It was stupid.
It was impossible.
It did not make sense.
That loop ran in circles in Ezra's mind as the last traces of mana seeped back into his body, leaving his right arm aching and limp.
It wasn't that he didn't want the spell to work. It wasn't a lack of will or effort. If anything, he wanted it too much.
It felt… wrong in a deeper way. Like trying to convince his own brain that two plus two was five.
He stared at his hand.
A few minutes ago, that hand had been a miniature sun—Field condensed tight. His father had walked him through the Four Stages, the chant, the visualization. All the cues said success.
And then, at the very edge of Activation, the mana had simply unraveled.
No flare. No backlash. Just—
Nothing.
Ezra swallowed, jaw tight. He flexed his fingers experimentally. They trembled from the exertion, but otherwise behaved like perfectly ordinary baby fingers.
This is ridiculous.
He shut his eyes and tried again—not with mana, just with imagination.
Sword. Wall. Cut.
He pictured the Flame Sabre like before: a bar of white fire erupting from the top of his fist, length of his forearm, slicing through stone. He could recall every detail of Reitz's demonstration—the sound, the heat, the way the air shimmered.
Alone, the image was solid.
Then he tried to tie it to the earlier sensation of Field packed into his wrist. He pictured that same compressed mana flaring into fire, the way his father had done it.
The image shattered instantly.
His mind flinched away from the transition. Sword, yes. Fire, yes. Mana, yes. The step where they became the same thing just refused to load. It sprawled into static, like a corrupted file.
It's like trying to visualize a square circle, he thought bitterly. My brain just rejects it.
He understood, on an intellectual level, that magic existed. The evidence was literally in front of him. He'd watched water hang in the air. He'd watched a Flame Sabre burn. His mother could freeze liquid mid-fall. His father could conjure light sabers.
Empirically, magic was real.
But acknowledging a fact and integrating it into your internal model of reality were not the same thing.
His old axioms clung to him like shackles.
Where is the fuel source?
His scientist brain, that rigid, hyper-trained pattern hunter, rose up like a prosecutor and interrogated the image.
Where is the oxidizer?
The Fire on Reitz's hand did not behave like any flame he knew. It didn't lick or trail or cast smoke in the ways combustion should. It obeyed intent, not chemistry.
Is it burning the air, then? Nitrogen isn't flammable under normal conditions. Oxygen is, but there isn't enough of it in a tiny volume to sustain that kind of sword without destroying the arm that's holding it—
He tried to shove the questions down. He genuinely did.
Shut up. Just shut up and burn.
He imagined the blade again, this time deliberately ignoring the physics. Just a sword made of fire. That's it. That's the spell. That's how everyone else in this world thought, right? Fire because you said so.
His own mind sabotaged him anyway.
If the mass is coming from nowhere, we are violating conservation. If the energy is coming from nowhere, we are violating conservation. If it's coming from somewhere, what is losing mass? The caster? The environment? The—
The image snuffed itself out like a candle in a vacuum.
Ezra exhaled slowly through his nose.
Maybe there is something wrong with your visualization, Aerwyna suggested, leaning over the crib.
Her voice was calm, almost gentle, but there was a furrow between her brows.
"Of course not," Reitz shot back immediately, his eyebrow twitching. "The visualization technique I gave him was the one I used. It's the one my father used, and his father before him."
Tradition. Optimized shortcuts. Generational refinement.
Ezra almost laughed. Even here, in a world of literal spellcraft, people still fell back on: it worked before, why wouldn't it now?
"Well, he definitely succeeded in Condensation," Aerwyna said, ignoring his tone. "And he did not mispronounce the words."
She said it as fact, not praise.
To her senses, Ezra's Field had been a blazing torch. To mispronounce a chant while handling that much power would have caused a backlash even Reitz would respect. The silence after Ezra finished was as telling as any explosion. The mana had listened. It just hadn't acted.
"We know he has superb magic control because he can walk," Reitz muttered, pacing a tight line beside the crib. "And talk. And the way he manipulated his Field earlier…"
He stopped, turning to face his son fully.
"Ez? Are you doing the Invocation correctly? It seems like the incantation is about to activate, but at the last moment, it becomes a dud."
Ezra forced his expression into something neutral—confused, but not panicking.
"I don't know, Father," he said aloud.
His voice was crisp, clear, each word carefully enunciated with the help of that subtle Field brace in his throat. To any outsider, it would've sounded utterly wrong coming from a five-month-old. To his parents, it was just one more item on the growing list of "things we don't talk about outside this room."
