Sael was in a good mood today. Or as close to one as he managed anymore.
The sky stretched blue and cloudless in every direction—barring the one he was sitting on—and the wind carried a clean smell of pine from the forests below. A beautiful day. The sort that made even a decade-long hermit think maybe leaving his cloud wasn't such a terrible idea.
He took a long pull from his pipe, held it, then released the smoke in a slow exhale. The blend was his own: silverleaf, dreamroot, and laced with enough moonpetal to drop a wyvern mid-flight. It didn't make him think less, exactly. Not that anything even could at this point. Not with a Constitution stat in the... in the...
"Wait."
He paused. Actually, he didn't remember.
"[Status]," he said and a screen appeared in front of him.
Sael of Hel — Level 6807 [Archmage]
Human (Demi-Primordial)
[Wrath Level: 0%]
[Main Title: The Struggling One]
[Affiliation: Pointbreak]
AGI: 302,452
CHA: 183
CON: 5,738,942 (+1)
DEX: 498,206
MAG: 84,353,639
STR: 1,472,146
WIS: 624,161
"Up one point in Constitution?"
He hadn't done much of anything in the past hundred years, though. He stared at the status screen, half-tempted to ask it why. Then he remembered it wouldn't answer, and sighed at the injustice of feeling so healthy.
At last, Sael waved the screen away and went back to enjoying the view.
He gazed at the horizon. Searching... where was it... ah. There.
The ever-cheerful village of Gatsby.
Sael leaned forward, smiling. Bright colors strung between buildings. People moving through the streets in numbers that didn't make sense for midday. The square looked crowded.
They'd started the festival early this time.
The pipe had gone out. He tapped it against his palm, watching the ash scatter into the wind, then tucked it into his coat.
"Off to Gatsby, then."
Sael stood, bones creaking in protest. He grunted—a low, annoyed sound that would've made any onlooker think twice about approaching—and stretched his arms overhead. His spine made a series of pops that sounded like kindling catching fire.
"Getting old," he muttered, which was a joke considering he'd stopped aging four centuries ago. His joints hadn't gotten the memo.
He walked to the edge of his nimbus cloud and looked down. It was a long way. Far enough that the forest below looked like moss, and the village like a handful of stones someone had scattered without much thought.
Sael stepped off.
The wind screamed past his ears. His blue coat snapped and billowed around him. The ground rushed up with alarming enthusiasm, trees resolving into individual shapes, then branches, then leaves, then—
"[Float]."
The word didn't need to be spoken aloud, but he'd gotten in the habit. Made it feel more intentional, like he was choosing to defy gravity rather than simply forgetting to fall.
His descent slowed as wind became breeze. The blur sharpened into detail. He drifted the last twenty feet in a controlled glide, refusing to hit the ground any faster than he meant to.
And finally, his boots touched grass without so much as a whisper.
Sael looked up. The nimbus hung there, a white smudge against blue, exactly where he'd left it.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small vial, no bigger than his thumb. The glass was old, scratched from years of use, and the cork fit poorly enough that he had to wiggle it free.
He frowned at it. The scratches were getting deeper. Another year and the thing might actually crack.
"[Arrangement]."
The spell cost more mana than creating a new vial would have—higher circle magic that rearranged matter at the atomic level wasn't exactly efficient—but he'd grown attached to this particular piece of glass. The scratches smoothed out. The cork reshaped itself to fit snugly. There. Like new.
He held the vial up and the cloud moved.
It didn't fall so much as compress, folding in on itself like cloth being gathered by invisible hands. The white mass spiraled down and poured into the vial in a thin stream that should have taken hours but was done in seconds. The last wisps disappeared with a faint hiss.
Sael corked the vial and slipped it back into his pocket.
He pulled his hood up, shadows falling across his face, and considered his options.
The village was close. Ten minutes if he walked. One second if he teleported.
His first instinct was the latter.
But it had been a while since he'd taken the forest path. And longer still since he'd let himself notice the details.
"Hmm."
