I don't remember my first steps. My parents do. They tell the story like it's a small legend—how I stood up in the kitchen while my mother kneaded dough, and how my father dropped a cup when I wobbled toward him. They make it sound like I was brave. I think I was just curious. Babies don't understand fear; they only understand distance.
By the time I was five, the world had begun to take shape in proper outlines. The house was small, built of pale timber that groaned when the wind brushed through the valley. The windows had shutters, always half-open, and the smell of grain clung to everything—floorboards, clothes, even the air after rain. I liked it. It felt honest.
Our village was called Tirna, a name that rolled softly off the tongue. It sat on the border of two landscapes: gentle farmland that stretched westward into rivers, and to the east, the rising hills where fog slept between trees. People said the hills were old enough to remember voices that no longer spoke. I used to believe they whispered when I wasn't listening.
I was a quiet child. Not shy exactly—just thoughtful. I liked to sit under the pear tree near the well and sketch in the dirt with sticks. Circles became faces. Lines became towers. Sometimes, they became symbols I didn't remember learning, curling and geometric, like the kind I once saw in dreams of stone corridors and candlelight. My mother said I had a good imagination. I never corrected her.
Her name was Elara, and she was gentle in a way that seemed deliberate, as if kindness were something she practiced daily. My father, Rowan, was the opposite: big hands, a laugh like thunder, and the kind of voice that filled a room whether you wanted it to or not. He was a woodworker, though half the village came to him when tools broke or furniture split. He said every living thing deserved mending, and he meant it.
When I turned six, things began to shift—not in the world, but in me. The memories started like dreams that overstayed their welcome. A flash of a London streetlamp flickering against wet cobblestones. A man's voice—stern, precise—lecturing about thaumaturgy. The sound of a scythe cutting not grass but space itself. They came in fragments, drifting between naps and moments of stillness.
At first, I thought they were just fantasies. Children often imagine other worlds. But the emotions that came with them were too vivid to dismiss. The weight of a leather-bound book. The ache of loss. The strange, bone-deep familiarity of the word Gray. I didn't yet understand that it was my name twice over.
It happened one morning while watching my reflection in the washbasin. The water trembled as I touched it, and for a heartbeat, I saw someone else looking back—a girl with the same pale hair but older, her eyes shadowed with guilt and knowledge. When I blinked, she was gone, and only I remained, small and uncertain.
That day, I asked my mother why I had silver hair when she and my father had brown. She smiled, brushing my bangs aside."Because you were born when the moon was closest," she said. "The midwife said it marked a blessing."I nodded. I didn't tell her that sometimes, when the moon rose full, my heart beat in rhythm with something not quite human. I didn't have the words for it yet.
Our village school was a single longhouse shared with the town hall. The children of farmers, traders, and artisans all gathered there, sitting cross-legged on reed mats while Master Havel, a wiry man with spectacles, droned about numbers and script. I loved the sound of chalk on slate. It reminded me of another life, another teacher, though I couldn't recall his name yet. Only the weight of his patience lingered.
My classmates were simple souls—bright, kind, and curious. There was Mira, whose laughter could wake the birds; Toma, who always carried a slingshot but never used it on anything living; and Lissa, who believed the stars were holes poked into heaven by ancient giants. They treated me normally, though sometimes I caught them staring at my hair when sunlight made it glimmer like frost.
Life was gentle, but not without oddities. Sometimes, travelers passed through Tirna, whispering of creatures in the east woods—animals that glowed faintly in moonlight, or people with strange eyes who vanished when called to. Once, an old man came to our door, selling trinkets of bone and crystal. He looked at me for a long time before saying, "The air bends around you, little one." Then he smiled and left before my father could ask what he meant.
At night, I dreamed of towers half-buried in sand, of gates that opened into skies filled with golden dust. Once, I dreamed of a train—silent, hovering, its windows glowing like eyes. Inside, I glimpsed faces: a woman with crimson hair, a man in glasses, a girl with a camera. I didn't know them, but something deep within me whispered, Not yet.
When I awoke, the dream left behind a hum in my chest, as if a song had begun somewhere far away.
By the time I turned seven, the memories had settled like silt at the bottom of a pond—still there, but less murky. I remembered both lives: the mundane sorrow of a dying man, and the strange, fleeting brilliance of being Gray, disciple of a man named El-Melloi. The combination was… confusing.
I began to understand things no one had taught me. The principles of resonance and sympathy, the structure of circles that could channel energy, the feel of a world's "pulse." Yet, when I tried to shape it, nothing happened. No light, no spark, not even a tingle. This world did not obey the rules I knew. Either the leylines were asleep, or I was.
Still, the instincts remained. I caught myself analyzing the grain of wood on my father's workbench, tracing its spirals like veins of fate. I found patterns in the flow of water, the arrangement of stones, the migration of birds. The world spoke softly, and though I couldn't reply, I listened.
There was one afternoon that etched itself into my mind. It was early spring, and Mira and I were gathering wildflowers along the hill path. She ran ahead, her laughter echoing. Then, suddenly, she stopped and pointed.
On the slope above us stood a creature—shimmering white, antlered like a deer but with wings folded tight along its sides. Its eyes glowed faintly gold. It regarded us with neither fear nor aggression, only a calm intelligence that froze me in place.
Then it bowed its head, as if acknowledging something, and vanished into the mist.
Mira screamed. I didn't. My heart pounded, but it wasn't fear. It was recognition. The same feeling as seeing an old friend across lifetimes.
Something in this world was awake.And somehow, so was I.