Four long years slipped by like smoke drifting through cracked alleyways and beneath rotten rooftops. Time here didn't march forward it crept, slow and unyielding, folding itself into the ragged breaths and desperate cries of the city's poorest. Each day blurred into the next, stained with the same sour smells of sweat, stale bread, and rot.
Emery learned to walk by stumbling over splintered boards and heaps of foul-smelling garbage tossed carelessly in forgotten corners. His small feet found uneven paths between muddy puddles and broken cobblestones, wincing at the sting of crushed glass hidden beneath cracked wooden planks. The world was jagged and unforgiving.
He learned to speak by listening to the slurred, rough dialects of commoners and criminals alike the broken tongues of beggars, thieves, and traders who hawked stolen goods in market shadows. Emery's sharp eyes memorized every twist and turn of the twisting alleys, the shifting dance of merchant stalls, and the stench-heavy corners where death seemed to linger longer than anywhere else.
This world was brutal, raw merciless in its hunger and desperation.
But it whispered echoes of a life Emery had lived before.
He had survived the blood-soaked jungles of cartel warfare, the cold betrayals whispered in sterile boardrooms, and the bloody climb to rule over shadows. Poverty was nothing. A paltry challenge.
Because he was Emery.
Emery Vane.
Just smaller.
By four years old, his tongue shaped five regional dialects with the cunning of a seasoned trader. His fingers counted coins faster than any fence hiding in the market's dark corners. His "parents," if they could be called that, no longer treated him like a child. Mara, his mother, skin cracked from years of labor, called him "little boss" with a tired smile whenever he corrected her sums. Joren, his father, a city guard scraping for scraps, often stumbled home late, reeking of stale ale and bitterness not violent, but hollow, worn down by a life he could no longer control.
Emery tolerated him.
Because Emery had a plan.
This new world, Althar, ran on magic and muscle. For years, Emery thought he was dealt a losing hand every child was tested for magic before age five, usually by traveling alchemists or city wizards. But he showed nothing.
Until one day… it woke.
It started with sharp, blazing pain. Real pain.
A local bully older, bigger, with cruel eyes waited near a pile of trash by the market square. Wooden stick gripped tight, grin crooked and mean.
"Boss's brat," he spat. "Thinks he's hot shit."
The stick swung without warning. Emery's head snapped sideways; stars flaring in his vision. He hit one knee, copper tasting fierce on his tongue.
Then… silence.
Stillness.
The boy froze mid-step, sneer frozen on his face. But then his body began to tremble not from fear, but under some invisible force. His legs buckled. The stick dropped to the dirt.
Emery rose slowly, eyes cold as steel. "Kneel."
The boy crumpled to the ground, grunting in pain but silent.
Around them, the air shifted. Invisible. Unseen. As if the world had bent, just for him.
The pain in Emery's head faded. His breath steadied. The strange pressure vanished.
The boy scrambled away, sobbing.
That night, under the rickety porch, Emery stared at his small hands, trembling.
This wasn't magic not fire, not lightning, not the flashy spells other kids showed off. No sparkling auras or chants.
This was something else.
Power that obeyed.
In the following weeks, he tested it quietly. He tightened ropes without touching them. Pulled nails from boards with a thought. Stilled rats mid-scurry, watching them freeze and die.
His soul screamed Dominate, and the world whispered Yes.
But he told no one.
Because Emery was powerful.
By four and a half, a ragtag band of orphaned kids and street rats followed him like shadows. Some begged, some scouted, some stole. None dared talk back. Not because of magic, but because of presence.
Because Emery didn't act like a child.
He spoke like a boss. Walked like a boss. Thought like a boss.
No giggles. No tantrums.
Only orders.
Simple. Clear.
And if you disobeyed?
You vanished from the group. Not punished. Just ignored. Forgotten.
That was the unspoken law.
His mother Mara noticed first. One cold night, as Emery returned from "play," hands suspiciously clean and pockets suspiciously full, she sat him by the dying fire and watched him closely.
"You're not like the others," she said softly. "Never were."
Emery said nothing. He sat close, letting the fire's warmth chase the chill from his bones. She wrapped a rough-spun blanket over his shoulders, her tired arms steady.
"I don't know what the gods gave you," she whispered, "but whatever it is, you're still my son."
Her words struck deeper than he expected.
For a long moment, Emery was silent. Then he leaned in, just slightly. Not like a child seeking comfort, but a man remembering what softness felt like.
Joren came home late. Bruised knuckles, cracked leather armor, the scent of stale ale and dried blood heavy on him. His eyes softened when he saw Mara asleep on the floor, Emery curled beside her.
He said nothing.
Just knelt down, pulled a tattered wool blanket over them both, and sat like a guard who finally had something worth protecting.
Amid the filth, the rot, and the violence, Emery felt a strange peace.
Not comfort.
Not safety.
But an echo of something he had never allowed himself to feel before.
Family.
How long it would last, he didn't know.
But this time…
It mattered.