Age: 1 year and 3 months
The thread didn't move.
Arthur sat cross-legged on the cold marble tile, tucked beneath the great central table of the Light family's private library, one candle lit beside him. He held a small stick of blackened wood between two fingers like a wand, pointing it at a golden filament floating just out of reach. He didn't blink.
He'd been trying for half an hour.
No reaction.
Not to his breath, not to his hand, not to his voice.
The thread simply drifted through the air like a slow ribbon of sunlight trapped in a world no one else could see.
He lowered the stick with a sigh. "Okay… you win. Again."
He leaned back against the carved leg of the table and looked upward at the vaulted ceiling. Even from this low angle, he could still see the edge of one of the stained glass windows, its colored light spilling in patterns over the shelves. The golden threads moved gently in the beams, unaffected by the breeze, untouched by time.
They're always gold, Arthur thought. Why not red? Or blue? What makes gold so special?
He glanced down at his journal—an unbound stack of rough-cut parchment he'd hidden inside a gutted atlas no one ever touched. His handwriting had improved; it no longer looked like a drunk squirrel had wielded the quill. There were labeled sketches now—simplified, symbolic.
He tapped the paper lightly with the charred stick.
"Let's call that one a 'Drifter,'" he muttered. "Not very original, but... you do drift. Constantly. Uselessly."
The Drifter didn't seem offended. It floated a few feet overhead, flickering slightly as it passed over a row of dusty books.
Arthur drew a soft circle around it on the page and scribbled:
DRIFTER TYPE – Appears randomly. No fixed anchor. Unaffected by breath, motion, voice. Doesn't respond to intention. Observed for 14 minutes today. No change.
He paused. Stared at the page.
Then he added:
Still no understanding of why.
It had been like this for months now.
He came here every afternoon after his tutors gave up trying to teach him the Light family's version of "proper" boyhood. Darian trained with swords. Arthur trained with silence.
He had watched the threads appear and vanish, spin and flicker, change speed and shape—sometimes thick, sometimes hair-thin—but never once had he made one move by choice. Not truly. Not without wondering afterward if he had just imagined it.
And still no one else saw them.
Not his tutors. Not the bishop. Not even his mother. She only saw a quiet child with golden eyes who asked too many questions and spoke too little.
They called him gifted. Or strange. Or worse, "touched."
But none of them ever looked up and saw the glowing threads that hung like secrets in the air above them.
Arthur picked up a second page from his hidden stack and unfolded it carefully. It contained a grid—nine squares, labeled with shapes. In the center was a simple stick figure of a person. Surrounding it were nine hand-drawn arrows showing the directions in which he had seen threads enter or leave a space.
"North-facing windows seem to let more of you in," he muttered. "Or maybe it's the air. You do float more when it's cold…"
He trailed off, watching the thread above him drift ever so slightly to the left. His eyes narrowed.
"…or maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see."
He hated that thought.
He hated not knowing.
He hated having something no one else could understand.
Most of all, he hated that he might be wrong about all of it.
"I don't even know what you are," he whispered aloud, slowly and clearly. "Are you part of this world? Or… are you leaking in from somewhere else?"
The silence pressed in around him.
His voice still felt strange in the air. He almost never spoke out loud, not unless he was completely alone. He preferred his inner thoughts—quiet, careful, shielded.
But tonight, the words slipped out like an itch being scratched.
"Are you alive?" he whispered again. "Are you even real? Or did that bastard god just curse me with hallucinations?"
He waited. Nothing moved.
The thread continued its slow arc across the air.
Arthur tilted his head against the table leg and closed his eyes.
"I don't know what you are," he repeated more softly. "But I'm going to find out."
He stayed under the table for a long time.
Eventually, he tried a new test: drawing a spiral in soot on the page, placing the candle in its center, and staring at it for ten minutes straight to see if the threads bent toward the light.
They didn't.
He wrote it down anyway. His journal was already full of failed attempts—chanted words, held breath, ink sigils, even copied prayers. Nothing ever changed the threads.
