Thwack.
The sound was crisp and indecently satisfying—paper on skull with enough spring to sting, not enough to injure.
Reitz paused mid-stride. With slow, offended dignity, he reached back and rubbed the back of his head like he'd been struck by a formal insult instead of a rolled-up parchment.
"Hey." He turned, eyes narrowing as he took in Aerwyna's expression. The glare he gave her was more for theatre, not genuine fury. "Is that how you treat your Lordship?"
Aerwyna stood with her weight on one hip, parchment still in hand like a baton. Afternoon sun slanted through the nursery's narrow window and laid bright stripes across the stone floor, the carved crib rails, and Ezra's dark hair where he sat propped against a mound of pillows.
Ezra watched without blinking.
His gaze held steady and sharp, tracking every movement like it mattered.
"What do you mean your training starts tomorrow?" Aerwyna demanded. "What are you going to do all day today?"
Reitz puffed out his chest—chin lifted, shoulders back—playing the part of a man crushed by governance.
"Well," he said, drawing the word out, "lording, of course."
Aerwyna made a small sound low in her throat. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a snarl.
"Tss. You just don't know what to teach Ezra yet," she said. "You're going to run to Maester Grimfire for help like you did when you were twelve."
Reitz straightened as if she'd accused him of treason.
"No! That's not true."
He pivoted toward the crib and jabbed a finger at Ezra, like he was addressing a council instead of a five-month-old.
"Don't listen to your mother, my boy. I know exactly what I am doing."
Ezra stared back.
His face couldn't form a proper scowl without mana yet. His cheeks were too soft, his mouth too small. The intent still landed: the forward lean, the fixed eyes, the way his hands tightened on the rail like he was bracing for the answer.
I'm listening, he thought. Show me the system. Show me how it works.
"Stop acting cool and just teach him," Aerwyna sighed. The corner of her mouth wanted to twitch. "And you can't go to others for help, Reitz. You might expose Ezra. Remember what they taught you when you were starting."
Reitz's grin faltered.
For a beat, something older showed through—the Earl of Blackfyre instead of the man joking in his own nursery. Ezra felt it the way he felt a spell gathering: a tightening, a pressure that made the room feel smaller.
Reitz rolled his shoulders like he could shake it off. He cleared his throat and set his face into solemn instruction.
"Fine," he said. "Fine."
He dragged a heavy chair closer to the crib. The legs scraped stone. Sitting forward with elbows on his knees, he brought his face level with Ezra's, close enough for Ezra to see faint freckles and the confidence in his eyes even under the serious act.
Aerwyna stepped back and leaned against the wall, parchment still in hand, watching both of them like a guard who didn't trust the sword or the hand holding it.
Reitz inhaled, then spoke in a tone meant to sound wise.
"Magic," he declared, "is something only a fool tries to define in one sentence."
Ezra blinked.
"In the songs," Reitz went on, "they say it's in the wind, in the river, in the stone. That it's the breath of the world, or the will of the stars—" He waved one hand lazily. "—or whatever the bard drank that night."
Aerwyna snorted, sharp against stone.
"But for us," Reitz said, tapping his chest with two fingers, "magic is the power that lives in blood. It is something we can move. Feel. Shape. It answers to our will."
Ezra latched onto the phrase.
Power that lives in blood. Body-based. Mechanism. A start.
"Not everyone has it," Reitz continued. "Most commoners don't. Some have a trickle. Enough to harden muscle, toughen bone. That's why a Knight can cut down three men even without spells."
He shrugged, like it was common knowledge.
"But they cannot push it out," he said, voice sharpening. "Not like we do. They can't shape it into fire or ice or earth. That is the difference between them and Nobles."
Ezra listened, mind building scaffolding it didn't trust.
Uneven distribution. Heritable? Selected? Or marriage patterns pretending to be bloodline?
"And bastards," Reitz added, suddenly awkward, "can use magic too."
Ezra's attention locked.
"That is why the Rex Imperia encourages…" Reitz slowed like a cart hitting mud. "Many children. Outside of wedlock as well. Not exactly outside, but I think they have a writ in place for these already. I haven't looked at the edict too much."
As he said it, Reitz shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he looked at Aerwyna.
Aerwyna lifted her free hand and drew a slow, deliberate line across her throat, eyes locked on Reitz.
Reitz swallowed.
