The boy sat alone in the dark, counting his breaths.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
It was a trick from another life, a life that felt increasingly like a dream he'd once dreamed. The rhythm steadied his heart, cleared his mind, and tonight, it kept him from screaming.
Through the thin walls of his chamber, he could hear them. The servants' footsteps in the corridor. The distant clatter of the kitchens. The wind moving through the ancient trees that surrounded Gloomhollow, their branches scraping against stone like skeletal fingers.
And beneath it all, the silence where his family's attention should have been.
Kael Thornwood opened his eyes.
Eleven years old. Second son of House Thornwood. Talentless. Worthless. Invisible.
Perfect.
He slipped from his bed, a simple cot in a simple room, the smallest in the family wing, and crossed to the window. The glass was cold against his palm. Outside, Gloomhollow spread before him, a town built among colossal tree roots, half sunken into the forest floor, lit by the soft blue glow of moss that grew on every surface. It should have looked magical. To the people of this world, it was.
To Kael, to Aris, it was data.
The moss glowed because of bioluminescence. The roots had grown around the buildings because of phototropism and time. The mana he could feel prickling against his skin was an energy field, measurable, quantifiable, subject to laws he was only beginning to understand.
Three months he'd been here. Three months since he'd opened his eyes in a child's body, in a world that made no sense and perfect sense at the same time.
Three months since Dr. Aris Thorne had died in a lab accident, his last thought frustration at the universe's unsolved mysteries.
The universe had answered in the strangest way possible.
A knock at his door.
Kael didn't turn. "Come in."
The door creaked open. He knew the footsteps, light, quick, always slightly hesitant, as if the owner expected to be scolded for existing. Mira.
"You should be sleeping, young master."
He turned. The chambermaid stood in the doorway, fifteen years old with dark hair pulled back severely and eyes that missed nothing. She held a small bundle wrapped in cloth.
"I could say the same to you," Kael said.
Mira's lips twitched, almost a smile, quickly suppressed. "I work in the kitchens tonight. Old Meg needed help with the bread." She crossed the room and set the bundle on his windowsill. "And you missed dinner. Again."
Kael looked at the bundle. The smell escaped before he could stop it, warm bread, still fresh, with a smear of honey on top.
"I wasn't hungry."
"Liar."
He blinked. Servants didn't speak to nobles that way. But Mira wasn't looking at him like a servant looking at a noble. She was looking at him like someone had noticed he existed.
"Eat," she said. "You're too thin. Meg says so, and Meg's always right about these things."
She left before he could thank her.
Kael stood there for a long moment, staring at the bread. Then he ate it, standing at the window, watching the glowing moss pulse like a slow heartbeat.
In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
The bread helped. The hunger, the real hunger, the one that came from somewhere deeper than his stomach, retreated. For now.
Morning came grey and cold.
Kael dressed himself. No servant attended him. They'd stopped trying years ago, when it became clear the second son was not worth the effort. His clothes were clean but plain, the kind a distant cousin might wear, not the heir to one of the three great houses.
He walked the corridors of Gloomhollow alone.
The fortress palace was a labyrinth of roots and stone, built over centuries as the Thornwoods learned to coexist with the forest rather than fight it. Hallways curved around ancient trunks. Rooms opened into clearings that should have been outside but were somehow inside, enclosed by living walls of woven branches. The moss provided light, soft and blue, even during the day.
Servants passed him without meeting his eyes. Guards nodded curtly, their attention already elsewhere. He was a ghost in his own home.
Exactly as planned.
Kael reached the great hall and paused at the entrance.
His father was there.
Lord Kaelen Thornwood stood at the far end of the hall, near the massive windows that looked out toward the forest's edge. He was alone, no advisors, no guards, no family. Just a man in Warden leathers, green streaked dark hair pulled back, pale eyes fixed on something only he could see.
Kael watched him for a long moment.
In his past life, Aris Thorne had studied human behavior as part of his research, the way people moved, the tells they couldn't hide, the physics of emotion expressed through flesh. Lord Kaelen radiated grief like heat from a dying star. It was in the slope of his shoulders, the slight tremor in his hands, the way he held himself as if expecting a blow.
The wife. The monster attack. The death he couldn't prevent.
Kael knew the story. Everyone knew the story.
What no one knew was whether Lord Kaelen would ever recover.
The Lord of Thornwood turned. For a moment, his pale eyes met his son's.
Kael felt something twist in his chest, an echo of something that wasn't his. The original Kael's memories, perhaps. Or just the body's response to a father's attention, however brief.
Then Lord Kaelen's gaze slid away, already distant again, and he walked out a side door without a word.
Kael stood alone in the great hall.
Good, he told himself. Better if he doesn't notice. Better if no one does.
But the twist in his chest didn't fade for a long time.
The kitchens were warm.
Kael had discovered this three weeks into his new life. The rest of Gloomhollow was cool, damp, kept at a constant temperature by the moss and the roots and the forest's slow breath. But the kitchens were hot, great hearths roaring, ovens blazing, steam rising from massive pots, and in a world where he understood nothing, the heat was something his body remembered.
Old Meg ruled this domain.
She was round and flour dusted and ancient, seventy one years old, though she moved like someone half that age. Her hands never stopped working, even when she stood still. Kneading dough, stirring pots, wiping counters, always doing. The other kitchen workers flowed around her like water around a stone.
Kael sat on a stool in the corner, out of the way, eating a bowl of porridge that had appeared in front of him moments after he'd arrived. He hadn't asked for it. He hadn't needed to.
"You're thinking too loud," Old Meg said without turning from the bread she was shaping.
