The banquet hall was alive with low voices and perfumed light.
Soft music hummed through the air, courtesy of a four-string ensemble seated behind a veil of blue silk. The nobles of the western territories—minor barons, trade lords, viscounts—mingled beneath the chandeliers, their silk shoes silent against the white marble.
At the heart of it all, seated on a smaller throne beside his mother, was Arthur Light.
Five years old today.
Still silent. Still strange. Still staring.
The guests brought gifts, as they always did.
Books with gilded covers. Blunted training daggers with animal motifs. Rare fruits. Sculpted figurines of saints.
"House Light deserves loyalty," they said to Lady Fionne, who nodded graciously.
"This one," said a red-nosed lord with too many rings, "is a miniature globe of the coastal isles, enchanted to spin with a touch—well, not enchanted, of course, ha ha, such things don't exist. But crafted… cleverly!"
Arthur smiled politely, bowing slightly as was expected. Inside, he was somewhere else entirely.
The hall was bright. Too bright.
He could barely see the threads.
Then came the final gift.
A small velvet box, black with gold trim, held in the hands of a senior servant.
"This is from Lord Gaunder," the man said.
Arthur blinked.
Whispers rippled through the room.
Gaunder hadn't given him a personal gift on any birthday before. Not when he turned one. Not three. Not even last year.
Now?
Arthur's hands trembled slightly as he took the box.
It was heavier than expected.
He opened the lid.
Inside sat a single stone—pale, rough-cut, almost crystalline. It wasn't symmetrical. It wasn't pretty. Just smooth and oddly shaped, like a frozen flame, faintly glowing with white luminescence, almost like moonlight caught in salt.
The room whispered louder.
"A relic from the eastern vaults, I think."
"Wasn't that just an old family heirloom?"
"No record of enchantment, I'm told."
"Just a... decoration."
But Arthur didn't hear them.
His eyes widened.
He could see them.
The threads.
Rushing toward the stone.
Golden strands, dozens at once, were moving—not slowly, not lazily, but directly. From the chandeliers, from the window, from the cracks in the ceiling—converging on the stone in his hand like metal to a magnet.
And they were going inside.
Not around it. Into it.
Like it was drinking them.
His mouth parted slightly.
No way...
He looked up, trembling now, not from fear—but from the sudden, devastating clarity that hit him all at once.
They're not just floating. They're waiting.
They need something to go through.
A focus. A vessel.
A catalyst.
He had been so arrogant.
He had tried everything.
Breath, light, ink, movement.
But he had never once stopped to think:
"Maybe the magic isn't supposed to come from just me."
The threads pulsed again.
As he held the stone in both hands, he felt pressure, faint and thrilling, near his ribs.
Like the world had shifted—slightly—and was now breathing with him.
He looked down at the pale surface of the relic.
It had no markings.
No runes.
No carvings.
Just potential.
Magic is real.
The thought exploded in his chest like a second heartbeat.
It was so obvious now.
So humiliating.
He wanted to laugh. Or cry.
He had doubted so much—had cursed the god, had questioned the threads, had nearly given up—
—and all this time, he'd forgotten the simplest thing every story from Earth had taught:
Magic needs a tool.
Wands. Staffs. Rings. Tomes.
Something to connect will to reality.
And now, in his hand, was the first real proof.
The first bridge.
"Arthur," Lady Fionne said gently, touching his arm. "You're trembling."
He realized he was gripping the stone too tightly.
"Sorry," he whispered.
He looked up.
Every noble was watching.
Even Gaunder Light, seated across the hall, was looking straight at him.
Their eyes met.
For a moment, just one breath, the marquis held that gaze—then turned away to speak to a guest.
But Arthur saw it.
A hesitation.
Like his father had been waiting to see what would happen.
That night, in the library, Arthur brought the stone to the alcove and laid it on the desk.
The threads continued to gather around it.
He placed his hand near it. Focused. Whispered the word:
"Move."
Nothing happened.
