The Valdorian nursery was not a place for children.
Or rather, it was not a place for ordinary children. The walls were panels of obsidian marble, each veined with gold that pulsed faintly in time with the palace's ley-line heart. No pastel colors or fluffy animals here. The toys arrayed on polished ebony shelves were enchanted training tools—a set of miniature weighted swords that hummed with corrective mana when swung with proper form, puzzle cubes of interlocking mithril that shifted into elemental rune configurations, and a particularly unsettling stuffed raven whose obsidian-button eyes glowed when squeezed, whispering the First Mantra of Foundation in a raspy, synthetic voice.
Lucian Valdorian, eleven months and fourteen days old, sat in the exact center of the room on a rug woven from the frost-rimed pelts of newborn Frost-Drake pups. He was practicing walking.
Left foot forward. Heel down first, you idiot, not the toe. Shift the weight. Feel the core engage. Now right foot. Don't you dare wobble. Gods, I used to do box jumps. Now a two-inch step feels like climbing a cliff.
His thoughts, sharp and distinctly adult, cut through the frustrating haze of infantile motor control. His tiny legs, clad in soft black linen, trembled with the sustained effort. The disconnect between his mind's expectations and his body's capabilities was a constant, grinding humiliation.
"Come on, my little raven! You can do it! To Mama!"
Duchess Elara Valdorian knelt five paces away, her arms outstretched. Her famous storm-gray eyes, once hollowed and shadowed by the eighteen-hour trial of his birth, now shone with a fierce, luminous pride. She wore not court silks but the simple black training tunic and trousers of a Valdorian legion officer, her silver-streaked hair pulled back in a severe braid. In the eleven months since his arrival, she had reclaimed her role as commander of the Valdorian Phalanx, but she guarded these afternoon hours with the ferocity of a dragon guarding its hoard.
Lucian took another wobbly step. The world tilted. His center of gravity—still unnaturally high in this ridiculous body—threatened to betray him. He felt the pull of the planet, the absurd, bowling-ball weight of his own head.
Then, without conscious thought, he triggered Void Core Stabilization.
It had started as a desperate experiment at eight months, a mental shout at the glitching interface in his vision. Now it was a reflex, as natural as blinking. The black-and-gold core nestled behind his sternum pulsed once, a silent, deep vibration he felt in his teeth. The dense, heritage-saturated mana that permeated the nursery—thick with the psychic imprint of a thousand Valdorian warriors—responded. It didn't flow into him. It flowed to him, coalescing beneath the soles of his feet.
For three critical heartbeats, the air solidified into invisible, perfectly level platforms of solidified force.
He took three more swift, confident steps. Then he let the effect dissolve and pitched forward, deliberately clumsy, into the waiting safety of his mother's arms.
Elara caught him, her laugh a bright, clear sound that echoed off the marble. "There! You walked! A full seven steps, and the last three were flawless! You're not just balancing, my heart, you're channeling!"
She swept him up, holding him high. Lucian endured the display, his usual internal sarcasm muted by the genuine, warming glow of her triumph. She thinks I'm a prodigy. I'm a cheat with a system menu and thirty-one years of muscle memory. But her pride... that's real. Don't cheapen it.
He grunted instead, burying his face in the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Her scent was unique: oiled leather, the crisp ozone of high-altitude lightning, and beneath it, the clean, powerful fragrance of a storm just about to break—unmistakably Elara.
As she held him, the persistent, glitching presence at the edge of his vision updated.
[Daily Assimilation Complete]
[Ambient Mana Source: Valdorian Ley-Saturation / Proximity to High-Density Echo Resonators]
[Mana Absorbed: 47 Echo Resonance Units]
[Current Realm: Mortal Foundation – Minor Realm 4]
[Cumulative ERR: 188/500 to Minor Realm 5]
[Recursive Amplification Multiplier: 1.07x]
[Nexus Shard Reserve: 14.3]
Fourteen point three shards. A pathetic, incremental hoard. Each shard represented a micro-unit of "recursed" reality, excess potential filtered and crystallized by his Nexus from the mana he passively devoured just by breathing the air of the Valdorian ancestral seat. Every stone in this palace was a battery, steeped in the legacy of Raven-Echo devourers. His system siphoned it, processed it through its mysterious recursion protocols, and spat out these gleaming, intangible fragments of black-and-gold possibility.
