When he opened his eyes, the world had changed.
The shouts were gone. The smoke was gone. The heat was gone.
He was lying in a bed he knew.
Carved wooden planes sat on his desk, cluttered with wooden models and half-scraped blocks. The familiar scent of Bren's air settled around him.
Castle Blackfyre.
Home.
He turned his head.
Aerwyna slept in a chair by his bedside, still in a simple dress, hair loose, dark circles bruised beneath her eyes. One hand rested on the mattress, fingers curled as if she'd fallen asleep mid-watch, reaching for him.
Ezra pushed himself up slowly, heart pounding.
"Evan," he whispered.
For a moment, his mind tried to imagine. Try to see the silhouette on the chair, guarding him.
There was nothing there.
Reality came rushing down.
Something sharp twisted under his ribs. On the battlefield, there had been too much—heat and noise and panic—to feel anything clearly. Here, in the quiet of his own room, the grief had nowhere to go. It settled in his chest like a stone.
He's gone.
He swallowed and glanced at the window. The light said morning, but of which day, he couldn't tell.
How long was I asleep? Did I… miss his funeral? I should be there. I should have said goodbye properly.
He closed his eyes and tried to call up the battle.
Faces, positions, spell structures, trajectories—that was how his mind had always worked. Before, he could replay things like a recording.
Some of it came.
Rycharde's sliding [Flame Blaze]. Orst roaring inside a cage of ice and stone. Galwell's fire arrows shooting through the dark. The Demon Hunters' whips snapping at the Shadow Walkers. The square in Anticourt's administrative district, gleaming with frozen water and shattered cobbles.
And then—
Blank spots. Smudged sections where things should have been sharp.
"I can't… remember all of them," he murmured, frowning. "Not their faces. Not every step."
The significant people were clear. Orst. Deimos and Phobos. Rycharde. Evan.
But the rank-and-file knights, the exact formations, the micro-movements he normally would have broken down and studied—those had blurred.
"This body... it... it doesn't have eidetic memory," he realized softly. "I only thought it did."
He thought back over everything since his rebirth: the nursery, the courtyard, Irriton, the Chimeraan, the attack on the caravan. He remembered a lot, but always through the lens of what he had cared about in the moment, what he'd been focusing on. Never perfect.
"I've been depleted before," he went on under his breath, clinging to analysis just to keep from sinking, "but this… this is the first time I truly hit zero."
"There must be thresholds," he muttered. "States where whatever layer carries my… past—has to resettle. Maybe some of the neurons were overwritten... I can't understand the mechanics yet. Maybe that is why I had so many blackouts."
He gave a small, humourless snort.
"Children on Earth who remembered past lives," he said to himself. "I used to laugh at those things. Called them fabrication, misfiring memory. But thinking back..."
They had known things they shouldn't. And yet they'd still run and sulked and thrown tantrums like any other child. Knowledge hadn't made them immune to being small.
"Being in a toddler's body—toddler fear, toddler anger... It gets into me. I can't just will myself back into who I was. Even though I can quote Piaget, Erikson, it's still different."
"Knowing, and feeling, their just so different... It just hurts. Even though I know... Even though I am Michael—"
"Am I?"
"Am I Michael in Ezra's body or Ezra with Michael's memories?"
But there was a deeper part of him that answered something else.
"Does that matter? I am here in this world, and I try to operate outside of it. And that... that gets people I know killed. People.. important to me." He swallowed.
Evan's face rose in his mind, the same way that people who tended to be emotional tried to run away from what was making them hurt, only for it to slam back in your face.
The distraction failed.
The pain surged back, hot and raw.
Ezra pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.
"I must be more mindful," he whispered. "For my sake… and everyone else's."
He looked at Aerwyna sleeping in the chair: head tilted at an awkward angle, fingers still resting on the edge of his mattress like she'd been holding on to him even in her dreams.
His throat closed, and he tilted his head to the ceiling.
"I never thought about an afterlife on Earth," he murmured to the ceiling. "Maybe you're reincarnated somewhere else. Maybe there's a heaven. Maybe there's nothing."
He swallowed hard.
"Wherever you are, my friend… it's goodbye for now."
His shoulders shook. Tears slid hot down his temples into his hair.
"I'd never thought I'd say this," he managed, "but you taught me."
You taught me well.
A small, wet sound escaped him. He bit his lip against it.
