The days that followed Emil's birth were woven with fatigue, wonder, and quiet discovery—the slow unraveling of what it meant to be a parent.
Alexander, once a man of tidy routines and careful ledgers, quickly found himself lost in the chaos of diapers, sleep-deprived rambling, and an endless rotation of lullabies. His hands, once calloused from trade and honest labor, now cradled something impossibly fragile. Sophia, radiant even in exhaustion, took to motherhood like soil to spring rain. She soothed when Alexander faltered, laughed when he panicked, and in the still moments when the world was quiet, she would hold Emil to her chest and hum songs from her girlhood—gentle melodies long forgotten by the world but not by her heart.
Emil grew fast.
Not just in body—but in awareness.
He was an easy baby in the strangest of ways. He didn't cry when he was hungry—he waited. Watched. As if expecting the world to answer him. His eyes—those impossibly green, searching eyes—rarely blinked, as if he feared missing something just beyond the veil of understanding. He would stare at flames in the hearth for minutes at a time, fascinated by the way they bent and licked the air. His fingers would twitch, mimicking the flicker.
"Do you think he's… different?" Alexander asked one night, sitting by the cradle as Sophia slept in the rocking chair.
"He's ours," Sophia replied without opening her eyes. "That's all I care about."
Alexander looked down at the baby—so still, so focused.
"But look at him," he whispered. "He watches everything like he's been here before."
Sophia smiled softly. "Maybe he has."
---
By the time Emil was five, he'd become the quiet fascination of the village.
He spoke like a boy twice his age—not in tone, but in thought. His questions were pointed, sometimes unsettling.
"Why do the stars feel different when I close my eyes?"
"Why does the moon pull at my stomach sometimes?"
He never meant to disturb. He just noticed things. Things most didn't. He knew the weight of a coin by touch. He could untie knots without looking. He learned his letters in a week, numbers in a day. And then… there was the sword.
---
It began with a broom.
Alexander had just returned from the merchant road, cart creaking behind him, when he caught sight of Emil in the backyard.
The boy held the broomstick in both hands—not like a child playing pretend, but with form. Legs spaced apart. Knees loose. Back straight. His eyes were locked on the air ahead as though it meant something.
Then he moved.
One slash. Then another. Fluid. Precise. He stepped forward, twisted on his heel, swept low, then rose into an overhead arc that would've broken a grown man's defense.
Alexander stood frozen. His mouth parted. The creak of the cart's wheels went silent.
When Emil finally noticed him, he relaxed and offered a sheepish smile.
"Hi, Papa."
Alexander cleared his throat. "Where'd you learn that?"
Emil tilted his head. "I don't know. I just… wanted to move that way."
Alexander nodded slowly, the image burned into his thoughts. That night, as Emil slept, he sat beside Sophia and relayed the moment in hushed awe.
"He didn't move like a boy," he murmured. "He moved like someone who's fought before."
Sophia held her mug close and said nothing.
---
Another day, he wandered to the river alone. When Sophia found him, he was sitting cross-legged at the edge, both hands submerged in the water.
He looked up at her and grinned. "Watch this."
The water began to ripple—not outward, but up. Thin streams spiraled around his arms, lifting into the air in smooth arcs. The fish swam around him in slow circles, unafraid.
"I asked it to dance," he said simply.
Sophia knelt beside him, eyes wide. "You… asked the water?"
He nodded.
"And it listened?"
He looked thoughtful. "It wanted to."
She said nothing else. She simply pulled him close and held him, quietly wondering how much of him would never belong to her.
---
Their home became a sanctuary of wonder and unease. Alexander started carving wooden swords for his son—small, balanced, beautiful. Emil took to them instantly. He would play in the yard, practicing alone for hours.
Sometimes, other children would gather to watch. They called it "magic dancing."
And yet, Emil never boasted. Never showed off. When praised, he would smile politely, then grow quiet. Thoughtful. As if trying to remember something he knew but couldn't quite grasp.
At night, he dreamed.
Not of childish things. Not of dragons or candy or stories.
He dreamed of a man.
Tall. Cloaked in ash and light. His eyes were fire and sorrow. He stood in fields of bone and silence. Sometimes he fought. Sometimes he wept. Always, he was alone.
There was no sound. Only pictures. Memories painted in silence. But Emil felt the battles. Felt the weight of the sword the man carried. Felt the heat of something terrible and holy pressed into the man's back as he stood between the world and its ending.
He would wake from these dreams not with fear—but with a quiet ache in his chest, like something forgotten calling to him in the dark.
He never told his parents.
How could he?
To him, they were just dreams—strange, vivid, and heavy with meaning he couldn't name. He didn't understand the faces he saw, the weight of the sword he imagined, or the sorrow that clung to the man like a second shadow.
He was five.
But every now and then, when the wind whispered through the trees just right, or the light struck the edge of his wooden blade at a certain angle, he would pause… and wonder.
And deep inside him, something waited. Not urgent. Not loud.