"B-but quality is better than quantity, isn't it, darling?" he corrected fast, forcing a smile so wide it looked painful. "We have a son equivalent to a hundred sons. No need for… experiments."
Aerwyna rolled her eyes, but her gaze softened when it drifted back to the crib.
Ezra filed it anyway.
So magic is heritable, but law and blood split. Titles track Law. Power tracks blood—with leakage.
"Of course," Reitz went on, relieved, "Lordship can't be passed to bastards. Titles follow oath and Law." He said Law the way someone said gravity—a force you could hate but still obey. "But for magic, blood is blood. A bastard son of a Primarch can burn like any prince."
His voice dipped on the last sentence. Memory, not drama.
"There are rare commoners who awaken on their own," Aerwyna added quietly.
Reitz glanced at her and stayed silent.
"No known noble blood," she continued. "A few sparks. A little spell. Enough to make them useful to a House. Not enough to challenge it. That is what the books speak of."
She kept her voice level. The structure sat in the words.
Ezra caught the term.
Awaken.
Servants whispered it. Aerwyna used it like prayer or curse. A first uncontrolled spill.
He hadn't had one the way they described.
Yet he was already sensing Fields. Already pushing at limits in flashes of too-clear lucidity.
Maybe I skipped the sequence. Maybe I'm doing something they don't name.
"Enough of that," Reitz said, clapping his hands lightly. The sound was small and final. "Politics can wait. Today is about training."
Ezra straightened, eager.
"Most Houses start with tricks," Reitz said. "A little flame on the fingertip. A ball of water. Something to make the grandparents cry."
He snorted.
"Fireballs. Floating lights. Pretty things."
Aerwyna arched a brow. "Floating lights saved your life once."
"Mhm," Reitz conceded, waving it away. "They can have that one. The point is, they teach the child to throw power outside before the child even knows what his own power feels like."
He leaned forward, gaze fixed on Ezra.
"We do it the other way."
The room tightened.
Reitz stayed seated, but the lazy sprawl vanished. His back straightened. His feet planted. His breathing slowed into a measured rhythm.
Ezra felt it in the strange sense behind his ribs.
Pressure. Density. Presence.
Reitz's Field pulled tight around him. Aerwyna's power felt like a tide filling space when it moved. Reitz felt compact and controlled, like heat behind iron.
"Before you learn to throw anything," Reitz said quietly, "you must learn to hold."
He rose.
His center of gravity dropped. Shoulders set. Weight spread even, like he expected a strike and had already decided it wouldn't move him.
Ezra's senses spiked. Skin prickled.
The pressure around Reitz thickened, air crowding close. Ezra's mind reached for labels—magnetic field, electrostatic, ionization—then dropped them. He had sensation and instinct. That was it.
"Watch," Reitz said.
He raised his right hand, fingers curling into a fist. Thumb angled along the side. Knuckles set.
Ezra braced, tiny fingers whitening on the rail.
Reitz didn't chant. He didn't shout.
Swoosh.
Fire burst from the top of his fist, just above the thumb along the back of his hand.
It extended.
A bar of flame snapped into place from nothing to full length in less than a heartbeat. One moment: a fist. The next: a sword of living fire, almost as long as his arm, blazing into the nursery's corners.
The flame held shape. Roughly straight, tapering to a jagged point. The edges crawled, but the spine stayed aligned with his forearm like something rigid forced it to obey.
Light splashed off the crib rails and stone. Ezra's pupils tightened. Heat reached his face a beat later—warm enough to flush his cheeks, far from pain.
That's a lightsaber.
His mouth fell open.
His mind scrambled.
No fuel. No reactants. No ignition.
Combustion demanded inputs. Plasma demanded obscene energy. This blade stayed stable and controlled and refused every model he shoved at it.
Illusion, a part of him insisted.
Heat proved otherwise.
His reflexes still fired off guesses, useless and fast.
Compressed air? A chemical in the room? Some structure in the Field coupling into thermal motion?
Nonsense. And the lack of footing scared him in a way he hadn't felt since waking in this body.
Reitz held the sword steady, arm extended, studying it with a slight tilt of his head.
"The condensation of magic is abrupt," he said, like he was reading from a manual.
"If you do it right, all the power in your Field jumps to one place," he went on. "If you do it wrong…"
He flicked his wrist.
The fire vanished with a soft whoosh. Faint warmth lingered. Heated air stung Ezra's nose.
