The year after the fall was the beginning of my true education—not in letters or numbers, but in something far stranger.

  I’d once thought the voices in my head were ghosts, or maybe dreams that had overstayed their welcome. But by the time I was six, I understood they were neither. They were real. They had names. They had pasts. They were Echoes—fragments of something else, someone else, and they had chosen to awaken in me.

  And they weren’t silent.

  “Alright, brat,” Jax barked one morning as I tried and failed to split a log with my child-sized axe. “You swing like you’re petting a kitten. Again. This time, pretend it’s that sniveling butcher’s boy.”

  “You’re going to teach a six-year-old combat technique?” Finn scoffed. “What’s next? War tactics during teatime?”

  “I like teatime,” I muttered aloud. The log didn’t split. My hands were blistered. I could feel Mara watching from the porch.

  “Jax’s method may be crude,” Tyran cut in, “but he’s correct. If Kael’s going to wield anything heavier than a spoon someday, he needs to learn the fundamentals of form, power generation, and stance. Let’s build a schedule.”

  “A schedule?” I said aloud, sweat dripping from my brow. “I’m six!”

  “You’re six, and we’re five. Together, that’s eleven,” Finn quipped. “If math is magic, we’re basically prodigies.”

  “You joke,” said Soren calmly, “but the sooner he starts building muscle memory and cognitive discipline, the more advantage we gain in ter years. Childhood is pstic—trainable.”

  And so began my lessons.

  They taught me things no six-year-old should know.

  Jax taught me how to move my weight when I swung, how to make my fists into weapons, how to read the shift of someone’s shoulders before a blow. His world was made of instincts, danger, heat.

  Tyran introduced logic and structure. He gave me exercises that tested memory, sequences, pattern recognition. I’d sit in the hayloft for hours solving puzzles he whispered into my mind. When I could do them with my eyes closed, he made them harder.

  Finn gave me words. Language. Subtlety. How to read tone and lie with my eyes. He taught me that the world was theater and everyone wore masks—even me.

  Soren made me still. He taught me silence and observation, how to listen with my skin and see with more than just eyes. His teachings were hard to grasp, but when I did, I started noticing things I never had—the tension in Mara’s jaw when she worried, the way the vilge elder’s gaze lingered on me with unease.

  And Siddharth… Siddharth taught me how to endure. How to ask myself questions I didn’t want to hear. His lessons were fewer, quieter, but they always stuck like winter frost on the soul.

  One autumn morning, as the fog curled low over the fields, I asked Mara the question that had been growing inside me like a splinter.

  “Gran,” I said, “do you think I could ever use magic?”

  She turned from milking Dol, wiping her hands on her apron. Her eyes were tired, but kind.

  “Why do you ask, little fox?”

  Little fox—that was her name for me. Said my eyes were always too clever for a human boy.

  “I see the knights ride through town,” I said. “And the mages in blue cloaks with their glowing staffs. Everyone stops to watch them. I want to be like that. I want to be strong. So no one can ever call you names again when I’m not looking.”

  She paused. The bucket creaked. The cow chewed.

  “Magic’s not just a wish, Kael,” she said. “It’s blood, will, and power. Some are born to it. Some... just dream.”

  “But do I have a chance?” I pressed.

  She set the pail down and knelt in front of me, brushing a curl from my forehead. “You might. There’s a test.”

  “A test?”

  She nodded. “When you turn eighteen, the Duke’s men send for commonborn ds and sses from the outlying vilges. They test you for a core—magic dwelling deep inside, like a seed waiting to sprout. If you have one, they send you to the capital. To the academy.”

  My heart pounded. “The one founded by the legendary wizard? The one who built the towers of silver gss?”

  “The very same. The Archmage Erian Myrr. They say his breath lit the stars, and his words turned cities into fire and snow.”

  I looked down at my small, blistered hands. “Do you think I could be like that?”

  She smiled, slow and warm. “I think you could be anything, if the world doesn’t scare it out of you first.”

  That night, I y awake beneath the rafters of the attic, the bnket tucked under my chin. My thoughts ran wild—of glowing sigils, of fmes dancing from my fingertips, of leaping through the sky with lightning under my feet.

  And the Echoes were watching.

  “He wants to be a mage,” Finn said, sounding amused. “Cute.”

  “He could,” Tyran said. “If he builds discipline now. A daily regimen. Martial training, physical strengthening, theoretical study.”

  “We start training him to wield a sword and throw a fireball?” Jax said with a scoff. “I’m in.”

  “No fireballs,” Soren interjected. “Not until he has a fundamental grasp of energy flow, mana conservation, and core structure.”

  “There’s no core yet,” Finn said. “That comes at eighteen. And that’s only if he has one.”

  “He will,” Siddharth said simply. His voice was quiet, but final. “He will, because we’ll make sure he’s ready when the time comes.”

  They all paused.

  Then, for the first time, Tyran said something strange: “We need rules.”

  “Rules?” I echoed aloud.

  “Yes,” Soren answered. “A system. If we are going to share a mind, we need boundaries. A Council. Guidelines.”

  “I agree,” Siddharth said. “We guide Kael. We do not control him. His will is first.”

  “Obviously,” Finn said. “I like breathing.”

  “Rule one,” Tyran said, his voice firm, “Kael retains primary agency. No override. No possession. We are guides, not masters.”

  “Rule two,” Soren added, “No conflicting commands. When advising Kael, we must present options, not contradictory imperatives.”

  “Rule three,” Finn chimed, “Humor is mandatory. Otherwise, this whole thing gets far too grim.”

  “Rule four,” said Jax, “Train the body as well as the mind. No cowards in here.”

  They waited. And then…

  “Rule five,” Siddharth said, “One voice speaks for the Council. One tie-breaker. One anchor. I will take that role.”

  No one argued.

  And just like that, they fell quiet.

  A warmth bloomed in my chest—not fire, not magic, but a sense of direction. Of purpose. I had them. And they had me.

  The next morning, I asked Mara for a new axe.

  “I want to start training,” I told her. “Really training. Not just chores.”

  She gave me a long look. Then she nodded, and handed me one of my grandfather’s old bdes. Too heavy. Too rge.

  Perfect.

  Over the weeks that followed, I trained. I chopped wood until my arms burned. I ran the perimeter of the pasture every dawn. I read every scrap of parchment the vilge scribe would let me borrow. I learned how to breathe in rhythm, how to listen to the wind, how to fall without breaking bones.

  And at night, I dreamed.

  Of magic. Of monsters. Of a life beyond the frostbitten hills of Frostmere.

  Someday, I would reach the capital. I would stand beneath the silver towers of Erian Myrr’s academy. I would hold out my hands, and something inside me would awaken.

  And the world would finally know my name.

  Kael.

  And the five who stood with me.