In the fourth week of his new life, beneath a moonlit atrium adorned with sigil-lit vines and whispering wind chimes, the infant was carried in swaddled silk to a ring of robed elders. A crystal lens, shaped like a teardrop and engraved with runes from the Age of Binding, hovered above his chest, held in the trembling hands of a Magister whose sight had not failed in a century. Glyphs flared across the lens and spilled in dancing light upon the stone floor like celestial ink.
"He shall be named—Sharath Virayan Darsha," the astrologer intoned, voice echoing as though repeated by the stars themselves.
"Sharath" — balance and clarity, the calm amidst the storm.
"Virayan" — valiant wisdom, the sword that cuts through ignorance.
"Darsha" — vision made manifest, the sight that sees what others dare not.
The name sealed itself in runic light, which spiraled into the crystal and vanished. The moment was captured in silent reverence by all present, but none noticed the flicker behind the child's eyes—the quiet recognition that this ceremony meant more than symbolism. It was a system call. A naming convention. A tag in a database of destinies.
That night, the estate bloomed in celebration. Nobles recited chants, minstrels played wind and reed instruments beneath arched balconies, and servants hung garlands from every corner of the Darsha manor. The scent of starfruit wine, clove-smoked meats, and fire-blossom incense lingered in the air.
Yet amidst this opulence, baby Sharath was quiet—not dazed, not sleepy. Observant.
His eyes, wide and liquid black, tracked a knight who dried his polished armor with a heatless flame conjured from a murmured spell. A maid beside him lit twenty candles with a whisper that floated on air. Two children nearby tossed stones at each other, and each pebble reversed its path midair before impact, caught in a bubble of containment glyphs.
Magic was not rare. Magic was routine.
But in Sharath's mind—still a lattice of human memory and infant neural growth—it was more than spectacle. It was language. It was logic. It was code.
Days passed, and then weeks. The crib was replaced by a padded corner of the nursery, where the child would often crawl beneath shafts of morning sun and trace invisible lines in the air. The caretakers thought he was playing. Lady Ishvari, however, began to suspect otherwise.
He babbled—yes. But not randomly.
Sometimes he repeated sounds after hearing them only once. His favorite seemed to be "Aelun." He said it when the sun rose. When candles flickered. When warmth touched his skin.
Light, he understood. Not just the word, but the intent. The purpose behind the word.
He began linking syllables:
"Velkyr" (flame) to "Brasha" (barrier),
"Sohra" (heart) to "Aluen" (light).
When servants changed linens, he listened. When guards recited the daily code at the main gate, he watched. When scholars passed in the halls, debating in Eldora, he soaked their dialects like sponge to water.
And slowly, the internal compiler in his mind—once used to process Python scripts and Java exceptions—began parsing this new syntax.
Eldora was more than words. It carried intention. It required precision. Sloppy speech produced sparks. Focused speech moved mountains.
Lady Ishvari began leaving scrolls nearby—not as lessons, but tests. She'd unroll a parchment near his crib, one bearing images and glyphs of simple elements—fire, water, wind—and would wait.
Within days, she found the scrolls repositioned. Specific glyphs had fingermarks beneath them. Repeated ones. Not random.
One night, she entered the nursery and found Sharath, awake under starlight, finger raised in the air, mimicking the spiral of a glyph with perfect precision.
"Sohra... Aelun..." he mumbled.
Not a chant. Not a copy. An execution.
A warm breeze curled around the room, touching every candle wick—and though no fire was near, each one lit.
Her gasp startled him. He fell back.
But she did not call for help.
She approached, knelt beside him, and whispered, "We must begin your training sooner than I dared."
That week, the veil of infancy was lifted—at least in private.
Lady Ishvari began a regimen. No outward signs, no incantations where others might hear. Only symbols. Only structure. She showed him how to draw runes in sand trays. How to form syllables using breath instead of voice. How to layer intent—like logic gates—on top of utterance.
To Sharath, it was exhilarating. Eldora was as much a programming language as it was magical. Variables were intent. Functions were spells. Constraints were spoken, not typed.
When he grasped that, things accelerated.
By the third month, he was crawling into the manor's old library. Not walking—crawling. Determined. A trail of abandoned toys marked his route.
In the library's east wing lay ancient scrolls encoded in triple-layered Eldora—once meant for high magisters. Lady Ishvari, amused and curious, let him explore under watchful eye.
One day, he pulled out a dusty scroll and tapped a glyph with the edge of his wooden rattle. The rune glowed. Not brightly. But enough.
"Did he just ping a reactive seal?" asked a watching scholar.
Lady Ishvari smiled. "He didn't just ping it. He queried it."
By the fourth month, Sharath began assembling spells in his mind.
He couldn't speak them—not yet. But in silence, he visualized code:
Function ignite_candle(): if (environment == dark): speak "Velkyr Aelun"
Then came the day of the mirror.
It was a ceremonial object in the eastern atrium. Forged from Obsidian Rainsteel and etched with soul-bound glyphs, it reflected not what one was—but what one could become.
Sharath, crawling under dusk's pink light, found his reflection.
But the mirror did not show a child.
It showed him—him, as he had once been: a man in worn jeans, hunched over a laptop, eyes sunken from sleepless code deployment.
The vision shimmered... then faded.
His tiny hand reached out.
He did not cry.
He remembered.
And with that memory, the last of his Earth-born hesitation burned away.
He would not just adapt to this world.
He would decode it.
And then, he would recompile it in his own image.
To be continued...