But something shifted inside the stone.
A pulse. A flicker of response.
Arthur's heart thudded.
"This is it. The real beginning."
Then came the knock at the door.
He turned.
A servant bowed in the candlelight.
"Lord Gaunder wishes to speak with you in the inner courtyard."
Arthur blinked.
That had never happened before.
Minutes later, he stood beneath the silverlight trees.
Gaunder Light, dressed in a sharp black military coat, stood with hands clasped behind his back. His face was unreadable.
"You are five now," he said simply.
Arthur stood straight. "Yes, Father?."
"It is time," Gaunder said, "that you begin swordsmanship training."
Arthur's fingers curled slightly.
"I'm not a swordsman," he said.
"You are a son of House Light," Gaunder replied.
Silence.
Then Gaunder added, "Your studies, your behaviour… they are unusual. But I will not interfere. You are what you are."
Arthur looked up.
Gaunder's voice softened just slightly. "But this is not a house of scholars. It is a house of warriors. You will learn."
Arthur bowed.
"I understand."
As he turned to leave, Gaunder said one last thing—quiet, almost too quiet to hear.
"I've always been watching, Arthur."
Then he turned and disappeared into the upper hall.
The first strike knocked the wind out of him.
Arthur hit the dirt hard, gasping, face-down, arms twitching.
"Up."
The voice came like a hammer.
Commander Lorey, head of the Light family's knights, stood over him. Towering. Grim. A square-jawed man with ash-blonde hair pulled into a tight band. His armor was plain but spotless, polished silver and black. No ornamentation. Just presence.
Arthur pushed himself upright, breath shaky.
This was his third fall in ten minutes.
"You hold the sword like you're afraid of it," Lorey said flatly.
Arthur wiped the mud from his lip. "I'm not afraid. Just… not used to swinging things designed to hit people."
"You're not swinging. You're flailing."
Arthur exhaled through his teeth. "I'm five."
"Then move like it."
He tossed the wooden sword back at Arthur's feet.
Training began before sunrise every morning.
Gaunder had ordered it personally — a regimen "fit for the son of a noble house." Sword drills. Post strikes. Balance control. Endurance running. Lorey enforced it without comment. His job wasn't to pamper.
It was to mold.
The first week was agony.
Arthur's arms screamed. His thighs burned. His hands blistered and bled. He collapsed each night barely able to reach the bath. He cursed under his breath while Lorey barked at him in the courtyard.
But he never quit.
On the eighth day, something changed.
Lorey noticed it first.
Arthur had swung the training blade nearly three hundred times, breath ragged, sweat pouring from his skin — but his legs didn't shake.
His eyes didn't dull.
He wasn't slowing down.
"Again," Lorey ordered.
Arthur nodded and raised the blade.
Another fifty swings.
Still no sign of exhaustion.
Lorey said nothing then, but his frown wasn't one of disapproval. It was confusion.
Two more weeks passed.
Arthur still couldn't parry well. Still stumbled when sidestepping. But what he lacked in skill, he made up for in a weird kind of resilience.
He never gave up.
Never asked to stop.
Never collapsed.
Only ever stared at the sky afterward and whispered:
"Not enough. Not yet."
By the fourth week, Lorey had stopped mocking him.
Now, he observed.
Arthur had begun integrating breathwork from sword drills into his magical meditations at night. He noticed that his heart rate seemed to sync with the threads more often after a training session.
The stone — always beside him — pulsed faintly when placed over his diaphragm while breathing.
He didn't understand why.
But something inside him knew:
Strength mattered.
Discipline mattered.
Even if magic was real, it wouldn't bend to weakness.
And yet...
Holding the stone still drained him.
He could feel the threads moving, swirling into it sometimes — but keeping it near for too long sapped his arms, even if it didn't exhaust his stamina.
His fingers cramped after long sessions.
It was... inefficient.
One night, after training, he stared at the stone atop his desk, rubbing his sore knuckles.