He'd learned their physicality at six months, driven by a crawling, existential curiosity. Focusing all his will, he'd tried to manifest a single shard in his pudgy hand. It had worked—a sliver of crystallized void, colder than the absence of heat, had flickered into existence for a second before dissolving into motes of light. The feedback had spiked his mana draw rate to terrifying levels. Every candle in the wing had flared a ghostly blue for an hour; a family heirloom shield in the hallway had hummed itself off its mountings. The migraine that followed had felt like his skull was being used as an anvil for a particularly enthusiastic dwarf. He hadn't attempted direct manifestation since.
"Look at you," Elara murmured now, swaying gently as she smoothed his fine, dark hair. It was already shot through with streaks of premature, metallic silver-gold at the temples—a visible mark of the Void Core's influence, the nursemaids whispered. "Your foundation is more stable than some third-year cadets in the Phalanx. Your father will be—"
The nursery door opened without a sound, bypassing the usual courtesy of a knock. Duke Roderick Valdorian filled the archway. He had shed the ornate obsidian war-plate of his public duties for the deep, grey, rune-stitched robes of the family's inner sanctum. In the year since Lucian's birth, the harsh, battle-forged planes of the Duke's face had developed new creases—not of weathering, but of a profound, weary tension. The weight of a living prophecy in his household was a burden no enemy blade could match. Yet when his silver eyes, mirrors of Lucian's own minus the golden rings, found his son, something indefinably soft thawed the perpetual winter there.
"Am I interrupting the campaign?" Roderick's voice was the low rumble of distant avalanche, carefully controlled.
"Never," Elara said, turning but not relinquishing her hold on Lucian. "Your son and heir just conducted a successful maneuver across the Frost-Drake salient. Seven paces unassisted. And... he cheated, Roderick. The air held him for the last three steps. He's not just walking. He's already learning to manipulate ambient mana."
Roderick's gaze, which had been warm, sharpened into a commander's assessment. He crossed the room, his movements economical and heavy with latent power. To Lucian's heightened senses, his father wasn't just a man; he was a walking confluence of fierce, disciplined energy. He could feel the primary Echo woven into Roderick's soul—not the family's vaunted Raven, but a captured, terrifying Tier 3: The Stillquake. A Calamity-Class Echo that granted dominion over silence, vibration, and the crushing absence of sound. It resonated at the absolute peak of power possible for it: Resonant Dominion, Realm 16, Peak.
The ceiling, Lucian thought, the knowledge from his internalized studies surfacing. He integrated two powerful Tier 3 Echoes in his youth. Maximum potential achieved. Realm 16 Peak is his absolute limit. A king among mortals, forever barred from the ascendant realms where the Emperor and true monsters walk. Because the Echo's quality dictates the ceiling. No amount of grinding will break that.
Roderick extended a single, callused index finger. The gesture was an old one, a wordless offer and test. Lucian, his infant mind warring with his adult curiosity, reached out a tiny, determined hand and grasped it.
The connection was a live wire.
Power didn't transfer, but perception did. Through the physical touch, amplified by the Nexus's ever-present passive scan, Lucian's mind was flooded with data. He didn't just sense his father's strength; he saw it. The Stillquake Echo appeared in his mind's eye as a complex, fractally beautiful structure of interlocking silences and vibrational nodes, woven deep into the tapestry of Roderick's soul. And around it, like scar tissue on perfect crystal, he saw the imperfections—tiny harmonic dissonances, minute soul-tears that had healed rough. Flaws born from the brutal, forced integration process, the price of claiming such power. Those flaws were the anchors of the ceiling.