"…you blister your own arm," Reitz finished brightly, "or worse."
Aerwyna exhaled through her nose. "Reitz."
"What?" He looked innocently offended, then softened at Ezra. "Don't worry, little one. We won't ask you to do that while you're still… squishy."
He reached between the rails and poked Ezra gently in the belly.
Ezra barely noticed. His mind replayed the sequence: pressure rising, blade forming, heat arriving after light.
That delay mattered.
It suggested propagation, not instant "magic heat." Which meant—
He cut the thought off. He had no instruments. Only a toddler's body and a scientist's hunger.
"It's called the [Flame Sabre]," Reitz said, flexing his fingers like shaking off embers. "Our House's signature spell."
He tapped his knuckles against the crib rail—tap, tap—too casual for what he'd just done.
"We don't throw fire at people from far away," he said. "We cut them up close."
Ezra's stomach tightened.
"Most Houses teach you to throw magic first," Reitz continued. "A ball of fire. A spear of stone. Something you can toss."
He shook his head.
"We teach you to condense first. Pack all your power into a blade's length. Make that blade as sharp and hot as the world allows."
His eyes stayed on Ezra.
"The Blackfyre way is simple," he said. "If the man who wants to kill you is close enough to touch…"
He raised his fist again—bare this time—and stopped it where an enemy throat would be.
"…you make sure he never moves again," he finished quietly.
The jokes vanished.
Ezra looked at his father and saw weight. Familiarity. Killing treated like a fact of life.
Aerwyna watched them both, jaw tight. Her fingers whitened around the parchment.
Reitz straightened, hauling himself out of it.
"But that's for later," he said, brightness snapping back. "Today you'll just learn what your own power feels like."
Ezra's heart kicked.
Reitz stepped closer and reached through the bars again. No poke. He set his broad palm over Ezra's small chest.
"Feel this," he murmured.
Ezra tensed, then forced himself to relax. Panic made control sloppy. Sloppy meant exhaustion.
For a heartbeat, nothing.
Then Reitz's presence pressed down—again, not physical. The air stayed the same. The light stayed the same. Something invisible leaned in, and Ezra's skin prickled like the world had added a new axis.
Ezra's own something stirred.
Pressure. Fullness behind his ribs. A weight in his center that wasn't organ or muscle. Reitz pressed his will in; that fullness pushed back.
Like a spring.
Ezra's breath caught.
"That," Reitz said softly, "is your Field pushing against mine. Remember it."
Ezra tried.
He focused as hard as his still-developing brain allowed, trying to outline the sensation the way he'd outline a function—center, slope, boundary. It stayed messy, more like groping in the dark.
He held on anyway.
Without meaning to, he reached.
Something inside him tightened.
The fullness swelled, bunched, and climbed toward Reitz's hand. Warmth gathered in his chest, crept into his shoulders, then into his tiny fists on the rail.
Reitz's eyes flicked down.
Aerwyna pushed off the wall, posture sharpening.
Ezra panicked and let go.
The sensation snapped apart. Backlash followed as heavy fatigue. Limbs turned to lead. Eyelids dragged. A dull throb started behind his forehead.
"Easy," Reitz said, and excitement leaked through his restraint. "You're not Awakened yet, at least we aren't sure that you are. If we push too hard, your channels will twist themselves in knots."
Channels.
Structure. Pathways. Something that could break.
"Reitz," Aerwyna warned quietly.
He nodded and eased his hand away. The pressure withdrew. The room opened back up.
"That's enough for today," Reitz said. "Your body is small. Your power isn't. We'll stretch it slowly."
Ezra slumped against the pillows, chest rising too fast for doing almost nothing.
His thoughts tangled. He couldn't build equations. He barely had the language to label what he'd felt.
One thing stayed clear.
Something inside him had answered.
Something real.
So it's real, he thought, foggy. Tangible somewhat.
He couldn't model it yet. Every model cracked under the first test. He was measuring an ocean with a teaspoon.
Reitz stepped back, rolling his shoulders 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 like she was digging up patience. "He's five months old."
"He's Blackfyre," Reitz replied, as if that settled it. "We start early."
Ezra's eyes drooped. The ceiling blurred at the edges. The warmth in his chest faded to a gentle hum, like an engine idling deep inside him.
The word stopped being a label for impossibility. It became a placeholder for a mechanism he hadn't solved yet.
Magic.