"That's all nice and flashy," Aerwyna said, "but isn't that a little too advanced?"
A heartbeat ago he'd been standing in the middle of the nursery, fist out, a sword of fire screaming from his hand. Now the Flame Sabre was gone, the air smelled faintly scorched, and his wife stood between him and the crib with her arms folded, blue eyes narrowed.
Ezra sat propped on pillows, clutching the crib rail with both hands, still half-blinded by afterimages.
"Too advanced?" Reitz repeated. "I showed him the basics."
"You skipped half of them," Aerwyna shot back. "Did you even explain how casting works? The stages? Invocation? Why some people are stuck with a single element their entire lives while others open to three, four?"
Reitz opened his mouth, closed it, then frowned at her like she'd just accused him of treason.
"I can answer those questions," he protested. "Why are you trying to make me look like a fool in front of our son?"
Ezra glanced between them.
I'm not judging, he thought. Just… please don't stop explaining because of your pride. This is the first coherent system I've heard.
"I told you to start from the very basics," Aerwyna said, jabbing the rolled parchment at his chest. "If you only show off, he will imitate you and blow his arm off. How do you expect Ezra to advance his magic if he doesn't even know how his aura becomes a spell?"
Reitz sighed like a man sentenced to paperwork.
"Fine," he muttered. He dragged the chair closer again and dropped into it, the wood creaking under his weight. The easy grin slipped from his face, replaced by something steadier. He turned back to the crib, to Ezra.
"Listen well, Ezra," he said. "Your mother likes when things are explained in order."
Aerwyna sniffed, but she didn't interrupt.
"Well, first," Reitz began, tapping his chest lightly, "the nature of your magic aura—the feel of your Field—is tied to what element you're best at. Fire, Water, Earth, Air. That part you already heard."
Ezra nodded inwardly.
He remembered Aerwyna's explanation: Water as "capacity," Fire as "purity," Earth as "stability," Air as "speed." None of it satisfied his inner physicist, but it was clearly how people here organized their world.
"As you grow," Reitz continued, "your Field changes. It deepens. It settles into a rhythm. We call that getting into harmony with your element."
Ezra rolled the word around in his mind. It sounded like something a meditation guru would say back on Earth, not a duelist whose fist could cut stone. But Reitz wasn't the type to spout poetry for fun.
He probably just means: repeated use shapes the system, Ezra decided. Like building calluses on skin or muscle memory at a piano. The more you work with one pattern, the more natural it becomes.
"When your Field and your element's nature line up," Reitz said, "it stops fighting you. That's when you stop straining to throw a single flame and start asking yourself how much you can burn without collapsing."
"So," Aerwyna cut in, "those who are in deeper harmony with one element can start to touch the others."
"That's what we were taught, at least," he admitted. "Once your Field is strong and steady, you can force it to behave in forms that don't match its 'favorite' element. Fire mages can learn to move earth, earth mages can learn to stiffen air, and so on."
He paused, expression tightening slightly.
"And at the very top," he went on, "Primarchs can reach into all four. Not cleanly, not cheaply—most of them have one or two elements that answer like blood, and one that answers like a stubborn mule—but they can touch all four."
His eyes flicked toward the window, toward the distant capital and its unseen palace.
"And the Rex Imperia," he added quietly, "is the only one who has ever reached full harmony with all four. That is why he is Emperor."
So from their perspective, he thought, it's a matter of resonance. Your Field has a natural mode—Fire, Water, etc.—and you can 'tune' it into others if you push far enough. That tracks with the way multi-element mages are rare.
He still wanted to ask a hundred questions—how does this "nature" arise, why four, why not eight—but he was still a baby. He settled for listening.
"Second," Reitz said slowly, "there are the Four Stages of Casting. I forgot to name them earlier." He glanced at Aerwyna and winced. "My mistake."
Aerwyna nodded once, satisfied. "Now you're talking like a Maester."
Reitz cleared his throat.
"First stage: Condensation. Second: Invocation. Third: Accumulation. Fourth: Activation," he recited, counting each on a finger.
"Maesters like to map your control onto Circles—not as rank, but as how much pattern you can hold steady at once," he continued. "Every spell, from a flicker of light to a Primarch's battlefield storm, follows these steps. The only difference is speed and scale."
He leaned in, holding up his hand so Ezra could see each finger clearly.