Just… patient.
---
By the time Emil turned six, Alexander and Sophia had begun to whisper to each other in hushed tones over candlelight.
Not out of fear.
But out of awe.
Emil was no longer just precocious—he was exceptional, in ways they could no longer explain away with parental pride or folk blessings. There was too much grace in his movement. Too much power in his stillness. Too much… knowing behind those impossibly green eyes.
One night, after supper, the cottage quiet save for the soft crackle of the hearth, Alexander sat at the table, idly running his fingers along the grain of the wood, lost in thought. Across from him, Sophia stared into her tea, barely blinking.
Emil had spent the afternoon laughing—laughing—as he drew a perfect ring of frost in midair, letting it hover over a bucket of water like it was the most natural thing in the world. And when it shimmered away, evaporating into the dusk, he had only asked, "Did you see that, Mama? It felt like the air wanted to help."
Sophia's hands trembled slightly as she reached across the table, resting her fingers over Alexander's.
"He needs more than us," she said, her voice low, thick with restrained urgency. "More than lullabies and wooden toys and bedtime stories. He needs guidance. Not just love. We've given him roots, but he's growing faster than we can follow, and I... I don't want to be the reason he ever feels held back."
Alexander looked up, eyes meeting hers. The weariness on his face didn't come from doubt—it came from weight. The weight of knowing she was right.
"He's beyond us already," he admitted softly. "Every time I think I've taught him something, he shows me something I can't explain."
Sophia's gaze flicked to the window, where a faint glimmer of frost still clung to the rim of the bucket outside.
"If we don't help him become who he's meant to be," she whispered, "someone else might try to shape him into something he's not."
Alexander nodded.
That same night he had begun writing letters to acquaintances and friendly relations he made over the years in business, dearly praying for a response of willingness to help nurture the immense talent of Emil.
Raphael arrived first.
He was not a flashy man. Weathered and tall, with salt-touched hair tied back in a warrior's knot and a lean frame wrapped in leathers worn smooth by years of honest work. His sword was plain, forged not for beauty but for balance. His coat was stitched with travel, sun-faded and marked with the careful repairs of someone who didn't believe in waste. His handshake was firm, his eyes tired but steady.
He had once served as a royal duelist in a coastal city long buried in scandal—an empire with golden thrones and darker secrets. But when that city fell, Raphael left it behind with nothing but his sword and a promise never to draw it for coin again. Alexander remembered him not for the skill with which he fought, but for the restraint with which he didn't.
"I'm not a knight," Raphael told Emil the first day they met in the field behind the house. His voice was rough as gravel, but gentle. "Just someone who's spent more time listening to steel than people."
Emil had tilted his head at that, curious. "Does steel talk?"
Raphael had smiled. "Only when you're quiet enough to hear it."
The boy grinned wide, and Raphael saw it—not arrogance, not ambition—joy. Honest, infectious joy.
Then came the wooden training blade.
"Let's begin with the forms," Raphael said, handing it to him. "Show me what you know."
Emil didn't nod. Didn't ask questions.
He just moved.
A stance. A breath. A shift of weight. Then a flourish—precise, elegant, unbroken.
He flowed from the first form into the third, bypassing the second with a transition Raphael hadn't seen since training in the royal courts. And then—something new. A sweep, a backward pivot, a strike pulled just shy of full extension. Clean. Efficient.
Raphael blinked.
"…where did you learn that?"
Emil frowned, thoughtful. "I didn't," he said. "It just felt like my feet wanted to go there."
From that moment, Raphael knew.
He could not teach Emil like a novice. The boy was not learning the blade—he was remembering it. Or worse—he was teaching the sword to remember him.
He tried to take it slow. He failed.
Raphael began with patterns used by elite duelists—subtle pressure points, blind-spot exploitation, cross-body parries. Emil mimicked them with ease. Not just mimicked—refined. He would pause after a sequence and ask, "Shouldn't I drop my hip here to keep my weight from sliding forward?" Raphael hadn't even thought to correct that yet.
By the third week, the field behind the cottage had been trampled into a training ground. Circular grooves marked sparring drills. Stakes lined paths for movement exercises. And Raphael, a man who once trained men with titles longer than their swords, found himself outmatched by a barefoot six-year-old who liked to hum between strikes.
They began sparring.
Real sparring.
At first, Raphael held back. Emil was small, after all—young, unshaped. But the first time he let his guard dip, Emil stepped inside his stance and knocked the blade clean from his hand.
"I didn't mean to," Emil said, eyes wide. "I just… saw the opening."
Raphael retrieved his blade, face unreadable.
"No," he said slowly. "That was good. Let's do it again."
The bond between them grew quickly. Raphael was not a father to Emil—but he became something close. A guardian of steel. A keeper of form. They ate together after sessions, breaking bread and laughing over clumsy attempts to spar with sticks and cloths as blindfolds. Raphael told stories from faraway lands—not grand tales, but quiet ones. Like how sea air rusted hilts faster than rain, or how the best sword he ever held was made by a smith who never gave it a name.
