CHAPTER 1 — The Cry of a Newborn
I came into the world screaming.
Not the cry of a helpless infant — no, it was something deeper. Something ancient. My parents would later describe it as a roar, as though a mana beast had been born in their home instead of a child.
I remember light. Heat. Pressure. Then a voice whispering in my mind:
"Awaken, Heir of Draven."
Of course, no one else heard it.
I was born into House Draven, a minor noble family in Sapin. Wealthy enough to be comfortable, irrelevant enough that the world hardly noticed us. A blessing. A cage.
Before I was even a week old, my mana sense awakened. I saw streams of energy flowing through the air, swirling around people, forming shapes and colors that corresponded to their emotions and strength.
My mother fainted the first time she saw me staring at the mana orb she was using to soothe me.
I reached out to it. The orb cracked.
I wasn't normal — and I knew it.
By age one, my emotions had stabilized, too mature for an infant. I observed everything. Studied everything. Patterns of speech, mana fluctuations, the rhythm of footfalls. Father thought I was merely attentive. Mother thought I was gifted.
Neither realized that something inside me… was remembering.
A dragon's memories. A monarch's instincts.
Every night, the same whisper returned.
"Grow. Remember. Become."
And with each whisper, I felt a spark inside my chest — heat like molten gold, coiling and expanding. A slumbering beast wrapped around my heart.
On my second birthday, I crawled out of my crib and traced a rune into the wooden floor — a rune no one had taught me. When a servant stepped on it, he was gently pushed back by a wave of mana.
My parents stared at me, horrified and awed.
They thought they had birthed a prodigy.
They were wrong.
They had birthed a storm.
And I could feel it too — a hunger, a certainty, a pride that didn't belong to a toddler.
I wasn't just growing.
I was awakening.