"I need something else," he muttered. "A better way to carry you."
The stone, of course, said nothing.
But the threads danced slightly when he whispered those words.
Arthur leaned forward.
"Not a ring. That's too small. Not a dagger. That's too direct."
He tapped the parchment beside the relic.
Then he drew:
A long weapon. Half-sword. Half-staff.
A core at the center to hold the stone.
Both martial and arcane.
Both of his worlds.
One hand. One tool. One future.
He stood abruptly and went to his bookshelf.
Tucked behind two volumes on estate law was a hand-drawn map of the nearby villages. He unrolled it and marked a location near the smithy in the eastern quarter of Grayhearth — one of the estate's satellite towns.
"Someone out there can forge this," he whispered.
He didn't know who.
But he'd find them.
Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance. Storms rolling in over the northern plains.
Arthur stared down at the drawing in his hands — the design that would change everything.
He didn't know yet that the stone was listening.
That the threads inside it had begun to echo his will.
That this staff, when forged, would become more than a conduit.
It would become the first true artifact of magic in a world that had never known it.
Age: 5 years, 2 months
The estate was silent.
Not the stillness of sleep—but that peculiar kind of hush that clings to noble houses deep in the night. The wind had died down. Even the birds had gone quiet. Only the soft ticking of a wall-mounted timepiece broke the illusion that the entire world had stopped.
But inside the library's hidden alcove, something very much hadn't.
Arthur sat cross-legged on a pile of folded blankets he'd dragged from the nursery.
The stone—his catalyst—sat before him on a simple iron plate, surrounded by seven lit candles placed in a ring. The flickering light made his golden star-shaped pupils shimmer like mirrors catching fire.
His fingers rested just outside the candle circle, unmoving.
He wasn't speaking.
He was breathing.
Controlled. Measured. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
He counted every second.
He didn't blink.
The threads had started gathering again. Not like before—not slowly.
With purpose.
One after another, golden strands converged from every corner of the library.
Some curled down from the vaulted ceiling.
Others slipped in through the cracks in the high windows.
Dozens.
They drifted toward the stone—but not into it yet.
They circled. Spiraled. Waited.
Arthur didn't reach for them. Didn't whisper a word.
He only focused.
Focus... and intention.
That's what he'd come to believe was the key.
Magic wasn't about loud declarations or runes carved into metal. It was about meaning. About wanting something to happen — and giving it shape.
The threads responded to intention.
The stone gave them a home.
He was certain now.
He opened his mouth and whispered, "Come to me."
A single thread pulsed in midair.
Not a movement.
Not a dance.
A pulse.
A reply.
Arthur's heart began to race.
This is it.
He raised one hand, palm open, fingers relaxed.
"Join," he said, barely above breath.
A thread moved.
Just slightly.
A hair's breadth toward the stone.
Arthur held his breath.
Nothing else moved.
He waited, eyes wide, spine stiff.
The thread touched the stone.
And disappeared inside.
Arthur exhaled in shock.
His vision fluttered—just for a second—as if the air around him had thinned.
He grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself.
It went in.
It responded to a command.
Even if just a little.
He sat still for a long while.
Letting the candles burn down.
Eventually, he stood, picked up the stone, and pressed it gently against his chest.
The weight was real. So was the warmth.
So was the pull—not outward, but inward.
It wasn't just a rock.
It wasn't just a vessel.
It was becoming a focal point.
Back in his quarters, he opened his journal and began to write.
Midnight Pulse
A single thread responded to command. Spoke the word "join" and gave internal focus.
Thread entered the stone. No feedback. No visible effect. But I felt something. Like pressure. Like the air moved inside me.
The stone works.
It's not just a container. It's a translator. A bridge.
The threads aren't passive. They're waiting.
They just need something to make sense of will.
He stopped writing.
Stared at the next blank line for nearly a minute.
Then wrote:
I was wrong before.
I thought magic was something you did.
It's not.
It's something you guide.