"I'm not making any sound."
"Didn't say you were." She slapped the dough onto a board and began kneading with practiced violence. "Your face does the talking. Too much thinking. Too little eating. You'll waste away to nothing."
Kael looked down at his porridge. It was good, better than good, actually. The oats were sweetened with honey, dotted with berries that shouldn't be in season, warm in a way that suggested more than just heat.
He'd noticed things about Old Meg's cooking. The way bread stayed fresh longer than it should. The way a simple soup could chase away the cold for hours. The way his hunger, the real hunger, retreated after he ate her food, even when other meals left it screaming.
"You know something," he said quietly.
Old Meg's hands paused for just a fraction of a second. Then they resumed their rhythm.
"I know how to make porridge, boy. That's all I know."
"No." Kael set down his spoon. "You know something about what's wrong with me."
Now she did turn. Her eyes, too bright for her age, too knowing, studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment.
"Nothing's wrong with you," she said finally. "Nothing that wasn't meant to be, anyway."
Before Kael could respond, the kitchen door banged open and a young man stumbled through, nineteen, lean, with bright eyes that missed nothing and hair tied back in a Warden's knot.
"Meg! Is Captain Bryn..." He stopped, noticing Kael. "Oh. The second son."
Kael had learned to read people in this world the same way he'd learned to read particles in his old one, by observing their behavior under different conditions. The young Warden's expression shifted through several micro expressions in the space of a second. Recognition, dismissal, curiosity, then a forced neutrality that didn't quite hide the curiosity.
"Corvin," Meg said flatly. "Captain Bryn isn't here. Try the Warden's Grove."
"I was just there. Old Garret said..." Corvin's eyes kept drifting back to Kael. "What's he doing here?"
"Eating. Something you should try more often." Meg turned back to her bread. "Go bother someone else."
Corvin hesitated, then crossed to where Kael sat. Up close, he smelled like pine needles and sweat and something else, something sharp, like ozone.
"You're Kael, right? Lord Kaelen's son?"
"The second son," Kael said. "The useless one."
Corvin blinked. "I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to."
A pause. Then Corvin laughed, a genuine sound, surprised out of him. "You're strange. I like strange." He leaned against the counter. "I'm Corvin. Junior Warden. I ask too many questions and go where I shouldn't."
"I'd noticed."
"Good. Then we understand each other." Corvin's eyes gleamed. "Tell me something. What do you think about the forest?"
Kael considered the question. It wasn't small talk. Corvin was testing him, though the Warden probably didn't realize it.
"I think," Kael said slowly, "that it's older than anyone remembers. And that something in it is watching."
Corvin's smile faded. He stared at Kael with new eyes, wary now, assessing.
"That's..." He trailed off.
"Troubling?" Kael suggested.
"Accurate." Corvin pushed off the counter. "I should find Captain Bryn." At the door, he paused. "Eat more porridge, second son. You're going to need your strength."
He left. The door swung shut behind him.
Old Meg was watching Kael now, her bright eyes unreadable.
"That one," she said, "sees too much and thinks too little. He'll get himself killed."
"And me?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she crossed to his stool, took his empty bowl, and said something that would echo in his mind for weeks.
"You'll get other people killed, boy. The question is whether they'll thank you for it."
That night, Kael couldn't sleep.
He lay in his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling, while his mind churned through the day's data. His father's distant gaze. Mira's unexpected kindness. Corvin's sharp curiosity. Old Meg's cryptic warning.
And beneath it all, the hunger.
It was worse at night. During the day, he could distract himself with observation, with analysis, with the endless puzzle of understanding this world. But at night, with nothing to occupy his mind, the hunger crept forward, not for food, though food helped. For something else. Something he couldn't name.
Energy.
The word surfaced from his past life. From the equations he'd spent years studying, the experiments he'd run, the theories he'd built. Energy wanted to flow. Energy wanted to balance. Energy wanted to move from places of high concentration to places of low concentration.
And Kael's body, he was beginning to realize, was a place of very low concentration indeed.
He sat up, heart pounding.
What if they were measuring the wrong things?
The Thornwood examiners had tested him as a child. They'd used standard methods, aura resonance, mana sensitivity, all the techniques developed over centuries to identify talent. Every test had come back negative. Zero. Void.
They'd declared him talentless and moved on.
But what if the tests were designed for normal bodies? What if his body was different?
Kael slipped out of bed and knelt on the cold stone floor. He'd been practicing meditation, not the mystical kind, but the focused awareness he'd used in his research. The ability to observe without judgment, to let data flow without interference.
He closed his eyes and turned his perception inward.
For a long moment, there was nothing. Just the darkness behind his eyelids, the distant sounds of Gloomhollow settling for the night, the beat of his own heart.
Then he felt it.
A void.
Not emptiness. Absence. A place where something should have been and wasn't. A darkness so complete it seemed to pull at the edges of his awareness, drawing everything toward it.
Kael's eyes snapped open. His heart hammered against his ribs. Sweat cooled on his forehead despite the warmth of the night.
The void was still there. He could feel it now, always, a constant presence at the edge of his consciousness. Waiting. Hungry.
He didn't sleep that night.
He sat on his cold stone floor, watching the moss light shift through shades of blue, and thought about what he'd felt. A physicist's mind grappling with impossible data.
What if I'm not empty? What if I'm the opposite of empty? What if I'm a singularity, pulling everything in?
The question terrified him.
The question fascinated him.
And somewhere in the deep forest, miles away, something ancient and vast turned its attention toward Gloomhollow for the first time in a thousand years.
The Cradle Mother was waking.