Lios’s schedule didn’t change much after his birthday. No, it didn’t change much at all. He still started every day training with his sword, sparring with his friends and practicing his rune dances. He followed that up with a hearty lunch made by a loving mother, then went out either to further study his runes or to work at the barracks as a sort of errand and chore boy.

  With coins in his pockets, he didn’t mind the tedious, monotonous work. In fact, he embraced it. Ever more frequently, he watched the blacksmith Darren and his apprentices work while fetching items or dropping them off. Every so often he even got to spar with the younger guards, those who joined when they were fourteen or fifteen, but he hardly won the bouts.

  On the days he practiced his runes, he worked toward crafting spells and bettering his understanding of mana. More often than not, he would get stuck on what to do with a spell and resort to practicing his dances. He no longer felt silly dancing by himself with his sword. In fact, he found it extraordinarily relaxing. Rarely did he see Brioche during the day anymore, though. She had finally given birth to a litter of pups. Lios hadn’t gone to see them yet. Every time he visited her den, he simply brought some meat for her as, despite the trust between them, she didn’t want anyone approaching her litter.

  It was on one such day, on the cusp of summer, that Lios first felt it. That he first touched upon something he had only ever dreamed of. He was dancing, falling into a meditative trance while Rose played music nearby. She was simply humming a tune as she plucked away at her lute. With the summer sun gracing Lios’s tanned shoulders, he sashayed and swayed, flitting around a prearranged circle of his various weapons.

  His feet were tracing a pattern he had long since become comfortable with. He had designed a circle of runes to send a burst of fire out around him once the spell was cast. Of course, he couldn’t be sure the spell worked, but at this point that hardly mattered. His movements over the past few months, since asking his mother for her tutelage, had rapidly improved. Now he was just as graceful as the performers at festivals.

  Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but the way he moved was still impressive for a lad of his age.

  He wasn’t sure what caused it, but as he danced, he felt a tingle of heat in his legs. It occurred as he started the dance over again, getting back into his starting space. As always, he started with simple steps. His foot glided through the dirt, or rather just above it. The runes for this spell were already etched into the earth from countless other practice sessions.

  He danced another line and then the third, the final one for the simple rune. It was a rune of ‘expansion’. His book contained only around forty-five runes in total, out of a potential thousand, so he didn’t have all that much to work with.

  Unlike all the other dozens, hundreds of times he had attempted to dance the runes, this time when he completed the first rune a flare of energy seemed to travel down his legs. He could have sworn he had imagined it. It wasn’t like he did anything differently. The brief, fleeting feeling almost startled him out of his near-trance state, but he carried on, brushing the experience off as wanton excitement.

  That is until he drew a second rune. The rune for fire took another two strokes, being slightly simpler than the first, and was therefore completed in a mere moment. Two steps was all it took as Lios danced in the rough shape of a circle. As he completed it, much like with the first one, he felt a rush of energy flow from his legs into the ground.

  He nearly stopped what he was doing, wanting to figure it out immediately, but decided to continue his dance instead. He could always reflect and replicate later. For now, he wanted to see what would happen. Ever curious, the boy continued to move. A third rune and another burst of energy flowed out of him. This rune was called ‘gather’ and he wanted to use it to gather ambient mana so he wouldn't have to use his own to fuel the entirety of the spell.

  A fourth rune, ‘energy’ took only a moment to create. As it did, the rush of energy flowing from his legs expanded slightly. In fact, it felt like each one took more. His legs were warm now, much warmer than he had expected, even with the mid-afternoon sun bearing down on him.

  And finally a fifth rune, the last one and the one required to complete the circle. The last one was arguably the most important, and one that the author of his book spoke about frequently. ‘Activation’, without it one could craft a spell but there would be no requirements to activate it. Without it, it would be inert.

  As the final marks were drawn in the air by Lios’s foot, a pair of dots over a line that crossed the top of the rune, a torrent of energy flowed out from his feet. It made him gasp in a combination of wonder and fear, nerves set aflame as he stilled for the first time in a while. Hearing his heavy exhalation and seeing him stop, Rose stopped playing, tilting her head as she watched on curiously. She hadn’t noticed anything.

  The tingling sensation surrounded the boy. Pressed against him for a few moments. It felt like the sun had met a swarm of ants, and they were now crawling over him. Then, unexpectedly, fire burst into shape around him. Five feet in each direction, starting from his feet, flames erupted and burned for a few seconds. Lios and Rose both shouted in concern. Lios danced over the hot tongues as they burned the sparse bit of grass that graced his training area. Having been trod upon countless times, the grass didn’t grow in abundance.

