The winter after Kael’s first birthday was a quiet, introspective time in the villa, but the rhythm of this world was different. Kael, ever observant, had pieced it together from overheard conversations about planting cycles and patrol schedules: a year here was 360 days, neatly divisible by twelve months of thirty. It was subtle, but the shorter year made the seasons turn with a slightly more urgent cadence. Autumn had arrived and faded with a swift, colorful breath.

  He had been born in the month of Falling Leaf—roughly analogous to October in his old memory—just as the island’s fierce, humid summer finally broke. Now, he was experiencing his second turn of the year. The island, vast and isolated like a mountainous Iceland, was cradled in a temperate belt. This meant seasons were distinct but not extreme; winters were cold and wet with slashing rains from the sea rather than deep, silent snows, and summers were warm and lushly humid. The mountain ranges of the interior created their own microclimates, but here on the slopes where the Outpost was carved, they felt the full, bracing breath of the ocean.

  The howling winds from the stone peaks now carried that breath, sealing the villa in a world of firelight, murmured lessons, and the scent of wet pine, drying seaweed, and roasting chestnuts. It was during these long, hushed evenings that Kael’s world, already expanded by his trip to Veldros, deepened in a new way. He began to truly listen.

  He was a silent, wide-eyed lump on Elara’s lap or a focused observer at Dain’s feet as the delvers—Korin, Boran, Astyo, and Vette—recounted their shifts patrolling the frozen ridges. The stories were not epic tales of dragon-slaying, but gritty, practical logs.

  “...ice-wyrm spoor was old, at least a week,” Korin would mutter, poking the fire with an iron-shod boot. “But the pack of frost-fang wolves has moved into the eastern crags. A real nuisance. Not a threat to the new walls, but they’ll pick off stray lumber beasts.”

  Boran would chuckle, a low, warm sound. “Aye, gave them a scare. Let out a proper roar, shook the rain-sleet off their den. They’ll think twice.” He’d flex a hand, the knuckles scarred. “Damp cold makes the joints ache, though. Even with the Captain’s aura.”

  It was the offhand comments, the casual grumbles, that built a new layer of understanding for Kael. He’d known Tiers granted power and longevity. But he began to grasp that Vitality—the stat Dain had mentioned—was the bridge between the two. It wasn’t just about having more years; it was about the quality of those years. A high Vitality, bolstered by Tier, meant joints didn’t ache in the deep cold. It meant recovering from a frost-fang’s swipe in days, not weeks. It meant your body wasn’t just a vessel for your Class; it was a resilient, self-repairing instrument.

  So Tier is the license to drive the sports car, Kael mused, watching Astyo gently rub a salve into a faint, silvery scar on Vette’s forearm—a souvenir from a ‘shadow-asp’ in a delve. But Vitality is the high-performance engine and the premium fuel. No wonder everyone’s obsessed. It’s not just about living to five hundred. It’s about being able to enjoy a stiff drink and a good fight at four hundred and ninety-nine.

  This understanding made the quiet, daily life of the villa feel different. It was the logistical framework that supported Dain’s high-Vitality, high-Tier team, allowing them to focus on pushing boundaries rather than basic survival. Marta’s nutrient-rich, mana-infused meals were preventative medicine. Aya’s silent, relentless cleanliness was a bulwark against the mundane illnesses that could weaken Vitality over time. It was all connected, a sophisticated ecosystem designed to cultivate and protect power.

  -

  By the time the snows and rains of Deep Winter relented, giving way to the chilly, mud-churned season of First Thaw, almost a full year had slipped by since Kael’s first birthday. He was no longer the same child. He was two, and his movements had lost the last vestiges of random, drunken clumsiness. He walked with a purposeful, if comically short-legged, stride. His speech, while still limited by a toddler’s vocal cords, was precise.

  “Why?” remained his favorite word, but the questions evolved.

  “Why does Astyo’s rock glow before she casts?” he asked Dain one afternoon, watching the Geomantic Theurge run her fingers over her geode in the weak, early sun.

  “It’s a focus. It holds and shapes her mana, so she doesn’t have to hold it all in her head. Like a… a template.”

  “A shaping core for earth-aspected mana?” Kael suggested, blinking.

  Dain stared at him, then shook his head, a faint, bewildered smile on his face. “Sure, Kael. That.”

