Gill opened his eyes, and for a long, disorienting minute, there was only the light.
It flooded his vision in a soft, hazy glow, as if the entire world had been submerged in warm milk. Shapes drifted slowly across the brightness—large, indistinct blobs of shadow and color that refused to settle into anything his mind could recognize. He tried to blink, hoping to clear the fog, but the motion was heavy and sluggish. His eyelids felt like leaden weights, barely obeying the frantic commands of a mind that felt far too large for its current container.
The light remained. The shapes continued their slow, ghostly dance.
Something warm and firm pressed gently against his back, and he realized he was horizontal. Soft, coarse cloth was wrapped around him with suffocating precision, pinning his arms against his sides. It was a swaddle—a concept his mind recognized even if his body recoiled from the restriction. When he tried to thrash, to demand space, his limbs merely twitched weakly beneath the fabric.
He tried again, straining with every ounce of will. Nothing.
His legs kicked slightly, a pathetic flutter of movement, but the effort only caused the cloth to tighten. A strange noise escaped his mouth—a small, thin, reedy sound that grated against his ears.
Gill froze.
That sound… it had come from him.
He tried to form a word—any word—to test the theory. Hello? Where am I?
"Ah—ga—nnn."
The sound that emerged was high-pitched and alien, a fragile trill that held no weight and no authority. A wave of cold panic flickered through his consciousness. His body wouldn't listen. He couldn't sit up, he couldn't speak, and the simple act of lifting his head felt like trying to shift a mountain of wet clay.
Before the panic could spiral into a scream, the world tilted.
Strong, calloused hands slid beneath him, lifting him with terrifying ease into the air. The sudden change in elevation sent the blurry shapes in his vision spinning, but a radiating warmth surrounded him almost immediately. It was the heat of another living being, a presence so massive it felt like a sun.
A gentle voice followed the movement. "Look at him… he's awake again. The little master doesn't like to sleep, does he?"
The words were a jumble of phonetics to his infant ears, yet the underlying intent was unmistakable. The tone was melodic and calm, carrying a strange, soothing frequency that acted like a balm on his frayed nerves. He felt the tension bleed out of his tiny chest, replaced by a weary curiosity.
Another shape leaned closer, a second sun joining the first. Two large figures hovered above him now, their features still obscured by the strange ocular fog that comes with brand-new eyes.
One of them spoke again, the voice vibrating through the air. "He stares a lot for a baby. Look at those eyes. Most of them are still squinting at the shadows, but he's looking for something."
A low, resonant chuckle answered. "Well, he is a Valencrest. They say the hawks of our house see the coin in the tall grass before the merchant even drops it."
The name—Valencrest—sent a ripple through the back of Gill's mind. It was a distant echo, a ghost of a memory that hinted at power, ships, and stone. He didn't truly understand it yet, but the vibration of the syllables felt significant, like a key turning in a lock he hadn't yet found.
Gill blinked slowly, letting his eyes wander away from the overwhelming presence of the giants. He needed something stable to look at, something that didn't move or speak.
The ceiling caught his attention.
Dark, heavy wooden beams stretched across the plaster in straight, uncompromising lines. They crossed each other at perfect ninety-degree angles, forming a series of repeating rectangles that spread across the entire expanse of the room.
Lines. Intersections. Mathematical consistency.
Even through the blur, his gaze lingered there. The beams were logical. They followed a rule. In a world where his own hands felt like strangers and his voice was a broken whistle, the geometry of the ceiling was a sanctuary.
One, two, three... cross. One, two, three... cross.
Something about the repetition felt… satisfying. It was a tether to his sanity.
A sudden flicker of movement to his right pulled his focus away from the wood. Sunlight was slipping through a thin, translucent curtain beside a tall window, spilling across the stone wall in soft, golden waves. The fabric moved in a rhythmic dance, caught in a stray breeze, causing the light to shift, bend, and refract.
Gill watched with an intensity that would have been frightening on an adult face.
The brightness rose. Then it fell. Then it rose again.
It wasn't a random flutter. It was a sine wave of light and shadow. Up, down, up, down. His eyes followed the pulse of the sun until the light dimmed behind a passing cloud.
The warm hands lowered him back onto the soft expanse of the bed. The cloth around him was loosened slightly, a mercy that allowed his hands a bit more freedom. He lifted his right arm—a monumental task that left him breathless—and held it in front of his face.
