The excitement inside Nicholas Manor gradually faded as night settled over the estate. After all, Leo would soon be studying in the magical world, and the adults had quickly reached a shared conclusion: the more useful magical items he owned, the better.
There was no such thing as being too prepared when their child and grandchild was stepping into an entirely unknown world. As sunset gave way to moonlight, the stars returned one by one above the manor.
The Nicholas family chatted for a while after dinner before everyone took showers and returned to their rooms. Whether any of the adults actually slept after witnessing magic, beauty potions, and an entire hidden world was another matter entirely.
Leo had intended to rest. Unfortunately, the textbooks from Flourish and Blotts were sitting right there.
After struggling for less than ten seconds, he gave up resisting temptation and picked up The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 by Miranda Goshawk. He opened it with the seriousness of a scholar beginning forbidden research.
Then, without realizing it, he fell asleep with the book still open beside him. No matter how mature his mind was, his body was still only eleven years old, and staying awake all night was not something it could handle.
Just before the day fully slipped away, Leo stirred faintly in his sleep. A strange murmuring voice echoed inside his mind, distant, broken, and distorted, as if someone were calling from the far end of a deep tunnel.
"Come…"
"I await… your arrival…"
"Come…"
"Await… your arrival…"
The voice faded, then returned again, whispering through the darkness. By morning, it had left behind only a faint, uneasy impression.
Rose realized something was wrong when Leo didn't come downstairs for breakfast. Her son had many habits, but skipping meals was absolutely not one of them.
She called his name several times from below. When there was no response, worry immediately rose in her heart, and she hurried upstairs to knock on his bedroom door.
Still nothing.
"Leo?"
No answer came.
Rose opened the door at once. The moment she stepped inside, she found her son asleep on the carpet, surrounded by books.
Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.
"Leo! Why are you on the floor? Why are you sleeping here?"
Leo felt someone shaking him gently. He opened his eyes slowly, still groggy and confused, and the first thing he saw was his mother's worried face hovering above him.
"Mum… good morning."
His voice came out soft and sleepy. For a moment, he didn't understand why she looked so anxious, then he realized he was lying on the carpet instead of his bed.
"Hm? Why am I on the floor?"
His eyes drifted to the open spellbook beside him, and last night's memory gradually returned.
"Oh. It's nothing. I couldn't resist reading the books we bought yesterday, and I must have fallen asleep."
Rose stared at his dazed expression for a second. Then her worry immediately transformed into overwhelming affection.
"My little Leo is too cute."
Before Leo could react, she leaned down and kissed him twice. His already messy hair was instantly ruined further, sticking up like a bird's nest.
"Mum!"
He protested with as much dignity as possible. Unfortunately, with his young face and sleepy expression, the protest only made him look like he was acting spoiled.
Rose ignored his weak resistance and dragged him to the bathroom to wash up. A little while later, all five members of the Nicholas family sat together in the dining room.
Breakfast was, as usual, a mixture of East and West. There was milk, cereal, sausages, golden fried dough, wonton noodles, tofu pudding, and several other dishes laid across the table.
Old Mr. Nicholas, now dressed rather fashionably after last night's potion experiment, took a spoonful of tofu pudding and sighed with deep satisfaction.
"My dear Rose, this tofu pudding is excellent. I never tire of it. In fact, I've decided I want it for every meal from now on."
He said this while adding honey.
Alice Nicholas glanced at him sharply.
"Don't add too much honey, old man. You'll give yourself diabetes."
Then she took another spoonful from her own bowl and smiled at Rose.
"But he is right, dear. This is wonderful. I absolutely adore it."
Stoke, who was eating wonton noodles with great enthusiasm, immediately joined the praise campaign.
"I agree completely. The wonton noodles are perfect today."
As he spoke, he lightly kicked Leo's chair leg under the table.
Leo had been distracted. That faint voice from last night seemed to flicker through his thoughts again, so distant that he wasn't even sure he had heard it.
Come…
His father's kick pulled him back.
"Ah, yes," Leo said quickly. "Breakfast is delicious. Mum is also very beautiful today."
Rose, who had been watching him closely, did not smile as brightly as usual.
"Darling, are you all right? Did you stay up too late reading last night? Go rest after breakfast, okay?"
Leo immediately forced a cheerful smile.
"Okay, Mum."
He lowered his head and continued eating, but his mind had already begun working quickly.
Something was wrong.
Last night, he hadn't even felt particularly sleepy. With an adult soul and years of mental training from his previous life, there was no reason for him to fall asleep so abruptly.
In his previous life, Leo had inherited a family technique that resembled meditation. He had always called it spiritual exercise, and after coming to this world, he hadn't practised it diligently every day, but he still used it every few days out of habit.
His spiritual resilience should not have been weak.
After finishing the last bite of noodles, he put down his spoon.
"I'm full. I'm going upstairs to rest."
Without waiting for more questions, he hopped off the chair and hurried upstairs. Back in his bedroom on the second floor, Leo sat cross-legged on the bed.
Relying on the combined experience of both lifetimes, he quickly entered a meditative state.
Darkness filled his vision.
Then his perception shifted into something deeper and stranger.
He could feel every strand of hair on his head, every inch of muscle beneath his skin, and even the faint flow of blood moving through his body. At the same time, it felt as though he could feel nothing at all.
It was like being suspended in a warm spring.
Quiet, comfortable, and weightless.
Then the voice came again.
"Come…"
"Come…"
"I await your arrival…"
The words were clearer this time. They poured directly into Leo's spiritual world, no longer vague and distant, and each syllable echoed inside him like a bell struck in darkness.
