Five years passed in the shadow of High Silpatra's palace, and the fourth prince remained a secret kept in plain sight.
Kael Silpatra did not walk early.
He did not speak early.
He did not glow, shimmer, or hum with the forces that marked every other child of noble blood.
What he did, with single-minded devotion, was eat.
Servants learned quickly: if the boy's plate was empty for too long, his gray eyes would fix on the nearest person with an intensity that made grown men step back.
He never cried.
He never tantrumed.
He simply stared, unblinking, until food appeared.
Then he ate.
Quickly.
Thoroughly.
Everything.
Meat most of all.
By his third year, the kitchens had taken to roasting whole lambs in the outer yards just to keep pace.
By his fourth, the master of provisions submitted a quiet request for additional hunting parties.
By his fifth, the palace steward simply stopped asking questions and doubled the meat budget without comment.
No one spoke of it openly.
The king had decreed the boy's existence tolerable, nothing more.
The queen had died two weeks after the birth—"fever," the official record read—and no one dared connect the two events aloud.
So Kael grew in the eastern wing, attended by a rotating staff of nursemaids who lasted months at best.
They whispered among themselves in the corridors:
"He doesn't play with the Aura toys."
"He doesn't react when the Ether chimes ring."
"He just… watches the kitchen door."
One nursemaid, a young woman named Mira, lasted longer than most.
She had a gentle voice and a habit of bringing extra strips of dried venison in her apron pocket.
Kael followed her with his eyes wherever she went.
When she left for the evening, he stood at the nursery gate until she returned the next morning.
On the day he spoke his second word, Mira was the only witness.
She had set a bowl of stewed beef in front of him—rich, dark, fragrant.
Kael stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at her.
"More," he said.
His voice was low, rough, as though it had been waiting years to be used.
Mira laughed in surprise, then immediately covered her mouth, afraid someone might hear and think her mocking a prince.
She ladled another portion into his bowl.
Kael ate in silence.
That same afternoon, Crown Prince Cassian visited the eastern wing for the first time since the birth.
He was ten now, tall for his age, his Aura already bright enough that the air around him seemed to bend inward.
Flanked by two tutors and a pair of young noble companions, he strode through the corridors as though inspecting conquered territory.
He stopped at the nursery door.
Kael sat on the floor, gnawing the last meat from a rib bone.
Grease shone on his small fingers.
He did not look up.
Cassian's lip curled.
"So this is the defect."
One of the companions snickered.
"They say he doesn't have a spark in him. Not one."
Cassian stepped into the room.
The Aura around him flared brighter—an unconscious display of dominance that would have made any normal child flinch or cry.
Kael kept chewing.
Cassian frowned.
He took another step.
"Hey. I'm speaking to you."
Kael finished the bone, set it carefully on the empty plate, and looked up.
His eyes were the same wet-stone gray, but now there was something else in them.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Hunger.
Cassian felt it like a cold wind across his skin.
He took an involuntary step back.
At that moment, Mira entered with a fresh platter.
She saw the crown prince and dropped into a hasty curtsy, nearly spilling the meat.
"Your Highness—"
Cassian recovered his composure.
"Feed him, then. It's what he's good for."
He turned and left, his entourage hurrying after him.
Later that evening, in the training yards below the palace, Cassian drove his practice blade through a straw dummy with far more force than necessary.
His tutor watched in silence.
Up in the nursery, Kael slept.
He slept deeply, as he always did after eating his fill.
His small chest rose and fell steadily.
His limbs seemed heavier, longer somehow, as though his body used the quiet hours to stretch itself toward something no one else could see.
Outside his window, the lights of High Silpatra burned—blue Aura conduits tracing patterns across the walls, Ether lanterns floating above the streets like captive stars.
All of it built on the certainty that power was born, not made.
In the morning, a new figure arrived at the eastern gate.
He was tall, broad, scarred across every visible inch of skin.
His hair was iron gray, cropped short.
He wore plain leather and carried no insignia, only a long bundle wrapped in oilcloth.
The guards knew him by reputation alone: Rogan Hale, once the kingdom's most feared monster hunter, retired after a wyrm took half his face and most of his left ear.
He spoke to no one as he was escorted through the palace.
When he reached the nursery, he dismissed Mira with a single look.
Then he stood over the sleeping child for a long time.
Finally, he unwrapped the bundle.
Inside was a wooden sword, child-sized, blunt.
Rogan set it on the floor beside the bed.
Kael stirred.
Opened his eyes.
Saw the stranger.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Kael sat up, looked past Rogan to the empty plate on the table, and spoke his third word.
"Meat."
Rogan's ruined mouth twitched—something that might have been a smile.
He nodded once.
From that day on, the quiet years began to change.