One day, during a particularly demanding drill, Raphael called for a break.
Emil flopped into the grass with a sigh, blade still in hand.
"Do all warriors train this hard?" he asked, wiping his brow with the back of his arm.
Raphael chuckled, sitting beside him. "Not most. But then again… most don't have this."
He nodded to Emil's grip. His poise. His instinct.
"It's like watching a river carve itself a path," he murmured. "Effortless. I give you stone, and you wear it down with grace."
Emil just shrugged and smiled. "I just like when it feels right."
Raphael would sit sometimes and just watch him. The way he twirled the blade absently between thoughts. The way his eyes followed leaves as they fell, calculating where they'd land.
"Gods forgive me," he muttered once to Alexander, "but I think I'm watching history write itself."
---
Liz arrived in early autumn, draped in layers of forest-dyed robes that smelled faintly of old parchment and crushed lavender. Her frame was small, almost birdlike, and her presence subtle—like a whisper caught between the pages of an unwritten book. Her staff was taller than she was, made from ironwood etched with runes that shimmered softly when struck by sunlight. She wore spectacles, cracked at one corner, and had a habit of forgetting where she placed them even when they were perched atop her head.
She spoke gently to Emil the first time they met, kneeling in the grass so their eyes met at level.
"I hear you're clever," she said with a smile. "But let's see if you can be curious too."
Emil grinned. "Mama says I ask too many questions."
Liz chuckled. "That's how magic begins. One question at a time."
Their first few lessons were structured and traditional. She brought scrolls inked with diagrams of elemental convergence. She etched basic sigils into sand and asked him to trace them with a stick. She explained mana flow like streams through a valley—easy to direct, difficult to master.
Emil listened. He nodded. He even took notes, though his handwriting was more doodle than letter.
Then she asked him to warm the air above his palm.
He looked at his hand.
The air shimmered.
And ignited.
A gentle flame hovered over his palm, dancing with a grace Liz had never seen—not conjured by force or repetition, but invited. Like the fire was listening.
She stared, her mouth slightly agape.
"…did you use the glyphs I taught you?" she asked slowly.
Emil blinked. "What glyphs?"
She sat down, hard.
And laughed.
The weeks that followed were nothing like what she'd planned.
Liz stopped teaching spells.
She began learning from Emil.
She asked him questions instead—"What does it feel like before the light forms?" or "What do you think the wind wants when you call it?" Emil didn't always have words, but when he tried, the results were… staggering.
He once whispered to a flower and coaxed it to bloom out of season. Another time, he sketched a rune absentmindedly in the dirt and shifted the shadows around them for hours. Liz found herself referencing grimoires and tomes long forgotten, only to discover Emil doing naturally what most mages could not do with a lifetime of focus.
There was no strain. No chant. No ritual.
Just… intent.
"I've spent my whole life trying to coax mana into cooperation," she told Sophia one evening, sipping warm tea with trembling hands. "But Emil—mana seems to follow his direction and gentle command as if it was unnatural to do otherwise."
The bond between them grew not just from respect, but from joy. Liz adored Emil—not as a prodigy, but as a boy who got soot on his nose and asked if he could enchant his toy wagon to fly. She told him stories about ancient sorcerers who turned rain into music, and Emil begged her to try it. She did. It failed spectacularly. They both laughed.
They worked in the orchard, under rustling trees, where birds occasionally landed near Emil without fear. Liz taught him not how to wield power—but how to listen to it.
"You don't command magic," she told him once. "You remember it. And it remembers you."
Emil tilted his head, as if understanding only halfway, but still smiled.
She crafted exercises just for him—ones that couldn't be found in books. Mana-sculpting with colored smoke. Emotion-based resonance with chimes. She even built puzzles that required magical intuition to solve.
He finished them all in a day.
Liz stopped trying to catch up.
Instead, she poured everything she had—her notes, her wisdom, her wonder—into Emil, as if trying to prepare the world for what he might become.
Because it wasn't just raw power that he possessed.
It was grace.
And time passed like this, physical training and swordsmanship in the mornings, and intellectual training and magical guidance at twilight.
Despite the seemingly arduous daily schedule, the training and shaping of his talent always came second to his childhood. Emil always found time to trip and bruise his knee, feed chickens and laugh at their silly bobbing, and especially to sit in wonder and admiration as his mother sang sweetly to him.
Even still, Emil dreamed.
The man appeared more often now. Clad in ruined armor. Sword always drawn. His face still obscured, but his presence undeniable. In those dreams, Emil felt strength. Pain. Purpose.
He didn't know what it meant.
But sometimes, just before waking, he would hear one word—not from the man, but from somewhere deeper.
"Remember."
He would open his eyes then, heart racing.
And somewhere, far beneath the peaceful soil of the world, something ancient stirred in wait. He could not put words to the sensation, but even at this age Emil knew he had an unknown duty greater than he could imagine.