  Toren remained his primary source of chaotic data and his passport to the wider Outpost. Now that the sucking mud was hardening into passable ground, Kael’s campaign to explore intensified. He became a master of the strategic tantrum—always deployed when Toren was about to go play with Jace and Mila, never when Dain was in a mood to say no. After a particularly impressive performance involving fake tears and clutching Toren’s tunic with heartbreaking desperation, Elara relented.

  “Alright, alright! But you stay with Toren, you hold his hand, and you come back the moment Aya calls. Do you understand?”

  Kael nodded, the picture of solemn obedience. Supervised freedom, at last.

  Aya followed a few paces behind them, watchful in her quiet way, while one of the manor guards lingered farther back, close enough to intervene, distant enough to pretend this was an ordinary outing.

  The Outpost beyond the villa’s garden wall was a revelation of a different sort than Veldros. Where Veldros was polished and complete, the Outpost had settled into itself—new stone still pale, edges still sharp, but its purpose no longer in question. And his brother’s friends were perfect guides to its chorus.

  Jace, the gardener’s son, was a year older than Toren, a lanky boy with dirt perpetually under his nails and a practical, observational mind. Mila, the cook’s daughter, was 6 years of age, sharp-eyed and fiercely pragmatic, with a no-nonsense attitude that cut through Toren’s grand fantasies.

  Their first real adventure as a trio-plus-baby-brother began with a crisis: Toren’s favorite wooden sword, “Dragon’s Bane,” had been lost during a previous skirmish near the new tanner’s yard.

  “It’s behind the big vats,” Toren declared, hands on his hips. “I just know it. We have to launch a rescue mission.”

  “It’s a stick, Toren,” Mila said, rolling her eyes. “They probably used it for kindling.”

  “It is not a stick! It has a wrapped hilt! And a… a slightly chipped crossguard! It’s a knight’s weapon!”

  “It’s a chewed-up piece of firewood,” Jace muttered, but he was already looking towards the tanner’s yard with interest. “Old Man Hargrove’s place though… he’s got those big, sloshing vats of who-knows-what. And his watchdog. That thing’s mean.”

  “See? A quest!” Toren’s eyes lit up. “We have to be stealthy! Like scouts! Like Vette!”

  Kael, holding Toren’s hand, felt a familiar spark of interest. This was going to be loud, poorly planned, and educational—mostly in what not to do around large teeth.

  The tanner’s yard was on the edge of the more industrialized sector, a place of strong, acrid smells and constant, low noise. They approached from the leeward side, creeping between stacks of drying hides stretched on frames. The watchdog, a shaggy, barrel-chested beast with teeth yellowed by brine, was tethered to a post near the main shed, asleep in a patch of sun. Tiered, yes—but an animal, not a monster, and temperament shaped more by habit than hunger.

  “Okay,” Toren whispered, adopting a crouch. “Jace, you’re the distraction. Mila, you’re the lookout. Kael, you’re… the secret weapon. I’ll go in.”

  “Why am I the distraction?” Jace hissed. “Last time I was the distraction for your ‘treasure hunt,’ I got stuck in a bramble patch for an hour!”

  “Because you’re fast! And good with animals!”

  “That thing is not an animal; it’s a furry barrel with teeth!”

  “Will you both shut up?” Mila snapped, peering around a hide. “The ‘secret weapon’ is picking his nose. This is a doomed operation.” She glanced at Kael, who was indeed idly exploring a nostril while his [Spatial Observation] passively mapped the yard. “See?”

  “I have a plan,” Kael stated, removing his finger. His voice was calm, cutting through their whispers. He pointed to a spot fifteen feet from the dog, where a broken crate of dried, salted fish skins had spilled. “The dog is asleep, but its nose is twitching. Wind is from that way, carrying our smell away, but also the fish smell towards it. If someone,” he looked at Jace, “can very quietly move a few of those fish skins upwind, the scent might cover our approach and keep it interested if it wakes up.”

  Three pairs of eyes blinked at him. Toren’s were filled with brotherly awe. Jace’s were suspicious. Mila’s were recalculating.

  “...That’s actually not stupid,” Mila conceded.

  “I told you he’s smart!” Toren whispered triumphantly.

  Jace sighed. “Fine. Fish duty. But if I get bitten, I’m telling my dad it was your idea, Toren.” He moved off with a surprising, silent grace, befitting a boy who spent his life avoiding being seen while pilfering berries.

  The operation was a masterclass in toddler-led tactical chaos. Jace successfully created a fish-scent buffer zone. Mila, from her perch, gave a sharp nod. Toren, with exaggerated slowness, began his infiltration towards the gloomy area behind the enormous oak vats.

