– Autumn
A year had passed.. The world grew sharper or perhaps that was just me.
My body, once limp and useless, began to respond with budding strength. My fingers curled tighter, knuckles brushing against soft silks and polished glass. Limbs that once twitched without rhythm now kicked with intent. I was no longer a passenger in my own flesh. My will was returning. Day by day, I reclaimed movement. Mastery.
I crawled before I could stand—dragging myself across obsidian floors, cold and immaculate beneath my skin. The surface reflected my pale, curious face as I moved like a soldier relearning how to march. There was no joy in the progress. Only necessity. Discipline. I was building a vessel worthy of what lay inside.
Because all the while, the energy within me stirred.
It wasn't dramatic. It didn't blaze or burn. It pulsed. Quietly. Rhythmically. Aligned with my breath, my heartbeat. No physician or scholar sensed it. Their measurements, magical or mundane, could not comprehend Qi in its purest form. Not like this. Not like me. But I felt it. I knew it.
A whisper at first, like a forgotten promise.
Then came the eve of my first birthday.
It returned.
Not a flicker.
A flame.
Stronger. Wilder. It surged through my veins like lightning confined in flesh. My tiny fists clenched, not out of fear, but instinct. I didn't fight it. I welcomed it. That Qi was mine. Familiar. Old. It raced beneath my skin and crackled in my bones. My eyes fluttered open, and for a brief moment, I saw not the nursery ceiling—but constellations I had once meditated beneath.
The servants noticed my silence, concerned.
"He does not make sound," one whispered. "Should we summon the high healer?"
The physicians ran tests, hands trembling with anxious reverence. They pricked and prodded. Whispered incantations. Scribbled notes. All their tools said the same thing:
"Healthy. But... quiet. Too quiet."
A woman with sharp violet eyes watched from the shadows of the room.
Lady Selene Nightborne.
My mother.
She did not speak for a long while. And then, softly, without opening her eyes, she said:
"Silence is not always emptiness. Sometimes, it is the sound of something greater taking root."
They didn't understand her. They nodded and bowed and withdrew. But I understood. Even in my half-formed thoughts, I understood. She knew. Somehow, she had seen through the mask.
Later that night, I heard her voice again.
Not to me. I could not yet speak.
She stood in the high chamber overlooking the gardens, a place lit only by a single floating crystal of pale blue light. A knight stood before her, clad in black armor bearing the insignia of House Valerius. His voice was gruff.
"There's talk among the lower guard. Whispers that the boy is touched. That he does not cry. That he watches."
He sighs, "Selene..m-my lady..they say he's evil."
"Let them whisper," Selene replied. She held a glass of pale wine, untouched. "Men always fear what they do not understand."
"And do you understand him, my lady?"
A pause. A long one.
Then: "No. Not entirely."
"He is your son."
"He is not just my son." She turned toward the window, her gaze drifting to where I slept, miles away behind locked doors and velvet curtains. "He is the convergence of two bloodlines built not just on love, but ambition. He is shadow and steel. Born on the eleventh. The eleventh hour. The eleventh day. The eleventh month. The child of dusk."
The knight shifted. He did not speak. He was not trained for this kind of war—the war of meanings. The war of omens.
She continued: "Do you know why we named him Cassius?"
"I assumed it was your will, my lady."
She smiled. There was something hollow in it. "Cassius means 'hollow' or 'empty' in the tongue of the old tongue. And yet in the tongues of the East, it is a name meaning 'vessel of light.'"
My head tilted ever so slightly to her words.
The knight frowned. "That is contradictory."
The door opened. Another figure entered—my father.
Duke Dorian Valerius. The Wolf of Calren.
He dismissed the knight with a glance, then approached Mother. They did not embrace. They never did. Their union was political. Useful.
"You worry too much," he said. "Let the boy be a boy."
"You know as well as I that he is not a boy. Not entirely."
"You see omens in everything."
"And you see strategy in everything," she countered.
They stood in silence.
"He didn't cry," Father finally admitted. "Even when born. Not once."
"He remembers something," Mother whispered. "I don't know what. But it looks through his eyes."
Father didn't respond. He merely nodded and turned away. "When he can walk, I will take him to the barracks. Let the steel sing to him. We will carve the hesitation from his spine.That is...if im not busy."
"And I," Selene said, "will teach him to wield silence like a blade."
Their voices drifted away as they left. But I did not forget.
Because while they spoke of legacy, I was cultivating.
While they spoke of omens, I was reforging.
While they spoke of futures, I was remembering the weight of the past.
I was remembering on how i got here.
How i became a boy of birth and death.
The child they thought they birthed did not yet exist.
But I would become him.
Cassius Valerius Nightborne.
A boy born in silence.
A boy too tired to cry.
A boy who once touched heaven—and fell.
The child of dusk.