"Hey there. My name's Vellora."

  A soft voice shook Notch out of his chronic spiral of worry. He looked up to find a woman standing before him, healer's robes marked with the faint shimmer of enchanted thread—practical magic woven into fabric to resist bloodstains and hold sterilization spells.

  "I'll help you with your fractured core." She smiled, warm and professional in equal measure. Auburn hair kept falling across her face despite her best efforts, constantly obscuring deep brown eyes that held genuine concern. She tucked the errant strands behind her ear for what was probably the hundredth time that day.

  "I really don't know how a kid like you even knows any spells that could hurt you to the point of fracture, but we'll figure it out."

  *Do all auburn-haired girls look this pretty?*

  The thought came unbidden. First Aelira with her cold beauty and lethal competence, now Vellora with her softer features and gentle warmth.

  *Or have I just not seen enough girls?*

  The thought carried uncomfortable weight. Viktor had been too exhausted, too ground-down by factory work to pursue anything resembling a romantic life. And now here he was—consciousness of a twenty-eight-year-old trapped in a twelve-year-old body, noticing attractive women and feeling deeply, profoundly weird about it.

  He had to accept it. He wasn't twenty-eight anymore. Not physically. Not in the ways that mattered to the world around him.

  He was twelve. And somehow that made everything more complicated.

  "What was the spell again?" Vellora's question pulled him back to the present danger. She was fishing for information, trying to gauge severity.

  "Well, I don't really know." The lie came easier this time, smoothed by repetition. "It was kind of a mistake."

  "Hmm."

  Vellora placed her delicate hands on her hips, tapping one finger against the fabric thoughtfully. The gesture was unconscious, habitual—the physical manifestation of active problem-solving.

  "I'll have to survey your core then." She said it like it was routine, no big deal. "Shouldn't take long. Not more than two minutes."

  Cold sweat ran down Notch's spine.

  Core surveying. He recognized the mechanic from the game—a high-level diagnostic skill that let practitioners examine another person's mana structure directly. It was how he instinctively understood Sly's power level, but healers did it deliberately, with precision.

  *What if she sees the limiter on my core?*

  His fingers found each other, twisting together nervously in his lap. He tried to keep his breathing steady, tried to project calm.

  *I'll be exposed.*

  The self-imposed restriction he'd visualized during the assessment—the artificial bottleneck that had caused the fracture in the first place—would be visible. Obvious. A twelve-year-old child didn't accidentally cripple themselves with advanced mana manipulation techniques.

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  Vellora walked up right next to him and squatted smoothly to his eye level, joints moving with the practiced ease of someone who spent hours working with children. Up close, he could see just how pretty she was—late twenties probably, with laugh lines just beginning to form at the corners of her eyes and a small scar on her chin that spoke of past accidents.

  Her piercing brown eyes held his, searching for signs of panic or pain.

  "Her eyes are really compelling," Notch thought.

  Except he said it out loud.

  Barely audible, just a whisper—but in the relative quiet of their corner, it carried.

  Vellora blinked, surprise flickering across her features. Then color rose in her cheeks, a faint blush that made her look younger.

  "You think so?" Her voice pitched slightly higher, flustered. She recovered quickly, smiled with genuine warmth. "Thank you. I think your blue eyes are pretty compelling too."

  Notch went red.

  Completely, utterly red. Heat flooded his face so fast he felt dizzy. This was the first time he'd been complimented by a girl—by a woman—and his brain simply stopped functioning. Viktor had never received compliments. The original Notch had been too abrasive to earn them.

  And now here was Vellora, kind and beautiful and professional, saying something nice about his appearance with complete sincerity.

  He became suddenly, acutely aware that Notch's body was actually quite handsome. Symmetrical features, clear skin despite poverty, striking blue eyes that probably looked even more dramatic against his darker complexion. Viktor hadn't been ugly—just built for function rather than form, muscles forged from factory work rather than deliberate training.

  But this body had potential. Youth and good bones and features that would only improve with proper nutrition.

  "You have a pet snake?"

  Vellora's voice brought him back again. She was looking at Sly with curiosity rather than revulsion—a refreshing change from his mother's reaction.

  "That's unique."

  She raised her hand slowly, telegraphing her movements so as not to startle either child or serpent, and placed her palm flat against Notch's chest. Right over his heart. He could feel his pulse quickening under her touch, betraying his nervousness.

  "Yeah, her name's Sly," he managed.

  Vellora gave a cheerful nod, expression shifting to focused concentration as she began her work.

  A faint white glow wrapped around her hand, spreading gradually across his chest like frost crystallizing on glass. The light was cool, not cold—pleasant rather than uncomfortable. It carried a slight tingling sensation, like pins and needles but gentler, as her diagnostic magic mapped the structure of his mana core.

  Notch held his breath.

  This was it. The moment she'd discover the truth. See the artificial restriction he'd imposed, realize he was hiding something, raise alarms—

  Vellora dropped her hand, expression shifting to something puzzled.

  "It's nothing serious, thankfully."

  She sighed with relief, smile returning. "Minor fracturing along the secondary channels, but the core structure itself is intact. You were lucky."

  Notch stared at her, not quite believing it.

  She hadn't seen the limiter. Or if she had, she'd mistaken it for something else—natural variation, developmental quirk, anything but deliberate self-sabotage.

  Vellora placed her hand on his chest again, this time speaking words too quiet for normal hearing. But Notch's enhanced senses caught them clearly, an incantation in the old tongue, syllables that described healing and restoration and wholeness.

  White light flared brighter. Warmth flooded through his chest, different from Sly's passive healing. This was active reconstruction, mana channels being carefully realigned and reinforced, microfractures being sealed like invisible sutures pulling torn flesh together.

  It didn't hurt. The opposite, actually—a profound sense of relief as the constant background ache simply... stopped.

  Less than a minute later, the pain was almost totally nonexistent.

  "You feel any better?" Vellora pulled her hand back, looking expectant and hopeful.

  Notch nodded, genuine gratitude flooding through him. "Much better. Thank you."

  He stood carefully, testing his body's response. No sharp pains. No tightness in his chest. Just the natural soreness that came from a long day of walking and trauma.

  Sly stirred on his shoulder, sensing the change. She'd stopped her passive healing when Vellora began working, conserving her own depleted energy. Now she perked up slightly, tongue flicking out to taste the air.

  "Rest for tonight," Vellora said, standing as well and brushing invisible dust from her robes. "Avoid any spellwork for at least three days. Let the channels fully stabilize."

  "I will," Notch promised, meaning it completely.

  The other injured children had already been treated and sent off to join the rest in the common room. Notch could hear their voices echoing down the corridor—nervous chatter, attempts at normalcy after everything they'd witnessed.

  Vellora walked him to the door, one hand resting briefly on his shoulder in farewell.

  "Be careful, Notch Dryk." Her expression had gone serious. "Whatever that spell was—mistake or not—make sure you understand it before trying again. Magic this powerful, in hands this young..." She trailed off, shook her head. "Just be careful."

  "I will," he said again, more quietly this time.

  She smiled once more, squeezed his shoulder, then returned to the organized chaos of the field hospital.

  Notch stepped into the corridor, Sly coiled around his neck, fracture healed, secret intact.

  But Vellora's final words echoed in his mind as he walked toward the common room.

  *Magic this powerful, in hands this young.*

  She'd seen something. Maybe not the full truth, but enough to worry her. Enough to offer warning disguised as gentle advice.

  The question was: how long could he keep pretending to be ordinary before someone looked too closely and saw what he really was?

  The answer, Notch suspected, was not very long at all.