He stared at it. His fingers were stubby, pink, and wrinkled, curling and stretching in slow, clumsy motions that felt like they were happening in slow motion.
They were so small. Ridiculously small.
Gill frowned, or tried to. The skin on his forehead bunched up, but the expression felt clumsy. This hand didn't belong to him. It was a toy, a puppet made of soft flesh that barely responded to the electrical signals of his brain. He opened and closed the fist again, studying the way the skin tension changed over the knuckles.
Pathetic, he thought, though the thought manifested only as a frustrated sigh.
A soft laugh drifted through the room.
"Oh look, Sarah, he's doing it again. The hand-watching."
"He looks like a philosopher contemplating the meaning of his own thumb," the other voice teased. "Well… they are new hands. I suppose I'd be impressed too if I'd just grown a set."
Gill turned his head toward the voices, a movement that made the entire room wobble uncomfortably. Two women stood near the foot of the bed, dressed in simple, sturdy linen—servants of the house. One of them leaned in, her face finally coming into a semblance of focus. She had a kind face, framed by a cap that tucked away her hair.
"Young master Gill," she said gently, her finger reaching out to tap his nose. "Already so curious? You'll have the whole library read by the time you can walk at this rate."
Gill winced at the touch. The sensation was sharp, an explosion of tactile data that made him squirm. The servants laughed, unaware of the sensory overload they were causing.
"He's going to be a lively one," one remarked as she tucked the blankets around his legs. "Let's hope he's not as troublesome as Lord Art was. My mother told me stories of the Master climbing the rigging of the merchant ships before he could even swim."
The two women continued to chatter, their voices becoming a background hum. Gill stopped listening to the words and started watching the movement.
Everything in this room followed a hidden choreography. One servant stepped forward to smooth a sheet; the other stepped back to allow her passage. Their paths crossed, diverged, and synchronized. Even their footsteps followed the invisible grid of the floor tiles.
Gill's eyes tracked the lines of their movement. To his developing mind, it looked like a game—a complex system of variables moving through a fixed space.
The door to the chamber swung open with a heavy, authoritative thud.
The air in the room seemed to densify instantly. The servants straightened their backs, their playful chatter vanishing into a respectful silence.
"Lord Art."
A massive shape entered the room. This figure carried a different presence than the others—heavier, steadier, like a mountain moving through a valley. Every step he took was deliberate, decided long before his foot hit the floor.
The figure approached the bed, and Gill looked up. Even with his vision still struggling to sharpen, he could sense the sheer power radiating from the man. This was the source of the "Valencrest" name.
A deep, gravelly voice spoke from high above. "So this is what kept the entire house in a state of panic last night."
The servants offered polite, nervous chuckles. "Yes, my lord. He's been quite alert since sunrise."
Art Valencrest leaned over the bed, his shadow engulfing the child. He studied Gill with eyes that seemed to pierce through the infant haze. Gill didn't look away. He couldn't. He was fascinated by the sheer scale of the man.
Then, Art extended a single, massive finger—scarred and toughened by years of labor and travel.
Gill didn't think. Instinct, or perhaps a lingering spark of his former self's pride, took over. He reached out and grabbed the finger.
His tiny hand didn't even wrap halfway around it, but he squeezed with every bit of strength his new muscles could muster. It was a gesture of defiance, or perhaps a greeting.
Art's eyebrows shot up. He didn't pull away. Instead, he felt the surprising determination in that tiny grip.
"Well now," Art murmured, a faint, rare smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "A strong grip. You're already trying to take what's in front of you, aren't you?"
Gill held on for a moment longer, feeling the pulse of the man's blood through the skin. Then, as quickly as the interest had come, it faded. His muscles burned with the effort of the hold, and he released the finger, his arm flopping back onto the bed.
His attention drifted once more toward the window.
The breeze had picked up. The curtain was billowing now, and the sunlight was slashing across the wall in jagged, beautiful patterns.
Up. Down. Up. Down.
The room buzzed with the "Lord" and the servants talking about legacies and lineages, but Gill was elsewhere. He was memorizing the rhythm of the light. He was tracing the angles of the ceiling.
He didn't know why yet, but his mind felt hungry. It was searching for a structure, a logic to apply to this new, soft world.
The world was confusing. His body was a prison. The voices were a mystery.
But the patterns… the patterns were the first language he intended to master. And somewhere, deep in the marrow of his bones, the mana that had shivered at his birth began to pulse in time with the light on the wall.
Up. Down. Up. Down.