Elara rushed to the cradle, scooping Alaric into her arms.
"You're scaring me, Vane. He's just a baby! Maybe the stone was old? Faulty?"
"A potential orb not breaking but does simply turn to ash," Vane snapped, then quickly bowed his head in apology.
"Forgive me. But what I witnessed... it is an omen.
A child with eyes the color of blood who erases magic before he can even speak?
Master Silas, if the Church of the Eternal Life hears of this, they won't see a prodigy. They will see a Great Calamity."
Silas Silverlane stood by the window, his silhouette dark against the moonlight. The shock was receding, replaced by the cold, calculating machinery of a merchant prince.
He didn't see a monster, he saw a threat to the Silverlane legacy—and an asset that needed to be hidden until it could be leveraged.
He walked to the heavy oak door and turned the iron key. The click echoed like a guillotine blade.
"The Church is miles away, and my gold keeps the gears of this city turning," Silas said, his voice dropping into a register of pure ice.
"You will tell no one. You will record that Alaric Silverlane has a 'dormant, unstable' mana core. High potential, but requiring years of isolation and private tutoring.
Do you understand, Vane? If a single word of 'ash' or 'blood-red eyes' leaves this room, you will find that the Church is the least of your worries."
Vane looked at the pile of fine grey ash on the rug—once a priceless testing orb—then at the sharp, dangerous glint in Silas's eyes. He nodded slowly.
"As you wish. But keep him hidden, Silas. If that power grows before he learns to cage it, he won't just destroy orbs. He'll destroy the very foundations of this city.
As the adults whispered their conspiracies, Alaric—or the soul once known as Daniel—leaned his head against his mother's shoulder.
He wasn't crying. He was watching. The system screen was still hovering in his peripheral vision, pulsing with a faint, violet light that no one else could see.
The strain of the "awakening" was too much for an infant's nervous system.
Alaric succumbed to a heavy, dreamless sleep that lasted eight hours. When he finally opened his eyes to the morning sun filtering through the nursery curtains, his first thought wasn't for milk or comfort. It was for the status screen.
The screen, pulsing with faint violet light, appeared before his eyes.
[Seed of Destruction assimilating successfully]
[Notice: Suppression Protocol Suggested.]
[The 'Seed of Destruction' essence is too harmful for a physical vessel of 6 months.]
[Would you like to expend 90% of current 'Destruction Purity' to seal your aura until the age of five]
Alaric didn't hesitate. He remembered his past life—the vulnerability of being weak, the way people looked through you when you had nothing.
He wouldn't be a lab rat. He wouldn't be a sacrificial lamb for a Church he didn't yet understand.
Seal it, he thought, focusing his intent with a mental sharpness that should have been impossible for a baby.
"I need time to learn the rules of this world before I break them.
[Protocol Accepted.]
[Aura Sealed.]
[System entering 'Deep Hibernation' mode. Wake up command: Reach physical age of five or encounter a 'Fatal Threat'.]
The searing heat that had been simmering in his veins since birth vanished, replaced by a cool, numbing sensation.
The terrifying red glow in his eyes dimmed to a dull, dark burgundy—unusual, but no longer supernatural.
As the "Deep Hibernation" took hold, a final thought drifted through Daniel's mind as he looked at the Seer's retreating back.
Fear is good, he thought. Fear keeps people at a distance. And distance gives me time.
I finally have the power to make sure no one ever Looks down on me.
The Quiet Years
The following months were a blur of room walls and hushed voices. Silas was a man of his word; the household staff was purged, replaced by a skeleton crew of servants who were either too loyal or too well-paid to gossip.
Alaric grew in a silence that unsettled the maids. He didn't babble. He didn't reach for colorful toys. He sat in his playpen, his dark red eyes tracking the movement of the sun across the floor with the patience of an apex predator.
He spoke his first word at age one. A maid had tried to take a dusty ledger away from him—a book he had crawled across the room to claim.
He didn't cry. He looked her directly in the eye and said, "No." It wasn't a child tantrum it was a command. The maid had quit the next day, claiming the child's gaze made her skin crawl.