"Condensation," he said, touching his thumb, "is when you gather your Field. You draw your aura in from wherever it's floating in your body and stack it where you need it."
He tapped his forearm, then his hand.
"If you're casting from the hand, you condense here. If you're casting from the eyes, you condense there. Most beginners let their aura leak everywhere. That's why they get tired after two sparks."
Ezra thought of the sensation when Reitz had pressed his Field into his chest—how his own power had bunched up in response.
Gather fuel, he translated. Put it where the engine is.
"Invocation," Reitz went on, raising his index finger, "is calling the spell together. It's when you chant and visualize what you want the magic to do."
Ezra narrowed his eyes slightly.
He understood the word chant now. The long strings of formal phrases Aerwyna had used before flooding the room with water. The utterly insane "Flood Cannon" that had turned physics into a punchline.
He still wasn't used to the idea that words could do anything, but in this world, they clearly served as mental scaffolding.
"During Invocation," Aerwyna said, picking up smoothly, "you draw the Field toward the shape you want. You don't just stuff it in one place and hope—your chant and your visualization tell it what kind of spell it should become."
So the chant is like a compressed instruction set, he thought. Reciting it in the right frame of mind loads the right pattern. If you mess it up, the energy has no template and fizzles—or goes wild.
"Third stage: Accumulation," Reitz said, lifting his middle finger. "This is the tricky one."
He leaned back a little, eyes going unfocused, as if remembering lessons drilled in pain.
"There's a heartbeat," he said, "after you've gathered your Field and aligned it with the chant, where you hold it. A fraction of a breath. That's when you decide how much power you push through. Range, thickness, intensity."
He snapped his fingers.
"Most people leak half their magic here. It shakes, it slips, it breaks. All that careful Condensation runs out into your limbs again. That's why there are mages who can chant for minutes and produce a spark, while others murmur once and level walls.
"And don't let the words fool you," he added, nodding at Aerwyna's parchment. "A chant isn't the spell. It's a rail for the mind—a way to hold the pattern steady until you can do it without speaking."
"Magic Control," Aerwyna added. "That is what Maesters call it. The ability to Accumulate without losing what you Condensed. The better your control, the less you waste. That is also the same skill you use when you strengthen your body."
She tapped her own bicep absentmindedly.
Ezra filed that away.
So external spells and internal strengthening share a foundation, he thought. Moving the Field into muscles or bone is just Condensation plus a different Invocation pattern. That explains the Knights—they're basically specialists in internal Accumulation.
"And lastly," Reitz finished, touching his ring finger, "Activation. You open the gate. You let the Field do what you just told it to do."
He mimed flicking something forward with his thumb.
"If you did it right, the spell appears. If you did it wrong…" He grinned. "You set your own hair on fire."
Aerwyna smacked him lightly with the parchment again.
"Or you overdraw," she said. "And your channels scar, and you never cast again. Don't joke about that, Reitz."
He raised both hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. No hair jokes."
He turned back to Ezra. "Did you get that, my boy? Condense, Invoke, Accumulate, Activate."
Inside, he mapped the sequence to something he understood.
Fuel in, he thought. Instruction loaded. Charge held. Discharge.
A spell was a capacitor with a bad attitude.
"The hardest part," Reitz said, "is doing Condensation and Invocation at the same time. Holding the Field in place and chanting. That's where most Awakened children stumble. They can gather power, but their mind is still muddy. They 'trip' and their Awakening blows up half the house."
He said it casually, but Aerwyna's expression tightened.
"Especially Hydromancers," Reitz added, glancing at her. "I've heard the first stage gives you trouble. Is that true, my river?"
"Hmp," she sniffed. "We work with volume, not sparks. Of course it is harder to move a lake than a candle flame."
Ezra absorbed the word.
They kept circling around it. The famous moment when a child's Field first overflowed into the world. In textbook terms, a sign that their channels had "opened." In practical terms, a baby-shaped bomb.
"We still don't know exactly what happened with you," Aerwyna murmured, her gaze softening as she looked at Ezra. "You never had an outburst. No flooded rooms. No scorched cots. You just… woke up. Looking at the world like an old man."
"That is also why we can't wait," she confessed. "If you had a normal Awakening, we could say 'it is done' and leave you to grow. But you slipped past it somehow. You are already moving your Field, already controlling your body. If we don't guide you, your first real outburst might come when we are not ready."
