/A prince should never strike to win. Only to remind the blade that it cannot be forgotten."\
—Thallian, years later, recalling the lesson that came not with words, but with the sound of breaking wood.
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He didn't sleep.
As the words of the bishop left his mouth, the beat of the Pyraxis shard on his hand, and that last reverberation—"That boy will never kneel"—he had waited until the midnight bells tolled.
No guards. There were no lanterns. Just wind, and the frosty breath escaping through cracks in the mortar.
The chapel remained quiet.
Thallian knelt on the floor of the temple. The ancient oak beam creaked under his knee. He laid his palm on the stone pavers just under the consecrated step. The surface was not cold like the others, but subtly warmer. A shimmer appeared in the air above it like oil that has been heated.
He brushed off the dust and saw it: a disk of hammered iron, fixed in the stone. Writing ran its rim—not Latin. Not Gaulic. Roman it was, but College Roman, the language of high thaumaturgy before the Church appropriated its rituals.
He identified the glyph.
The same as in the genealogy of Queen Amlaide.
He did not say anything. He just touched the border.
Reduce aura retention. A hundred times.
The heat disappeared at once. The glow broke. The ward was dead, as silent as a breath.
Something under the plate shifted.
In remote northern Scandia, Bram Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, archmagus of the Nordic Tower and infamous even at the time as "The Young Beast," halted his runic meditation. He experienced the tingle of a dimension-traversing tether being touched. A dead College ward had been broken — from underneath.
He grumbled, "That makes four."
In Avesburg, Thallian exhaled. He hadn't opened the plate. Not yet.
But he'd silenced it.
He leaned back, his heart pounding too hard—too vigorously. Not with fear, though. From within. His blood—his body—yearned for more.
Not hunger.
Not lust.
Simple. effort. Yeoman
"I might be able to open it."
But he didn't. Not yet. The flame above the altar did not dance. It blazed steadily and high as if observing.
_-_
He left the chapel as the eastern sky blushed blue.
No servants stirred yet. No bells. Just the rustle of wind brushing the frost-wilted herbs in the Queen's garden. He walked the narrow path out of habit, breath sharp in his lungs, the ward's silence still coiling behind his ribs.
Then he heard humming.
Not melody. Pattern.
A girl's voice, soft, pacing.
He turned the hedge and found her: Eda, barefoot in the chill, cloak discarded on a stone bench. Her hands were streaked with soil, fingers dancing over a patch of cleared dirt where she traced looped glyphs with a vine's tip.
"Eda."
She flinched.
Then looked up and smiled. "Oh. I thought you were the Bishop."
"What are you doing?"
"Dreamwork," she said, brushing hair from her eyes. "I had another one."
Thallian stepped closer. Her markings weren't random — they echoed the iron ring from beneath the altar. Not perfectly. But not accidentally either.
She squinted up at him. "You've got fever eyes again."
"I didn't sleep."
She nodded, unsurprised. "Neither did I. In the dream, there was fire without smoke. And a man in grey. He said... 'This place remembers too much.' Then he vanished."
Her fingers hovered above the last symbol, uncertain.
"I think he was real."
Thallian crouched beside her. "Did you feel anything? Heat? Cold?"
"Both."
Eda blinked. Her breath curled visibly.
"And then I woke with this." She pulled back her sleeve: a tiny mark at her wrist — a burned spiral, black against pale skin.
A sigil, faint but precise.
He didn't recognize it. But something in him did.
Elsewhere, deep in Alexandria's shattered archives, a child scribe under the Holy See hesitated at a fragmentary glyph found beneath the original Library's foundation. She blinked, paused, and whispered:
"...It's waking again."
Back in Avesburg, Eda wiped the symbols clean.
"I don't think I was alone in the dream," she said quietly.
Thallian nodded.
"You weren't."
_-_
Once Eda disappeared behind the wall of the cloister, Thallian tarried.
She was always peculiar.
Neither cruel, not soft. Just tuned differently. Her blood cousin — her mother was his father's sister — and two years younger. He had played with her before her dreams had begun. Now, most whispered she was moon-touched.
But her dream had coincided too closely with his.
Still contemplating it, he proceeded down the hall to the kitchens.
They were half-lit, still pungent from the morning's simmering cauldrons. Cook Marle worked at the long table, her wrists bound in cloth and her fingers purple-stained from berries. She was older than his father. Had cooked for three kings, muttered curses in three languages, and yet still had her wedding ring on her finger, although the husband had died during the Gaulic slaughter before Thallian was born.