But not reacting was still a kind of reaction.
And that meant data.
Later that evening, the bell in the far courtyard tower rang—four soft tolls. Dinner hour.
Arthur sighed, blew out his candle, and gently tucked the pages back into their hiding place.
He stood slowly. His legs were steadier now—almost normal for a child his age. He could walk, even run if he tried, but it took effort. He still stumbled sometimes. No one ever saw.
He reached for the table edge and pulled himself up, then looked one last time at the thread hovering by the window.
Still there.
Still gold.
Still silent.
"…One day," he whispered.
Then turned and walked toward the hall—quiet, unnoticed, and unsatisfied.
Age: 1 year and 4 months
Arthur walked softly along the inner edge of the hallway, fingertips brushing the cool marble wall as he went. His steps were slow, deliberate, and silent—more measured than any toddler's should be.
He passed a pair of maids rounding a corner just ahead. One gave a small start upon seeing him and quickly muttered something under her breath.
The other slowed to watch him, eyes narrowing ever so slightly as he passed.
Arthur kept his face neutral, eyes low.
He didn't miss how they whispered once they thought he was out of earshot.
"He doesn't even blink when you look at him."
"It's those eyes. They're not natural."
"The little lord gives me chills sometimes, like he's watching your thoughts before you say 'em."
The Light Estate had grown warmer as spring drew closer, but Arthur felt colder than ever.
Since his birthday, he had only become more talkative in private—never around others. But that hadn't stopped rumors. One slip. One overheard sentence from the library weeks ago had made its rounds.
Now, every noble who visited looked at him with that same expression—a mix of politeness, curiosity… and a touch of fear.
Even his tutors had begun treating him differently.
This morning, his history tutor, a square-jawed man named Master Fenlor, had quizzed him on the founding dates of the current royal line. Arthur answered perfectly—casually, even, as if the answers were obvious.
Fenlor blinked. "You memorized those?"
Arthur shrugged. "You said them yesterday. I listened."
"…You're not supposed to understand them yet," the man muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
The lesson ended early.
Darian noticed too.
Arthur's older brother had, until recently, treated him with the same disinterest most older siblings reserved for new pets. Now, though, his tone was cutting.
In passing, Arthur had heard him laugh with a cousin from the western branch of the Light family.
"He doesn't run. Doesn't spar. Doesn't talk like a real kid. He just sits around staring at things. It's like he's broken. Or possessed."
The cousin replied, "He has your eyes, doesn't he?"
"No," Darian said, flatly. "He has stars for eyes."
They both laughed.
Arthur, hidden around the corner, simply closed his notebook.
That evening, Lady Fionne entered his room carrying a silver brush and a folded sash. Her hair was undone for once, loose around her shoulders. She sat beside him on the cushioned reading bench, gently guiding him into her lap.
"Your hair's getting longer," she said. "It's fine like spider silk. You'll have to let it grow out properly. The court loves a boy with golden hair and grace."
Arthur let her brush it in silence.
After a few minutes, she added, "The servants say you've been walking alone again."
"I like the library," Arthur said softly. "It's quiet."
"Too quiet?"
"No. Just… less full of people who think I'm strange."
She paused, hand resting lightly on his head.
"You are strange," she said honestly, but without malice. "You always have been."
Arthur looked up at her, surprised.
"But that's not bad," she continued. "It just means you're meant to be different. Different things are often misunderstood."
Arthur turned his gaze toward the window.
A thin golden thread drifted past the glass.
Misunderstood, he thought. Is that what I am? Or just wrong?
"I'm trying," he said aloud.
Fionne blinked. "Trying?"
"To… figure things out. Understand what I'm seeing."
"What are you seeing?"
Arthur hesitated. He couldn't tell her. Not yet.
He fumbled for a half-truth. "Patterns. In the way people move. In the way things… change."
Fionne said nothing for a long time.
Then, gently, she resumed brushing.
"You don't need to understand everything now, little one," she murmured. "Just don't lose that curiosity. It's the brightest thing about you."
