Afternoons he reserved for projects. Today’s idea involved river reeds, beeswax, and pig bladders—testing buoyancy curves for potential cargo floats. Yesterday he had charted bird flight arcs to estimate sling accuracy. Tomorrow? Maybe distilling ink from alder bark just to see if it held pigment longer. Classmates apprenticed as brewers or cobblers, swung practice swords at straw dummies, learned weaving patterns from grandmothers. He devoured books, observed, tested. If knowledge were soil he tilled every inch, believing some seed—he knew not which—would sprout the thing he craved. When dusk cooled the fields, he balanced atop the old irrigation fence, squatting on one foot for minutes on end—strengthening balance for no reason except that it might later matter. Might it? Who could say.

That night, behind the Morrows’ barn, villagers gathered to watch old Timory Morrow impress a tinker. Timory knelt, pressed palm to loam, and murmured syllables shaped like wind through hollow bone. A sapling burst upward, branches unfurling into a living shepherd’s staff within heartbeats. Children squealed. The tinker offered five silver coins; Timory waved them off, pride satisfied. In the hush that followed, someone asked why no two mages cast quite the same way.

“Because mana has manners,” he said. “It bows to the shape of a soul. And no two souls wear the same cut of cloth.”

The boy tucked that phrasing away; the idea rang true with something he felt but could not yet voice. As torches dimmed, he thought he heard a footstep behind the haystack—too heavy for a child, too light for the ox. Turning, he glimpsed a hooded silhouette beneath the eaves of shadow, watching. A fractional moment, then gone. A chill spidered across his spine, but when he peered again only barn swallows stirred.

Next day, at the river docks, Captain Bragga—a barrel-chested trader from Continent One—unloaded salt kegs while spinning stories.

“Elf armies massing in the Whitewood Pass,” he told Arthur and several wide-eyed farmers. “Dwarves claim the grove’s mithril veins belong to them. Swords’ll settle it soon enough.”

A hush fell. Then old mason Jeb shrugged. “Elf quarrels, dwarf pride—nothing to do with barley prices here.”

And that was that. War felt as distant as moon-tides. Rathvale’s granaries were full, its temple bells rung only for weddings. Still, Akio caught the flicker in Arthur’s eyes: a blacksmith knows the terror of war and how desperate people sometimes get.

Akio had a habit of staying up late, town would be calm and quiet then and that would help him think more easily. During one of those times, restless Akio scaled the leaning watchtower. Planks creaked; rusted nails protested but held. At the top platform the village unrolled beneath him like a constellation of fireflies—hearth windows glowing amber in the dusk. Beyond stretched the sea of fields, then forested hills, then unknowable dark. The sky overhead spread with stars he could name, stars he could not, and those he suspected were still nameless.

If mana shapes itself to a soul, he mused, what shape belongs to me? Deep inside, something vast stirred—an echo. A whiff of snow and steel drifted through memory though the night sat warm.

Down below, a lone owl hooted—a soft, almost questioning sound, as though the night itself wondered why anyone would climb so high just to feel so small.

Returning home, Akio nudged the cottage door. Embers pulsed in the stone hearth, painting the room in copper. Arthur’s even breathing rumbled from the loft; Freyr’s silhouette shifted gently as she turned in sleep, dark hair spilling across pillow like spilled ink. Akio spread his straw pallet near the dying fire. Vesta slept curled beside a ragdoll, knees grubby, face serene. He brushed a strand of hay from her cheek, watching the rise and fall of her tiny shoulders. Peace settled over the house—thick, drowsy, persuasive. Yet the question mark hovering at the edge of that word—the sword in snow, the hooded watcher, the hum in his marked arm—glimmered like a secret coin. He lay back, leather book as pillow, and listened to the silent churn of thoughts beneath calm surfaces. Somewhere far away continents feuded. Somewhere closer a stranger traced patterns in the dark. And somewhere within, a boy with a many yesterdays waited for tomorrow’s first crack of dawn.