"I picture a flaming blade cutting a wall, just as you said," Ezra continued. "But it still does not activate."
He did not mention the mental tripwire. The way his own logic balked at the last step. The instinctive recoil from believing in something that, by all the rules he knew, should not exist.
How do I explain "my worldview refuses to compile your spell" to people who grew up with chant-books instead of physics textbooks?
He slumped back against the mattress, staring up at the carved canopy of the crib. The familiar weight of overthinking settled on his chest.
A fragment of an old quote surfaced.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light," he remembered, "but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Max Planck.
On Earth, that line had amused him—a cynical observation about academic stubbornness and institutional inertia.
Now, the irony tasted sour.
I am the opponent, he realized. I am the old generation trapped in a newborn's body.
The world around him was the "new truth"—a reality where magic wasn't a metaphor or a superstition but a system with rules and history and bloodlines. But his mind had been forged in a different paradigm. His instincts fought it at every turn.
Maybe I need to die, he thought, startled by the clarity of it. Not in the literal sense. But the Michael who clings to the Standard Model needs to.
The thought frightened him.
It also felt… inevitable.
"Maybe you are giving him a complex incantation," Aerwyna said, breaking his spiral. She tilted her head toward Reitz. "What grade is Flame Sabre, anyway?"
"My Flame Sabre is advanced," Reitz admitted, rubbing his neck. "But the one I gave him is the most basic variant."
He stepped away from the crib and paced again, the familiar swagger muted.
"It is still considered a top-tier technique," he added reluctantly. "Even the basic form. If a normal practitioner outside House Blackfyre tried to activate it, the result would be a flicker of fire two inches long. If Ezra had succeeded, given his purity and capacity…"
He trailed off, frowning.
"He would have made a three-foot blade," he finished quietly.
Aerwyna's gaze sharpened. "Hmm. Try a different incantation. Something simpler. Less structure. If he fails at that as well, we know the problem is not complexity."
Reitz thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Okay then." He turned back to the crib, his expression shifting to "instructor" again. "Ezra, let's try a different spell. The Flame Ball. It's the most basic of the flame chants. No shaping. No cutting. Just heat and light."
He cleared his throat, then intoned:
A flame that giveth warmth\
A fire that giveth light\
Cometh, O flame; appeareth, O fire\
Blaze forth thine fury\
Showeth forth thine light\
I invoke thee, Flame Ball, to showeth thy might
He dropped the formal cadence and grinned.
"And just picture a fire," he said. "Any fire will do, Ezra. A torch. A brazier. Even a candle. Just a ball of flame in front of your hand."
He paused, a sudden thought hitting him.
"Wait," Reitz said slowly. "You do know what fire is, right?"
His eyes lit up with a hopeful glint. If this entire disaster turned out to be a vocabulary gap, he was going to jump out the window.
"Yes, Father," Ezra deadpanned.
More than you, probably.
He didn't say it out loud.
Instead, he drew in a shallow breath and began again.
Condensation.
He pulled his Field back to his hand. It came easier now—the pattern familiar, if still uncomfortable. Mana pooled in his wrist and palm, thick and hot, until his skin tingled.
Invocation.
He held out his hand, this time not picturing a sword. Just a sphere. A ball of flame hovering an inch above his palm. Nothing fancy—no cutting, no pressure, just a small, steady orb of light and heat. He imagined its surface shifting, tongues of fire licking around it, shadows dancing on the ceiling.
"A flame that giveth warmth" Reitz said.
This time, he focused obsessively on warmth. Not cutting. Not destruction. Just that pleasant, comforting heat he'd felt lying near the hearth on cold nights in his last life. The way his fingers had tingled after stretching them toward a campfire.
Warmth is fine, he told his brain. He'd never had a problem with that. A radiator. A stove. An infrared lamp. Those were all just systems for moving energy from one place to another.
"A fire that giveth light"
Light was also fine. Photons. Emission spectra. Excited electrons dropping to lower energy levels.
He imagined the room growing brighter, the shadows softening, the stone around them bathed in a gentle orange glow. The ball of flame hanging above his hand like a miniature lantern.
"Cometh, O flame; appeareth, O fire"
The Field in his hand pulsed. The familiar pre-Activation tension built, but differently this time—less sharp, more diffuse. Less "compressed blade," more "pressurized balloon."
