The days passed slowly, but they weren't ordinary days.
To anyone watching from the outside, Viren was just a quiet baby. He cried less than others. Slept longer. Barely fussed. His dark eyes always looked focused—too focused. The staff whispered, unsure whether to be impressed or worried.
But inside, Viren was always thinking.
He didn't just look at things. He studied them.
The way the crystal chandelier refracted mana-light at specific angles. The subtle sound the stasis field made when it adjusted temperature. Even the lullabies his mother hummed—each of them had layers of enchantments, like puzzles tucked into the melody.
Sometimes he didn't understand everything, but he remembered it all.
And with every passing day, that strange hum in his chest—the one he couldn't explain—grew a little stronger.
---
One morning, while lying in the floating crib, he noticed something unusual.
The nursery had grown quieter. Too quiet.
Usually, the enchanted vines along the window sang faintly, reacting to sunlight. But now, they were still.
The floating glyphs, which used to orbit the ceiling in calm patterns, had stopped moving. Their light dimmed.
Viren blinked. Then focused.
The air shimmered faintly near the edge of the room—just a ripple, like heat above a flame. Most would have missed it.
He didn't.
Someone had entered the room… or was trying to.
He heard no footsteps. No door.
But something was there.
And then came the noise.
A soft, mechanical hum.
A shape formed slowly from the shimmer. Humanoid. Metallic outlines. Unnatural silence.
It was a construct—not magical, not technological, but something in-between. Null-coded. Designed to move unseen.
A weapon.
Coming for him.
---
Viren's first reaction wasn't panic. He didn't scream.
He stared at it.
And the hum in his chest roared to life.
He didn't know how he was doing it, only that something inside him reacted—like a hidden instinct. He reached not with his hands, but with his will.
The energy around him bent.
The crib flickered.
The air snapped like pulled wire.
And then he felt it:
[ABSORPTION: Engaged]
Target: Null-Weave Construct
Subsystems Detected: Cloak Module | Pulse Thread Engine
Compatibility: High
Effect: Partial Assimilation | Function Decoded: Cloaking Type I
The construct stopped moving.
It shimmered. Twitched.
And then it began to fall apart—like its parts were being rewritten in real time. Bits of metal disassembled midair. No sparks. No explosion. Just… unraveling.
When the process ended, only a few fragments remained—a strange crystal core and a black shard with flickering runes.
Viren breathed slowly, though his baby lungs made it sound like tiny hiccups.
His fingers closed around the crystal.
---
Moments later, the door burst open.
Lysara was there first, followed by Aurex. Her eyes darted across the room—first to the empty space near the window, then to the motionless crib.
She moved so fast it blurred. One second she was at the door. The next, she was lifting Viren into her arms, her heartbeat loud and fast against his ear.
Aurex scanned the room. His hand glowed with quiet energy.
"There was a breach," he said calmly, though his tone was sharp. "Security barriers didn't trigger. Something slipped past them."
Lysara looked down at her son, then at the glimmering shard still in his tiny grip.
She didn't ask how it got there.
She didn't need to.
---
That night, they reinforced every protective ward in the manor.
Lysara stayed beside Viren's cradle until sunrise. She didn't hum. She didn't smile.
She watched.
Not with fear.
With calculation.
---
The next morning, Viren tried something new.
He placed the black shard—the one from the construct—into a slot on the levitating toy that floated near him. It wasn't meant to take anything. It was just for amusement.
But the moment the shard touched it, the toy glowed.
A new light flickered across its surface.
It changed color. It spun faster. Then it displayed symbols Viren had never seen before—like fragmented runes stitched into the air.
It wasn't a toy anymore.
It was reacting to his will.
He had changed it.
Or maybe… synthesized something new.
A second hum stirred within him.
[DEVOURFLUX: Stabilizing]
Essence Core Activity: Low-Grade Absorption Successful
Subsystem: Adaptive Resonance Field | Integration Possible
He didn't understand all of it, but he understood the most important thing:
This was only the beginning.
---
By the time Viren was six months old, his room was more like a lab.
He'd gathered bits of mana-infused stones, broken tools, and stray enchantment fragments the caretakers hadn't noticed missing. He didn't use them at random—he tested them.
He held them. Focused on them. Waited.
Not all reacted. But some did.
When they did, they left behind something inside him. Like an imprint.
Not full memories. More like functions—how they worked. Why they failed. What they once were.
A cracked levitation crystal taught him about balance between opposing energies.
A frayed spell-thread showed him how spells decayed under unstable emotion.
He wasn't just absorbing them.
He was learning how to reforge them.
---
It happened again late one night.
He was holding two items: a heatstone and a music chime. One glowed with residual warmth. The other still rang faintly when shaken.
He focused on both. Tried to combine their patterns in his mind.
And then, suddenly—
[ARCANOFORGE: Activated]
Inputs: Heatstone Core | Sound Chime Fragment
Output: Echo-Flare Node
Status: Prototype Successful | Minor Feedback Detected
A small burst of light flickered between his hands.
It pulsed once—warm and harmonic—before fading.
But it worked.
He had fused two things into one.
No adult had taught him this.
He hadn't even spoken a single word yet.
But he was already building his foundation.
---
Outside his room, the world went on.
Rumors spread about the child born under the eclipse.
Some said he was cursed.
Others whispered he was gifted.
Aunt Virelle visited again, her smile as polished as always. She offered Lysara a cup of flower tea and said casually, "The boy's presence is starting to ripple. Best to keep his talents… discreet."
Lysara gave no answer.
She only watched her son through the glass.
He was stacking small rune-stones—not randomly, but in a precise sequence.
He didn't look up when Virelle entered.
But he knew she was watching.
And so, for the first time, he deliberately activated a spark.
Not because he needed to.
But because he wanted them to see.
---
He didn't know what the future held.
He didn't know why someone had already tried to kill him.
But he knew one thing for sure:
He wasn't powerless.
And as long as he kept learning, kept forging, kept devouring…
He would survive.
He would grow.
And eventually… he would find out why his thread had been cut—and who had pulled the knife.
---