The transition from life to death was not a tunnel of light, but a catastrophic chemical oxidation. One moment, the scientist was stabilizing a volatile isotope in his lab; the next, he was the isotope. The explosion should have been the end—a final, messy punctuation mark on a life dedicated to the cold, hard laws of physics.
Then, he felt the air.
It was thick, smelling of beeswax, old parchment, and a strange, metallic ozone. He tried to open his eyes, but his motor functions were a disaster. His limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated, like meat-mittens. When he tried to curse the faulty safety valves in his lab, all that emerged was a high-pitched, wet wail.
Hypothesis, he thought, his adult consciousness screaming against the fog of a literal infant brain. A: I am in a state of post-traumatic hallucination. B: Experimental consciousness transfer. C: I have died and, against every law of entropy I ever taught, I have been recycled.
As a scientist, he found the concept of reincarnation utterly unscientific. It lacked a mechanism. Where was the data? Where was the energy conservation? Yet, as days bled into weeks of blurred vision and sensory overload, the evidence became empirical. He was a baby.
He was also not alone.
"He is quiet today, my King," a woman's voice drifted over him, melodic and regal. He was lying in a cradle of carved oak and silk. "Petyr has the eyes of a scholar already. Look at how he watches the shadows."
"He is the firstborn of Redania, Hedwig," a deep, booming voice replied. He felt the vibration of footsteps—heavy, spurred boots. "He must be more than a scholar. He will be the Eagle that leads the North. And his brother, little Radovid... well, the boy has lungs enough for both of them."
He froze. Redania? King? He felt a smaller, flailing shape beside him in the oversized cradle. His twin. Radovid.
"The Brotherhood is already asking when the boys will be tested for the Gift," King Vizimir II grumbled, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial low. "They smell power in this lineage. Philippa Eilhart looks at Petyr as if he were a prize mare."
"Let them look," Queen Hedwig whispered. "He is a Prince first. A mage second, if at all."
Petyr IV processed the data with cold precision. He was in a feudal society. A world with "Mages" and a "Brotherhood." If the "Gift" they spoke of was real, it wasn't mysticism. It was a variable. A force of nature that had yet to be properly peer-reviewed.
He felt a tiny, uncoordinated hand smack into his cheek—Radovid, his twin, restless in his sleep. Petyr didn't cry. He simply stared up at the silk canopy, his mind already beginning to map out a new periodic table.
If this world runs on magic, Petyr thought, closing his tiny fists, I will be the one to write its laws.
He accepted his fate not out of destiny, but out of curiosity. There was a world to demystify, and he had a front-row seat to the throne.
******
Tretogor's royal library was a cathedral of leather and dust, a place where knowledge went to be hoarded rather than shared. At five years old, Petyr was a small, silent fixture among the shelves. While Radovid spent his mornings wooden-sword fighting in the courtyard, Petyr was busy cataloging the world.
He found it on a high shelf, tucked behind a dry treatise on Redanian grain taxes: a grimoire bound in dark goat-hide.
The text was maddening. It was filled with poetic nonsense—"Invite the fire to dance within the marrow of your soul"—and diagrams that looked more like abstract art than blueprints. But at the core of the fluff were the Four Elements: Fire, Earth, Air, and Water.
Archaic, Petyr thought, his small fingers tracing the ink. Aristotelian at best.
He decided to test the "Fire" protocol. Following the book's instructions, he reached into the "void" and pulled. A spark jumped from his palm, blooming into a tennis-ball-sized sphere of orange flame. It was beautiful, defying the lack of a fuel source—until the spike hit his skull.
A sharp, throbbing migraine bloomed behind his eyes. He extinguished the flame instantly, leaning his head against the cool stone of the bookshelf.
He looked at the grimoire and facepalmed.
"A toll," he muttered, his child-voice high and annoyed. "The book describes it as a 'spiritual tax,' but it's clearly a biological cost. If I ignore the laws of physics to create energy from nothing, the system draws the difference from my own neural pathways."
He sat on the floor, his mind racing. In his past life, the four-element theory was a precursor to the Periodic Table of Elements. If this world viewed magic as four distinct 'flavors' of power, they were missing the underlying unified theory.
Hypothesis: Magic is a high-entropy energy source that can manipulate matter at a molecular level.
Observation: The more a spell contradicts the natural laws of the universe—like creating heat without combustion—the higher the 'cost' to the caster.
"If I want to throw fire," Petyr whispered, "I shouldn't 'invite it to dance.' I should simply accelerate the vibration of the oxygen molecules already present in the air."
He held out his hand again. This time, he didn't visualize a mystical flame. He visualized the kinetic energy of atoms, the friction of gas, the simple Laws of Thermodynamics.
He felt the power—the Source—humming in his blood like a live wire. He didn't pull it; he channeled it into a precise, mathematical point.
A blue-white spark hissed into existence. It was hotter than the previous flame, but the headache? It was barely a dull hum.
"Efficient," he noted, a small, triumphant smile tugging at his lips.
"Petyr?"
He turned. Radovid stood in the doorway, clutching a wooden shield, his eyes wide as he looked at the flickering white light in his brother's hand. Unlike the mages he would one day grow to fear, Radovid looked at Petyr with nothing but pure, unadulterated awe.
"You're doing it," Radovid whispered. "You're a mage."
"No, Radovid," Petyr said, closing his hand and snuffing the light. "I'm a student. And I'm going to teach you how the world actually works."