Fainyx woke at four in the morning, right on schedule.
The room was blanketed in darkness and a deep, heavy quiet that only settled in the hours before dawn, a time when even the servants slumbered and the massive mansion felt entirely empty.
He sat up slowly, brushing a lock of silver hair from his face, and immediately cast his senses outward.
It was a familiar morning ritual, sending a thin veil of awareness creeping through the walls, sweeping the corridor, and drifting down the grand staircase.
'Everyone is still asleep...' he noted silently.
Satisfied, he opened the portal.
The familiar, crisp air of Aetherium rushed to greet him.
He stepped through without a moment of hesitation, letting the pristine white space swallow him as the portal sealed silently behind his back.
The dimension had grown since he first forced it into existence.
It was no longer an endless, barren void.
Real trees stood tall, their rough bark and green leaves rustling in a phantom wind that had no logical reason to blow within a pocket dimension.
Soft, uneven patches of vibrant grass carpeted the ground, and a gentle river he had not even consciously created babbled steadily somewhere to his left.
Right in the center of it all, nestled beside the modest cottage he had shaped from absolute nothingness, grew his Kalmia.
He crouched beside the delicate plant, gently pressing two fingers into the earth near its roots to ensure the soil remained moist and perfectly tempered.
Its petals were a pristine ivory, traced with silver veins that seemed to drink in the faint, artificial light of the sky above.
The entire flower pulsed with a quiet, magical luminescence that ordinary Kalmias simply did not possess.
It was a beautiful mutation that had developed over weeks of careful tending, as if the raw mana saturating the dimension had seeped deep into its roots and altered its very nature.
Fainyx lingered for a quiet moment, admiring his work.
'It is adapting faster than I thought...' he thought, tracing a glowing silver vein with his fingertip.
'The ambient mana in this space is changing its fundamental structure...'
Then, he stood, rolled up his sleeves, and began to run.
Weeks ago, he had mapped out a precise route winding past the trees, curving around the river, ascending a small slope, and looping back again.
It was not a long distance and his frail body simply would not permit a long distance.
Yet he ran it anyway, pushing himself lap after lap until his lungs burned like fire and his legs felt as heavy as lead.
"Haah... Haah..."
He forced himself to push just a little further, knowing that the only cure for a hopelessly weak constitution was an absolute refusal to coddle it, even when every screaming instinct begged him to stop.
Unfortunately, his body possessed many instincts, and they were all deafeningly loud.
'Do not stop...' he commanded himself, gritting his teeth as a sharp pain flared in his side.
'Breathe... Keep moving...'
By the third lap, sweat drenched his practice clothes and his breathing grew ragged and harsh.
Yet, if anyone had been there to witness it, his face remained a perfect, unreadable mask, proving that not even utter physical exhaustion could force him to show weakness.
On the fourth lap, he finally surrendered to a walk, allowing his racing heart to settle.
He rested near the river, letting his bare feet dangle in the cool, rushing water while he circulated mana smoothly through his aching muscles.
It was a necessary routine, patching up the tiny physical strains before they could bloom into real damage.
He stared down at his hands.
They were still so incredibly thin, still bearing the fragile bones of a child who had been starved in his earliest years.
He had been eating generous, proper meals for weeks now, yet his body refused to show any visible improvement.
It sparked a distant, almost academic frustration within him.
He knew perfectly well that it took time, that a shattered constitution did not knit itself back together overnight.
He understood the logic completely, yet the reality still gnawed at his patience.
'So frustratingly frail...' he thought, clenching his tiny fists until his knuckles turned white.
'Even with a core full of dense mana, this physical body is lagging too far behind...'
"It will not remain this way," Fainyx said aloud, his soft voice carrying a terrifying, unbreakable resolve into the endless white sky. "I refuse to be weak again..."
Letting out a slow breath, he pushed himself upright, retreated to the cottage to change into fresh clothes, and stepped back through the portal into his bedroom.
The morning sun still had not pierced the horizon, leaving him a quiet forty minutes before the household would stir to life.
He sat on the edge of his bed, stretching his arms high above his head with a wince as the familiar post training ache settled deep into his shoulders.
Opening his notebook, he began reviewing the complex mana theory he had been analyzing the night before.
He only managed half a page before his sensing magic flickered with a warning.
Someone was hurrying down the corridor toward his room. The light, quick cadence of the footsteps gave her away instantly.
'Estrella, huh... I suppose it is time to get ready...'
He snapped the notebook shut, placed it carefully on the bedside table, and straightened his posture just as a bright knock echoed against the wood.
"Good morning, Young Master!"
