The first deliberate act didn't appear to be a rebellion.
That was the mistake they would later regret.
It began with bread.
Cael sat at the long table reserved for his meals, a table far too large for a child who was rarely expected to finish what was placed before him. Silverware gleamed. Linen lay folded with ceremonial precision. The food was warm, rich, excessive—meat glazed in honeyed sauce, fruits imported from the southern coasts, bread white and soft enough to tear without effort.
He stared at it in silence.
The servants stood at a distance, eyes lowered, bodies angled in a posture that suggested obedience but concealed vigilance. They had learned to watch him the way one watches fire: Don't because it moved, but because it might.
Cael picked up the bread.
He turned it in his fingers, feeling the texture, the lightness. In another life, bread had been something earned with violence or debt. Here, it was ritual. Proof that the crown still remembered how to feed itself.
"How many loaves like this are baked each morning?" he asked quietly.
The question startled them.
A middle-aged steward stepped forward, clearing his throat. "For the royal kitchens alone, Your Highness, perhaps two hundred."
Cael nodded. "And how many mouths does that serve?"
The steward hesitated. "The royal family. The court. The clergy assigned to the palace."
"And the rest?" Cael asked.
Silence answered him.
Cael tore the bread cleanly in half.
"Bring the remaining loaves," he said, "to the outer servants' quarters. All of them."
The steward froze. "Your Highness, that would be… irregular."
"Then consider this the first irregularity of my recovery."
One of the servants glanced toward the door, as if expecting a reprimand to arrive fully formed.
"It will upset the kitchen accounts," the steward pressed. "And the clergy—"
"Will survive," Cael interrupted. "They fast for virtue, do they not?"
The words were mild. The implication wasn't.
Reluctantly, the steward bowed.
Within an hour, the palace knew.
Not because bread was rare, but because precedent had been violated.
******
By midday, whispers had reached the Church.
Cael was summoned.
Not formally.Not publicly.
A request wrapped in courtesy, carried by a junior cleric who smelled faintly of incense and fear.
The chapel was empty when Cael arrived, its vaulted ceiling swallowing sound, its stained glass filtering daylight into fractured colors that fell across the floor like shattered promises. Candles burned in perfect symmetry. Order, imposed on flame.
At the altar stood Archdeacon Malrec—a man whose voice had guided kings and whose sermons had justified wars.
He turned as Cael approached.
"You give generously for one so young," Malrec said, his tone warm. "Charity is a virtue."
Cael stopped a few steps away. "Charity implies choice," he replied. "This was redistribution."
Malrec smiled thinly. "Words matter, Your Highness."
"Yes," Cael said. "That is why you guard them so carefully."
The archdeacon studied him, eyes sharp behind the kindness. "The kitchens serve a purpose. Tradition sustains stability."
"So does hunger," Cael answered. "But only for those who never experience it."
Malrec clasped his hands. "You are recovering. The mind wanders when the body is weak."
Cael tilted his head. "Does the Light prefer obedience or understanding?"
The question struck like a stone dropped into still water.
"Both," Malrec said after a pause.
"Then teach me," Cael said. "Why is surplus holy at this table, but sinful beyond those walls?"
Malrec's smile faltered—just enough.
"Because hierarchy reflects divine order."
"And suffering?"
"A test."
Cael nodded slowly. "Then the servants passed."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was crowded with implications.
"You tread dangerously close to misinterpretation," Malrec said.
"I tread where the words lead," Cael replied.
"If they end somewhere uncomfortable, perhaps they were written poorly."
Malrec straightened. "The prophecy warns of exactly this kind of distortion."
Cael looked up at the stained glass above the altar—depicting a crowned figure bathed in light, sword raised, enemies faceless.
"Does the prophecy fear distortion," Cael asked, "or exposure?"
Malrec said nothing.
Cael bowed not deeply, not submissively. Just enough to acknowledge the space.
"I will return the bread tomorrow," he said.
"If the Light commands it."
Then he turned and left.
*******
That evening, a rumor spread beyond the palace.
Not a grand one.Not a dangerous one.
Just a story told quietly among servants, guards, and low-ranking clergy.
The prince had given food without being asked.The prince had spoken back to the Church and lived.The prince had looked at men of power without lowering his eyes.
The rumor did not say he was kind.
It said he was different.
The difference was more destabilizing than cruel.
*****
The High Council convened before sunset.
Cael wasn't invited.
But he listened anyway.
The palace had been built to impress, not to conceal. Sound traveled through its bones, and Cael had learned which corridors echoed truth more clearly than lies. Hidden behind a tapestry depicting the founding of Eldervale, he sat on the floor, knees drawn close, breathing shallowly.
Voices carried.
"This can't continue," one councilor said. "He is a child."
"Children grow," another replied. "Especially those everyone expects to die."
"The prophecy—"
"—is already doing its work," a third interrupted.
"Look at us. Arguing over bread."
"Bread becomes rebellion when it teaches expectation."
Cael smiled faintly.
Expectation. Yes.
Expectation was the seed.
"Then remove him," a voice said quietly.
"Before belief spreads."
A pause followed.
"We can't," came the reply. "Not openly. The Church would lose face. The people would ask why."
"So we wait?"
"No," the first voice said. "We constrain. We isolate. We remind him of his place."
Another voice, lower, sharper: "Or we let him continue."
Silence.
"To what end?" someone asked.
"To prove the prophecy true," the voice answered. "Let him cause disorder. Let the people fear him. Then, when he falls, the Light will look merciful."
Cael's breath slowed.
So this was the shape of it.
They didn't fear destruction.
They feared losing authorship of it.
*****
That night, Cael dreamed.
Not of his past life—not of blood or sirens or gunfire—but of corridors without doors, and books without words. In the dream, he stood before a throne made of parchment, its surface etched with sentences that rearranged themselves as he watched.
A voice spoke, not aloud, but directly into the space behind his eyes.
You were not meant to read this.
Cael reached out.
The throne burned.
He woke with a gasp, sweat cooling on his skin.
The candle beside his bed had burned down to its wick.
He sat up slowly, heart steadying, mind already working.
Dreams, he knew, were where systems confessed.
*****
The next morning, he requested a lesson.
Not in swordplay.Not in scripture.
In history.
The tutor arrived hesitant, carrying books thick with approved narratives. He spoke of glorious reigns, righteous wars, kings guided by divine will.
Cael listened.
Then he asked, "Who lost?"
The tutor blinked. "Your Highness?"
"In every war you've described," Cael said, "someone lost. Where are they?"
The tutor shifted. "History records victory."
"Then it lies by omission."
The tutor frowned. "That is not—"
"—treason?" Cael finished. "Or education?"
He closed one of the books gently. "Bring me accounts written by merchants. By soldiers who deserted. By priests who were silenced."
The tutor swallowed. "Those are… restricted."
Cael met his eyes. "So is the future."
By noon, another irregularity had been noted.
By evening, another contradiction had been born.
****
Power didn't move toward Cael yet.
It leaned.
Like something heavy, testing the ground.
And Cael, patient as ever, adjusted his stance—not to resist, but to guide where it would fall.
He didn't need allies yet.
He needed witnesses.
People who would one day say: This did not begin with fire.
It began with a question no one was supposed to ask.