That night, he dreamed of the staff again.
But this time, the stone at its center was pulsing, just like his breath.
In the morning, Lorey put him through his usual drills.
Arthur failed the forms again.
His footwork was improving, but his balance was still too reactive. His blade turned too early. His shoulders slouched from over-focusing on speed.
But the swings never slowed.
His breathing never changed.
When they broke for water, Lorey asked, "Don't you ever get tired?"
Arthur shrugged. "Maybe I don't notice when I do."
Lorey gave him a strange look.
Then nodded.
Back in his room that evening, Arthur stared down at his newest sketch.
A refined version of the previous design.
A wooden core.
Weighted grip.
Hollowed shaft to house the stone.
Etched focus points for potential resonance.
He didn't know what all of it meant yet—but the shape felt right.
"I'll need a blacksmith," he said aloud.
Not one of the estate's artisans.
Someone else.
Someone discreet.
Someone skilled enough to shape something never meant to exist.
He looked out the window toward the distant stone hills where the estate gave way to village roads.
Somewhere out there was a forge.
A place worthy for Arthurs creation.
Age: 5 years, 3 months
Arthur sat alone beneath the southern orchard canopy, eyes closed, the stone resting in his hands.
His breath came in slow, even waves. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
He was listening.
Not with ears, but with will.
Around him, faint golden threads flickered in and out of sight. They had grown more active since he'd started focusing properly. Less erratic. Less wild.
Now they waited.
He tried something new.
Anger.
He thought of Gaunder's command. Of Darian's scorn. Of the maids who whispered behind curtains. The nobles who stared like he was cursed.
Heat bloomed in his chest.
The threads shivered.
The stone pulsed faintly.
Arthur's eyes snapped open.
He calmed his breath immediately, letting the emotion fade.
The threads pulled back.
He tested fear next.
Memories of dying. Of blood. Of the cold, dark street. Of waking in the god's void, lost and voiceless.
His heart raced.
The threads pulsed again—faster.
The stone vibrated.
He dropped it.
It hit the ground and stilled.
Arthur crouched over it, heart pounding.
They respond to emotion.
But not evenly. Not safely.
Back in the training yard, Lorey watched Arthur's practice with narrowed eyes.
His footwork had improved again.
Still wild. Still amateur.
But his form was... intentional now.
Sharper.
More controlled.
And his stamina?
It was unholy.
By now, Lorey had begun asking quiet questions.
"What's in your blood, boy? Boar marrow and stormwater?" he grunted one morning as Arthur finished his three-hundredth repetition without even gasping.
Arthur, half-focused, replied, "Just cabbage and curiosity."
Lorey grunted. "Hell of a combination."
And whatever he was training for, it wasn't just swordplay.
That night, Arthur sat by candlelight, tracing the rim of the stone with one finger.
He whispered:
"You respond to thought.
You respond to pain.
You pulse with breath.
But you're still... passive.
You want a shape."
He looked at the sketch again.
The staff-sword.
Half weapon. Half arcane focus.
He would need someone to forge it.
Not a noble smith.
Not a House artisan.
Someone different.
Someone who understood wrongness.
A week later, during a permitted trip to Grayhearth Village, Arthur quietly slipped away from his guard.
He followed a rumor passed through servant tongues — a half-ruined smithy on the cliffside, run by an outcast no one visited.
The place looked like it was falling into the sea.
Soot-stained walls. A broken anvil outside. Empty barrels and rusted tools. Smoke billowed faintly from a crooked chimney, coughing like a dying man's breath.
Inside, the air stank of metal and wine.
Arthur stepped through the open door.
A voice snapped from the back room:
"If you're another bootlicking merchant come to mock the 'fair-spirited elf', I'll nail your feet to my floor."
Arthur stepped in, silent.
The elf appeared seconds later—shorter than most, with copper hair tied back and a furious scar crossing one cheek. He wore a sleeveless smithing tunic, arms covered in old burns and ash tattoos.