[Scan Complete: Host Proximity – Roderick Valdorian]
[Primary Echo: Calamity-Class – 'The Stillquake' – Integration Depth: 94% – Echo-Host Harmony: 82%]
[Secondary Echo: Rare-Class – 'Ironblood Warlord' – Integration: 89% – Harmony: 76%]
[Confirmed Realm: Resonant Dominion 16 – Peak (Structural Ceiling Lock Engaged)]
[Analysis: Soul-matrix exhibits stabilization scarring from high-risk integration protocols. Ceiling is not a barrier but a structural integration limit. Recursion Protocol could potentially...]
The system glitched, the text fragmenting into nonsensical glyphs before resetting.
Recursion could what? Lucian pushed the thought at the interface, frustration bubbling. Fix it? Re-write it? Shatter the ceiling? The Nexus remained silent, an oracle that gave data but never answers. It was a tool, not a teacher.
Roderick, as always, felt the invasive scan. A subtle tension corded the muscle in his jaw. A faint ripple, like a heat haze, distorted the air around him for a millisecond—his Echo instinctively reacting to the probe. Yet, he never broke the contact. He endured the violation, his eyes holding Lucian's strange, knowing gaze.
"His perception grows sharper," Roderick stated, his voice devoid of inflection as he spoke to Elara. "He doesn't just feel power. He dissects it. The Oracle Conclave has renewed its petition to the Emperor. Formally this time. They insist on an 'empirical assessment of the prophecy's ontological vector.'"
Elara's warmth vanished, replaced by a glacial chill that had frozen battlefields. "They can take their ontological vectors and petition the Void itself. He is my son. Not a relic to be gauged and measured in some dusty observatory!"
"The Emperor has granted it," Roderick said, the flatness of his tone more frightening than any shout. "A 'casual, non-invasive observation.' To be conducted tomorrow. During the public Lunar Zenith ceremony in the Sun Palace."
Ah. The cold, understanding clarity of politics cut through Lucian's infantile frustrations. The game board was being revealed. The Oracle Conclave was one of the three pillars propping up the Aetherion Empire, alongside the Imperial Sun Dynasty and the Military—the latter embodied by House Valdorian. A living, breathing prophecy, especially one that promised "the empire shall kneel," residing squarely in the hands of the military pillar was a seismic threat to that ancient balance. They needed to classify him, to quantify the threat, to find the limits and levers of the omen they'd all revered for centuries.
"Who?" Elara demanded, the word a blade.
"High Oracle Kaelen himself. And he is bringing his Seer-apparent. Lyra."
Elara actually took a half-step back, her grip tightening on Lucian. A low, visceral hiss escaped her. "Lyra? The bone-ash reader? The child who traces fate-lines in the ashes of the dead? Roderick, she's a Soul-Echo devourer. That's not just Rare-class, that's forbidden arts."
"Tolerated," Roderick corrected with a weary finality that spoke of arguments already lost in private councils. "Tolerated because she operates under the Emperor's personal seal. Tolerated because her predictions have diverted three famines and exposed a major cult. And tolerated because, despite her Echo, she has never let her Harmony dip below 65%."
*Soul-Echo. Tier 3. Rare. Forbidden.* The lexicon from his mental archives flared. High risk of madness, soul contamination, existential erosion. The ability to perceive memories, emotions, the threads of fate itself. To manipulate them. Harmony measured an Echo's stable integration with the host's soul. Below 70% was considered risky. Below 60% was a slow suicide. 65% was balancing on a monomolecular wire over an infinite drop.
The cold knot that formed in Lucian's gut had nothing to do with his Void Core. They're not coming to scan my magic. They're coming to read my soul. Would Lyra's sight pierce the veil of reincarnation? Would she see the glitching, alien code of the Nexus? Would she perceive the recursive anomaly at his center?
Roderick finally broke the handhold, taking Lucian from Elara's arms. He held him aloft, not with playful joy, but with the solemn focus of a general studying a strategic map of a doomed battlefield. "Listen to me, Lucian. Tomorrow. In the Sun Palace. You will be quiet. You will be placid. You will be a child. You will drool on the toys they present. You will not stare with those ancient eyes. You will not pull on the world's mana. Do you understand me?"
Lucian met his father's intense gaze. Forming words was still a physical impossibility—his vocal cords and mouth couldn't coordinate the complexity. So he did the only thing he could. He let his face, his entire being, go slack. The fierce intelligence dimmed, replaced by a vacant, babyish placidity. He was an empty vessel, a doll waiting to be posed.
