Captain Vance didn’t waste time with comfort.
He stripped off his heavy leather duster, threw it over a wooden crate, and marched straight to the side of the cot.
His face was a grim mask of scars and unresolved tension as he looked down at the seven-year-old boy.
“Vance, let him rest,” Martha pleaded, her hand resting protectively on Thomas’s forehead.
“He’s shaking.” “He’s alive, which means he’s resting enough,” Vance barked, his voice sharp and unyielding in the cramped stone bunker.
He knelt beside the cot, bringing his massive frame down to Thomas’s eye level.
His sharp gaze locked onto the center of the boy’s chest.
“That light wasn’t normal magic, Thomas.
I’ve executed rogue sorcerers from three different High Houses, and I’ve never seen a core flare with a silver absolute like that.
What did you see when you passed out?
Where did your mind go?” Thomas swallowed hard, pulling the threadbare blanket tighter around his small shoulders.
The memory of the endless black stone and the starlight weaver was still terrifyingly fresh, but the First Spellborn’s final warning chimed like a bell in his head: Keep it quiet.
Do not call to it.
He knew he couldn’t tell Vance everything.
He was too young, too small, and too afraid of what the captain might do if he knew the full extent of the vision.
“A…
a void,” Thomas whispered, his voice trembling.
“There was a man.
He told me his name was stripped from the scrolls.” John and Martha exchanged a frantic, uncomprehending glance, but Captain Vance’s eyes narrowed instantly.
He leaned closer, the scent of stale tobacco and iron rolling off him.
“A man?
Did he tell you what woke up inside your chest?
What did he call it?” Thomas hesitated, keeping his gaze locked on his own small lap.
He withheld the grand claims about governing the elements or rewriting the laws of creation.
“He just gave it a name,” Thomas muttered, choosing his words with a child’s careful desperation.
“He called it Arcanis.
He said I am too young to understand it, and that I have to keep it completely quiet, or it will destroy me.” Vance went entirely rigid.
He stood up slowly, the color draining from his weathered face as if looking at a ghost.
He murmured the name under his breath, testing its weight.
“Arcanis…” “Vance?” John asked, standing up from the edge of the cot, his hands trembling.
“What does it mean?
What is Arcanis?” “It means the High Houses aren’t just going to hunt him,” Vance whispered, his hand drifting instinctively back toward the hilt of his executioner’s blade.
“It means if they find out what’s sitting under his ribs, they’ll tear this entire city apart stone by stone just to put him in chains.
He didn’t just wake a core, John.
He woke something ancient.” The cramped stone bunker grew suffocatingly quiet, save for the rhythmic hiss of the whale-oil lantern overhead.
Martha didn’t ask for further explanations.
She didn’t care about ancient names or the politics of the High Houses.
She simply leaned over Thomas, wrapping her arms completely around his small frame.
“Then we run farther,” Martha whispered fiercely, pulling Thomas tighter against her breast.
“We change our names and vanish into the corners of the world, but nobody is taking my son.” “You can’t outrun a boundless storm, Martha,” Vance replied heavily.
He looked back down at the boy, his rough features softening just a fraction into something resembling pity.
“From this moment on, the energy in your chest stays locked away.
Thomas, look at me.” Thomas peered out from behind his mother’s shoulder, his wide eyes reflecting the dim amber light of the lantern.
“You become a ghost,” Vance ordered.
“When you walk the streets above this bunker, you breathe slow, you keep your head down, and you pretend you are as empty as a dry well.
If you feel that power rising, you swallow it down until it chokes you.
Do you understand?” “I understand,” Thomas whispered.
Beneath his ribs, the Arcanis thrummed once, a faint, mocking heartbeat of raw, unshaped potential.
It was still there, coiled tightly in the dark, waiting for the fragile vessel of his seven-year-old body to grow.
But for tonight, inside the heavy walls of Captain Vance’s sanctuary, the ancient essence was forced to stay quiet.