He scowled down at Arthur.
"...You're a child."
Arthur held up the design.
"I'm looking for someone who can make this."
The elf snorted. "You're child."
"A child yes but smarter than everyone else I've met," Arthur said flatly.
A pause.
The elf took the paper. Scanned it.
His brow furrowed.
"This isn't a sword."
"No."
"It's not a staff either."
"No."
"It's... both."
Arthur nodded. "Exactly."
The elf looked at him—really looked—and something changed in his expression.
Not respect yet.
But curiosity.
He waved Arthur inside.
"Fine. Sit down. Tell me where you stole this design from."
"I didn't steal it."
"Right," the elf muttered, rolling his eyes. "And I was born from dragon flame."
The elf didn't laugh.
Not this time.
He sat in the half-collapsed chair behind his forge table, bare arms crossed, Arthur's schematic between his fingers. The soot on his hands had already smeared half the drawing, but the elf didn't seem to care.
His eyes—sharp, almond-shaped, bronze—kept flicking between Arthur's face and the design.
"You're serious," he said at last.
Arthur nodded. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
The elf exhaled through his nose. "No guards. No entourage. You're Light-blooded, aren't you? I've seen the crest."
Arthur didn't answer.
The elf raised one brow. "What's your name?"
"…Arthur."
"Arthur Light," the elf repeated, more to himself. "Didn't think the noble families let their kids walk into places like this unless they were looking for runaways to chain up."
Arthur didn't blink. "I didn't come for small talk. Can you make it or not?"
The elf leaned back in his chair, kicked his booted feet up onto a crate, and stared at the design again.
"Nothing like it. Too thin to be a war club. Too long for a parrying blade. No crossguard. It's got no balance—unless the core's weighted."
Arthur stepped forward and reached into his coat pocket.
He set the stone on the table.
The elf's posture changed immediately.
Not from awe.
From stillness.
The air around the stone had shifted. The golden threads—normally invisible to everyone—began moving just a little more than usual. Not enough to be seen directly.
But the elf felt it.
He leaned forward.
"…What is that?"
Arthur said nothing.
The threads gathered faintly around the stone's center. Not diving in. Just… circling. Softly. With reverence.
Arthur whispered, "It listens to will. To shape. I want you to forge something around it."
The elf stared at him.
Then, without a word, pulled a small steel chisel from a drawer and gently tapped it against the stone's surface.
A spark snapped the tool back, throwing it across the room.
The elf stood up slowly.
Now he was really looking at Arthur.
"…You're not lying."
"No."
"You're not normal either."
Arthur shrugged. "Not my fault."
The elf crossed his arms again. "What is this thing?"
Arthur stared at the stone.
"I think… it's the beginning of magic."
The forge crackled louder for a moment, the coals shifting.
Outside, thunder rolled across the coast.
The elf didn't speak again for almost a minute.
Then:
"I'll need special wood for the shaft. Something light but stable. Steel for the binding caps. And I'll have to find a core wrap that won't disrupt the energy it's putting out. If I break it trying to cut a groove, it'll probably shatter me in the face."
Arthur nodded.
The elf narrowed his eyes.
"…It talks to you?"
Arthur paused.
"It listens."
The elf moved around the table and began clearing a workbench.
"Then don't leave."
An hour later, the elf returned with a metal container wrapped in deerhide. Inside were strips of blackwood, raw smelt iron, and a length of old elven silver-thread wire.
He slammed the box onto the bench.
"I haven't forged anything in months," he said gruffly. "Been too busy drinking and not getting robbed."
Arthur smirked faintly. "Doing well on both fronts, then."
The elf grunted.
"You got a name for it yet?"
Arthur looked at the staff schematic.
His voice was quiet.
"…No."
"Well," the elf muttered, lighting the forge, "name it when it's alive."
Age: 5 years, 5 months
The forge roared like a beast reborn.