  Even as he felt the heat lick at his ankles, Lios only felt exhilaration. He had somehow done it. Without the system, he had cast a spell. So lost was he in his revelation that he failed to notice his mother burst from the door of their home after hearing his and his friends' shouts. She rushed toward him, seeing the fire as he lifted his feet to avoid it. Then, before she had a chance to reach him, the flames died out.

  As they did, a wave of fatigue washed over Lios. He fell down on one knee, mildly aware of how warm the dirt was. How much warmer it was than if it had only been the sun pounding into it. With wonder on his mind in the wake of accidentally casting his spell, he couldn’t hold back his gleeful cackle. I did it! I don’t know what I did, but I just did magic!

  Briefly, he imagined a massive hairy man approaching him with an umbrella, telling him that he was a wizard. Sadly, there was no chance of such a thing. He was neither eleven nor near enough to England to be taken to the wizard boarding school.

  Still laughing, he barely noticed his mother approaching with wide eyes and concern etching lines into her pretty face, though notice he did. He smiled at her excitedly, hardly noticing that his ankles had been mildly burned. Nothing serious; surely they’d be fine after a few days.

  “Mom! I did it! I cast a spell!” Lios shouted and practically launched himself in his excitement, catching her in a hug as he looked up at her.

  The worry didn’t entirely fade from her expression but it did waver for a moment, caught up as she was in her son's discovery. She smiled at him and then glanced behind him at the scorched grass. “I see that. Now, how in Ravos did you manage such a thing?”

  Lios looked back and tried to think about the answer, but found he had no idea. He intoned as such, which caused him to laugh again. So much more to learn! But now I know I can do magic!

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  Months passed with Lios attempting to replicate the casting of his first spell. Unfortunately, he struggled for weeks and weeks, trying to figure out what conditions it took to get his mana to react as it had. He tried all sorts of things, from meditation and introspection, to attempting to write the runes while sparring with his friends.

  To say there were no successes would be a lie. Many times, on the first and second and third runes he would feel his mana slip out of him. Sometimes he found that it would fizzle after the first, or not even start after the first, in which case he’d complete the dance and restart. He only tried with his fire burst spell, wanting to stay consistent to the best of his abilities.

  Attempting to cast the spell while sparring seemed like the worst of his options, at least until he figured out how the spell worked down to its most minute details. When he was simply practicing the dances, and especially when he was treating it as a meditation technique, he found that more often than not he would reach the end of his spell. He assumed that this was due to a sense of calmness combined with precision that came with moving slowly and steadily.

  He never completed the spell, opting out of activating the final rune as he didn’t want to accidentally burn himself again, even if it was barely an injury. Enough first-degree burns, a second-degree burn would make, after all.

  He discovered that when his steps were off by even the smallest of margins, the mana would not flow. This, he felt, was part of why calmness was so important. While moving frantically, he would run the chance of messing up the runes, but while collected, that chance was mitigated. The first time he had cast the spell, he had evidently danced it entirely correctly.

  Once this was known to Lios, he experimented. First, he tested what would happen with various deviations. Starting small, the spell would fizzle as though nothing was there, the mana spent on it dispersing into the clear air. He attempted to fizzle the spell from the first rune all the way to the last, and each time it yielded the same results. No explosions or blasts of mana, perhaps owing to the meager amount he could exert.

  When he made a larger deviation, however, he found a bit more of what he expected. Blasts of heat radiated around him. Not so much as to disrupt him or anyone around him, but it was akin to opening an oven to check on one's food. He theorized that should he deviate too much from a higher-level spell, the effects could be catastrophic. Not just for him but for those around him.

  It took him well into the winter to find all of these quirks, minor as they would seem to an experienced wizard. Despite the fact that he could barely consciously control his mana, the feat was far greater than one could expect from the almost ten-year-old.

  After discovering these nuances, he worked on a different spell that was largely the same. The only difference was in a single rune. Swapping the rune for ‘expansion’ for one of ‘coating’ and pouring his thoughts into the casting. He was away from his home, in the rocky clearing where he had first met his best friend, when he finally managed to get the spell just right. Hesitantly,though he forced himself not to cast it in case something went wrong.

  From there, as the days passed steadily and began to near spring, he practiced two spells. He would alternate every other day. Their steps were mostly the same. With only one rune of difference, they weren't all that different. He was getting to the point where, fifty percent of the time, he got the movements perfect, adjusting them himself before committing each time.