Which meant walking. It could've meant teleporting—hmm was versatile like that—but he was alone, so hmm could mean whatever he decided it meant.
He started walking.
Sael didn't rush. There wasn't much point. The grave would still be there whether he arrived now or an hour from now, and the extra time let him smoke another pipe's worth before he had to deal with people.
The forest path was familiar in that half-forgotten way old places always were. He recognized the curve of the trail, the specific oak with the split trunk, the stream that cut across at the halfway point. But the details had shifted. Trees had grown. Some had fallen. The bridge over the stream was new—or new to him, anyway.
By the time he emerged from the trees, the dirt path had widened into a proper road, and he wasn't alone anymore.
A merchant's caravan trundled ahead, three wagons pulled by oxen that didn't seem particularly motivated. Behind them, a family on foot: father, mother, two children bouncing around like they'd been told to stay close but hadn't internalized the concept. A pair of young men walked together, laughing about something. An old woman rode a donkey that looked even less enthusiastic than the oxen.
Sael fell into step at the back, pulling his hood lower.
Gatsby sat in a shallow valley, ringed by gentle hills that rolled away in every direction. The village itself looked like it had been there forever—which it had, more or less. Stone cottages with thatched roofs. Gardens bursting with vegetables and flowers in a chaotic mix that suggested the residents cared more about results than aesthetics. Smoke curling from chimneys. The smell of bread baking.
It looked peaceful. The sort of place where the worst thing that happened in a year was Old Marten's cow getting into the Fenwick's garden again.
It hadn't always been that way.
The banners were everywhere now that he was close. Bright reds and golds strung between buildings, snapping in the breeze. Children darted through the crowd—and it was a crowd, easily three times the village's normal population. Visitors. Here for the festival.
Sael's Day.
"Status!"
Sael's attention snagged on the word, pulled from his thoughts like a fish on a line.
"Status! Status!"
He looked.
The voice came from a little girl—maybe seven—squeezing her eyes shut, fists clenched at her sides, her whole body trembling with concentration.
"Mira," her father said, laughing. "You're only seven. Your Awakening won't come for another three years yet."
"But maybe I'm special!" She opened one eye, then both, shoulders slumping when apparently no translucent window appeared before her. "Jonn said some people Awaken early."
"Some people," her brother said, "means like one in a million. You're not special."
"I could be!"
"You could," her father agreed easily. "But probably not today. Come on, we need to find the inn first. And you need to stop trying to force your Awakening. The System comes when it comes. Usually around ten years, when you're ready."
"But what if—"
"No buts."
The family had drifted closer to Sael without meaning to, the natural compression of the crowd funneling everyone toward the gate. The father was a solid man in his thirties, weathered in the way farmers were, with callused hands and a comfortable bulk that certainly came from hard work and good meals. His wife walked beside him, carrying a basket.
The son, older than his sister by maybe two or three years, was trying very hard to look serious and grown-up, which meant he was failing.
"Bit of a crowd this year."
Sael kept walking. The comment seemed general enough—probably aimed at the wife, or just spoken aloud the way people did when they were making conversation with the air.
"You here for the festival too?"
The voice was closer now. Warmer. Definitely directed at someone.
Sael glanced up.
The father was looking right at him.
Oh.
"Ah." Sael cleared his throat. "Yes. The festival."
He wasn't sure what else to say, so he stopped there. The father didn't seem bothered by the brevity, which was a relief. Some people took short answers as rudeness. Gatsby folk, thankfully, just seemed to take them as answers.
"Sael's Day," the man continued, as if Sael might not have known. His tone was warm and open. One that invited conversation without demanding it. "Big one this year. Four hundredth anniversary since the battle of Yrsult."
Sael nodded, because that seemed like the appropriate response, and wondered if he was supposed to add something. The silence stretched just long enough to feel awkward before the wife leaned in, curious but polite.
"Are you visiting family?"
That was a reasonable question. A normal question. The kind people asked when they saw a lone traveler on a festival day.
Sael's brain, unhelpfully, went blank.