Roderick saw the terrifyingly perfect performance behind the act. His shoulders slumped a fraction. "He understands too well."
"Of course he does," Elara said, her voice softening as she placed a steadying hand on Roderick's forearm. "He is the blood of our blood. And he is more. Let the Oracles peer into their scrying pools and ash trays. They will only see what the prophecy wishes them to see. They will see the Raven, returned. They will not see our son."
But that night, as the twin moons—Selia, the Silver Muse, and Mor'thas, the Crimson Harbinger—climbed to their joint zenith, painting the spires of Valdorian Keep in monochrome silver and bloody rust, Lucian did not sleep.
He lay in his crib, carved from ancient heartwood and inlaid with obsidian shards that drank the moonlight, watching the familiar, glitching panels in his mind.
[Nexus Shard Reserve: 14.3]
[Available Primary Functions: Devour, Scan]
[Locked Secondary Functions: Purification Protocol (Cost: 50 Shards), Stability Booster Matrix (Cost: 100 Shards), Echo Mimicry: Level 1 (Cost: 200 Shards)]
Fourteen point three. It might as well be zero. The locked functions taunted him with their potential.
Driven by a slow-burning anxiety, he turned his focus inward. Away from the shards, away from the locked doors. He focused on the core of it all—the spinning, silent maelstrom of the Void Core itself. He willed the Nexus to analyze not the world, but the analyzer.
[Scanning Host Core Matrix…]
[Void Core Status: Stable]
[Purity: 100%]
[Recursion Seed: Dormant (Growth: 0.7%)]
[Inherent Authority Identified: Devouring (Conceptual Weight – Unranked)]
[Sub-Function Unlocked: Echo Resonance Perception]
Echo Resonance? That was new. Not in the basic readouts. He pushed his concentration, a mental finger poking the glitching text.
[Echo Resonance Perception: Dual-State Function (Passive/Active).]
[Passive State: Host continuously perceives Echo typology, tier classification, and approximate Harmony percentage of all entities within sensory range (currently: 10-pace radius). Data is overlain on visual/aura perception.]
[Active State: 'Resonance Pulse.' Host can emit a targeted burst of recursive discordance. Pulse seeks harmonic instability in Echo integrations (Primary Target: Harmony <60%). Effect: Brief, severe integration disruption, causing psychic feedback, mana backlash, or momentary Echo suppression. Cost: Variable Nexus Shard expenditure (Minimum: 5 Shards). Warning: Unstable Echoes may fracture. Host proximity to backlash is advised against.]
The information settled in his mind, cold and sharp. A weapon. Not a sword or a spell, but a precise, surgical, soul-deep scalpel. A tool that didn't attack the body, but the very bond between a devourer and their power. Disrupt an unstable integration… like, for instance, a young Seer clinging to a forbidden Soul-Echo with a Harmony of 65%?
The cold knot of dread transformed. It didn't disappear, but it crystallized into something else: a hard, calculative edge. He had 14.3 shards. A Resonance Pulse cost a variable minimum of five. A gamble with terrible, unknown odds. But it was a lever. A hidden switch in the dark.
Outside his window, a lone, laggard Void Tear—a final, lingering droplet from the storm of his birth-night—streaked silently through the dual moonlight. It was a speck of absolute black, rimmed in dying gold, tracing a brief, defiant scar across the face of the moons before winking out.
Let them look, he thought, the words in his mind as clear and cold as the heartwood beneath him. He was no longer just a baby playing a part. He was the operator of a flawed, glitching god-machine, trapped in a infant's flesh. Let the old man peer through his lenses. Let the girl read the ashes of fate.
But if her fingers, psychic or otherwise, try to grasp the core of what I am… if she tries to touch the recursion…
In the darkness of the crib, the Recursive Echo Nexus glitched violently once, its golden veins flaring with silent, corrosive light, as if in savage agreement.
[Recursion Seed Growth: 0.8%]
Tomorrow would not just be interesting.
Tomorrow would be a test.