  It was on such a day, with the sun poised over a near-empty glade and the trees blossoming pink and white flowers, that Lios danced as a small furball chattered excitedly with him. Her pups were sleeping in the den, and her mate was out hunting. Lios had been paying Brioche many visits now that she allowed him to. She often showed off her pups with an alacrity befitting a Facebook mom.

  They were asleep now, and so she instead flitted between his legs, trying to trip him up as he wove his spell. Pine needles and twigs crunched underfoot, grass tickling his ankles, as he moved methodically but rather quickly. Brioche was a wonderful training aid, forcing him to adjust his movements on the fly in order to complete the spell while avoiding the obstacle. He had never managed to complete it with her help, but he was getting closer.

  What he discovered shortly after Brioche allowed him back in her clearing was that he could essentially pause his writing by picking his feet up higher or letting himself lose focus on his task. The first was easier for him to do, as getting his focus back could take several seconds, whereas stepping higher only required him to step back down to get back into the groove of his spell. Both took a bit of mental energy though; disrupting a task and remembering exactly where one left off was difficult in the best of times; doing so when your task was largely invisible was even more so.

  Still, he was getting better. And his friendly fox was ever eager to play again, having regained much of her energy since her pregnancy. She was tired of being cooped up while her mate hunted, leaving her to take care of the babies. The tan fox called out with cheerful chatter and laughter as she nipped at her rescuers’ legs, never biting hard enough to pierce skin despite being presumably a higher level than Lios and the fast movement.

  “Noctis’s nightcap!” Lios swore, his spell disrupted right as he moved on to the fourth rune in the circle. The sudden pronouncement distracted Bri, surprising her. She leapt back and looked up at the swordsman as he wiped some sweat from his brow and tried to tuck a few loose strands of hair from his forehead back into the ponytail he had recently started wearing.

  “Time for a break, Bri Bri?” he asked but waited for no answer. Instead, he sat down and played with the overeager fox with his back to a tree on the edge of the glade.

  He sat there pensively, idly petting the wriggly animal. He was nearing a deadline he had imposed on himself several years ago. Tempted as he was to push it, to extend it, he didn’t want to. As anxious as it made him, as much as parts of him told him it was a bad idea, he didn’t think he could avoid the conversation forever, so it was for the best that he went through with it.

  Lios tapped at the ground with his knuckles, fidgeting before Bri nudged his hand with her snoot, forcing him to pet her even more. The pair stayed there, cuddling and enjoying each other's company as he mused. Is there anything I’ll need to leave out, or should I just... let it all out? Lios wondered to himself, considering his options. To be honest, he had a lot to unpack.

  And he wanted someone he could talk to about everything. He had for a long time, nearly his entire life. Someone he could confide in, who wouldn’t think poorly of him for keeping the secrets for too long. With that in mind, and with a heavy sigh, he decided that if he was going to say anything, he may as well expose the entirety of the truth.

  Will they think I killed their son? That I took over his body as it was forming? He groaned at the thought. He didn’t think that’s what had happened, but he didn’t really know. He did know that their son would have been vastly different had he not overtaken his body, but there were too many uncertainties to be sure how exactly his new life had come to be.

  With the adrenaline from training fading and fatigue from training most of the day settling in, he closed his eyes. The sun was a comforting, if warm, blanket washing over him, the perfect temperature for a cozy nap. Brioche stopped trying to force him to pet her. Also growing tired and hearing his breathing slow, she decided to fall asleep cuddling him.

  One of his last thoughts as he drifted off was whether to tell Rose everything as well. To be honest, he was grateful to have met her. He hadn’t realized how lonely he had gotten; it was difficult to socialize with the mind of an adult and body of a child. He was well aware he spoke oddly as a result, but she didn’t seem to mind. None of his friends really did, but she was the one who had accepted him from the get-go.

  Well, after I came to listen to her music a few times. I bet she’d love to learn some songs from another world. Wonder if that would affect her class or skills? Still, I think I should wait until we’re older. It’s one thing to tell my parents everything, but she’s still a kid. A kid with superpowers, no less...

  With that thought, he succumbed to the delightful spring day, his fatigue from constant practice catching up to him. He didn’t dream much of anything, despite his anxiety revolving around events soon to pass. No, he slept peacefully, lulled to sleep by the bountiful birds and chittering forest rodents, the rustle of leaves.

  It was then, while he was asleep, that the sounds of a lively forest faded around him. The general din of the woods made way for gentle susurrations, only the wind daring to break the cautious silence as animals hid from a pair of newcomers.