  And Kael watched. He tracked the dog’s breathing rhythm, the twitch of its ears. He calculated the sightlines from the tanner’s open workshop door. He saw the glint of Toren’s lost sword, half-submerged in a pile of wood shavings. When Toren, in his excitement, kicked a small stone that clinked against a vat, Kael’s spatial sense flared. He saw the sound wave travel, saw the dog’s ear flick a half-second before it began to growl and stir.

  “Jace, now!” Mila hissed.

  Jace, from his position, gave a low, whistling chirp—a perfect imitation of a ground-squirrel. The dog’s head snapped towards the sound and the tantalizing fish scent. It woofed, got to its feet, and strained at its rope, now fixated on the potential treat upwind.

  Toren seized the moment, grabbed his sword, and scrambled back. They retreated in a giggling, hushed rush, collapsing behind the hide stacks several yards away, hearts pounding with success.

  “We did it!” Toren crowed, holding up the grimy sword. “Dragon’s Bane is rescued! And Kael’s plan worked!”

  “It was an okay plan,” Mila said, but she was smiling. She looked at Kael with new respect. “How’d you know about the wind?”

  Kael shrugged. “Saw the grass bending.” It was a lie; [Spatial Observation] had modeled the air currents. But it was a believable lie.

  Jace clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him over. “Not bad, little lord. For a baby.” It was the highest praise.

  From the edge of the square, Aya pinched the bridge of her nose in silent despair, while the guard turned deliberately away, shoulders shaking as he fought down laughter. Neither stepped in. They kept their distance, watchful but restrained, letting the boys’ games run their course.

  That afternoon cemented Kael’s place in their group. He was not just Toren’s appendage; he was the strange, quiet strategist. They dragged him along to watch the Stoneborn masons, where Jace would explain, with genuine passion, how the different rocks were chosen for foundations versus walls. Mila would critique the efficiency of the work crews, pointing out where two people were getting in each other’s way. “My mum runs the kitchen better than this,” she’d sniff.

  And Kael listened, learned, and filed it all away. He saw the world through their eyes: Jace’s connection to growing things, Mila’s drive for order and utility, Toren’s focus on glory and protection. Combat and Utility. Force and Foundation. They were all preparing, in their own ways, for the day their five skill slots would open.

  -

  Back at the villa, his private experiments took a new turn after the incident with the ball and Vette. Her cryptic lesson, See the path complete before you start, resonated in his mind. It wasn’t just about throwing. It was about intentionality. About imposing the desired outcome onto reality before action was taken.

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  He began to practice in earnest. He’d set up a simple course in a secluded corner of the courtyard: three different-sized pots at different heights and distances. His goal wasn’t to hit them by trial and error. His goal was to know, with absolute certainty, that the stone in his hand would land in the left pot, then the right, then the high one, in succession. He would spend minutes just standing, [Spatial Observation] active, running the simulations in his mind. He’d feel the weight of the stone, the muscle tension required, the arc—not as a hope, but as a memory of something that hadn’t happened yet.

  He failed. Miserably and often. Stones went wild, clattering against walls, missing by feet. The disconnect between his mind’s perfect model and his body’s clumsy execution was infuriating.

  A week into this frustrating routine, her voice came again from the shadows, as if she’d been waiting for him to exhaust his first wave of enthusiasm.

  “You are fighting your body.”

  Vette was perched on the low garden wall, a silhouette against the grey sky. “You see the end. Good. But you command your arm as if it is a separate thing. It is not. The path is not just for the stone. It is for your bones, your muscles, your breath. They are all part of the throw. You must see yourself completing the motion.”

  Kael frowned, picking up another smooth river stone. Integrate the actuator into the trajectory model. The body is part of the system, not the user. It was a paradigm shift.

  He closed his eyes. This time, he didn’t just see the stone’s flight. He saw his own tiny body. He felt the coil of his legs, the pivot of his hip, the whip of his spine, the snap of his wrist—not as isolated movements, but as a single, unified kinetic chain that existed for the purpose of launching the stone along that specific arc. The stone was merely the endpoint.

  He opened his eyes, wound up, and threw.

  The stone flew true and smooth, but with a new, fluid authority. It didn’t just hit the left pot; it landed dead center with a solid, satisfying clunk.

  He didn’t smile. He was too busy analyzing the feedback. The feel of it. The unity.

