The days turned quietly, but the world around Viren never truly slept.
Though he was only a few months old in body, his mind moved with precision. His senses sharpened—not just physically, but metaphysically. He could taste the mana in the air, feel the resonance of machinery deep within the walls, and hear the subtle shifts of intention behind words not spoken aloud.
He was not an ordinary child.
And those closest to him had stopped pretending otherwise.
---
On his sixth-month solstice, a formal gathering was held within the outer hall of House Virelin. Courtiers, scholars, envoys from other Houses, and a few carefully veiled strangers arrived to "celebrate" his birth.
Viren understood it for what it was: a test.
Not of his strength, but of his nature.
He lay in his levitating cradle at the center of the chamber, swaddled in silver-laced fabric meant to amplify ambient aether. Light cascaded from the crystalline ceiling above, refracted through enchantments meant to calm, to probe, to read.
And around him—smiling, clapping, toasting—stood some of the most dangerous minds in the Conflux.
---
"It's quiet," someone whispered near the edge of the circle. "Too quiet."
"He doesn't cry."
"He doesn't squirm."
"He watches."
The murmurs weren't meant for him. But he heard them all.
And he stored every word.
---
Later, as the last guest drifted away and the spells laced into the chamber finally faded, Viren lay alone in the glow of the everlight. He stared upward, calm and still.
He had expected someone to return—his mother, perhaps.
But instead, someone else entered.
A girl. Young. Perhaps ten or eleven in years, though her aura shimmered with faint threads of training.
She stepped into the nursery barefoot, holding a small puzzle sphere—a device of shifting plates and light-reactive runes. She glanced around, then knelt beside the cradle.
"You're the weird baby everyone's whispering about," she said flatly.
Viren blinked.
The girl sighed and sat cross-legged.
"I'm Nael," she said. "They told me not to talk to you, but I don't care."
She set the puzzle sphere on the floor. "I wanted to see if the stories were true."
---
Something about her was different.
She wasn't afraid. She wasn't probing. She was just… curious.
She slid the sphere toward him.
"Can you do anything with this?" she asked. "It's old. They said it's broken."
Viren's hand twitched—just slightly. His fingers were still clumsy, but his mind was not.
He reached with will, not body.
> [Devourflux: Partial Engagement]
Target: Rune-Locked Puzzle Sphere
Outcome: Internal layout understood. Damage source identified.
Stored Pattern Fragment: Kinetic Thread Lattice (Disrupted)
Then came the next part.
He didn't consume it. He repaired it.
> [Arcanoforge: Initiated]
Source A: Internal Runic Memory
Source B: Residual Kinetic Flow Signature
Output: Restored Puzzle Sphere — Child Grade
The sphere clicked. Plates shifted.
And for the first time in years, it lit up.
Nael gasped. "You fixed it!"
She looked at him with something new—not fear, not even awe.
Respect.
"I'm coming back," she whispered. "Tomorrow."
---
She did.
And again, the next day.
And the day after that.
Nael became his first visitor who didn't look at him like an experiment. She told him stories—simple, silly things. She asked him questions. Brought broken toys, odd crystals, things she didn't understand.
And each time, he tried to fix them. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.
But always, she smiled.
And Viren felt something he hadn't expected in this life.
Warmth.
---
But not everyone approved.
Aunt Virelle's voice returned one evening, sharp as ever.
"She's too close."
"She's just a child," Lysara said.
"No child is ever just anything in this house," Virelle replied. "Especially not one who breaks wards just to speak with the boy."
"She's harmless."
"She's a risk."
Viren listened.
He remembered.
He would not forget.
---
At night, his dreams deepened.
He saw not just cities and shadows—but paths.
A tree of choices, each branch bleeding into the next. Some led to ruin. Some to power. Some to loneliness. Some… to fire.
In one such dream, he saw himself older again. Beside him stood Nael—her aura bright, her eyes determined. But behind her, smoke rose. Conflict. Division.
Every choice had weight.
And Viren was no longer simply following fate.
He was shaping it.
---
One morning, he sat up.
Unsteady. Weak. But unaided.
His hands trembled. But they obeyed.
And his eyes—still quiet, still silver-ringed—glowed faintly with layered reflections.
His mother was the first to see it.
She didn't speak.
She simply held him to her chest.
"Everything's changing," she whispered.
And Viren, for the first time, reached back.
---