Arav woke to the smell of smoke and honeyed porridge. For a second he smiled—then remembered he had not set anything on fire today, and the smile collapsed into a small, guilty grin.
Sharanya was already bustling about the kitchen, her movements efficient and warm. Isha sat on the floor by the hearth, arranging a row of ember-pebbles like tiny soldiers. The house hummed with ordinary life, but under everything was a different sound now: a low, steady thrum, like a distant drumbeat that only he could hear.
He padded to the table with the careful slowness a four-year-old used when trying not to break the world. A small, nervous curl of aether danced at his fingertips and died when he noticed his mother's eyes on him.
"Eat," Sharanya said, pushing a spoon across. Her smile held a thread of worry he couldn't miss. "You'll need strength for today."
"For training?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.
"For control," Aaryan corrected from the doorway, voice calm as a lake but with an undercurrent that made him sound like the sea. He stood in the doorway the way mountains stood in the distance—solid, unyielding. Even in nothing more than a plain training robe, there was an authority that didn't come from words.
Arav lowered his head. "Yes."
He tried, right after breakfast, to use his aether gently—nothing dramatic, only a glance inward. The world folded thinly like a page; he saw threads of light overlaying the courtyard, faint and shimmering. For half a breath, the sight made him dizzy. The threads multiplied, braided together, and for a moment the edges of everything went soft and wrong. Heat licked the back of his throat like the memory of a dream.
His vision blurred. He clutched the stone bench to steady himself. His stomach dropped. A cold pinched his chest—not fear of being burned, but something older and sharper: the memory of rain and a knife and a sudden blackness in which a voice had said his name. For a heartbeat he was somewhere else, thin and small and very, very cold.
"Arav?" Sharanya's voice was close and alarmed. Isha had already crawled into his lap, her small hands clumsily trying to anchor him.
He swallowed hard. "I'm—okay," he said, but the sound of his own voice frightened him; it carried a brittle edge he didn't like.
Aaryan's hand was suddenly on his shoulder—steady, grounding. "Breathe," he said quietly. "In slow. The aether will follow."
He did. The thrum eased. The threads receded into one steady ribbon that ran through his chest like a warm river. The nausea petered out into a low ache. He felt childish and human and fragile, and something tender in his chest opened because Aaryan hadn't scolded him, only steadied him.
Aaryan's jaw tightened for a moment, his eyes drifting up to the western walls where, in the distance, the clan's outer courtyards met the city. The expression that crossed his face was almost old sorrow folded into iron will.
"Go through basics again," Aaryan said to him. "Slow. Don't reach for more than you can carry."
Arav obeyed. He breathed; he guided the aether like thread through his palms. The small flame that appeared this time didn't jerk or roar; it sat, a tiny, obedient bird. He let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding.
Sharanya's face unfroze into something relieved and fierce all at once. "You did well."
Isha declared, "Bhaiya tamed the bird!" and then, as usual, tried to pet the flame. Aaryan snatched the child back with an efficiency that would have made a drill sergeant proud and a gardener weep. "No touching," he said, but his voice had a smile hidden in it.
Outside the estate, beyond their quiet, a different sound had begun: the quick shuffle and whisper of those who followed patterns on screens and runes. There were watchers in every clan—men and women who chronicled aether-blips and pulse-readings and the odd lines of energy that every prodigy left like footprints. Elder Varun's hand had been on the projection crystal not an hour ago when the reading flickered again, and he had sent a message. Not an angry summoning. Not yet. But a message flagged with the highest concern.
Minutes later there came a knock at the estate's outer council door. Aaryan stepped to the hall and opened it. Two figures stood on the threshold—elders, robes folded into the color of old embers, faces lined with the maps of decades. They bowed low.
"Aaryan Ashvathar," Elder Varun said, tone even but clipped with gravity. "The Council sensed a strong resurgence of your clan's aether last night. We came to—"
To inspect. To confirm. To take control. The words hung in the hallway like smoke.
Aaryan's expression didn't change, but the air did. Those in the doorway seemed to shrink a degree, as if the room itself acknowledged there was no climb without falling and Aaryan's shadow stood where falling was improbable. There was a history in the way the elders paused; even their robes seemed to fold inward with respect. Varun cleared his throat.