By fourteen months, he was walking. Not the stumbling, uncertain gait of a child, but with a deliberate, haunting precision. He moved through the halls of the Silverlane manor like a ghost, his tiny feet making no sound on the polished marble.
By the age of two, Alaric's physical development had stabilized into that of a slender, pale child.
But while other noble children were being taught to ride wooden horses or recite simple prayers to the Eternal Life, Alaric had found his true sanctuary:
The Silverlane Great Library.
It was a cavernous hall that smelled of vanilla, old parchment, and the weight of centuries.
Rows of shelves stretched toward a vaulted ceiling painted with the constellations of a sky Alaric didn't recognize. To Silas, the library was a symbol of wealth. To Alaric, it was an armory.
He spent his days dragging heavy tomes across the floor, his small fingers tracing lines of text he shouldn't have been able to read.
He wasn't just learning the language, he was decoding the power structure of the world.
He read about Valor City, the sprawling metropolis they lived in.
It was a marvel of engineering, built upon the ruins of an older city powered by "Mana-Crystals"—distilled essence harvested from the earth.
Then there was the Church of the Eternal Life, a theocratic juggernaut that claimed all "Life Magic" was a gift from the heavens, while anything else—anything destructive—was a curse to be purged.
One afternoon, when Alaric was four, Silas found him perched precariously on a rolling ladder, three stories up.
The boy was struggling to pull a thick, black-bound book titled The History of the demon War from a high shelf.
"You won't find any comfort in those pages, Alaric," Silas called out from the base of the ladder.
He looked up at his son—small, pale, with those unsettling eyes that never seemed to blink. "That book is for historians. There are lighter tales in the east wing."
Alaric didn't look down until the book was safely clutched to his chest. "Knowledge is comfort, Father," he replied. His voice was eerily calm, lacking the lisp or the high-pitched innocence typical of his age.
Silas winced. Every time the boy spoke, it felt like talking to an ancient soul trapped in a porcelain doll. "Most children want toys, Alaric. You want records of massacres and extinct. Why?"
Toys are fragile," Alaric said, finally climbing down. "They break when you press too hard.
"Books... books carry what can't be broken. They carry the truth of why the world is the way it is."
Silas watched him, a mixture of pride and genuine fear warring in his chest. He saw the "investment" paying off—an intelligent, focused heir who would one day run the Silverlane merchant family with a ruthless efficiency.
But he also saw the coldness Daniel had carried over from his previous life. There was no warmth in Alaric's gaze, only a calculating appraisal of everything around him.
"The Seer returns in a year," Silas reminded him, his voice stern.
"The world thinks your magic is dormant. Keep it that way. If you show a spark of that... thing... from your infancy, even cannot protect you. Not even with all the gold in the city."
Alaric climbed down the ladder, his tiny feet making no sound on the wood.
"I know, Father. I am very good at staying hidden."
As Alaric's small fingers trace the gold-leafed lettering of The History of the demon War, he uncovers the tragedy of valorian, the city that preceded Valor City.
The Tragedy of Valorian
That night, by the light of a single enchanted candle, Alaric opened The History of the demon War.
He turned past the propaganda of the Church to a chapter titled The Fall of Valorian.
Four hundred years ago, the world didn't rely on mana-crystals. It relied on Living Conduits—prodigies born with the ability to channel raw magic directly from the atmosphere.
The greatest of these was a girl named Sofia, hailed as the "First Shield." She was meant to be the ultimate weapon against the Demons—creatures from the demon realm gate.
However, during the Siege of Valorian, something went wrong. Sofia's power didn't just protect; it "inverted.
" Instead of closing the gate, her mana core began to consume the reality around it. In a single heartbeat, the city of Valorian was turned into a graveyard of glass and ash. Ten thousand people died, their souls supposedly "unraveled."
After that day, the Church declared that raw, unchecked magic was "The Breath of the demon.
They moved the world toward mana-crystals—predictable, taxable, and controllable magic.
Alaric closed the book, his heart racing. He recognized the description of Sofia's "inversion." It sounded exactly somehow like his "Seed of Destruction" the system had mentioned.
He wasn't just a mage, he was a Living Conduit of the very force the world had spent four centuries trying to forget.