"You're late for nothing," she said not looking at him. "Or just too early for the wrong things."
He paused at the doorway. The air was thick with bark and oil. She was grinding something into flour — bitterroot bark, used for inflammation. He had seen it in his mother's apothecary before.
"That is not in the prescriptions of the priest."
"No," she said.
She didn't resume grinding.
"I dislike the way he bellows when his joints lock. And the bishop will never inquire what's in his bread."
Thallian observed. "You've done it before."
Marle nodded once. "Since I was twelve. Healing predates men's laws. But still, they burn you for it as poor and female."
She winced in pain — elbow swelling. Her hand hesitated above a pitcher of cold water. On instinct, Thallian stepped forward, brushed against her hand on the pitcher, and murmured:
Boost cold storage. One hundred times.
He then handed it to her. She blinked and accepted it and placed it against her elbow.
The bark which she was grinding suddenly became pungent.
"I know you're not like other people," she said. "But I think maybe you're okay."
A shadow moved across the window above them — not of a man, not of a spirit.
A bird. Observing.
It made one deep, low caw.
It was called Huginn somewhere.
_-_
The kitchen's warmth faded from his skin as Thallian crossed the cloisters. Above the chapel, the bell hadn't yet rung, but voices echoed anyway—laughter, chanting.
He stepped inside.
Bertran stood on the low altar, draped in an old velvet curtain, a chipped ladle held like a crozier. The "congregation" was three grubby servant children kneeling before the rat, who sat perched on a kneading stone, regal and still.
"Brothers and sisters," Bertran intoned, "His Most Chewedness, Pope Strawcrumb, blesses this holy day with salted broth and clean ears."
One child snorted.
Another sneezed.
Thallian leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.
"You're going to be hanged when the Bishop finds out."
Bertran didn't flinch. "He'll be the first rat we excommunicate."
Thallian walked forward, knelt by the stool. The rat twitched — slow, labored breath. Its eyes were milky now, fur brittle. He remembered it from his first night back from fever.
He placed a hand beside the rat, fingers brushing the edge of the stone.
Amplify biological longevity. One hundredfold.
The rat twitched again—then stilled. Not dead. Just... peaceful.
Its chest rose slow. Clear. It blinked once.
No spark, no glow. Just life.
Bertran tilted his head. "You blessed it?"
Thallian stood. "Something like that."
Behind a pillar, Eofric scratched furiously into his wax-sheet journal. His candle flickered. He didn't understand the spell, but he understood intention.
Thallian wasn't just different.
He was choosing to be.
Outside, perched on the chapel's moss-eaten spire, a raven watched. Its feathers shimmered faintly, as if still touched by myth. Though Odin was long dead — lost in the twilight of gods — this creature remembered.
Huginn, pride-bound and bored, had chosen Thallian three nights ago. Not out of love. But curiosity.
The boy touched time. And didn't flinch.
Inside, Bertran poured saltwater into a wooden goblet.
"Drink," he said solemnly. "It's not wine, but it's still sacramental."
Thallian drank.
The rat sneezed again.
_-_
He lay down, but the salt from the chapel still tingled behind his teeth—a bitter ghost of the blessing, or the curse, that had touched his tongue.
The rat had survived. Longer than nature allowed. That wasn't mercy—it was control. And control, when twisted, leaned closer to heresy than miracle.
Thallian turned to the wall, then froze.
There it was again—a faint, rhythmic sound, like fabric brushing against stone in slow, deliberate pulses.
He sat upright, bare feet recoiling from the chill of the flagstone floor.
The noise came from the wall just beside his cot. Ancient stone, once a corner of Roman barracks. He pressed his palm to the surface. Silence.
Still...
He crossed the room, slid his fingers behind the loose slate near the archway to the old armory, and eased it free.
Inside the cavity, wrapped in dust-veiled cloth, lay a needle—not of thread, but purpose. Longer than a tailor's, forged from a muted green-gold alloy, etched with a spiral glyph foreign to any local artisan.
This hadn't come from the chapel. Nor from any tradesman in the province.
And it was never meant for sewing.
The cloth bore a mark he recognized from Amlaide's forbidden pages: a seal of Atlasia.
They were already here.
—
By morning, no one would meet his eyes.
An elder courtier dropped his cup when Thallian offered him a greeting.
A young servant girl bowed too deeply, then vanished down the nearest stairwell without a word.
Even Veon, his sparring master, said nothing. Instead, as he handed Thallian a practice sword, he tapped his wrist twice. A quiet warning: Don't hold too tightly.