  “Better.” Vette’s voice held a note of approval. “Now do it again. Until the seeing is faster than the thinking. Until it is a reflex.” She paused. “This is not just for pots and stones. It is for everything. A step. A dodge. A cut.” She touched the hilt of her dagger. “The path exists before the enemy knows you have moved.”

  She slipped off the wall and was gone, leaving Kael with a heart pounding not from exertion, but from revelation. This was a foundational principle of combat in this world, and she’d just given him the first key. Kinesthetic pre-cognition. Action as a confirmed reality before initiation.

  It reminded him, distantly, of the old days—foam weapons, shouted rules, and choreographed chaos in muddy fields. Back then, anticipation had been a game, a shared illusion where everyone politely agreed to be hit when the timing looked right. This was different. There were no calls, no resets, no safety lines drawn in chalk and laughter. Here, the world did not wait for intent to become action. It simply answered it.

  He practiced until his arm ached, each throw no longer a game of pretend, but a commitment—each motion a wager placed before reality itself. Every clean release felt earned, every success a quiet confirmation. A prayer to the god of causality, answered not with mercy, but with truth. Each hit was a tiny sacrament, and this time, the altar was real.

  -

  The rhythm of his days was shattered in the month of Budding, when the island shrugged off the last of its chill and erupted in a frenzy of green and blossoms. The Albun villa, usually a bastion of organized, purposeful activity, retreated into a stifling, hushed silence. Servants spoke in whispers. The cheerful clatter from the kitchen was absent. An air of solemn anticipation thickened the air, so potent even the enchanted vines framing the windows seemed to grow still.

  Mila, Marta’s daughter and Toren’s frequent playmate, was turning seven.

  Kael understood instantly. This was the Great Divide. He positioned himself in his chosen corner of the sun-drenched parlor, a small, observant shadow. The entire household seemed to have gathered, layered in unspoken hierarchy. Dain stood like a pillar near the hearth, Elara beside him, her hand finding his arm. Aya was a statue by the service door.

  Korin and Boran flanked the main entrance, not as guards, but as witnesses. Astyo sat quietly, her geode at her feet glowing with a subdued, steady pulse. Vette was absent—or, more likely, present in a way no one could detect.

  They no longer lived under Dain’s roof; each had claimed a small villa of their own along the ridge road, close enough for a shared fire, distant enough for privacy. They could have stayed away. No duty required their presence tonight. But Mila had been part of their lives for four years now—long enough to become more than the captain’s child, long enough for habit to harden into attachment. And so they came, not as a team on rotation, but as people who wished to be there.

  Mila sat on a simple stool in the center, washed and scrubbed raw, wearing a dress that was clearly too stiff and new. Marta and Bram, Mila’s father, stood behind her, a study in contrasting anxiety: Marta’s hands fluttered, then stilled, then twisted her apron; Bram was a carved monument, only the intensity of his gaze betraying his tension.

  Bram worked the stone yards beyond the eastern cut, shaping blocks for the Outpost’s final walls and roads. He and Marta lived in the masons’ quarter, close enough to the dust and hammer-song that it never truly left their clothes or their lives. Stone had taught him patience, endurance, and how to endure pressure without showing cracks—and now, with his daughter seated before him, those lessons were being tested harder than any slab he had ever set.

  Captain Rylan had already seen to the rest. The watch was set, patrols briefed, and the Outpost guard reminded—quietly and without fuss—that the evening required nothing more than their usual diligence. He gave Dain a single nod afterward, a simple formality between professionals: all accounted for, nothing expected, nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Greetings, kin of Albun.”

  The woman entered without ceremony, yet the room shifted around her all the same. Kael saw a figure wrapped in layered greys and deep blues, cloth that moved like mist caught between solid moments. Her hair was bound in thin, woven cords threaded with faintly glowing sigils that dimmed as she crossed the threshold, as if the room itself had swallowed their light.

  She did not walk so much as arrive—each step precise, unhurried, placed where it had clearly already decided to be. Kael felt it before he understood it: space tightening, then relaxing, like a breath taken and released.

  Only after she had fully entered did the adults shift, straighten, and incline their heads. Someone murmured her name in a tone that held both respect and caution.

  Anya, they called her. The Weaver of the Path.

  She carried no staff, no obvious tool, but her presence commanded the room’s energy, bending the silence around her. Her eyes, a clear, unsettling grey, took in every detail—the worn but proudly kept tapestry, the fine yet understated furnishings of a noble house built for function rather than ceremony, and the faces of the frontier family and their formidable retainers.

