Only idiots feared the dark. Kairen Voss, age seven and forty-two days, had never understood the point of cowering under bedsheets or hiding from shadows behind the heavy curtains of Ashenhold's ancestral bedrooms. He blinked awake beneath the velvet shroud of his own room and let the night pour in, sluicing through the cracks between the old stones and the warped shuttered windows. He stared up at the ceiling. The darkness waited, patient and thick, counting his clumsy little breaths. Kairen grinned into it, baring his teeth the way he'd seen the barn cat threaten the rookery, and dared it to do something real.
The air was damp, metallic, a little like blood and a lot like the inside of the old chapel after a rainstorm. He could smell the difference. And why not? Everything in the Ashen Vale's oldest mansion stank of secrets: the wax polish on the floors, the mothballs in the drapes, the cold, peppery tang of half-faded spells in the stonework. Kairen willed his pupils wider, chasing the faintest glimmer from the hallway torch that, even snuffed, left a memory on the retinas. He reached out with his senses the way his mother had taught him—spread, don't push, taste, don't bite. The darkness tasted of wet chimney soot and, faintly, the bruised plum aroma of last night's wine. No monsters. No lurking assassins. Just the calm, thick dark.
He stretched, catlike, all arms and weirdly long fingers and the sort of double-jointed knees that made the housemaids mutter about "dragonling babies" over their morning gruel. He'd heard them: "Look at his eyes, they glow even when the fire's out"; "Did you see his hands? Too many knuckles, I swear it." Adults, always so convinced the world was out to get them. Kairen knew different. The world—or more specifically, the Vale—was mostly indifferent, and the real monsters all wore shoes and signed their names in careful, curling script.
He rolled onto his side and glared at the slits of shadow under the door. If there was a threat, it'd come from there. Not for the first time, he rehearsed snappy one-liners to deliver to any would-be kidnapper or demon that busted in before breakfast. He liked to think that if the darkness ever grew teeth, he'd have the presence of mind to crack a joke before it swallowed him whole.
He lay listening: drip, tick, the faint groan of stone, the wingbeat hush of bats in the eaves. The Ashen Vale's oldest mansion sucked sound the way bogs drank light. Only centuries of boredom and minor ghosts ever haunted these halls—the real dangers were always human, and his parents had taken those concerns with them on assignment. S-rank, the sort of quest without return date. The staff whispered that Darien and Lyra Voss might never come home, especially now that the west was heating up, but Kairen didn't waste time on their speculations.
He slid out of bed and padded to the window, toes seeking the cracks in cold marble for the warmest spots. Fog pooled below, swallowing hedgerows and the first terraces. Some nights, the low clouds flashed with the muted blue of guild banners or the red of urgent messengers, but tonight the only light came from the embers he coaxed alive with a flick of his fingers.
Outside, nothing moved except the garden's guardian sprites, flickering like will-o'-wisps through the laurel. Inside: silence. He stretched, feeling the thick ache of sleep in his joints. Mother said he'd grow into his body soon enough. Father promised otherwise, that their bloodline always cropped up strange, with spines and scales in the wrong places. Kairen didn't mind. The physical oddity suited him.
He shrugged on a shirt and opened the door, careful not to wake the hallway. The house had moods—corridors narrowed, thresholds creaked, sometimes a mirror peeled itself from the wall to follow you with its warped reflection. Kairen knew the patterns, knew which servants would be up prepping breakfast, and how to avoid the east wing, where broken magic curled in the air like fermented smoke.
Downstairs, he found Ardan the butler sleeping upright at the dining table, one hand curved around Father's silver signet ring. Ardan's snores punctuated the quiet. Kairen tiptoed past, through the library's great arch, where rows of books ran to the ceiling and the upper shelves leaned in suspiciously, as if eavesdropping on the lower stacks.
He ducked into the family alcove and ran a finger along the spines. Histories of the mainland, treatises on mana theory, half-burned journals from the last war. There. A slender volume, dark blue, buckled at the corners: _Records of the Astral Lineage_. He'd read it twice but never dared bring it to daylight. The last time he asked about the "rumored dragon blood," Mother's face went flat, and she buried herself in books for a week. But secrets had flavors, and this one tingled on his tongue.
He cracked it open, skimming the faded diagrams—serpentine bodies, people with slit-pupil eyes. The margins crawled with annotations from ancestors who'd all disagreed on the proper cure for inherited temper. In the centerfold, a family tree. He traced the names back, tracing the quirk of sharp incisors and mottled skin through generations. His father's name. His.
A shuffle from the door. Kairen snapped the book shut, but it was only Tali—barefoot, in a nightgown that trailed like wings behind her. Five years old but crafty as a spider, she padded closer, blinking sleep from her lashes.
"What're you doing?"
"Reading," he said. "You'll ruin it if you touch."