Estrella chimed as she swept into the room with a heavy breakfast tray. She wore a smile of such blinding morning cheerfulness that Fainyx briefly wondered if she ever actually slept, or if she merely spent the night charging up her energy just to be this radiant.
She set the tray on the small table by the window, turned her bright eyes upon him, and immediately let her smile fall into a deep, worried frown.
"Oh, you look so pale again! Have you truly been eating well?" she asked, her voice thick with genuine distress.
Fainyx simply looked at her.
He did look pale, but then again, he always looked like this. His complexion had been ghostly white since the day he was born, and no amount of hearty meals or morning sunshine was ever going to rewrite his genetics.
He picked up his pen and wrote his response in swift, condensed strokes.
[ I always look like this. ]
"You look paler than yesterday," Estrella countered firmly, completely rejecting his logic.
She marched across the room and pressed the back of her warm hand against his forehead, executing the temperature check with the ruthless efficiency of a woman who had been doing this since he was in a crib.
"Well, no fever at least, but you feel freezing."
She pulled back and gave him a very specific, deeply maternal look of pure anxiety, the one that meant she had roughly seventeen different concerns bubbling in her head and was about to unleash them all at once.
"Are you really sleeping properly?"
[ Yes. ]
"Are you eating enough?"
[ You fed me yourself yesterday. ]
"That is not an answer, Young Master."
Fainyx stared at her for a long second.
Slowly, his gaze drifted to the tray she had hauled in, which was piled high with enough food to sustain a grown man, let alone a frail three year old.
He looked back at her. She stared back, clearly seeing absolutely nothing wrong with the monstrous portion size.
Defeated, he picked up his spoon.
Estrella hovered over him with the intense focus of a hawk guarding its nest.
She refilled his drink a herbal drink before he could even drain the cup and, at one particularly humiliating point, leaned over to cut his bread into bite sized pieces without being asked, an accommodation he was fairly certain he had not required since his first birthday.
He did not bother protesting. It simply was not worth the energetic cost, and besides, the bread was undeniably delicious.
When he finally set the spoon down, she let out a profound sigh of satisfaction, looking as though she had just conquered a battlefield.
"Excellent job, Young Master~" she beamed.
He picked up his pen again.
[ You are going to force feed me like this every single morning, aren't you. ]
"Absolutely!" she chirped, without a microsecond of hesitation or shame.
Fainyx looked at her bright face, then quickly looked away. Somewhere at the very corner of his mouth, a tiny muscle twitched.
It was not quite a smile, but it was close enough that Estrella gasped softly and pressed both hands to her flushed cheeks.
By the time he reached for his coat, she was already there, laughing as she helped him slip his small arms into the sleeves.
Her hands were quick and neat, smoothing the crisp fabric across his shoulders just as she used to do when he was too tiny to dress himself.
"There we go," she declared, stepping back to admire her handiwork.
"You look incredibly cute as always, Young Master!"
He scribbled a quick reply.
[ We are just walking around the estate. ]
"You still need to look perfectly presentable! Your family's reputation is on the line even when you are inside your own home," she scolded playfully.
He had absolutely no rebuttal for that logic.
They spent a beautifully idle morning doing very little.
Estrella had clearly appointed herself his personal protector for the day, and she executed the role with terrifying dedication.
She pointed out vibrant flowers transplanted from the annex garden, peppered him with questions about the estate that he answered in short written notes, and told an elaborate, sprawling story about a stray cat haunting the kitchen.
She was entirely convinced the feline possessed advanced intelligence, noting that it only ever materialized exactly when the chefs began cooking and vanished immediately after.
Fainyx listened in comfortable silence, finding that he genuinely did not mind her endless chatter.
Her voice was a warm presence. It filled the quiet spaces without ever demanding his energy, jumping from topic to topic so seamlessly that he never felt pressured to respond.
Occasionally, she would say something so unexpectedly funny that he had to quickly avert his eyes so she would not catch the amusement dancing on his face.
In the lazy hours of the afternoon, they settled into one of the smaller, sunlit sitting rooms, sharing delicate desserts and cups of warm, fragrant tea.
Through the slightly parted window, they could hear the faint, unmistakable sound of someone being firmly escorted back to a study room in the east wing.
Fainyx tilted his head, listening.
Estrella sighed, her shoulders drooping with sympathetic sorrow.
"Young Master Liam again," she murmured.
He quickly scribbled on his pad.
[ What happened? ]
"His Grace issued new instructions to the tutors last week," she explained, leaning in and dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, even though they were completely alone.
"Young Master Liam is no longer permitted to leave his lessons early. Or at all, honestly. His Grace was apparently concerned that the young master's fierce dedication to sword training was overshadowing his academic studies."
