The next few days passed like fog.
The orchard valley lay quiet under a stretch of clear skies, its soft hills and winding trails carrying the scent of spring blossoms. The world had moved on, but the three siblings had not.
They ate, worked, and spoke like before—but everything felt different.
Their mother noticed first.
Not in anything said outright, but in the silences that fell where laughter used to be. She watched the way Wade flinched whenever someone raised their voice, or how his eyes glazed over during dinner, staring at his hands under the table.
And yet, she said nothing. She merely kissed him more gently and lingered in his doorway longer before bed.
Their father grew quieter too. He spent more time sharpening tools that didn't need sharpening, and his glances toward the forest grew more frequent, as if still sensing danger out there that hadn't been vanquished.
But it wasn't the forest that held the mystery now. It was Wade.
He couldn't sleep more than a few hours a night. When the house was quiet, and the candlelight had faded, he would sneak outside barefoot, beneath the apple trees, and sit in the dew wet grass alone.
That was when the system spoke.
[Welcome, Wade]
Synchronization 12%
Attribute Capacity – Currently Active: 2 (Wind, Fire)
Locked Attributes Detected: 4
Initiate Spell Threading?
Yes / No
He stared at the text for hours the first time, unsure if it was real, or if his mind was just unraveling.
Eventually, he whispered, "Yes."
And the pain returned.
It wasn't as catastrophic as the explosion. It didn't feel like dying. It felt like growing—violently. His veins itched, his bones pulsed like they were beating with his heart. The wind tugged at his hair as though recognizing him, and tiny sparks would dance across his fingertips when he exhaled too sharply.
He couldn't control it.
Not yet.
Riven found him out there one night, cross legged on the grass with his palms glowing faintly.
"You're gonna set your damn face on fire if you keep breathing like that," he grunted, tossing him a canteen.
Wade jumped, startled. "How long have you been watching me?"
"Long enough to know you suck at sneaking out. And even longer to know you're definitely gonna burn something down if you don't figure this out quietly."
He sat beside him, eyes on the orchard.
"You're gonna train me?" Wade asked, half hopeful.
Riven snorted. "No. I'm gonna make sure you don't die while you figure it out."
Wade smiled, just a little.
It was their first real smile in days.
Back inside the house, Lira took a different approach. She became his second shadow, following him in chores, offering extra food, insisting on bandaging every new blister from his night experiments. She didn't say much about the system. She didn't need to.
But one night, as she tucked the covers around him, she finally asked
"Are you scared?"
Wade paused.
Then nodded once.
She sat beside him on the bed, her wind-blown hair falling over her eyes.
"Good," she said. "You should be."
He blinked at her.
"It means you're not arrogant, not stupid, and not alone."
She kissed his forehead, like their mother did, and stood.
"I don't know what you're becoming," she whispered. "But you'll always be our brother first."
The next morning, someone came asking questions.
A group of knights from the outer patrol arrived at their home unannounced, their silver tabards marked with the crescent sun emblem of the local lord. They claimed they were "investigating a magical disturbance" from the forest last week.
"We believe a rogue mage may have triggered something dangerous," the squad leader said, eyes scanning the family like a ledger.
Their father met them at the fence with a firm, polite smile. "My children saw smoke, yes. But there was nothing by the time I searched."
"Do they all have attributes?" the knight asked.
"They do," the father said without hesitation, though Wade noticed his shoulder shifted ever so slightly to block view of him.
"And the boy?" the knight asked, gaze landing on Wade.
"No," the mother cut in smoothly, stepping between them. "Wade hasn't awakened."
The knight's eyes lingered a second too long.
Wade held his breath.
Finally, the knight nodded. "If anything strange happens… report it."
They left soon after, their boots stirring dust.
Riven exhaled once they were gone. "They'll be back."
Wade clenched his fists. He didn't know what the system wanted from him yet. But he knew one thing:
If someone came for his family, they'd never leave alive.
That night, Wade didn't sleep.
He lay still in his bed, listening to the chirp of crickets outside the window and the creak of old wood as the house settled around him. Every shadow on the wall seemed deeper, every flicker of candlelight more alive.
The system hadn't spoken again since the knights left.
But he could feel it—waiting.
Waiting for what, he didn't know. Instructions? A decision? A command? Or maybe it was just learning, adapting to him the same way he was adapting to it.
What am I becoming?
He slipped from bed and tiptoed into the hallway.
There were still muddy boot prints from the knights in the entryway. Wade crouched beside them, reaching out to touch the dried crust of dirt with a single finger.
Their presence had been brief. Professional. Polite.
But wrong.
He'd seen it in the way they looked at his mother—not with respect, but calculation. He saw it in the way they noted his height, his silence, his eyes. Like a threat not yet awakened, but worth cataloguing.
He wasn't even someone yet—and they were already hunting him.
Wade rose and stepped outside.
The wind greeted him gently.
No longer chaotic, it now stirred only when he called. A leaf fluttered past his hand, caught in a quiet updraft. He focused on it, reaching into himself, coaxing the smallest spark from his fingers—and the leaf caught fire midair.
Not orange. Not red.
Blue.
The flame crackled in silence, heatless and ghostly. It burned a hole through the leaf and vanished into nothing.
His heart pounded.
[Element Fusion Detected: Bluefire]
Progress: 1%
Potential: Unlocked
It wasn't a hallucination.
It was real.
And it was only the beginning.