Reitz nodded, sobered.
"That's why we test today," he said quietly. "To see what you're carrying."
He pushed himself back from the chair and stood.
"First, range," he said. "Ezra, I want you to expand your Field as far as you can. Don't force it. Just… stretch."
He knew the feeling Reitz was asking for. The strange, hyper-real state that came to him in fits and starts—when the room sharpened, when the air felt thick, when his thoughts turned crystalline. He still didn't have a proper label for it. It wasn't sleep, it wasn't wakefulness. It was like someone had turned extra dimensions on.
He took a breath—more out of habit than necessity—and let his awareness sink inward.
His body faded from the center of his attention and became an outline. He felt his heartbeat as a slow drum, his lungs as bellows. Somewhere beneath his sternum, something else pulsed. Not with blood, but with presence.
It responded like a sleeping animal being prodded; it stirred, uncoiled, and began to expand.
He didn't see anything. There were no colors. But he felt a growing sphere, centered on his tiny body. The edges brushed the crib bars. The wood was a vague resistance—denser than air, not as dense as stone. The Field didn't stop; it slid through.
His awareness washed past the crib, through Aerwyna—who registered as a cool, deep pool—through Reitz, who was a tightly-controlled furnace, and out into the room.
He felt the wall, the way the stones fit together, the seam of the mortar. The old wardstone deep below, humming like a buried bell. The corridor outside, empty for now. The colder mass of the outer wall. The open space of the courtyard beyond that.
The strain started as a pressure behind his eyes, then built to a heavy ache at the back of his skull. The edges of the sphere trembled, warping slightly, but still expanded.
This is… big, he thought, startled. Much bigger than before.
He hadn't tried to push this far on his own. Every other time, he'd stopped once he could feel the walls. Now he rode the curious momentum, extending the Field like a bubble being inflated from within.
"Woah," Reitz breathed.
Aerwyna said nothing, but Ezra could feel her—the way her own Field drew tight in response, shrinking instinctively to avoid interfering with his.
"Ezra," Reitz said, voice low, "this is the reach of your Field? At your age?"
Ezra couldn't spare much attention for him. His thoughts were beginning to fray at the edges. Each additional inch felt like dragging a net through molasses.
"Enough," Aerwyna said sharply. "Reitz, call him back. He's barely five months old."
"Right," Reitz said quickly. "That's far enough, Ezra. Now pull it back, slowly. Don't let it snap."
Ezra exhaled shakily and obeyed.
He reversed the push. The bubble began to contract, its outer edge retreating—from courtyard to wall, from wall to corridor, from corridor to nursery, folding in on itself like a tide rolling back.
As it shrank, the pressure eased. By the time the Field had drawn back to the surface of his skin, the pounding in his head had faded to a manageable throb.
The nursery looked… flat, for an instant. Sight suddenly seemed dull compared to what he'd just felt.
Reitz was staring at him as if he'd grown a second head.
"This is half my Field," Reitz said hoarsely. "Half. At five months. And I am considered a top-tier Elementalist."
Aerwyna's eyes flicked to the crib, then to Reitz. "Range is not Circle," she said, crisp. "It only tells you how far he can hold himself together."
He ran a hand through his hair, then shot Aerwyna a sideways look.
"You sure you didn't cheat on me with some Earth noble?" he asked weakly. "His range is on par with secondary-stage Earth Elementalists."
He knew enough of their terms now to understand the joke. Earth Elementalists were known for range—stability and reach. He was apparently mimicking their specialty with zero training.
Aerwyna's glare could have frozen magma.
"Are you stupid?" she snapped. "Look at him. He looks exactly like you, except for the cheekbones."
She jabbed a finger at Ezra's face. "That jaw? Those eyebrows? That stubborn frown? Blackfyre."
Reitz held up both hands.
"Haha! I was joking, of course!" he said, laughter coming out a bit hollow. "Ezra is my son! How could anyone else have him as a son? His talent comes from me, naturally."
His tone shifted on the last words. Something darker coiled under the bravado.
"Besides," he added, voice dropping, "who would dare lie with the wife of the Ashbringer?"
For a moment, the room changed.
Ezra felt it as a physical thing. Reitz's Field, which had been warm and contained, sharpened. Its edges grew jagged, each point aimed outward. The air tasted metallic on Ezra's tongue, like the tang before a lightning strike.