She wrung her hands together.
"He is only four years old. I am so worried for him."
Fainyx turned his gaze to the window, picturing his older brother being unceremoniously glued to a thick textbook somewhere across the courtyard.
He wrote.
[ Do not worry about Liam, Estrella. Father is simply terrified that Liam will grow up to be a meathead. ]
Estrella pressed her lips together instantly, fighting a losing battle against her own amusement.
"I would certainly not phrase it quite like that yojng master..." she choked out.
Fainyx looked down at his dessert, calmly picking up his silver fork.
[ But that is exactly what it is. ]
Estrella let out a strangled sound, a laugh she was desperately trying to swallow. She clamped a hand over her mouth and stared fixedly at the ceiling until she could compose herself.
When she finally looked back down, her eyes were bright with unshed tears of mirth.
"Young Master... please have mercy," she wheezed.
He simply ate a bite of his cake.
She shook her head in fond exasperation, a wide smile breaking across her face that neither of them tried to hide.
"Young Master Adam is buried in his studies as well," she added, her tone softening with pride.
"Even though he turns five this year, he has already memorized the great histories!"
She beamed at Fainyx, making sure to include him in her glowing praise.
"Though, you are just as brilliant, Young Master Fainyx, reading so fluently already."
Evening crept over the estate, and dinner passed with its usual quiet rhythm.
Estrella hovered nearby, laser focused on ensuring his plate remained full while she monitored his chewing like a vital scientific experiment.
Adam made a brief appearance, popping his head in to ask Fainyx if he needed anything, accepting a swiftly written no with a polite nod before vanishing again.
Liam eventually dragged himself to the dining table, looking utterly drained and glassy eyed from hours of relentless math and history lectures.
Afterward, Fainyx moved through his evening routine with clockwork efficiency.
A warm bath, a crisp, clean pajamas. Estrella tucking him into bed with wildly unnecessary thoroughness, aggressively smoothing the blankets twice before she was finally satisfied.
"Goodnight, Young Master~" she whispered softly from the doorway.
[ Goodnight. ]
She smiled tenderly and clicked the door shut.
Fainyx lay perfectly still in the darkness. He listened as the massive mansion slowly settled into a heavy slumber, using his sensing magic to track the lingering servants as they finished their final chores.
One by one, their movements ceased, and the estate plunged into total, suffocating silence.
'It is finally time...' he thought, slipping out of bed.
Then, he threw off the covers.
The midnight garden was freezing, draped in pitch black shadows and complete stillness.
He slipped into the cool air with a powerful concealment spell clinging to him like a second skin.
It was woven thinly enough to conserve his precious mana, yet dense enough that two armed guards patrolling the eastern path walked right past him without even a shiver of awareness.
Moving on pure muscle memory, he navigated to his hidden sanctuary. It was exactly as he had left it, the towering, overgrown hedges forming a natural fortress, a massive ancient tree stretching its dark branches across the silver moonlight, and a patch of soft grass where he had spent countless nights reading in the dark.
He sat down gracefully and pulled out his notebook, barely managing three pages before the atmosphere shifted violently.
Yong materialized first, his hands shoved casually into his pockets, exuding the irritating aura of a man who had simply decided to exist in that exact spot and owed the universe no explanation for it.
Ruth flanked him, arms crossed tightly over his broad chest, his piercing golden eyes executing a silent, sweeping threat assessment of the shadows before finally locking onto Fainyx.
"Right on time," Yong noted, a smirk playing on his lips.
[ You are the one who arrived on time. I was already here early. ]
"Fair enough." Yong dropped onto the dewy grass cross legged, entirely ignoring protocol.
Ruth stood rigidly for a long moment, looking deeply offended by the concept of sitting on the dirt, before finally lowering himself with the terrifying, fluid grace that came naturally to a creature who was, fundamentally, a dragon in disguise.
"First session," Yong declared, his casual demeanor sharpening into the focused edge of a true instructor.
"Before we begin anything, I need to know exactly where your foundation lies. What have you actually studied on your own?"
Fainyx did not hesitate. His pen flew across the paper.
[ Mana structure, flow pathways, elemental affinity theory, density compression, and spatial mana principles. ]
Yong stared at the freshly inked list. A heavy silence descended on the group, the specific kind of silence that occurs when an adult is aggressively recalibrating their expectations of a toddler.
Ruth read the list over Yong's shoulder. He did not utter a word, but his posture shifted drastically, radiating a powerful, silent judgment.
"I see," Yong finally muttered, his brow furrowing in deep thought.
[ The library at the annex where I grew up was exceptionally well stocked. ]
"Apparently so." Yong rubbed the back of his neck, clearly thrown off balance. "Alright then. Theory is one thing entirely. Show me how you actually cast."