Tali stepped up to the shelf, ran a thumb—deliberate, slow—along another title. "You promised to teach me the smoke trick."
He huffed. "Not on an empty stomach. You'd combust."
Tali scowled, teeth glinting. "I want to see it."
Kairen considered the risk. Smoke control wasn't advanced, but it left traces. If Ardan or, worse, Housekeeper Min found soot in the library, they'd both be scrubbing shelves until armistice with the rats was declared.
He relented with a nod. "Fine. Get the terrarium."
Tali darted out. Kairen slid the blue volume back, careful to misalign it by a scant millimeter—he'd know if it was moved again. Tali returned, hoisting the glass box of dead beetles, their legs splayed like black flowers. Kairen rolled up his sleeve and began the routine: breath in, focus, release. Heat woke in his chest, spiraled up his throat as he clicked his tongue. A ribbon of gray slithered from between his teeth, coiling inside the terrarium.
Tali pressed her nose to the glass, eyes wide as the smoke circled a beetle skull. "Do it again."
He obliged, this time adding a twist, splitting one plume into two with a snap of his jaw. Tali giggled, hands clapping the air.
After two more passes, he stopped, skin pricking with an after-zing. The scale pattern had crept over his forearm, subtle but visible—lapping around the bone like frost. He pulled his sleeve down, but Tali had already seen.
"When are you going to get the full ones, like Papa?"
"I'm not," said Kairen. "That's not how it works."
She frowned, unconvinced. They all thought the next Voss child would be the monster: full wings, horns, scales, the kind of transformation chronicled in horror ballads, never in family trees. But Kairen felt only the faintest echo of whatever pulsed through their ancestors.
He packed the terrarium and returned it to the shelf. Tali watched him, quiet now, probably mulling over which adult to tattle to first. He offered her his hand instead, signaling a truce.
She took it, and together they sneaked past the kitchen, past Ardan still snoring, to the conservatory. Dawn had begun to dilute the fog, painting the estate in bruised gold. Kairen squinted at the horizon. Somewhere west, the S-rank quest unfolded, his parents busy gambling their lives for fame and reward. He wondered if they ever missed these mornings, the hush before the day could be hurried into disaster.
Tali let go and ran outside, chasing a squirrel. Kairen lingered, watching his breath fog in the air. The magic inside him hummed—eager, restless—but for now he kept it leashed, savoring the quiet.
He thought about the dragon rumors, about what it meant to be a "next link" in the chain. About how every story in _Records of the Astral Lineage_ ended the same way: with someone devouring their own future, or burning out before the world could demand too much.
He sat on the conservatory steps, back warmed by glass, and opened his palm. Even now, faint specks of iridescence mottled his skin—vanishing if he blinked, returning when he stared. He prodded at the feeling, found a crack of heat, and let it shimmer there for a moment.
Then he closed his hand, and the glow faded.
The darkness would not master him. He would become its architect, its sculptor, until his name echoed beyond the Vale's boundaries.
Something whispered at his periphery—a flutter like silk against stone. Kairen's head snapped left, but the space stood empty. Sprite-guardians always retreated with the dawn. The Vale's air remained silent; creatures with simple minds knew better than to enter. He remembered the crow that had landed on the watchtower three summers past. Before sunset, the house had claimed every feather for a threadbare tapestry. Nothing survived here, he reflected, that didn't bend to the Vale's ancient patterns.
The slick of magic still buzzed along his arm. The pattern of scales reminded him of hex tiles on the library's mosaic floor: uniform, variable only in the places where history had failed to predict itself. Kairen pressed his fingers to the warmth, feeling for the pulse that, according to Record, marked the hungry spot—where a Voss's bloodline gnawed at the walls until its bearers were remade or destroyed.
He inhaled, holding the cold inside, then out, timing his breath to the slow hush of fog peeling from the lawn. From the far side of the orchard, Tali's voice echoed: "Cheater!"
He replied with a hand-rolled whistle, which she'd never been able to mimic. Her answer tumbled back, indignant.
Somewhere another sound, heavier. A gate shrieked. Kairen tensed, stomach lining clenching tight: a visitor, this early? The Guild didn't call on apprentices without notice unless there was trouble—bad news, or summons. Maybe one of the neighbor boys hoping to trade for orchard apples before the staff was up. He stood, brushing dew off the seat of his pants, and steered toward the noise.
He glimpsed them through the hedge. Not boys, but adults: one in Guild blue and lacquered boots, shoulders squared as a chess piece; the other trailing behind, hood up, same color but lost in her own dark. The blue-jacketed man scanned the grounds, dismissing the topiary dragons before honing in on Kairen. "Voss?" he called, voice carrying in the shrivelled light.