Just let it burn, Ezra pleaded silently. Don't think. Don't calculate. Just accept.
His mind refused to cooperate.
You are trying to ignite nothing, it whispered. There is no material there. No fuel molecules. No plasma generator. You're not even heating the air—there is no mechanism for the Field to transfer—
He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. He tried to drown the thoughts under the chant.
"Blaze forth thine fury"
He pictured sparks this time. Not from a spell. From a match. A lighter. A Bunsen burner. Anything. He imagined the sulfur stink of a struck match-head, the tiny flare of yellow that followed.
The Field quivered.
"Showeth forth thine light"
The pressure climbed. It felt like holding a breath past the point of comfort, lungs screaming, body shaking.
"I invoke thee, Flame Ball, to showeth thy might"
The chant finished, locking into place. Once again, he hit that invisible switch—the moment where intention should harden into reality.
Now.
He pushed.
The Field surged toward the image. The shape of the ball sharpened. For a flicker of time, he felt something trying to bridge the gap—a hair-thin line between "potential" and "actual."
Then the mental objections slammed into it like a hammer.
There is no mass. No reaction. No process. You are asking for an outcome without a cause.
The Field hesitated, caught between "be fire" and "that's impossible."
And reality—his reality—chose stability.
The mana unraveled, sliding back into his body in a smooth, apologetic wave. The pressure vanished. The phantom warmth evaporated.
Ezra's hand lay empty.
Again.
The hour that followed blurred into repetition.
Reitz tried to tweak the chant delivery. Slower. Faster. Emphasizing different lines.
Aerwyna suggested adjusting how much mana he used. "Half as dense," then, "barely a shimmer." They tried keeping his Field loose instead of tightly condensed. They tried holding the image first, then gathering the mana, then chant last. They tried reversing the Order: Outcome, then Condensation, then Invocation.
Every attempt followed the same curve.
Condensation: perfect.
Invocation: clean.
Accumulation: promising.
Activation: nothing.
Ezra attempted everything he could think of on his end.
He tried lying to himself—pretending the fire was just an illusion projected by unknown machinery. He tried framing the spell as a "shortcut to some undiscovered branch of physics." He tried thinking of mana as some exotic fuel with hidden reservoirs.
It didn't matter.
Each time, at the instant where magic should have crossed the line into the physical world, his own model of reality vetoed it.
Your axioms do not allow this, his thoughts kept insisting. So your system refuses to render it.
By the time Reitz finally dropped his hands and let out a long breath, Ezra's head pounded. His arm felt like it had been through a weight training session it was evolutionarily not prepared for. Fatigue crept into his bones, a dull, sticky heaviness that tugged at his eyelids.
"Maybe Ezra is too young for this," Reitz said at last, wiping sweat from his forehead even though he hadn't actually burned anything. "The foundation of Blackfyre magic is the body, after all. Perhaps his channels aren't mature enough."
"Hmmm. Maybe," Aerwyna replied, though doubt colored her tone.
She studied her son, lying limp but awake, eyes still clear despite the exhaustion.
"I don't see anything in his constitution that would hinder him from conjuring the most basic of spells," she murmured. "His Field flows well. His control is sharp. Basically all magic follows the same bones. Your method just trains offense first."
She sighed, the breath carrying a tangle of emotions.
"But yes," she added, more loudly, "he is an infant. Maybe he just needs to grow a bit."
The logic was weak, and they both knew it.
Her shoulders relaxed anyway.
He failed, Aerwyna thought, and the thought brought with it a surge of guilty relief that almost knocked her over.
If Ezra had actually cast a Flame Sabre—or even a proper Flame Ball—at his age, on top of walking and talking and manipulating his Field with surgeon-level precision, it wouldn't just be "unheard of."
It would be heresy.
Not in the religious sense, but in the political sense. A violation of the natural order as the Nobles understood it.
A child like that wouldn't be seen as a blessing. He would be seen as a weapon. Or a threat.
If word reached the wrong ears—the Primarch Seats, the Imperial Court, the more paranoid factions in either camp—Ezra wouldn't live long enough to see his first nameday. They'd dress the assassination up as an "accident," a "sudden illness," a "tragic infant fever."
At least now, she thought, he is only a genius, not a god.
"It is alright, Ezra," Reitz said, breaking the silence.
His voice was gentle in a way that didn't match the broad-shouldered warrior frame. "You might be too young for spells. You should not try too hard."