Fainyx set his notebook aside.
Slowly, he raised a single, frail hand.
The mana answered him instantly. It did not rush or explode, rather, it gathered above his tiny palm with the quiet, steady obedience of water finding its perfect level.
It began as a formless, invisible weight, slowly molding itself to his absolute will.
He shaped it.
The raw energy compressed inward, thinning at its edges while densifying at the core until it forged a flawless, glowing sphere.
It rotated at a mesmerizing pace, controlled entirely by his subconscious mind. As the moonlight caught the magical construct, the sphere looked almost liquid, its brilliant surface rippling with contained power.
But a simple sphere was boringly easy, and he desperately wanted to test his absolute limits tonight.
'Let us see how far I can push the density...'
Fainyx thought, his eyes narrowing in fierce concentration.
With a mental nudge, he forced the sphere to unwind. He drew the pure mana out in agonizingly delicate threads, exactly as he had practiced during those endless, solitary weeks inside Aetherium.
Each thread extended with deliberate, terrifying slowness, branching, curving, and reconnecting at mathematically precise angles.
The resulting pattern bloomed like frost crystallizing across winter glass, forming a breathtaking, three dimensional structural diagram of an advanced mana flow pathway.
Every intersection balanced flawlessly against the rest, the entire construct hovering weightlessly in the cold night air.
He forced more density into the key focal points, making them flare like miniature stars, while the delicate threads connecting them pulsed with streams of liquid light.
For one suspended heartbeat, the magnificent, impossible structure illuminated the dark garden, a masterpiece of high tier magic being casually sustained by a frail three year old boy with a face utterly devoid of expression.
He held it perfectly stable.
'Stable...' he noted with satisfaction. 'The pathways are holding the compression without fracturing...'
Then, with a gentle mental sigh, he let it dissolve. It broke down cleanly, the intricate threads unwinding in exact reverse order, the blinding light fading into mist until the mana dispersed back into the atmosphere without a single sound or tremor.
He lowered his hand.
The garden was dead silent.
Yong was staring at him. His casual smirk had vanished entirely around the manifestation of the third thread, leaving him looking thoroughly shell shocked.
Beside him, Ruth had gone terrifyingly still, adopting the frozen posture that ancient, lethal predators assume when they are genuinely, fundamentally stunned.
The dragon's glowing golden eyes remained locked on the empty space above Fainyx's hand, as if his brain was struggling to accept that the structure was gone.
"No incantation," Yong breathed out, his voice rough.
Fainyx nodded once.
"No verbal trigger or any physical catalyst. Not even an external anchor." Yong
swallowed hard. "Just direct, pure control."
[ Yes. ]
Ruth slowly turned his head to glare at Yong, communicating volumes of outraged disbelief without uttering a single syllable. Yong stared back, his wide eyes practically screaming that he already knew the boy was abnormal and that it was not his fault.
"Your mana," Ruth finally rumbled, turning his burning golden gaze back to the tiny boy. His deep voice carried the heavy, measured weight of an ancient being choosing its words with extreme caution.
"It does not move like some immature beginners mana. The sheer depth of it, the absolute density, the way it answers your shaping without a single tremor of turbulence or waste, that level of absolute control demands decades of blood, sweat, and agonizing practice to develop, even in the most talented adult mages."
The dragon paused for exactly one agonizing heartbeat.
"You are three years old."
Fainyx met the ancient creature's piercing gaze calmly and offered absolutely nothing in response.
There was simply no way to explain it without sparking a wildfire of dangerous questions.
Ruth exhaled heavily through his nose, a puff of air that sounded suspiciously like a man forced to delete everything he knew about reality and start over, finding the entire process deeply annoying.
Yong stared at the small boy for a long, stretched moment. Then, slowly, a smile broke across his face. It was not his usual, easygoing facade.
It was something raw, genuine, and burning with fierce anticipation.
"Alright," Yong laughed softly. "I think this arrangement is going to be considerably more thrilling than I initially planned for." He shot a wild grin at the dragon. "In a good way, of course."
"In a deeply complicated way," Ruth corrected darkly.
"Same difference."
Fainyx sat quietly, watching the two powerful men bicker, and calmly realized that he might have accidentally revealed just a fraction more power than he had intended.
It was not enough to expose his true nature.
It did not betray the monstrous depths of his core, the existence of Aetherium, or the grueling years of secret training.
It was just enough to make a master mage and an ancient dragon look at a toddler as a terrifying equal.
'I am probably fine...' Fainyx thought, closing his notebook with a soft click. 'Probably...'