  “I am Anya. I have come from the Temple of the Unfolding Path in Veldros to guide Mila through her Awakening.” Her voice was not loud, but it layered itself into the quiet, impossible to ignore.

  “We stand in a home, not a temple,” she said, her gaze briefly lifting toward the ceiling, as if seeing the half-finished stone and scaffolding beyond the walls. “This is… uncommon. But the Outpost’s temple is not yet complete, and the roots of a path matter all the same. To begin where one is loved is no small thing.”

  She approached Mila, who trembled visibly. “Be at ease, child. Today, you do not reach for the System. Today, it reaches for you. You need only allow what comes.”

  Anya’s hands began to move. They traced patterns in the air that seemed to pull at the very light, leaving behind lingering, silvery afterimages that smelled of ozone and cold starlight. She didn’t chant, but a low, harmonic hum emanated from her, vibrating in Kael’s teeth. The mundane sunlight in the room grew thick, charged. Dust motes hung suspended.

  Mila gasped as a soft, white-gold light kindled within her own chest. It seeped out, outlining her small form. Anya’s movements became more precise, faster, her fingers weaving the emitted light, shaping it, guiding it up to form a delicate, complex lattice of energy around Mila’s head.

  Her gaze swept the circle, steady and precise. “Before the age of seven, the soul is still settling into its form. Power forced into it too early fractures instead of flowing. Left too long, and the System grows… impatient. That is why the Awakening is guided, not delayed, and never rushed.”

  She let the silence linger for a breath. “There was a time before this tradition. Before guidance. Before safeguards. Then, awakenings happened as the System willed—unguided, abrupt, and often brutal. Many survived only in part. Others did not survive at all.”

  Her voice did not soften. “What we do here exists because that cost was deemed unacceptable.”

  “When the Awakening completes,” Anya continued, “those chambers open fully. Five slots. Empty, visible, and under pressure. What you place into them first matters more than most ever realize.”

  Five blank slots, Kael thought, his [Spatial Observation] straining to parse the intricate energy web. The universe's way of saying 'Here's your character sheet, try not to die before you fill it out.' The pressure is real.

  The luminous lattice flared once, brilliantly, then collapsed inward, sinking into Mila’s skin. She shuddered, her eyes flying open. They were wide, unfocused, staring at something no one else could see. The charged atmosphere snapped, leaving the room feeling ordinary again, but irrevocably changed.

  “It is done,” Anya said, stepping back. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her brow. “The pathways are open. The chambers await.”

  Marta choked back a sob. Bram’s hand found her shoulder, his grip white-knuckled.

  Mila blinked slowly. “Status…” she breathed the word like a secret. Her gaze was fixed on empty air, scanning. The room hung on her silence.

  “Well?” Bram’s voice was a gravelly scrape. “Can you see it?”

  Mila nodded, dazed. “It’s… there. My name. And… five lines. Five empty lines.” A flicker of relief crossed her face, quickly tempered by the quiet weight of what that space represented. “They’re really empty.”

  A few smiles followed, small and knowing. Toren let out a satisfied hum, his grin returning as if things had unfolded exactly as they should. Dain gave a single, firm nod—confirmation, not surprise.

  Dain spoke then, his voice cutting through the emotional haze with pragmatic clarity. “For the young ones here,” he said, his eyes including Toren and Kael, “the screen she sees now shows eight attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Agility, Willpower, and Perception. For a child newly Awakened, they will be low. Five is common. Ten is the measure of a grown, healthy 14 years old when the class is unlocked.” His gaze hardened as it returned to Mila. “Mila, listen. You will see numbers by those words. You will tell them to your parents. You will tell them to no one else. Not to friends, not to rivals. That knowledge is a vulnerability. It reveals your weaknesses. Guard it.”

  Mila, pale but determined, nodded. “Yes, Lord Dain.”

  Anya inclined her head once, satisfied. “That concludes my duty here. The road has been long, and the rite takes its toll.” She stepped back, already ceding the space to the family. “I will take my leave.”

  -

  Later, after the formalities, after the small, subdued celebration where Mila was the center of a quiet, hopeful attention, Kael lurked. The adults lingered over spiced cider. He caught the tail end of the conversation between Dain and Garin near the study’s oak door.

  “...most folks, even from decent lines, settle,” Garin was saying, his voice low. “A [Guardian] is a fine, honorable Class. A [Hearth Mage] can warm a city. They see the requirements for a [Stonewall Juggernaut] or a [Pyretic Archon] and choose the safer, surer path. The difference is in the foundation laid before seven, and the courage to walk the sharper edge afterwards.”