"Goodbye, my friend… and uncle," he whispered.
"Goodbye."
The word barely left his mouth before the chair beside him creaked.
Aerwyna stirred, blinking blearily. Her gaze found his, and for a heartbeat she just stared, as if afraid he'd vanish.
Then she was on her feet.
"Ezra," she breathed.
She rushed to him and crushed him to her chest, arms shaking. He felt the warmth of her, the faint tremor in her muscles, the way her breath stuttered against his hair.
"Are you alright, little one?" she asked in a rush. "You've been sleeping for four days. You drank a lot of water as they carried you here, you were half awake, half asleep, so we tried not to worry too much, but—"
Her voice broke. The lie didn't even last a sentence.
Ezra just nodded, small and stiff in her embrace. He wasn't ready to move his mouth yet. If he opened it, he wasn't sure what would come out.
Aerwyna hugged him tighter, then let him go enough to cup his face in her hands.
"I'm sorry, Ezra," she said, and the words were raw, scraped. "I didn't see that I was too harsh and too strict. I kept you here all the time. That's why you left."
She drew back a little to look at him properly. He wanted to look away, but her eyes held him.
"I kept you here," she repeated; guilt rang in her voice. "You were just growing so fast. I… think that was my way of keeping you as you were. Holding you back. I wanted to protect you from the world."
Her fingers slid to his hair, smoothing it back.
"They will envy you," she whispered. "They will hate you. They will tear at you because of what you can be. I just… I didn't want you to suffer from that. So I built a cage and called it love."
Ezra stared at the blanket.
He didn't answer.
Words were jamming together inside him. Shame. Anger. Hurt. None of it wanted to come out clean.
"In truth…" Aerwyna continued, staring down at her hands, "Evan told me before that I was restricting you too much."
"I didn't want to hear it," she admitted. "I threw myself into rooting out every spy in Bren, checking every servant, inspecting every wall—all 'for your sake'... but it meant I wasn't with you."
Her mouth twisted.
"I tried to build. Instead, I neglected my son."
Ezra kept his eyes on the bedclothes. His fingers bunched in the fabric.
Aerwyna watched him for a moment, then swallowed and stepped back.
"Are you okay?" she asked softly. "Maybe you need a little more rest. You need to eat, Ezra. You haven't had anything these past two days." She tried for a light, practical tone and failed. "I'll call the attendants."
He didn't stop her.
The door opened. Attendants came in with trays—porridge, broth, soft bread, watered juice—and were dismissed again almost immediately. Aerwyna hovered, fussed with the bowls, then turned back to him.
"Ezra… please talk to me," she said.
He didn't.
"Do you..." She hesitated, then forced it out. "Do you blame me for Evan's death?"
Ezra's head jerked up.
Slowly, he shook it.
Her shoulders dropped in visible relief—but the knot in her chest didn't loosen.
"Then why aren't you speaking?" she whispered. "You must be upset about something. Of course you are." She gave a weak laugh. "Maybe you really are just hungry. Aren't toddlers supposed to cry and shout when they're hungry?"
He could see that she was trying so hard to reach him, to joke, to soften the edges.
The effort made his throat ache.
"What happened," he asked, voice rough from disuse, "when I fainted, Mother?"
Aerwyna blinked, then smiled faintly. At last—words.
"Well," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, "after you left, we couldn't find you anywhere. The guards searched all of Fulmen. The next day, Reitz decided to go to Anticourt himself to find you. He didn't bring an honour guard. You know your father—he's impulsive."
Ezra nodded, just once.
"I wanted to come," she admitted, "but someone had to oversee Castle Blackfyre's affairs."
She gave him a helpless look.
"I worried so much, Ezra. It was such a relief when I finally saw you."
He met her eyes for a moment, then looked down again.
"Your father arrived after the battle," she continued. "He ran as soon as he received the hawk about Evan's report. He didn't pack anything; he just ran. When he reached Anticourt, half the knights we lent the Demon Hunters were injured. Bandits attacking so close to Bren..."
Her mouth flattened.
"There were plenty of prisoners, but none that would matter. It was mostly mercenaries. The elites had disengaged halfway into battle, apparently, and no person of note was caught. Only dead Arcanists."
She paused as the attendants knocked again and slipped in to adjust the fire and collect empty pitchers. Aerwyna waited until they left, then went on.
