The cloak was heavier than it looked.
Not in weight, but in intent.
When the child pulled it around himself, the fabric seemed to resist for a moment, as though unused to serving someone like him. Then it settled, draping over narrow shoulders, warming skin that had grown accustomed to cold stone and open air.
The mage turned without looking back.
The child followed.
They walked in silence.
The land beyond the ruins sloped downward into uneven ground, where stone gave way to packed earth and sparse vegetation. The path was not a road—roads required repetition, and repetition required memory. Instead, it was a series of choices the mage made without hesitation, stepping where the ground was firm, avoiding places where the earth sagged as if tired.
The child watched his feet.
Not to imitate—but to understand.
After a time, the mage spoke.
"You do not ask questions," he said.
The child did not respond.
"I will take that as habit, not defiance."
They continued walking.
The sky shifted gradually, light dimming not into night, but into something uncertain. The stars had not yet agreed on where they belonged. Some brightened, others faded, their positions subtly wrong.
The mage glanced upward briefly.
"This world has not stabilized," he said. "It will. Eventually. But until then, things fall through the cracks."
He slowed slightly, matching the child's pace.
"You are one of those things."
They reached shelter long after the land had grown quiet.
It was not a tower, nor a fortress, nor anything grand enough to justify fear. The structure was low and partially embedded in the earth, built from fitted stone reinforced with timber darkened by age. Symbols had been carved into its outer walls—circles intersected by lines, marks that hinted at rules not yet formalized.
The child stopped at the threshold.
He had learned caution early.
The mage noticed.
"This place will not bite," he said. "It already knows me."
That did not reassure the child.
Still, he stepped inside.
The interior was dim, lit by a soft, steady glow that came not from flame, but from crystals embedded along the walls. The air was warmer here, dry and still. Shelves lined the stone interior, stacked with scrolls, tablets, and objects whose purpose was not immediately clear—rings of metal, fragments of bone etched with symbols, blades that had never been sharpened.
The child's eyes moved constantly.
Nothing here felt alive.
But everything felt aware.
"You may sit," the mage said, setting down a pack near a low table. "Or stand. I will not instruct you on how to exist."
The child sat anyway, lowering himself carefully onto the stone floor. The cloak pooled around him, too large, but he did not adjust it.
The mage removed his outer robes and folded them with deliberate care. His movements were precise, habitual—someone accustomed to order in a world that resisted it.
He retrieved a cup and poured water from a sealed vessel, then set it down within the child's reach.
"You will drink," he said. "Not because I command it. But because your body requires it."
The child stared at the cup.
Then drank.
Slowly. Carefully. As if expecting the water to disappear halfway through.
It did not.
The mage watched him for a long moment.
"You do not have a name," he said finally.
The child looked up.
"Names," the mage continued, "are anchors. They tie a thing to the world's memory. Without one, you drift."
He paused.
"But naming you now would be… premature."
The child did not ask why.
The mage nodded, as though that silence confirmed something.
"For now," he said, "you will remain as you are."
He reached into his robes and withdrew a thin plate of metal, smooth and unmarked. He placed it on the table between them.
"This is a record," he said. "Or rather, an attempt at one."
He pressed his thumb against its surface.
Light spread outward, forming lines—then hesitated. The symbols wavered, blurred, and vanished.
The mage frowned.
"As expected."
The child leaned forward slightly, eyes fixed on the metal.
"It refuses to acknowledge you," the mage said quietly. "The world does not know where to place you."
He closed his hand around the plate, the light extinguishing instantly.
"That will change."
That night, the child did not sleep.
He lay wrapped in the mage's cloak, listening to the subtle sounds of the shelter—stone settling, mana flowing through unseen channels, the quiet scratch of the mage writing somewhere beyond his sight.
For the first time, hunger did not come.
For the first time, cold did not bite.
These things unsettled him more than pain ever had.
Somewhere deep beneath the shelter, something shifted—old mechanisms adjusting, responding to a future that had taken its first step off the expected path.
The child stared into the dim light, eyes open, unblinking.
He did not know it yet.
But this was the moment his existence stopped being an accident.
And began becoming a contradiction