Ezra had scared everyone half to death.

  One moment he’d been on his little table, hunched over parchment, eyes too bright for a six-month-old as he pushed a quill around.

  The next, his head dipped onto his arm and his whole body went slack.

  Aerwyna found him like that—ink smeared on his cheek, quill locked in his tiny fingers, breathing shallow and slow.

  For a heartbeat, her mind went blank.

  “Ezra?”

  No answer.

  She checked his neck, then his forehead, then the place over his heart. Warm. Steady. Skin clean of sweat. His Field felt hollow, the way a mage felt after draining themselves dry.

  Mana depletion, her training supplied.

  From what? He can't even cast a spell.

  Jaw tight, she worked the quill free and lifted him from the chair. He fit against her chest like something made of glass.

  “Catalyna,” Aerwyna called, voice sharp.

  The wet nurse hurried in from the adjoining room. “Milady?”

  “Help me with the crib,” Aerwyna said. “He’s overtaxed himself. We’ll let him rest and see if the Maester has anything safe for infants.”

  Catalyna nodded, eyes wide, hands steady. Together they laid Ezra down and tucked the blanket around him.

  He stayed limp.

  Aerwyna took the chair beside the crib. She watched the rise and fall of his chest until night thinned into morning.

  Ezra surfaced like someone swimming up from too deep.

  Sound arrived first—the clatter of dishes somewhere distant, a gull’s thin cry near the outer walls, boots thumping on stone.

  His eyelids felt glued shut.

  He forced them open.

  The canopy of his crib filled his view: carved dark beams, a patch of plaster with a hairline crack, morning light sliding across the ceiling. His body weighed a ton, as if his bones had been swapped for wet sand.

  What… happened?

  Memory snapped back.

  The quill slipping. The air twitching around it. Thin gold lines stitching meaning into place—numbers, letters, that clean relationship between speed, time, and acceleration.

  v = u + a·t

  Not on the page.

  On the world.

  Ezra lay still, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  That wasn’t a dream.

  Dreams blurred at the edges. That had been crisp. The click of a formula landing in the right slot.

  His skull throbbed, dull and persistent.

  Movement flickered at the edge of his vision.

  Catalyna sat by the window in her usual chair, positioned to watch both the crib and the courtyard. He expected knitting, or a doze. She was writing, finished quickly, then tucked the note into her bodice.

  Ezra squinted.

  That’s… odd, Ezra thought muzzily. Do most commoners know how to write? Maybe it’s part of the requirement to work in the castle. Maybe the education here is better than I give it credit for.

  The thought drifted off. Bigger questions pressed harder.

  He pulled himself up, fingers curling around the crib rail. The room tilted, then held.

  All right. One thing at a time.

  That equation. That fall.

  Can I do it again?

  Afternoon found him back at the table.

  Aerwyna had declared him “not allowed to do anything strange” for the morning, which translated into broth, enforced naps, and a steady watch until she decided he would remain upright.

  By the time she carried him down the corridor to the library, Ezra vibrated with impatience.

  “Remember,” Aerwyna said, like his six-month-old brain hadn’t already etched it in, “you are to take it easy today. Letters, numbers. No trying to jump off furniture. No touching any crystals. No… experiments.”

  She made a face at the last word.

  Ezra nodded solemnly.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  He meant it.

  He also meant to make the numbers appear again.

  The library sat quiet. Reitz was elsewhere with border reports. No guards in sight—only shelves, a long table cleared of breakables, and sunlight pouring through high windows.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Aerwyna settled at one end with a stack of ledgers. Ezra got his usual setup at the other: low cushion, parchment, inkwell, and a quill trimmed short for clumsy hands.

  “Do be careful,” she added, perhaps for the twentieth time. “If you drop the ink, I am making you mop it with your own blanket.”

  “Yes, mother,” Ezra said.

  She smiled, satisfied, and returned to her columns.

  Ezra dipped the quill and drew one careful “A” for show. Then he set it down and reached for something easier to control: a small wooden block from Catalyna’s counting toys.

  He placed it near the table’s edge.

  His pulse sped up.

  Okay. Yesterday you were tired, frustrated, thinking about falling things. Start there.

  Eyes closed, he chased the feeling from before the blackout—the pressure fuzzing his thoughts, awareness narrowing until the quill became the only thing that mattered.

  In. Out.

  He still couldn’t point to his “mana pool,” but he could nudge it. More into muscles to grip. More into eyes to read fine print.

  This time he coaxed the warmth upward, behind his eyes and deeper into his skull.

  Pressure tightened around his temples.

  He opened his eyes.

  Shelves. Dust motes. Aerwyna’s braid.

  He held the warmth and set a thought on top of it.

  Fall.

  He pictured the block dropping. Gravity’s steady pull. The little triangle of equations he’d learned as a teenager, forgotten, then dragged back out in this world of mana and wards.

  For a long moment, the room stayed ordinary.

  Then his sense of it shifted.

  Edges shimmered in faint gold, drawn over the world like a second outline. The air gained texture, threaded with invisible lines.

  His head pulsed a warning.

  He exhaled.

  “Ezra?” Aerwyna asked, glancing up. “Are you well?”

  He realized his shoulders had climbed and his eyes had probably gone strange.

  “Fine,” he said quickly, pointing at the parchment. “Letters.”

  She relaxed and went back to the ledgers.

  Ezra swallowed.

  Slower. Don’t be an idiot.

  He let some of the pressure bleed away, keeping only a thin warmth behind his eyes.

  He looked at the block.

  “All right,” he muttered under his breath. “Work with me.”

  He nudged it off the table.

  It slid.

  The instant the block lost contact with the wood, the haze snapped into focus.