Arthur didn't respond.
But he watched the golden thread slide silently behind her shoulder.
Later that night, Arthur sat in his hidden corner of the library, flipping through an illustrated children's book meant for noble heirs. It was filled with stories of saints and kings, stories passed off as history but lacking substance.
He held the book open to a page showing the "First Sword of the Empire"—a man dressed in gleaming silver armor, standing over a battlefield, holding a weapon that glowed.
Not with magic.
Just with glory.
No mention of mana. No spell. No light save for steel.
He stared at it for a long time.
"They don't even know what they're missing," he whispered.
He closed the book and pulled out his diagrams.
In his notes:
Golden threads appeared more often in quiet, empty spaces.
They clustered faintly in corners or near old books.
No person ever reacted to one. Not once.
They did not respond to heat, light, or speech—except on rare, uncertain occasions.
He stared at the sketches.
His eyes were heavy.
His chest felt tight.
What if it's not magic? What if I really am the only one seeing this?
He put his face in his hands.
The silence of the room pressed in again, patient and endless.
Age: 1 year and 9 months
Arthur stared at the page in front of him and frowned.
It was a mess.
Lines, loops, spirals, a dozen half-formed ideas connected by hasty arrows. The more he studied it, the more it looked like a child's daydream scribbled over a real thought. The central word circled in ink—THREADS—mocked him from the center.
He sat back on the padded stool in his library alcove, exhaling sharply through his nose. A golden strand hung above his head, drifting lazily toward the edge of the bookshelf. It pulsed once—faint, rhythmic, like a heartbeat out of sync with his own.
It always looked like it was about to do something.
But it never did.
He leaned forward again and muttered, "Alright. Let's start over."
His star-shaped pupils shimmered slightly in the candlelight as he scribbled down three words:
Drifter
Anchor
Pulse-type
"Drifter" was self-explanatory—most of the threads wandered. "Anchor" referred to the ones he'd seen that lingered around objects longer than others. "Pulse-type"… well, he wasn't sure. But sometimes a thread shimmered slightly when he spoke near it. Or thought near it. Or maybe that was just his own reflection fooling him.
He glanced up again at the floating strand.
"Do you react to voice?" he whispered.
It didn't move.
He furrowed his brow and leaned closer.
"I'm talking to you. Can you hear me?"
Still nothing.
Arthur exhaled and let the quill clatter against the wooden table. "No answers," he muttered. "Not even wrong answers."
His throat tightened. He hated how lonely it made him feel.
Later that day, in the upper garden of the estate, he sat on a stone bench with a slate and chalk, drawing rough geometric models in silence. A maid had brought him here to "play" while Lady Fionne met with visiting nobles.
The sky was blue. The air warm. Birds called gently from trees.
Arthur barely noticed.
He was too focused on a theory that was already falling apart.
He'd noticed threads converging near strong emotion—anger, joy, grief. But there was no consistency. Sometimes they responded. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they floated directly through people as though they didn't exist.
He scrawled two words in a corner of the slate:
Not logical.
A voice broke his concentration.
"Playing scholar again?"
Arthur didn't need to look up.
Darian Light, now thirteen, stood a few steps away, arms folded, flanked by a pair of younger cousins—Leon and Rasia, both around ten. Their tunics were neatly pressed. Darian had a wooden practice sword slung over his shoulder like a war trophy.
Arthur said nothing.
Darian stepped closer.
"You know, scribbling on rocks doesn't make you smarter," he said. "But I guess it gives people something to laugh at."
Arthur closed the slate and stood slowly.
"I wasn't trying to impress anyone."
"Good," Darian smirked. "Because no one's impressed. They think you're soft."
"I'm not trying to be like you."
Darian's smile stiffened. "No, you're not. You're not trying to be anything. Not a fighter. Not a speaker. Just a little shadow."
Arthur stared at him.
Darian walked closer, lowering his voice. "Mother dotes on you like you're some golden miracle. But the others? They think there's something wrong with you."
Arthur's jaw clenched. "Maybe there is."