"Who are you?" Leo demanded.
His voice sounded strange in that inner world.
"What arrival? What do you want?"
At first, he had thought the whispers were only an illusion caused by exhaustion, but now he could no longer deny them. The voice was real, or at least real enough to reach the deepest part of his mind.
Then it began to recede.
Not vanish. Recede.
Like something moving toward a distant place.
The moment the voice disappeared, a gust of wind swept through Leo's spiritual world.
That should have been impossible.
This inner space was not a physical place. There was no sky, no earth, no water, and certainly no wind, only a mental construct formed by his consciousness or some mysterious spiritual domain he could not yet understand.
But now wind was blowing through it.
Stronger and stronger.
Leo's first thought was not curiosity.
It was danger.
If this place was damaged, he had no idea what would happen. He might go insane, or his consciousness might become trapped here forever while his body outside turned into an empty shell.
Before he could think of a solution, the wind intensified.
Pain struck.
It felt as though countless invisible blades were slicing across him from every direction. Anyone who had ever been caught in violent storm winds knew that at a certain point, wind no longer felt like wind.
It became knives.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the pain vanished.
Warmth followed.
It was the same warm sensation he usually felt during meditation, but far stronger. One layer became two, then three, then even more, swelling until it was almost unbearable in its comfort.
Just as it approached its peak, everything scattered.
Leo's consciousness snapped back.
He opened his eyes slowly and exhaled a long breath.
The bedroom returned around him.
His gaze immediately moved to the alarm clock.
Only five minutes had passed.
Inside that strange spiritual state, time had felt immeasurable. Outside, almost nothing had changed.
Yet Leo knew something had happened.
His mind was clearer than ever before. The world around him seemed sharper, as if a thin invisible veil had been removed from his senses.
"This was… a magical outburst?"
He frowned.
It felt somewhat similar to what he remembered from canon, but also not quite the same.
"An Obscurus? No. It doesn't feel like that."
The thought alone made him tense. Obscurials were terrifying, and the moment the word appeared in his mind, he immediately checked his body for anything strange.
Fortunately, he found no signs of harm.
His breathing gradually settled.
"At least I'm fine. And my mental technique seems to have advanced."
Then he noticed the room.
Books that had been on the carpet were scattered everywhere. Items from his desk had fallen over. Several books from the shelves had toppled to the floor, leaving the bedroom looking as though a small storm had passed through it.
Leo's expression stiffened.
"Was this caused by the magical outburst?"
Cleaning everything up was going to be annoying.
The thought had barely formed when the objects around him moved.
Books rose from the carpet.
Pens, papers, and ornaments floated smoothly into the air. Within seconds, everything returned to its original place.
Leo stared.
Then his eyes lit up.
"Whoa. That's cool."
He quickly realized what had changed. Before today, his control had limits.
He could manipulate roughly eleven objects at once, though controlling ten smoothly was far more realistic. The objects also couldn't be too heavy, and if measured by size and weight, his previous comfortable limit was about ten dictionary-sized items moving at the speed of a remote-controlled car.
Now, however, he had just moved almost everything in the room.
Books, papers, desk objects, scattered supplies—nearly a hundred items at once.
This was not a small improvement.
This was a leap.
"So the advancement of my mental technique, combined with a magical outburst, expanded my control?"
He was just about to test the new limit when the bedroom door burst open with a bang.
Stoke rushed in first.
Rose immediately shoved him aside and ran straight to the bed.
"Leo!"
She grabbed him into her arms and checked him frantically.
"Tell Mum what happened. Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," Leo said quickly. "I was just testing some magic from the books."
He pointed toward the spellbooks on the carpet, trying to look innocent. Rose clearly did not believe him entirely, but she continued checking him anyway.
Moments later, Grandpa Nicholas and Grandma Alice also hurried into the room. They had moved more slowly because of their age, but their worry was no less obvious.
"Mum, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma," Leo said obediently. "I'm fine. It was just an accident. It won't happen again."
Everyone stared at him.
After Stoke explained what had happened downstairs, Leo finally understood why they were so frightened.
While he had been meditating, the entire manor had experienced strange movement. Furniture, dishes, and small objects downstairs had floated into the air without warning.
That meant his outburst hadn't only affected the bedroom.
It had spread through the house.
Leo repeatedly promised that it had been an accident and would not happen again. He even used the ultimate weapon of puffing his cheeks and acting cute.
After agreeing to several strange conditions from his family, the adults finally calmed down enough to leave.
At last, the room became quiet.
Leo had just begun to relax when Stoke turned back at the doorway.
"Leo," his father said, his voice unusually serious. "I don't fully understand what happened, but I need you to remember this. Your mum and I, and your grandparents too, care about you very much. Don't hurt yourself. Take proper care of your body."
Leo looked at him and nodded.
"I know, Dad."
Stoke's expression softened.
Then he closed the door.
Or tried to.
The door, having been violently forced open earlier, no longer closed properly.
A second later, it opened again by a crack, and Stoke poked his head through.
"I'll fix the door before dinner. You rest."
Then he pulled back and left before Leo could respond.
Leo stared silently at the broken door. He could feel his father's love, but the sudden entrance had still scared him half to death.
After this incident, Leo decided he would test his new abilities properly at night after everyone had gone to sleep. For now, he was genuinely tired.
Between the voice, the strange spiritual wind, the magical outburst, and the family panic, exhaustion finally caught up with him.
He lay down slowly on the bed.
Within minutes, he fell asleep.
....
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