For the first time in months—maybe years—the bellows screamed with purpose. Flames licked up from the coals, gold-orange and hungry, casting sharp shadows across the walls of the broken smithy.
The elf moved like he'd never stopped.
Fast hands, sure grip. Sweat already forming along his brow. Sparks danced as he shaped the shaft, polished the steel caps, twisted the blackwood into its final grain. The workshop smelled of smoke, iron, and new beginnings.
Arthur stood to the side, silent, watching every motion with a kind of reverent terror.
This wasn't just a weapon.
This was a theory given form.
The stone sat at the center of the cleared workbench, untouched—waiting.
Arthur had tried explaining more. Tried describing the way the threads moved. The subtle pressure in his chest when he focused. The fact that the stone pulsed faintly when he stared too long.
But it didn't matter.
The elf—who still hadn't offered a name—didn't need the philosophy.
He only needed the shape.
At first, the plan was simple.
Inlay the stone in the central head of the staff. Bind the housing with silver-thread wire. Reinforce with iron ringlets to protect against blade clash. Cap the bottom for counterbalance and martial grip.
But as the elf worked, something began to change.
He tried measuring the stone for carving.
The chisel slipped.
He tried grinding a groove for the housing.
The stone shifted.
Not dramatically.
Not visibly.
But subtly.
Every attempt to shape it ended with the shape reshaping itself.
The elf stepped back and stared.
"That's not normal."
Arthur stood beside him, staring at the crystalline surface—once raw and pale, now starting to glow faintly from within.
The stone's core shimmered golden, like a captured thread was spinning inside.
Arthur whispered, "It's responding to me."
"You're not touching it."
"I don't need to."
The elf gave him a look—half impressed, half unnerved.
Then he adjusted the clamps, reset the tongs, and muttered, "Then stop thinking about circles. I'm trying to forge a bloody slot, not a bowl."
Hours passed.
Night fell.
The forge didn't stop.
They didn't speak much.
The elf hammered the base shaft with perfect rhythm. Arthur, when not watching, sat cross-legged nearby, eyes closed, focusing all his will on keeping the stone stable, cooperative, still.
At one point, the elf tried to rotate the piece to align the housing cap.
The stone twisted.
Just a bit.
The clamps strained.
"Alright," the elf muttered. "This thing's alive."
Arthur opened one eye. "Sort of."
"You know, in old elvish, we had stories about objects that could answer thoughts."
"I thought elves didn't believe in magic."
"We don't," the elf said. "That's why they threw me out."
He didn't sound bitter. Just tired.
Arthur looked at him.
"You ever name yourself?" he asked.
The elf didn't respond immediately.
Then: "Seryn."
Arthur nodded.
"Thank you, Seryn."
Seryn grunted and returned to hammering.
By dawn, the body of the staff was nearly complete.
Sleek blackwood shaft, reinforced with silver-thread filigree. Two hardened iron end-caps—one spiked slightly for combat, the other blunt and smooth. In the center, a ring-shaped chamber of interlocking brackets, designed to hold the stone without trapping it.
And the stone...
It sat perfectly in the chamber.
Not carved.
Not set.
Just... resting.
As if it had always belonged there.
The threads danced around it.
Hundreds now.
Moving in slow spirals, wrapping around the wood, the metal, the boy watching.
Arthur stepped forward and placed a single hand on the staff.
A faint vibration met his palm.
Not loud.
Not powerful.
But right.
Like it recognized him.
Seryn leaned back against the forge wall, breathing hard. "I've made blades for nobles. Bows for hunters. Even tried to forge an axe that could split a boulder."
He wiped soot from his face.
"But this? This feels like something I wasn't supposed to touch."
Arthur stared at the weapon in his hands.
The threads swirled.
Soft. Patient.
Eager.
"It's not finished yet," he whispered.
Outside, the wind carried the first whispers of dawn across the cliffs.
And inside the quiet forge of an exile, beneath the hum of ancient threads and glowing stone, magic began to take form in a world that has forgotten it.