Darian blinked, surprised.
Arthur continued, tone quiet but sharp, "Better broken and thinking than whole and empty."
A sharp silence fell.
Even the birds seemed to pause.
Darian's fingers twitched near the hilt of his wooden sword—but he didn't draw.
"You're lucky I don't waste time on weird little brats," he muttered.
Arthur didn't respond. Just picked up his slate and walked past.
Back in the library that night, Arthur sat under the same alcove, slate beside him, a faint mark still on the corner from when Darian's foot had "accidentally" kicked it earlier.
He stared at the pages of his notes.
So many pages.
So little progress.
The golden threads swirled in the high space above, utterly unchanged by the conflict earlier. Untouched by fear or anger. Or curiosity.
"You don't care about anything, do you?" Arthur said aloud. "You're just… there."
He pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. He felt hot.
Frustrated.
"You're like wind. Or smoke. Or some... leftover of the world's breath."
He stood abruptly, reached up toward one of the threads—and clenched his hand.
Empty.
Always empty.
He sat back down, breathing hard.
"Why gold?" he whispered, voice smaller now. "Why not any other color?"
The words hit the air like lead.
He looked down at his hands. "What am I missing?"
He opened his journal again and began writing with a shaking hand:
No reaction to voice. No consistency with breath. Light only affects some types. Still no proof these things are magical.
What if they're natural? What if this is normal, and I'm the one broken?
He paused.
Or worse—what if they're not real?
He slammed the quill down, ink splattering across the page.
"No," he hissed. "No. They're real. They have to be."
A golden thread drifted across the candlelight, softly pulsing, ignorant of the fury beneath it.
Arthur just stared.
Age: 2 to 3 years old (leading up to 3rd birthday)
The thread hovered just above his open palm.
Arthur sat motionless beneath a dim, arched window near the old chapel wing—an area most of the estate forgot existed. Dust motes floated in sunbeams cutting through stained glass. The stone was cold under his legs, and his body ached from holding the same position for too long.
But he didn't move.
The thread quivered faintly. Not at his hand. Not at his thoughts.
At nothing.
He watched it with growing detachment. Not anger. Not even frustration anymore.
Just... exhaustion.
It was his third attempt today. The fiftieth this month. Hundreds this year.
It never changed.
The world moved forward.
Arthur watched from its margins.
He had stopped sharing observations with anyone but his journal. No one listened. No one understood. Even his mother, gentle as she was, seemed more worried about his health than his brilliance.
She'd smile and stroke his hair when he muttered strange questions under his breath, but she never answered.
She couldn't.
At age two, he'd already memorized every noble house's crest from the family archives. He could recite them backwards. He could identify every known region of the kingdom by their banner's colors.
His tutors praised him less for it than they feared him for it.
Master Fenlor had begun attending lessons with another aide present—"to help manage materials," he claimed.
But Arthur saw the look in his eyes when he asked, "Why is there no mention of invisible forces in any natural philosophy?"
The man had paled, stammered, and changed the subject.
In the dining hall, he sat quietly while the others laughed. He didn't understand the humor anymore. Most of it was just social positioning, banter about who was getting posted where, who was marrying whom.
Darian had stopped mocking him aloud. Now he just ignored him completely.
That was fine.
It was cleaner that way.
The golden threads still visited him.
Mostly in quiet places.
He tracked them obsessively.
He'd begun calling his system "Threadmarks"—an evolving list of thread types and their locations. One page in his notebook was a full estate map, annotated with where threads clustered most: chapel windows, deep corners of the library, certain hallways during storms.
He still had no idea what any of it meant.
Every time he thought he was close to a breakthrough, the threads would act differently. Or simply vanish.
"I don't get it," he whispered one afternoon while crouched behind a tapestry near the east hall. "You react to nothing. You follow no rule. You glow for no reason."
His voice was older now, but still small.
"I've tried everything. Patterns. Breath. Light. Movement. Words. Nothing works. So what do you want?"
