At four years old, Erikan was no longer just an inquisitive child.He had become a living interface between two worlds: the one of his current birth steeped in mana and mystical traditions and the one from his past life, rational, structured, rooted in science and logic.
Since the day he realized that the fire in the forge wasn't just heat and combustion, but a response to intent a will fueled by mana he had never stopped questioning, reflecting, modeling.This world, however irrational it seemed at times, had laws.And if there were laws, then they could be understood.
His first major realization was that mana wasn't a random fluid, but a vector of information.He developed his own classification not in spiritual terms like the scholars of his adoptive world
but in terms of hypothetical particles:Lumons (flow),Gravons (anchoring),Aetherons (magical resonance)
He didn't yet know how to detect them, or how they interacted, but he conceived them, drew them, calculated them.Each night, he filled his notebook with equations inspired by quantum mechanics, mixed with empirical observations: how wood reacted near a crystal, how air moved around a focused blacksmith, how the ground vibrated when soaked with mana.
Physically, his body developed like any other child's.But his mind… was that of a thirty-six-year-old man a researcher once consumed by the pursuit of curing cancer through the manipulation of nuclear matter.That past had never left him. He was still haunted by the white corridors of his old laboratory, by spectral graphs and energy curves, by the cancer cells he had tried to heal… and by the slow agony of his own body, decaying from what he studied.
That trauma, subtle yet persistent, drove his rigor an obsession with control.He didn't want to manipulate mana. He wanted to tame it. To make it explicable. He refused to believe in chance. Even the concept of elemental affinity, which supposedly revealed itself at age twelve, he was already analyzing.He questioned his father Gaël about fire how it felt, how it moved.He compared those answers with Stella's, who spoke of soul, wounds, emotions as the roots of affinity.
Gradually, he accepted that this world followed its own paradigms.He came to understand that emotion wasn't the enemy of science it was another axis of interpretation.He discovered meditation, not as a spiritual discipline, but as a tool to reach an expanded state of consciousness.He quoted Jon Kabat-Zinn, Antonio Damasio, Herbert Benson as if they had been preparing him for this alternate reality.
He began to feel faint changes in the air, subtle pressures within his body when he focused.Nothing striking. Nothing usable.But something. A tremor.
Stella watched him grow with a mix of tenderness and concern.She saw a child with abnormal wisdom, constantly alone.His gaze was always half-absent, as if he were observing the world through a lens no one else could see.She tried to bring him back to the present to talk about birds, about seasons, about childhood friendships.But he answered with questions.Too precise. Sometimes too cold.
And yet, in rare moments, she saw him smile.When Gaël recounted how he forged his first blade.When Erikan managed to model a phenomenon.Or when he heard Stella hum an old elphic lullaby, and felt his heart finally ease.
Erikan wasn't just seeking knowledge.He was seeking meaning.Connection.A reconciliation between what he had been… and what he was becoming.
At four years old, he still hadn't mastered mana.His affinity had yet to awaken.But he had already taken a giant step: he had accepted not to understand everything at once.He understood that this world wouldn't fit into his old models.And that maybe, what he truly needed to learn here…was to be human, before being a scientist.
And each night, in front of his half-filled notebook, he whispered the same phrase, both a promise and a prayer:
"Mana is a living equation… and I will solve it."
At eight years old, Erikan was no longer just a passive observer of the world.He walked, he thought, he acted.Every morning, he rose before dawn to join Gaël at the forge.The black stone walls, the soot-covered beams, the carefully arranged tools this place had become a second home to him, a living laboratory where the air vibrated with the heat of the embers.
The fire spat sparks, hammers struck glowing steel, and amidst the almost suffocating warmth, Erikan stood proudly in his small leather apron.He passed the tongs, cleaned the anvils, and observed the way Gaël handled blade and flame with instinctive precision.
