Void-blood," another whispered, thinking Kael couldn't hear.
He remembered the royal tutor's glare. The courtiers' disgust. The servants' fear.
But none of them had tried to understand it. Gravity wasn't flashy or destructive. It didn't ignite or freeze or tear apart armies in dazzling displays of power. It was subtle. Constant. Inescapable.
It didn't ask for attention.
It simply was.
Kael rolled onto his side and pulled the journal close, fingers tracing the title he'd etched into the cover.
Project Graviton.
He whispered to the empty room, "They'll see. One day, they'll all see."
And as he drifted into a shallow, dreamless sleep, the thought circled in his mind — a spiral pulling everything toward it.
Not because of pride.
But because gravity, once set in motion, never stopped.
To be continued…