Ezra turned his head to look at him.
There was a flicker of something in Reitz's eyes. Not contempt. Not even real disappointment. Just… a deflating of a dream he'd allowed himself to hold for a moment.
He wanted to see me do it, Ezra realized. To brag later about how his son cast his first spell before he cut his first tooth.
"Father," Ezra said quietly. "I am sorry to disappoint you."
The words slipped out before he could edit them. They sounded stiff in his own ears, strangely formal, like a subordinate addressing a superior officer.
Reitz reacted as if someone had stabbed him.
His whole body jerked. His face twisted, and for an instant Ezra saw raw panic under the practiced nonchalance.
"No!" Reitz crossed the space between them in two strides.
He dropped to a knee beside the crib, one big hand reaching through the bars to cup Ezra's cheek. His palm was rough and warm, calloused from sword practice yet curiously gentle.
"Don't you ever say that," he said, and his voice wobbled on the edges.
Up close, Ezra could see the wet shine at the corner of his father's eyes.
"Papa is not disappointed," Reitz continued, and his speech slipped without warning into a shameless, soft sing-song. "Papa knows Ez is capable, hmm? Papa knows Baby Ez will be able to do it someday."
If the court had seen the fearsome Earl of Blackfyre talking like that, half the nobles would have fainted from scandal and the other half from second-hand embarrassment.
"Even if you never cast a spell in your entire life," Reitz said, tone flattening into absolute sincerity, "we will still be here. We will still be your parents. We will still love you."
He rested his forehead gently against the crib rail, his thumb stroking small circles along Ezra's jaw.
"We will do our very best to protect you," he whispered. "From Primarchs. From court. From anyone."
Aerwyna watched them, one hand lifting almost unconsciously to cover her heart.
This, she thought, a warmth rising in her chest. This is why I married him.
In a world where most lords counted children as assets and political leverage, where affection was another word for "control," Reitz's softness was an aberration.
He was loud. He was vulgar. He flirted too much. He boasted about his "good seed" far more than any respectable man should.
But he was honest.
When he was angry, he showed it. When he was afraid, he didn't hide it behind layers of courtly sarcasm. When he loved, he didn't ration it out behind a wall of calculated distance.
Other nobles would have already recalculated Ezra's value in their heads.
A genius with control but no spells might be seen as "defective"—useful as a Knight, perhaps, or as a specialized body-enhancement mage, but not Primarch-tier. Not "Seat-level threat." Not "future contender."
Most of them would have sighed in private, written their "regrets" in their ledgers, and moved on.
Reitz did not think that way.
He looked at his son—this tiny, strange, miraculous child who walked too early, spoke too clearly, and now failed at something he should have succeeded at—and all he saw was Ezra.
Not a weapon.
Not a bargaining chip.
A son.
Aerwyna stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind, resting her cheek briefly against his hair.
"We love you, Ezra," she said softly, adding her voice to his.
Ezra looked at them—his paranoid, sharp-eyed mother and his loud, ridiculous father.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Michael-the-physicist wanted to analyze this too. To map out their behaviors, label their attachment styles, predict likely trajectories of familial interaction.
He didn't.
For the first time in two lives, he let the analysis drop.
He stopped running simulations. He stopped calculating odds. He stopped comparing them to case studies in developmental psychology.
He simply… accepted.
This is my family, he thought.
Not a lab environment. Not a temporary staging area until he could "return" somewhere else. Not a random spawning point in a hostile universe.
His family.
Something shifted, small but seismic, inside his chest.
It wasn't Field. It wasn't mana. It didn't hum along his nerves or glow under his skin.
It was… warm.
Not the heat of spellfire or condensed energy, but the quiet, steady warmth of being wanted.
It spread slowly, like the pleasant heaviness of drowsiness after a long day, or the way his old bones had relaxed in front of a fireplace back on Earth.
He let his eyes close, not from exhaustion alone, but from a strange, fragile contentment he didn't quite know how to hold awake.
In the dim nursery of Castle Blackfyre, under the watchful eyes of a Water mage who feared for him and a Fire lord who would burn the world to keep him safe, Ezra Blackfyre—once Michael, once a man who trusted nothing he couldn't derive—allowed himself, just for a moment, to stop resisting.
He curled his tiny fingers around Reitz's thumb, holding on as tightly as his small hand allowed.
Warmth, he thought, as sleep finally pulled him under.
For now… this is enough.