He should have prepared for this. He came here every ten years. He should have a script by now. Something simple and true enough that he didn't have to think about it.
"My wife is buried here," he said finally.
The change was immediate. Not pity—Gatsby folk weren't the pitying sort—just a gentle warmth that settled over the conversation like a blanket. The wife's expression softened. The father's smile turned understanding.
"Oh," the wife said softly. "I'm sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
The words came out rougher than he'd intended, so he added, "But I visit when I can."
"That's good," the father said, and he sounded like he meant it. "Keeping the memory alive. Some people don't bother, you know. Just… move on. But it means something, coming back." He nodded, as if confirming his own point. "It means something."
Sael didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Which seemed to be fine, because the father was already continuing.
"You should join us for the festival after you've paid your respects. No sense spending the whole day alone. There's good food, music, and—"
"The play!" Mira burst in, unable to contain herself any longer, her earlier disappointment forgotten. "They're doing the Battle of Cair Natel! Where Sael the Great defeated the Usurper and saved the whole kingdom! Right, Jonn?"
Her brother—Jonn, Sael assumed—rolled his eyes with an exaggerated disdain, like someone who thought he was too old for such things but secretly wasn't. "Everyone knows that story."
"But they're doing it with real magic!" Mira insisted. "Father said so!"
"Illusions," the father clarified, grinning at Sael like they were sharing a joke about the enthusiasm of children. "Got a mage from Thornhaven to do the effects. Should be quite the show."
Sael made a noncommittal sound. He was already regretting the conversation, though not because of the family. They were nice, genuinely so, in that uncomplicated way that made him wish them well. But talking to people had always been work, even before. Eirlys—his wife—used to tell him he should practice more. Go to the market, she'd say. Talk to the baker. Ask someone about the weather. You can't spend your whole life in your own head.
She'd been right, of course. She usually was.
It still drained him.
"I heard," Mira said, her voice dropping to a reverent whisper as she looked up at Sael, "that Sael the Great Awakened when he was only three years old. Is that true?"
The father chuckled. "Some scholars say two, actually. Youngest Awakening on record. Though there's debate about whether—"
"Actually," Sael said, then paused. The family looked at him expectantly. He took a breath. "The records indicate he was born awakened. The System was already present at birth."
The family went quiet.
"Born with it?" Mara's eyes widened. "I've never heard of such a thing."
"It's quite rare," Sael continued, keeping his voice level. "He had a fully formed mana core from birth and could see his Status window before he could walk. His mother—she was... a mage—started training him at two."
"That's..." Edric shook his head slowly. "That's extraordinary. No wonder he became what he did."
"I'm going to get mine at eight," Mira announced with absolute confidence. "I can feel it."
Jonn snorted. "You can't feel an Awakening coming, stupid."
"Jonn," the mother said sharply.
"Well she can't!"
"Language." The father's tone was mild but final. He glanced at Sael with an apologetic smile. "They're excited. Jonn Awakened six months ago, so now he thinks he's an expert on everything."
"I am an expert," Jonn muttered. "I have a Status window."
Sael nodded. That seemed like the safe response, acknowledge the statement without committing to further conversation. Unfortunately, the silence that followed made it clear something more was expected.
He pulled his pipe from his coat and made a show of inspecting it. Partly because it gave him something to do with his hands, and partly because he needed a moment to make sure his voice came out steady when he asked, "What Class?"
"[Farmhand]," Jonn said, trying to sound proud and mostly succeeding. "Level 1."
Sael nodded again. Then, because the boy was clearly waiting for something more, added, "Good foundation."
The words came out stiffer than he'd intended, but Jonn straightened anyway, a pleased flush creeping up his neck. Validation. The kid had wanted validation.
The father was already reaching into his pocket as Sael raised the pipe to his lips. "Here—" He produced a small flint lighter, offering it over.
"Thank you." Sael took it, struck the flame, and lit the bowl. The silverleaf caught quickly, and he took a long pull, feeling the familiar calm settle over him. It made talking easier. The smoke curled out when he exhaled, harmless by the time it left his lungs. He'd made sure of that years ago.