He looked at his own reflection in the polished brass of a discarded candleplate.
Star-shaped pupils stared back at him.
"Or is that it?" he whispered. "You don't want anything. You're just... here. Like wind. Like rot. Like a lie."
The thread drifted away as if in answer.
Arthur's Third Birthday passed without celebration.
At least, not the kind Darian had for his twelfth.
There was a banquet for Arthur, yes. Flowers, guests, a ceremonial gift from the local baron: a gold-trimmed cloak that weighed more than Arthur did. A bishop came to bless him again and muttered something about "star-touched children" before leaving early.
Arthur stood beside his mother on the ceremonial dais.
Darian stood beside their father.
Not a word was spoken between the brothers.
That night, after the guests had gone, and the kitchen fire had burned down to embers, Arthur returned to the library alone.
He stood in the center of the stone room, surrounded by towering shelves and ghost-light from the moon. Golden threads floated all around him—dozens. Maybe more.
He said nothing.
He didn't try to touch them.
He just looked up.
And asked softly:
"Is this it? Is this all there is?"
No answer came.
Only the slow, graceful swirl of threads above.
He sat down.
Opened his journal.
And wrote:
Three years alive.
Still no spell.
Still no reaction.
Still no truth.
He closed the book and lay back on the floor, eyes open, watching the ceiling fade into darkness.
"I don't want power. I just want to know why."
And the threads continued their silent dance above him.
Age: 3 to nearly 5 years old
The quill snapped in half.
Arthur stared at the broken stem in his hand, ink blotting across the parchment like spilled blood. The diagram he'd been drawing — a new theory he'd dared to call "flow alignment structure" — was now ruined. Again.
He sat alone in the observatory alcove of the family library, the only place where he could think without eyes on him. He was older now, taller, his balance steady, his fingers stronger. But the threads still treated him the same way they always had:
Like a ghost.
Like a stranger.
Like someone who didn't belong.
He pressed his palm into his eyes until white sparks danced behind his lids.
Why are you still doing this?
Why do you keep expecting something to change?
You've been trying for years.
Years.
He lowered his hand and opened his eyes again.
A dozen golden threads floated overhead, weaving through the air in their lazy, beautiful patterns — utterly indifferent to the boy sitting beneath them.
When he was younger, they'd felt like a secret gift. Something given only to him. A mystery left behind by a forgotten world.
But now?
They felt like a mockery.
"Why gold?" he asked aloud.
His voice was low, steady, but frayed at the edges. No longer the soft voice of a child wondering about stars, but the brittle, biting tone of someone who'd asked too many times.
"Why not silver? Or blue? Why not fire or ice or blood?"
No answer.
"Why do you drift through my world like silk and never touch anything? Why do you come near me and do nothing?"
Still nothing.
Arthur stood abruptly, his chair screeching across the stone. The journal he'd been filling for nearly four years fell from the table with a dull flap.
"Why are you here?" he snapped, louder now. "What's the point?!"
His voice echoed through the empty library.
A single thread pulsed softly.
Not in response.
Just in rhythm.
He picked up the fallen journal, flipped it open to the earliest pages, and began to read through them.
Threadmark Alpha: Candlelight test – failed
Threadmark Delta: Controlled breath patterning – failed
Threadmark Theta: Emotion-induced proximity – inconclusive
Page after page of questions with no answers.
Drawings. Diagrams. Thought webs. Maps.
Not one successful result.
Not a single spell.
Not even a flicker of real proof.
Just golden light drifting like lies in the air.
He sank to the floor, journal on his knees.
His hands trembled.
This was supposed to be magic.
That bastard god told me I was going to another world.
A magical one.
He remembered the void. The featureless mouth. The condescending tone.
"There's no such thing there."
He had thought it meant something else. Like "not yet." Like he'd bring it back. Reignite some lost age.
But now he wondered if it was more literal than that.
What if magic really didn't exist?
Not in this world.
Not ever.
Arthur stared at the threads through his star-shaped pupils, and for the first time in his life — he hated them.