Kairen willed the scales away and marched forward. "Present.��
The man cocked his head, maybe surprised a child answered so quick. He stepped close enough for Kairen to see the hard indent of Guild pins on his lapel. "I'm looking for the head of house," the man said. "That's your father, yes?"
"Parents are both out," Kairen said, keeping his voice like the smooth side of a coin. No one respected a quaver.
The woman—older, face map-wrinkled when she finally lowered her hood—stopped at the threshold, as if not convinced the house wouldn't bite. Her eyes pinned Kairen, then flickered back to the bluejacket. "Told you. No one's here but the runt and the books."
The man ignored her. "We left an urgent packet last night. Did anyone bring it in?"
"No packet," said Kairen, "but the night staff might have eaten it." He bluffed a smile. "They're worse than crows."
The bluejacket's gaze lingered on Kairen's exposed forearms, the faintest outline of iridescence still crawling the skin. "You're early for it," he said, voice softened now. "Usually it skips a generation. Or so they say in the records."
Kairen braced, then shrugged. "I read a lot." Always best to control the story. "Was there news?"
The woman's attention scoured the conservatory, her tongue clicking against teeth. "There's rumors of a breach in the west. Not an animal, this time." She eyed him with a dry smile. "More a turning of the wheel."
Kairen didn't ask what that meant. He'd parsed enough history to know the way the Guild wrapped bad news in parable. "If you need to check the perimeter, go ahead. I can show you the wards."
The bluejacket nodded, eyes softer now. "Sure." As if Kairen had suddenly passed some invisible test. He motioned to the woman, who bristled but followed in his wake.
Kairen led them around the main structure, the usual lap of boundaries. He pointed out the sigil stones, the runes etched into the foundation where the moss never grew. The bluejacket made a show of inspecting them, but Kairen watched the woman more—how she trailed her hand along the brickwork, not quite touching, how she stared at the windows with the particular dread of someone who feared being watched in return.
At the garden's edge, Tali bounded up, leaves stuck in her hair and a streak of resin running down her cheek. One look at the grownups and she dropped the squirrel skull she'd been brandishing.
"This is Tali," Kairen said. "Don't let her nearest the pond. She'll flood you."
The bluejacket knelt, not patronizing, but simple. "You keep each other safe?"
Tali, predictably, just stared back. She assessed the strangers, saw no interest in play, and turned to Kairen. "Are they staying?"
"No," he said, gently. "They're just checking."
Tali nodded, as if this explained everything. She glanced at the woman, who returned the look with something somewhere between pity and hunger.
After the circuit, the bluejacket turned serious. "Let your steward know," he said, "that travel outside the eastern manor is suspended for a week. Until further word."
He knelt again, this time conspiratorial. "Your parents," he added, quieter, "are doing important work. We're counting on the Voss to keep order here."
Kairen's hands curled in on themselves. "I know."
Satisfied, the man straightened, offered an awkward salute. He and the woman vanished through mist as quickly as they'd come.
Kairen stared at the place they'd melted from view, mind already sifting for the unstated. Not a beast, then. Not weather. Something slow and sticky in the west, waiting for S-rank to fail, or never return. Wasn't scared, wasn't even angry—just felt the old familiar tickle at the bone, alerting him to a new requirement: survive. Hold the Vale. Don't let the chain break here.
He turned to see Tali waiting at the threshold, jaw set. "We're not going east are we?" She darted a glance to the forbidden wing.
"Never," he said.
But she grinned, and Kairen smiled back, both knowing that in a world with no proper parents and bored ghosts, the only way to test a rule was to snap it in half.
By noon, the house was alive—a furnace of servants and errands and distant shouts. Kairen shadowed none of it; instead he returned to the library, pulled out blue and buckled, and reread every word, hungry as the lineages that would one day claim him.
The glow was waiting for him under his skin, patient, inevitable. He let it come until his hand burned with the secret light, not as an accident, but as armor.
This time, he left the book on the table.
The fog thickens, carving the garden and pond into islands. Kairen counts sprites. Nine, tonight. One more than last week—one fewer than the day Father vanished a flock with a flick of wrist and a tongue-twist curse. Old gods take the difference, he thinks. Out here, the rules didn't shift to account for missing people.
The grass soaks his calves. He feels the chill, the prickle, the way the new scales resist the cold, pushing up in jagged fever along his skin. The books all disagree on whether this is a gift or a parasite. Kairen leans toward parasite. But the monster genes have their perks, and he means to learn every one.
He snakes around the pond, leaving only the barest ripple of footprints, and hops the crumbling stone border with practiced grace. From the far end, Tali watches, her face smudged with dirt and triumph—she's caught the squirrel, somehow, and is feeding it crusts from her pocket. Kairen resists the urge to tell her about rabies. Instead, he walks the perimeter, scouting for the landmark. Berros, the old gardener, swears there's a catacomb vent here, hidden before the last war in case the house was breached. Kairen's heard the story six times, but only this spring did he catch the glint of metal under the mossy slab.
