Age: 11 years, 2 months
The human mind is not built for stillness, yet that is where I now live.The days after the attack passed quietly—too quietly.No one mentioned the intruder. Father forbade talk of it, the servants obeyed, and the clan resumed its routines as if nothing had happened.But silence does not erase events; it distills them.
At night, I sat beside the pond, the same water that had once mirrored my childhood.Its surface reflected everything except the truth.
Age: 11 years, 4 months
I began to write again. Not on paper—words could be stolen—but within memory, each line carved into thought like scripture.
Doctrine of the Silent Era
1) Observation precedes control.2) Emotion clouds data.3) Control demands calculation.4) Mastery is born from failure, not perfection.5) Perception shapes truth more strongly than fact.6) Life and death are variables—both can be solved.7) Evolution demands isolation from weakness.8) Truth is a mirror that breaks when observed too closely.9) To master death is to master consequence.
Each line a scar. Each scar a lesson.They were not morals; they were equations—statements of cause and effect.
When I repeated them in my mind, my breathing slowed until even the air seemed to hesitate before moving.
Age: 11 years, 6 months
Father's limp grew worse.He no longer joined the training fields; his voice carried through courtyards like the wind over an empty harbor.He had once said strength must serve something greater than itself.I now understood what he had truly meant: not obedience, but endurance.
Mio visited less. She had started lessons in the nearby village, far from the estate.When she left in the mornings, she waved from the gate but rarely met my eyes.Perhaps she saw what I had become—or maybe she saw only distance.
Age: 11 years, 9 months
I tested the water again, not to shape it, but to listen.When I stilled my thoughts completely, faint ripples formed without touch, responding only to the heartbeat.Power no longer needed motion; it required understanding.
I felt no pride—only confirmation.
The world is built on rhythm: rise, fall, rise again.Even silence follows that pattern.If power could move unseen, it could rule unseen.
I whispered into the mist,
"The Silent Era begins when sound no longer defines action."
The air seemed to absorb the words. The pond did not ripple.
Age: 12 years
I buried my childhood that winter.No ceremony, no grief—just a final look at the estate walls, the fading banners, the rooms once filled with voices.
I left before dawn, carrying nothing but memory.The sea wind followed like an old friend, carrying the scent of salt and distance.
Behind me lay a dying clan.Ahead lay the uncharted equation of the world.
And in between—silence.