—
That night, long after supper's silence had settled, Thallian brought a single feather to his chambers.
He touched its vane and whispered the phrase:
"Reduce descent speed. Tenfold."
He let it go.
The feather lingered in the air—too long, too still. It didn't drift. It hovered, suspended by something unseen, as though the world had forgotten how to pull it down.
When it finally touched the floor, it cracked sharply, brittle as old bone.
Thallian stared.
Even feathers could break—if held too gently, for too long.
Above, Huginn let out a low croak. Judging. Displeased.
Thallian whispered toward the perched raven, "Do you watch for wisdom?"
The bird blinked, unimpressed.
And far down the west corridor—hidden from sight—Eofric etched another line into the record:
The prince is not sleeping.
Not because of fear.
Because he's afraid not to know what he's capable of.
_-_
The sun had yet to rise when Veon summoned him to the training circle. The stones were slick with night frost, and Thallian's bare feet gripped the gritty surface in silence. No fanfare. No greeting.
Just a nod.
And the wooden sword placed into his palm.
Opposite him stood Tomas of Merive, the second son of a frontier marquis—two years his senior, broader in the shoulders, but lacking in insight. He wore a smirk—the kind men don when they've already recounted their victory before earning it.
Thallian did not return the look.
"Begin," Veon said, his voice flat.
The first strike came wide—Tomas was testing him.
Thallian let it pass, pivoted on the ball of his foot, and tapped the boy's forearm with the tip of his sword.
Lightly.
Tomas frowned, reset. Came again—harder.
Thallian moved without thought.
Not faster than Tomas could see, but faster than he could process. The strike turned aside. His counter struck the boy's ribs.
And Tomas crumpled.
Not bleeding. Not broken.
But rattled—deeply. Eyes wide.
I didn't push that hard, Thallian thought. Did I?
A tremor threaded through him.
He reached for the wooden sword's grip, whispered in his mind:
Reduce shock transference. One hundredfold.
The next time Tomas lunged, the parry sang clean. No pain. Just the echo of wood.
Behind them, noblemen watched from the stone arch. They didn't cheer. One shifted uneasily. Another tightened his cloak.
The boy moved like a spell gone unspoken.
Veon ended the match with a curt motion. "Enough."
Tomas rose, face pale.
Thallian stepped back, bowing slightly.
Veon didn't speak for a long moment. Then finally: "You remembered to breathe this time."
It was not praise.
It was a warning.
---
Later, in Veon's quarters, the old knight sat alone, unstrapping his war-plate.
The boy listens, he thought. But he will be feared. And worse—he knows it.
A single ember snapped in the hearth.
Outside, a servant whispered to another: "He didn't even raise his voice."
_-_
He returned to the chapel near midnight, barefoot once more. The ancient walls seemed to hold their breath. No candles burned; only Huginn perched silently overhead, a shadow among the rafters, watching like a quiet accusation.
The altar retained a faint warmth where the stone plate concealed the vault. Roman craftsmanship—iron-inscribed, its ring sealed with prayers the Church never sanctioned. The ward's glyph pulsed in his blood now—part Atlasian, part something older.
He knelt, pressing both palms to the rim.
Not to open.
To silence.
Diminish aura resistance. A hundredfold.
A dry sound followed, like air folding over itself.
The heat dissipated. The ring cooled.
The vault beneath was no longer sealed. But it was not broken. Not yet.
He breathed deeply, feeling the marrow of his bones resonate with restraint. His heart beat once—and did not race. Not this time.
He rose and left the vault untouched.
---
At sunrise, Veon found him in the outer yard, gazing at the frostbitten grass.
"You look lighter," Veon observed.
Thallian shrugged. "I put something to sleep."
Veon nodded. "Good. Just don't let it wake you."
He said no more. But in his thoughts: He's learning how to kill slowly. With silence. Like a ruler should.
---
That evening, Queen Isalotte poured two cups of boiled clover tea. One for herself. One for him.
"You've stopped asking questions," she noted.
"I already know the answers," he replied softly.
She touched his hand—cold fingers meeting warmer flesh.
"You don't need to hide from me."
He met her gaze.
"But everyone else does."
---
In a scriptorium beneath Trebizond, a scholar of the Byzantine Mage Association translated a charred Latin codex retrieved from a ruined Gallic estate.
One phrase recurred repeatedly: Sonum sine voce. Fire without flame.
He dipped his quill.
Another thaumaturge had awakened.