He handed the lighter back.
They walked in comfortable silence for a moment. Or at least, it felt comfortable to Sael. The family didn't seem bothered by his quietness, which was a relief. Some people took silence as an invitation to fill every gap with words.
Sael glanced at Mira, who was still clutching her father's hand but looking around with wide, hungry eyes—taking in every banner, every stranger, every hint of something beyond the familiar.
That kind of restlessness didn't fade with time. This was a child who would leave home the first chance she got. Who would chase adventures and danger with equal enthusiasm, probably before her parents were ready to let her go.
They seemed like good people. Definitely farmers. They'd probably expect their daughter to Awaken as a [Farmhand] like her brother, or maybe a [Gardener] or [Weaver]. Something safe and practical.
They should know better than to count on it.
"Your daughter," Sael said finally, the words forming before he'd fully decided to speak them. "When she Awakens. It will be her own path."
He almost left it there, but Mira was looking up at him with such hopeful attention that he added, "The System doesn't make mistakes."
The girl beamed up at him like he'd just promised her the world.
They'd reached the village gate now, a simple archway of old stone that didn't actually have a gate anymore. Just the frame, weathered and covered in climbing roses that someone had clearly been tending for years.
The crowd thickened. Voices layered over each other in a pleasant din. The smell of cooking food drifted from a dozen stalls—roasted meat, fresh bread, something sweet he couldn't place. Somewhere, a fiddle started up, joined quickly by a drum.
"Well," the father said, "the offer stands. You finish paying your respects, come find us. Name's Edric. This is my wife Mara, and the terrors are Mira and Jonn." He clapped Sael on the shoulder—a friendly gesture that somehow didn't feel invasive. "No one should be alone on Sael's Day. The man himself wouldn't have wanted that."
Sael almost laughed at the irony but caught himself. Instead he nodded, which seemed to be enough.
"Wait," he said.
The family paused, turning back.
Sael reached into his coat. Past the vial of compressed cloud, past three other pockets that held things he'd forgotten about, until his fingers found what he was looking for. A small pendant on a silver chain. Unassuming. The sort of thing you might buy at any market stall.
He held it out to Mira.
"A blessing," he said. "For your Awakening. When it comes."
Mira's eyes went wide. "Really?"
"Mira, you can't just—" Mara started, but Edric put a hand on her arm.
"That's very kind," Edric said, and there was something knowing in his eyes. Something that suggested he understood this wasn't just a pendant. "But we couldn't possibly—"
"It's traditional," Sael said, which was true. "Awakening blessings. For children."
Also true, though usually those blessings were wooden tokens from the temple, not artifacts that could stop a dragon's breath.
Mira took the pendant with reverent care, holding it like it might shatter. The silver caught the light. She slipped it over her head, and the chain adjusted itself to fit perfectly. A subtle enchantment. One of many.
"What do you say, Mira?" Mara prompted.
"Thank you!" Mira clutched the pendant. "I'll keep it forever!"
Sael nodded. "See that you do."
You're the kind of person who will need this.
He didn't mention that the pendant was Grade S. That it would grow with her, adapting to her needs. That it could turn aside blades, deflect hostile magic, and would alert her to poison, curses, and ill intent.
"I'll think about it," Sael said, answering Edric's earlier invitation.
"Good!" Edric said with an easy grin. "You know where to find us."
"Goodbye, mister!" Mira said as she grabbed her father's hand, already pulling him toward a nearby stall, the pendant gleaming at her throat "Thank you for the blessing!"
Jonn followed, trying to look indifferent and failing. Mara gave Sael a warm smile and a small wave before turning to corral her family.
Sael stood at the gate for a long while, watching them disappear into the crowd and took a thoughtful drag from his pipe.
They'd invited him to join them.
Shame they'd forgotten to mention where.
Or maybe he'd forgotten to ask.
Either way, a tragedy of communication.