"Reitz didn't want you left alone," she said quietly. "So he didn't chase or try to route. He asked the knights what had happened instead. They told him about the viscount-ranked brute, and about..." She looked at him, and her eyes glistened. "...about your 'awakening.'"
Ezra said nothing.
She took a breath. "They say you levelled a whole section of the district, and incinerated everything near you." Pride and fear warred in her voice. "Now the news is out that the Blackfyre heir has potential of being Primarch."
She reached for him again, more gently this time, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind his ear.
"Everyone in Anticourt saw your brilliance, my son," she whispered. "I can't hide it now. Word will spread throughout Fulmen, throughout the Empire, about how strong you are."
Her hand trembled.
"And that terrifies me."
Ezra's fingers twisted in the blanket.
"Mother," he blurted suddenly, cutting across her words. "I am sorry."
Aerwyna froze.
"I have been too rash," he said, words tumbling now that the first had broken free. "I fail to look at you and others and consider your feelings. I am selfish."
Her eyes widened. She had expected anger, blame, silence—anything but this.
"Little one," she said quickly, "it is alright." Her voice had gone soft, soothing, the way it never was in the training yard. "I am at fault as well. Besides, aren't all toddlers your age a little selfish?"
Ezra started to sob.
It came on suddenly, a hitch in his chest that turned into a shudder, then into a full-body tremor he couldn't stop. For so long, he'd kept everything neat and compartmentalized. Now the boxes were gone.
"I'm sorry, Mother," he choked out. "I did this. I killed Evan. I didn't think of you or Father. I just went as I pleased."
He buried his face against her thigh, small hands clutching at the fabric of her dress.
"I dragged him with me," he cried. "I wanted to prove something, or... or escape, or— I didn't think. If I hadn't gone, he wouldn't have been there. He wouldn't have—"
His voice broke on a sob. The words dissolved into hiccups and gasps.
Aerwyna's own eyes filled.
"No, no, little one," she said, leaning over him, arms wrapping around his shaking shoulders. "You did not kill him. You didn't. Terros did. The man who drove that knife did."
She pulled him into her lap fully, as if he were still a baby.
"Evan chose to stand in front of you," she whispered into his hair. "He swore an oath to protect you. He was proud to keep it. If he could speak now, he would hit me over the head for letting you say such things."
Ezra shook his head against her. "If I hadn't run away—"
"If I hadn't caged you," she cut in, voice trembling. "If I had listened when Evan told me I was holding you too tight. If Reitz hadn't offended half the court simply by existing. We can stack 'if' on 'if' until the end of our days."
She cupped the back of his head.
"It won't bring him back."
She drew in a breath, eyes shining.
"I love you," she said fiercely. "That is what matters. Not that you never make mistakes. Not that I never do. I love you. Your father loves you. Evan loved you."
He sobbed harder at that, but he didn't pull away.
"For now," she went on, stroking his hair, "don't take all the world's weight onto your shoulders. Don't sit there and decide that everything is your fault because it happened near you."
She laughed through her own tears, a small, broken sound.
"You are two, Ezra," she said. "Two. A strange, brilliant, infuriating two, but still. You deserve to be a child at least some of the time."
He clung to her.
"I don't want to feel like this," he whispered. "It hurts. It hurts so much. I've never felt anything this bad."
"Then we'll feel it together," Aerwyna answered, pressing her forehead to his. "I will carry as much of it as I can. That's my duty as your mother."
After a time, Ezra's sobs dwindled to soft sniffs.
He wiped at his face with his sleeve, embarrassed by how red his eyes felt. Aerwyna caught his hand, moved it aside, and gently dabbed his cheeks with the corner of a linen cloth.
"Don't worry, my baby Ezra," she murmured. "From now on, I will be more tolerant of you. If it is within reason, I will allow what you want. Lessons. Projects. Time outside these walls. We'll make rules together, not just mine alone."
She kissed his brow.
"I won't lock you in the nursery again and call it love," she said. "I swear it."
That earned a tiny, wet huff of laughter.
She smiled through her tears.
"Eat now," she said, easing him back against the pillows and setting the tray across his lap. "You haven't had anything in two days. I want you happy, little one. Or at least..." Her mouth softened. "...that you're not carrying everything alone."
Ezra picked up the spoon with unsteady fingers. For now, he let his mother share the burden of the weight in his chest.