"You're not magic," he said bitterly. "You're not sacred. You're just… leftovers. The world's static. Useless light from a dead god's joke."
He paused.
Then he whispered, "You put me here to rot, didn't you?"
He was no longer talking to the threads.
He was talking to him. That god. That being who yanked him from the street in a split second of blood and steel and shoved him into a body with no power, no guidance, and no meaning.
"You dropped me into a world without magic," Arthur spat. "You made me see things that no one else can. And then you let them be meaningless."
He slammed the journal shut.
"You didn't give me a gift. You gave me a delusion."
He didn't cry.
He didn't scream.
He sat very still, teeth clenched, until his jaw ached.
Then, slowly, he stood and returned the journal to its hiding place.
He didn't visit the alcove for days.
He didn't test any new theories.
He didn't even look at the threads when they floated by.
He walked the halls in silence, practiced his handwriting when required, and answered his tutors with short, dry precision. He spoke when spoken to. Ate when told. Sat when commanded.
Like a statue that used to move.
One night, his mother came to find him in the garden.
He was sitting beneath the western tree, the one shaped like an open hand. A single golden thread twisted through the branches above, brushing the leaves with glimmering disinterest.
Lady Fionne sat beside him quietly.
"You've been quiet lately," she said.
Arthur didn't answer.
She stroked his hair gently.
"You're angry."
Still silence.
She exhaled softly. "I know what that feels like."
He looked up at her.
Her eyes were tired. Beautiful, but tired. Her fingers, always warm, trembled faintly as they passed over his hair.
"It's hard," she said, "when the world doesn't give you the answers you want."
Arthur looked back toward the thread.
"They're not even answers," he said. "They're nothing."
Age: 4 years, 11 months → the day before his fifth birthday
Arthur stood barefoot in the garden, his toes sinking into the cold earth as the last of the evening sun painted the stone wall gold. His hair was longer now, brushing just below his ears, pale as wheat. His eyes—those golden stars that once made midwives gasp—looked dull beneath the low light.
He was almost five.
And still, nothing had changed.
The threads floated in the distance, as if they too had grown tired of hovering near him. They passed through the world like drifting pollen, meaningless, effortless. Beautiful in the most painful, useless way.
He watched one curl toward a flower. It passed over the petal without disturbing it.
Of course.
He turned and walked back inside.
The halls were quiet at this hour. Darian had already left for evening sword training. The house echoed with the clatter of distant servants, the occasional soft voice, the ever-present weight of silence.
Arthur moved like a shadow. Light enough that most barely noticed him anymore.
He returned to the library—not to test anything. Not to write.
He just sat in the alcove, where the walls felt closer and the air didn't press so hard.
His notebook lay untouched beside him. He hadn't opened it in days.
He stared upward.
"I thought I'd know something by now," he said to the air. "Even one thing."
The threads moved slowly above, like dancers in a dream they weren't sharing with him.
That night, Lady Fionne kissed his forehead while he lay in bed, brushing his hair back behind his ear.
"Tomorrow," she said softly, "you'll be five."
He nodded.
"You've grown quiet again," she added.
Arthur didn't reply. Not for lack of love. But because he didn't have the words for the weight he was carrying.
Fionne smiled gently, the way she always did. "Whatever you're searching for… I hope you find it."
Arthur watched the ceiling as she left.
One golden thread drifted across the top beam of the nursery, slow as sleep.
He whispered:
"Five years… and I still don't know what you are."
Far above the hall, in a shadowed window of the tower study, Gaunder Light stood alone, watching the courtyard below where his son had passed earlier.
He didn't speak. He didn't move.
But his eyes lingered longer than they had in years.
A servant approached behind him. "Shall I confirm tomorrow's audience with your second son, my lord?"
Gaunder answered without turning:
"Yes. It's time he started learning the sword."
The servant nodded and left.
Gaunder remained still, looking out over the estate—over the gardens, the tower tops, the statues weathered by time and war.
His voice, when it came, was almost too soft to hear.
"I'm sorry, Arthur."