Images flickered at the edge of his mind that weren't his own: a valley lit by fire, ranks of armored men breaking under a wall of flame, shadows writhing in the heat. A sword wreathed in light, cutting through flesh and stone alike.
So that's what a killer feels like, he thought, briefly forgetting all his theoretical musings. Whatever the physics behind magic were, the human behind it was very real.
Aerwyna's parchment met the back of Reitz's head again.
"Stop trying to act cool," she said tartly, the suffocating weight of his aura dissipating as quickly as it had come. "You're scaring him. Continue your instruction."
Reitz rubbed his head, sheepish. The oppressive presence faded, replaced once more by the familiar, noisy father.
"Okay, okay, I'll quit it," he said. "We were testing range. Next is density."
He turned back to Ezra.
"Now," Reitz said more gently, "keep your Field close. Coat your skin with it. No farther than that. Think of it like a second cloak."
Ezra took another breath and closed his eyes.
This time, instead of expanding, he imagined his Field gluing itself to him. No loose strands, no wide sphere—just a layer, hugging the lines of his body.
It was like pulling a blanket tight.
As he tightened it, the sensation shifted. The Field felt heavier, more present. A faint warmth spread over his skin. His fingers tingled. His tiny muscles felt both lighter and more solid, as if the air around them had thickened.
"Good," Reitz murmured, watching the subtle shimmer that only trained eyes could see. "That's your base coating. Most Knights never get past this. They walk around like this all the time, without realizing they're wasting half their capacity."
"Now, condense it further," he said quietly. "As much as you can. Make it thick."
The cloak of power clinging to his skin resisted at first, like a liquid that wanted to stay evenly spread. He forced it inward. The layer thinned in some places, thickened in others, then flowed, slowly, toward a uniform coat just under the surface.
The air in the nursery seemed to dim.
"Oh, Great Omnipotence," she whispered.
Ezra forced his eyes open.
He couldn't see his own aura, not the way they did, but he could see its reflection in their faces. Light from nowhere bathed the crib, throwing stark shadows on the far wall.
Reitz squinted, lifting a hand to shield his eyes.
"By the Seats," he breathed. "He's… shining."
Aerwyna stepped closer, her own Field fluttering, thrown off-balance by the intensity.
"He has the same capacity as me," she said slowly, awe and something like fear tangled in her voice. "But the coherence—that thickness—Blackfyre. You don't get that without Fire purity."
Ezra didn't fully understand, but he could feel the strain.
Maintaining the compression was hard. Every heartbeat made the Field want to pulse outward again. Holding it steady felt like clenching every muscle in his body at once.
"Enough," Aerwyna said again, more sharply. "Reitz, don't push him beyond this."
Reitz nodded, visibly fighting the desire to see how much further his son could go.
"Alright, Ezra," he said. "Let it go. Breathe out and let your Field soften."
He exhaled, and as he did, the aura loosened. It spread back out from his skin, not as far as before, settling into its usual hazy layer. The light in the room dimmed back to normal.
He sagged against the pillows, panting.
Exhaustion seeped into him—different from the sleepiness of a baby after feeding. This was the tiredness of a mind that had lifted something heavy and unfamiliar.
Reitz whistled under his breath.
"So," he said quietly, "he has the range of a mid-stage Earth Elementalist, the capacity of a Riverrun Water mage, and the density of a Blackfyre Fire specialist."
He grinned, but there was a wild edge to it.
"Our son is a monster."
Aerwyna shot him a look, but she didn't deny it.
"It also means," she said, "that if he loses control, the damage will not be… small."
Her gaze went back to Ezra, softening, worry radiating from her Field like a tide.
"That is why we teach you early," she murmured. "Not to make you a weapon. To keep you from exploding."
Ezra looked back at her, chest still heaving.
Exploding, he thought. He imagined the Flood Cannon blast, the Flame Sabre, multiplied by his own capacity and lack of understanding.
For the first time, the idea of training didn't just excite him. It felt necessary.
Reitz clapped his hands once, as if shaking off the tension.
"Right," he said. "Theory, tested. Now we go back to practice."
He pointed at Ezra's right arm.
"Condense again," he instructed. "Not all of it. Just enough to feel heavy. Pull it into your arm. From shoulder to fingertip."