  Dain grunted, the sound acknowledging a hard truth. “Aye. I was pushed. My father saw I had the seed for it. When my Class manifested at fourteen, I had three skills at Rare-tier and two high in Uncommon. It was the only reason my first Rare path didn’t shatter me. At Level One, even a T3 class is little more than promise, and the early delves were crowded with monsters far too strong for initiates. But progress demanded risk. Experience, titles, true growth—they came only when failure was possible. That was why no one dragged a party of fresh Level Ones behind a seasoned veteran; safety bred stagnation, and stagnation was its own kind of death. By the time I reached my third evolution, the [Aegis-Sword Warlord], I had already been tempered by choices that could have broken me.”

  He paused, his gaze distant. “I still aim for that final consolidation into true Tier Three. Three hundred years…” He said it not with avarice, but with the stark, weary reverence of a soldier who understood the value of a secure citadel.

  “A long life isn’t just more time,” he continued. “It’s a strategic resource. It allows for compounding interest on power, for rebuilding after losses, for true mastery.”

  His expression tightened, just slightly. “Beyond that lies the fourth evolution—but Tier Four demands more than refinement. It requires an Epic path to even open the door.” He shook his head once, not in frustration, but in honest assessment. “And I do not know if the life I am leading now is one that would ever call such a thing forth.”

  Garin nodded, swirling his cider. “And Vitality determines when that long life begins to cost you,” he said. “Tier decides how long the road is. Vitality decides where old age starts walking beside you.”

  He glanced toward the fire, thoughtful. “A Tier Three with modest Vitality may see three centuries—but they’ll feel the years by two hundred. Grey hair, stiff joints, the slow narrowing of margins. Raise that Vitality high enough, and the decline is pushed back. The body holds its prime longer. A century, sometimes more.”

  His gaze sharpened slightly. “That is why cultivation matters. Not for power, but for time spent strong. The diet, the rest cycles, the therapies—none of it is indulgence. It is an investment in delaying decay, in ensuring that when experience peaks, the body has not already begun to fail. A House does not cultivate Vitality to live longer.”

  He took a sip. “It cultivates it to grow old later.”

  Kael’s mind, already racing, locked onto the terminology. Compounding interest. Strategic resource. Capital expenditure. They were framing power and longevity in the cold, precise language of economics and engineering. It made terrifying sense.

  So the secret to living three hundred years is a relentless, lifelong regimen of diet, exercise, and not getting stabbed, he mused, the thought laced with his signature dry cynicism. Fantastic. The path to immortality is basically just extreme adulting with better special effects. If a monster doesn’t eat you first.

  Kael absorbed every syllable. The puzzle was now complete, and the picture it formed was one of meticulous, lifelong architecture. He understood, with devastating clarity, why every moment of Toren’s childhood was a curated blend of play, drill, study, and rest. It was about constructing the physical and mental vessel—the high-Vitality, resilient body and the disciplined mind—that could support the weight of powerful Skills, which would define a powerful Class, which would enable a high Tier, which would grant the centuries needed to refine it all further. Childhood was the pouring of the foundation.

  He looked down at his own small, soft hands. He had just turned two. He had five years until his own Awakening. Five years where the System would be blind to his progress, but where reality would not. Five years to build in secret.

  I have five years, he thought, the plan unfolding with crystalline, ruthless logic. Five years to refine my ‘unsanctioned’ skills—[Spatial Observation] and whatever else I can will into being. If I can push them to an evolved state, to a tier that makes Weaver Anya blink, before the System even knocks on my door…

  The implications were staggering. He wouldn’t just be ahead. He would be operating on a different plane. When he finally unlocked his five official System skill slots at seven, he wouldn’t be starting from zero. He’d be a master programmer booting up a new interface, his core systems already debugged and optimized. All his cognitive power could be focused on grinding those new, System-approved Skills from minute one.

  He wouldn’t just be ahead of the curve. He’d be on an entirely different curve.

  A slow, internal grin spread through him, the kind that had nothing to do with being a toddler and everything to do with the joy of a perfectly defined, infinitely complex engineering challenge.

  Game on, he thought, watching Mila across the room, now nervously trying to levitate a breadcrumb with furious, futile concentration. I’m going to make those five slots a symphony. But first… I need to make sure my foundation is diamond. Time to get to work.