Gaël, on his end, was a massive man.A stocky frame, all muscle, skin bronzed by the sun and years spent in front of the flames.His tousled red hair contrasted with his deep hazel eyes, sharp and lively.A calm man, slow to anger, but capable of erupting like a furnace when someone touched those he loved.
That morning, light streamed through the slats of the forge, tracing golden lines across the dark walls.The scent of hot metal, charcoal, and sweat filled the air.Erikan, sitting on a small wooden stool, watched Gaël hammer an incandescent steel bar.
Erikan had a unique relationship with Gaël.The blacksmith was neither talkative nor intrusive.He listened, without trying to understand what he couldn't grasp.When the boy asked odd questions, about how fire reacted to his gestures, or why certain metals vibrated differently with heat, Gaël answered plainly, without judgment or curiosity.He never asked, "Why do you ask that?"He simply gave a smile, or a mildly amused frown, and offered an honest, straightforward reply.And that... Erikan appreciated.
He felt good around him.At ease.
In that quiet complicity, in that routine of metal, sweat, and sparks, he found peace.Gaël didn't try to shape him, to fit him into a mold.He accepted him as he was, strange, often distant, frequently lost in thought.
With Stella, it was different.She loved him with unconditional, overflowing affection.A true mother hen, gentle, attentive… sometimes a bit too much.She worried over everything, watched him constantly, and asked a thousand questions about the tiniest of details.When he stayed silent too long, she'd come close and whisper:"Are you okay, sweetheart? Are you bored? Are you cold?"
Erikan loved her deeply.She embodied something he had never known before: maternal warmth, a home, a cocoon.But he had to admit,it sometimes annoyed him.Not because he didn't love her.But because he wasn't used to being loved like this.
He felt torn.Between the quiet freedom Gaël gave him…And Stella's constant embrace,well-meaning, but smothering.
And yet… that turmoil in his heart, he cherished it.It was the price of love. Of belonging.It was the beautiful chaos of having a family.
For the first time in his life, he was home.And that feeling,even with its annoyances, clumsy moments, and sighs,was worth more than all the cold, lonely balances he had known before.
— Papa, he said suddenly, his voice calm yet curious.Gaël looked up, raising an eyebrow.— Hm?— When you work… do you feel the mana?The blacksmith smiled, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.— Yeah. Not like your mother does, but I feel it. It's like… a living warmth. It responds to what I feel.Erikan frowned.— A living warmth?— Yeah. When I focus, when I want to harden the steel,it gets heavy, dense. When I'm angry, it flares. And when I'm joyful… it sparkles, like the embers.The boy mentally noted every word.— Do you know your affinity?Gaël nodded.— Fire. Grade A. I found out during my awakening ceremony. I was twelve.— Do you think it's hereditary? That I might have fire too?Gaël set down his hammer, looking at him warmly.— Maybe. But affinity isn't just in the blood. It's in the soul too. Your experiences, fears, dreams… all that shapes how mana responds in you.— And what if… there's more than the classical elements? What if there's… something else?Gaël narrowed his eyes, intrigued.— Like what?— I don't know. Time. Space. Gravity. Concepts we can't see,but that are always there. That structure everything. Maybe some people are sensitive to those... like you are to fire.Gaël placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, not smiling this time.— You think too much for your age, kid.— You've said that before.— And you always reply with that.
They exchanged a knowing glance.Then Erikan continued silently in his mind:If mana reacts to the soul… then maybe it's a language. A code. And affinity would be the natural syntax of our being.
Gaël blinked. He hadn't understood a word.But he loved that kid. So he nodded.— That's beautiful, what you said. But don't forget—understanding is good. Forging is better. Now come, help me hold the blade.
Erikan smiled, thrilled.He leapt off his stool and grabbed the tongs.Together, father and son resumed their work, in a silence punctuated by the song of metal.
But in his mind, Erikan was forging other weapons.Ideas. Hypotheses.And above all, one conviction:
He might be in a new world…But truth , truth never changed.And one day, he would find it.