He nudges the slab with a stick, careful not to touch it barehanded. Every lock and hinge on the estate is spelled against "inquisitive heirs," but moss is smarter than most mages, and by the third try he's rolled it enough to peer through the gap. Cold, still air waits below—warmer than the dawn above. He tastes mineral and rot, but also the dazzle of secrets. The way trouble always smells.
Tali hovers behind him, squirrel forgotten, eyes glass-bright. "You're not supposed to go down there."
"No one's supposed to do anything," he mutters, lying flat and worming both arms into the hole. The first drop is only a meter. He lands soft and rolls up, beaming the weak flame from his thumb, painting the old brick with bands of sick yellow.
Tali drops in after, knees bent, landing like she means to break her legs and heal them just to prove she can. She's stronger than he is, in some ways, but lacks the patience to use it well.
They walk hunched, the corridor half-choked with roots and damp. At the second bend, the air shifts—smells sharper here, cut with ash and the sweet tang of ancient magic. Kairen slows, noting the black residue on the bricks. Something burned its way through generations of dust. Something that never bothered returning.
At the third bend, a door. Less a portal and more a warning—iron, scored with runic script, graven hard enough to rip fingernails on. Kairen runs his hand over the surface, feeling the resonant thrum beneath the rust. "Don't tell Min," he says. Because if Min caught them, she'd close this wing for a season, and there'd be nothing new till winter. "Don't tell anyone."
Tali's lip curls. "Swear."
He pinches her arm, and she bites back a yelp. "Swear."
He places his left hand on the rune. A static pulse runs up his wrist and sets the dark scales flickering—first with heat, then with cold, then a shivering numbness. The scripts are older than the house, maybe older than the valley's bones, but under the hum there's a rhythm he recognizes. Tap, breathe, speak. The static grows into an ache, not pain exactly, but edge. All he can think is: this will leave a mark.
The door groans, yielding half a gap—enough for children, not for adults. They slip through, and as the space widens, the air snags with ozone. At the far end, a spiral stair, going down and down and down.
At the bottom: a chamber, no bigger than the kitchen pantry. In its center, a pedestal of green-black stone. On the pedestal, a vial—clouded glass, stoppered with wax, liquid inside alive with shimmer. All around, the walls pulse with phosphor sigils, slowly brightening as Kairen breathes. He wants to touch it, but his spine goes tight, and so does his jaw.
Tali slides in, sniffs the air. "It looks like honey."
He nods, unsure if he's meant to open it or run from it.
She glances at him, then at the walls. "Are you scared?"
He shrugs, but inside, the answer isn't simple. He's both scared and not-scared. Scared in the way a cut is scared of infection—worried but curious what it will become.
Behind them, the stair whispers. A gust, then a click, then the hush of something waking up. Neither of them moves for a breath.
When Kairen finally steps forward, he does it with the grace of a thief and a Voss. He lifts the vial. The sigils ripple brighter. The liquid inside glows blue, then frog-green, then settles to gold.
Tali is right behind him, eyes so wide he can see his own reflection in them, briefly warped, then gone.
He doesn't unstopper it. Not yet. Instead, he stows it in his sleeve, the way he's seen Father smuggle contraband past city wards. When Tali opens her mouth to argue, he shushes her with a look.
Back up the spiral, through the iron door. The house has changed. Corridors shorter, ceilings lower. The hallways prick with the static tingle of fresh magic.
Inside the library, Ardan is awake, pacing, the ring still on his finger. "There you are." His voice shakes, but only a little—Ardan's panic is never full-throated. "Breakfast, now. Both of you."
Kairen and Tali sit at the long table, silent as ghosts. Ardan pours tea, hands too steady, and pretends not to notice the mud on their feet.
Whatever the vial is, Kairen can feel it against his skin, leaking warmth through the glass. Not dangerous yet. But alive.
When the meal is over, Tali slips away—back to the hedgerows, or her menagerie, or some new forbidden corner. Kairen heads to his room, bolting the door behind him for the first time since the last siege drill. He turns the vial over, marveling at how the liquid shapes itself to gravity—denser than water, slower than oil.
He sets it on the desk and waits, breathless, for whatever happens next.
*
The first time it spoke, it did so without words. A flicker in his vision. A taste of metal at the root of his tongue. Then, crisp as a knife through frost:
**Celestial Bond System: Active.**
Kairen jerks upright, nearly knocking over the chair. The words hang in the darkness, brilliant and cold like an afterimage from lightning.
He stares at the vial. At his scales. At his fists, balled and trembling. The window is open, and outside, the garden sprites wink out, one by one.
He laughs, high and thin. Of course it would be this. Nothing in the family line was ever dormant for long.
Staring at the bottle, he wonders if next time it will call him by name.