  Gold scribbles lunged toward it, wrapping the falling shape, then straightening into something clean and familiar:

  v = u + a·t

  Start speed. Acceleration. Time.

  The block struck the floor with a dull thunk.

  The equation disappeared.

  Ezra’s heart hammered.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  His head ached, but it stayed on the right side of manageable—more like staring too long into bright light than the cliff-edge blackout from yesterday.

  After a few breaths, he pulled the block up and tried again. Then again.

  Each fall brought the same flare. Each flare cost him.

  He switched to the quill.

  He balanced it at the table’s edge, called the warmth back up, and thought about motion and mass together—how movement stored energy, how speed turned even a small thing into a threat.

  He pushed.

  The quill tipped.

  Gold lines seized it.

  This time the shape in his vision curved longer, resolving into:

  K.E. = ?·m·v2

  For a heartbeat the formula hung beside the falling quill—mass, speed, energy bound into symbols.

  The quill kissed the floor.

  The gold vanished.

  Ezra leaned back, breath quick, grin pulling at his mouth.

  Not just once. Not a fluke.

  Reality had answered him with numbers.

  He sat with that for a moment.

  Then he started poking.

  If I can see it… can I use it?

  He turned his hand palm-up over the table.

  He summoned a small warmth there, the way Reitz did when he was showing off—just a glow at the center of his palm.

  The air shimmered faintly.

  “Half m v squared,” he whispered, the words awkward in a small mouth. “Come on. Do something.”

  He pictured the formula compressing into a spark, imagined it folding into a neat packet of energy he could throw.

  Nothing.

  The warmth in his hand guttered as his concentration slipped.

  He scowled and tried again.

  Same result.

  By the third attempt his fingertips tingled and his headache deepened.

  “Of course,” he muttered under his breath. “Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.”

  Back home, you paid for work. Energy went somewhere. There was always a ledger, even when you couldn’t see it.

  Magic here looked like it ignored that—Fire from empty hands, Earth Wall from flat road.

  Maybe this overlay was the universe keeping its books.

  Or maybe he was a baby staring at one corner of a mural and pretending he understood the whole thing.

  Either way, he’d found something useful.

  Prediction.

  If he could see speed and energy early enough, he could judge when to duck. How hard a hit would land. Whether he could hold ground or needed to move.

  In a world where adults could liquefy you with a miscast spell, that mattered.

  He chewed on the thought, then lifted his head.

  “Mama,” he called.

  Aerwyna looked up at once. “Yes, little one? Are you hungry?”

  “No,” Ezra said, shaking his head. His eyes shone with a different hunger. “Mama… can you punch the air?”

  Aerwyna blinked.

  “…what?”

  He pointed at empty space in front of her, brow furrowed.

  “Punch the air,” he repeated. “Like this.” He balled his fist and made a clumsy motion that came out more flail than strike.

  Aerwyna stared, then let out a soft huff of laughter.

  What an odd request, she thought. He was usually so serious—letters, numbers, stories. This sounded like a strange little game.

  Well. I suppose it doesn’t hurt anyone. Parents should play with their child, not just lecture them.

  “Please, Mother?” Ezra added, voice small but insistent.

  “All right,” she said, setting her quill aside with care. “Here goes.”

  She rose, smoothed her skirt out of habit, and stepped clear of the table. Her feet settled into a natural stance—one forward, weight balanced.

  Ezra swallowed.

  He drew the thin thread of mana up again, behind his eyes. He stopped thinking about falling blocks.

  He thought about her.

  About the way her shoulders set when she lifted a ledger. The snap in her wrists when she gave an order. Strength packed under soft skin.

  The world sharpened.

  Faint gold lines crawled over Aerwyna’s body, clustering at shoulders, elbows, hips. When she shifted her weight, tiny markers flared at her feet, showing pressure building against the floor.

  Potential coiled in her muscles like drawn bowstrings.

  This is great, he thought, heart pounding. I can see the build-up. The direction.

  “Ready?” Aerwyna asked, amused.

  He nodded, eyes wide.

  She drew her fist back and let it go.

  Whoosh.

  To Ezra it looked like lightning.

  Vectors jumped from her shoulder down her arm. Force estimates flickered. The punch itself blurred past his perception. One heartbeat she was coiled; the next her fist hung in the air where an opponent’s face would have been.

  He blinked.

  …Wait.

  He replayed it as best he could. The intent had read clean, the energy mapped in gold. The strike itself outran him.

  Too fast.

  Even with the numbers, his body wouldn’t move in time. By the time the overlay shouted impact, the impact would already be there.

  Seeing data wasn’t enough.

  He needed less delay between seeing and moving.

  Hmm. I’ll need to practice this more, Ezra thought, excitement pushing against the ache. Maybe I can find a way to stretch how I feel time. Make a moment… longer.

  “Mama, again!” he blurted, the words coming out as a bright, eager squeak.

  Aerwyna’s irritation—never fully gone since the core incident—melted at the sound.

  He looked earnest. Ridiculously delighted by something as simple as a punch.

  She laughed, warm and surprised.

  “Again?” she echoed.

  “Again!” Ezra insisted, eyes shining, hands clapping together once.

  Aerwyna shook her head, smiling despite herself.

  “Very well,” she said. “But just a few more. I don’t want you getting ideas about hitting people, understand?”

  He nodded vigorously, which she took as agreement and which he decided not to clarify.

  She raised her fist.

  Ezra pulled the numbers back into his eyes and braced.

  Aerwyna punched the empty air again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Each strike filled his vision with vectors and half-formed values—still too fast, still messy, but cleaner each time.

  The bright, sun-lit library rang with the delighted chant of a baby’s voice:

  “Mama again! Mama again!”

  Aerwyna gladly obliged.