Ezra groaned internally but closed his eyes again.
He followed the instructions, this time more cautiously. Instead of dragging his entire Field, he coaxed a portion of it down his right side. His shoulder warmed. His bicep prickled. His forearm felt like it was wrapped in a tight bandage.
His hand buzzed, fingers twitching involuntarily.
"Good," Reitz said softly. "Now, toward the wrist. Slowly. Don't force it through the joints."
Ezra focused on the point just above his palm. The Field resisted again, viscous and thick, but it moved. The weight in his arm shifted downward. His wrist felt like it was being squeezed from the inside.
Sweat beaded at his hairline.
"It's like pushing syrup through a pipe," he thought, teeth gritted in his mind. "It does not want to go where I want it to go."
"Yep," Reitz muttered, watching the faint glow gather around Ezra's hand. "Definitely a Blackfyre. You don't get that much resistance without purity. The more refined the aura, the harder it is to move—but the stronger the spell when you do."
Aerwyna frowned, but said nothing.
Ezra's arm trembled. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold it.
"Alright," he said. "That's enough for shaping. Time to give it a name."
He straightened, placing one hand over his heart, the other hovering above Ezra's glowing fist.
"This is the Blackfyre house spell," he said, voice taking on a ritual weight. "Our Flame Sabre. It's been passed from father to son since the founding of House Blackfyre. You may not cast it today. You may not cast it for years. But you will remember the words."
He looked Ezra in the eye.
"Repeat after me," he said.
Reitz drew in a breath.
"A flame is sharp and ever burns…"
He had no better word for it than pressure. A fullness behind his ribs. A weight in the center of his body that wasn't muscle or bone or organ. When Reitz pressed his will in, that fullness pushed back. It was like someone had nudged a spring inside him.
"That," Reitz said softly, "is your Field pushing against mine. Remember it."
He focused, as much as his tired, underdeveloped brain allowed. He imagined outlining the feeling the way he would outline a function on a graph—center, slope, edges. It was clumsy, more like groping in the dark than any neat mental model, but he clung to it.
Without meaning to, he reached for it.
Something inside him tightened.
The fullness swelled, then bunched, as if trying to climb toward Reitz's hand. A faint warmth gathered in his chest, then in his shoulders, then in his tiny fists curled around the crib rail.
Reitz's eyes flicked to those fists. Aerwyna straightened.
Ezra panicked and let go.
The sensation unraveled, leaving him suddenly exhausted, as if he'd just sprinted across the training yard instead of lying motionless. His eyelids felt heavy. His head throbbed dully.
"Easy," Reitz said, though there was barely suppressed excitement in his voice. "You're not Awakened yet. If we push too hard, your circuits will twist themselves in knots."
Circuits. That implied paths. Structures. It hinted at anatomy.
"Reitz," Aerwyna warned quietly.
He nodded and eased his hand away. The pressure withdrew with it. The room felt bigger again. Emptier.
"That's enough for today," Reitz said. "Your body is small. Your power isn't. We'll stretch it slowly."
Ezra sagged back against the pillows, tiny chest rising and falling a bit faster than before.
His thoughts were a jumble. He couldn't assemble equations. He barely had the words in this language to name what he'd just felt. All he knew was that something inside him had responded to his father's touch—something that wasn't muscle or nerve, not in any way he understood.
So it's real, he thought fuzzily. Not just… metaphor. Not just some cultural… story. There's actually… something.
Beyond that, his guesses were all wrong, and he knew it. He'd tried to fit this world into the bones of his old ones and watched every scaffold crack.
Reitz stepped back, rolling his shoulders again like a man coming down from a fight.
"Tomorrow," he said, "I'll show you how to breathe with it. How to pull it to your arm, then your hand, then your fingers."
A grin spread across his face, bright and reckless.
"And maybe," he added, "just maybe, I'll whisper the first line of the Flame Sabre chant."
Aerwyna groaned. "He's five months old."
"He's Blackfyre," Reitz replied, as if that were an answer to everything. "We start early."
Ezra's eyes drooped despite himself. The ceiling blurred. The warmth in his chest faded to a gentle hum.
Magic, he thought, the word no longer just a fantasy label but a placeholder for a system he didn't understand.
Not a clean equation. Not yet.
Just a wrong model waiting to be broken.