A drop of cold water fell from the rotting timbers overhead, striking Thomas precisely between the shoulder blades.
He didn’t flinch.
At twelve years old, he had outgrown the soft, frail frame of his early childhood.
The five years spent in the dark underbelly of Rogue’s Haven had carved away any lingering baby fat, leaving him lean, wiry, and remarkably stillness-hardened.
His dark hair was shorn short to stay out of his eyes, framing a strikingly handsome face.
He possessed a sharp, aristocratic jawline that mirrored his father’s, high cheekbones, and an unblemished, pale complexion that seemed entirely too refined for the gritty slums.
He wore a simple, sleeveless tunic of coarse gray hemp, exposing arms that were stringy with hard-won muscle from hours of lifting iron weights and hauling Vance’s heavy equipment.
“Again,” Captain Vance growled from the shadows of the training room.
Thomas shifted his weight on the slick black stone.
He raised a blunt wooden practice sword, holding it perfectly level.
He couldn’t see the weapon.
He couldn’t see the walls.
A thick, seamless black blindfold was tied tightly across his brow, pressing down firmly over his eyelids.
Beneath that cloth, his eyes were wide open—and they were entirely terrifying.
Ever since that fateful night in the alleyway, when his consciousness had been ripped into the presence of the First Spellborn, Thomas’s eyes had never truly returned to normal.
Whenever he let his guard down, his pupils transformed into shifting, swirling pools of liquid cosmic starlight, a direct, undeniable reflection of the Arcanis slumbering beneath his ribs.
It was a flawless beacon of primordial power.
If any passing agent of the High Houses caught even a glimpse of that silver luminescence, it would mean execution for his family and chains for him.
Because of this, from the very night of his meeting with the ancient weaver, a desperate pact had been forged between John, Martha, and Captain Vance.
To protect the boy, they agreed that Thomas would carry on a total, unbreakable ruse.
To the world above, he was not a child hiding the source code of magic; he was merely a tragic casualty of the slums—a boy who had supposedly lost his sight to a violent fever shortly after his family vanished into the lower docks.
Even with the blindfold covering his handsome features, the disguise worked in his favor, as people in the markets rarely looked closely at the faces of the blind or the broken.
But hiding his eyes was only half the struggle.
Over the years, Vance had discovered a staggering truth about the Arcanis: because Thomas held the unshaped essence of creation, he wasn’t limited to a single elemental affinity like the sorcerers of the High Houses.
He could wield any magic.
To keep his training manageable and practical for close-quarters survival, Vance had spent the last three years training him relentlessly in both martial swordplay and the subtle currents of wind magic.
A sharp whistle cut through the damp air as Vance’s wooden blade swung toward his left flank.
Thomas didn’t wait to hear the strike.
He felt the displacement of air, his budding wind magic acting as an extension of his own nervous system to map the pressure changes around him.
Thomas ducked, sliding his bare feet across the stone, and brought his own practice blade up in a sharp parry while simultaneously casting a tiny, concentrated burst of compressed wind against Vance’s shin to throw off the larger man’s balance.
The wood cracked together loudly, and Vance had to take a heavy step back to steady himself.
“Good,” Vance grunted, pulling back his blade.
“You’re reading the air and the ground, not just your ears.
The moment you step above those stairs, the city will try to distract you.
You have to read the weight of a room before anyone even opens their mouth.” Thomas lowered his wooden sword, but he left the blindfold firmly in place, merely pulling up the hem just enough to wipe the sweat from his cheeks before letting the dark fabric drop back over his glowing, cosmic eyes.
He took a long, steadying breath, consciously keeping the silver, restless energy spinning behind his eyelids tightly contained so it wouldn’t bleed through the edges of the cloth.
“Your mother left for the upper markets an hour ago,” Vance said, throwing a clean linen rag at the boy.
“Go help her carry the grain sacks.
And Thomas?” Thomas paused, catching the rag out of the air.
“Make sure that knot is secure,” Vance warned, his scarred face deadpan.
“You are a blind weaver’s son.
Your dad has the fortune of finding employment with the merchants’ guild, but any slip-up from you threatens that safety.
Remember the walk.” “I remember,” Thomas said quietly.
Ten minutes later, Thomas emerged from the hidden drainage grate into the foggy, sulfurous air of the lower canal docks.
The black blindfold remained tied immovably over his face.
He held a long, notched pine cane in his right hand, tapping it rhythmically against the rain-slicked cobblestones as he navigated the crowded, shouting thoroughfare.
He walked with a deliberate, slight slouch, dragging his feet just enough to sell the performance and distract from his naturally graceful stature.
To the merchants and cutthroat gangs brushing past him, he was just another blind boy stumbling through the mud, his striking appearance hidden behind dirt and fabric.
They didn’t see the way his cane tracked the exact density of the crowds or how his mastery over the wind allowed him to feel the breath and movements of everyone within ten paces.
Beneath the dark cloth, his cosmic starlight eyes stared unseen into the gloom, while the Arcanis thrummed with a patient, disciplined rhythm, waiting for the day the veil could finally be torn away.