"Aryan, your son has awakened—large resonance. The Council asks permission to observe his condition, out of duty to the clan."
Aaryan's eyes moved from Varun to the hall and then inward, as if weighing a small grain. The measured silence he held was not empty; it was full of something heavy.
"No," he said at last. The single syllable landed with the authority of a slammed gate. "Not today."
Varun's hand tightened on his staff. A dozen things might have happened—explanation, argument, a rebuke—but Varun had risen in the clan and lived to respect more than fear. "Lord Aaryan," he said carefully, "the Council's responsibility—"
"I understand responsibility," Aaryan interrupted gently but with the barest edge. "And I will not have my son rolled out like an exhibit for curiosity. If you suspect danger, you will be informed. Until then, I will guard him myself."
There was an unspoken ledger between them that Varun understood: Aaryan had fought in campaigns some of the elders only read about in old stone murals; he had dismantled formations, folded storms into silence, and brought down beasts that changed the borders of the map. The elders measured consequences and found Aaryan's threshold too steep to test.
Varun bowed deeper, chin touching his chest. "As you command."
When the elders left, they did not look at one another the same way. Outside, whispers trailed like the wake of a passing ship. The Council had been dissuaded—but not blind. They would watch. They would balance. In their quarters, Varun's eyes flicked to a memory he did not voice: a battle where Aaryan had been the storm that stopped a moving mountain. He left the remembrance unspoken, because in this house, power was a thing that ended questions rather than raised them.
Inside, Arav's stomach lurched again—this time not from a vision but from the weight of being the center of attention in a way he didn't choose. He looked at his father and, for the first time in the quiet morning, saw more than the man who taught him breathing patterns. He saw the cause of the way people fell into stillness when he entered a room. He felt, without understanding the details, the shape of the armor his father wore: responsibility, threat, protection.
Aaryan noticed the look. He came and crouched, tilting his face toward Arav. For a brief second, he was no mountain—only a man with tired eyes.
"You are not alone in this," he said. "And you are not the danger. I will carry that part."
Arav's throat tightened. He thought of the rain and the knife and the boy who had run. Guilt whispered in his ear: you died. You were meant to stay there. Then another feeling fought it—an ember of stubbornness, the sense that this life had purpose now. He swallowed and let the two exist without resolving them.
Later, when the servants carried baskets to the kitchens and the courtyard resumed the normal rhythm of footsteps, the system pinged softly in his head—like a tiny bell.
[Warning: External resonance detected.]
[Potential linked awakening signature identified. Source: Unknown.]
[Advisory: Maintain concealment protocols.]
The words were clinical, but they landed with the same force as any shouted order. Aaryan's mouth tightened. He glanced at the ceiling as if expecting the world itself to have ears.
Arav felt a prickle of fear—real, physical—race through him. Not of fire or pain this time, but of being seen in ways that would make his whole small life change. He imagined Isha taken to the Academy gates for study, or elders' hands prodding at him like curious instruments. He imagined Sharanya worrying until she forgot to sleep.
He took Aaryan's hand and squeezed. "Don't let them take me."
Aaryan's face folded into a softness that made Arav's chest ache. He drew the boy close. "I won't," he said. "Not while I stand."
Outside the walls of the estate, plans would be made. The Council would confer. Rival clans would listen with sharpened ears. The shadow of the Fire-Thunder moment lengthened, and the world tilted in small ways to accommodate its weight.
Inside, Arav closed his eyes and for once allowed himself to tremble—not with the strain of controlling a flame or the dizzying sight of aether strands, but with the tiny, human worry of wanting to stay a child for a little longer. He promised himself, quietly, that he would learn control not for the glory of being noticed, but so he could run with Isha and eat porridge without the world bending around him.
The vow was small, private, and honest.
Aaryan held him a moment longer, then rose, moving like someone who had just taken a weight off a shelf and knew where it belonged now. "We will prepare," he said, and whatever the future produced, his voice made the next step sound like a plan already drawn.
Arav watched him go. The drumbeat in his chest was still there—muted, steady—and for now it sounded like a companion rather than an alarm.