Fourteen.
There was something strange about waking up on the morning of your birthday and realizing the mirror no longer showed the boy you thought you knew.
I stood before it now, eyes narrowed, taking in the reflection that stared back.
Taller—by at least a handspan since last winter. My frame had begun to stretch, shedding the soft roundness of childhood. My shoulders had broadened slightly, my limbs less clumsy now, more deliberate in how they moved.
The long hours in the courtyard, the cold air biting at my skin, had sculpted definition into my arms and legs. I wasn't bulky, not yet—but lean, like a blade still in the process of being sharpened.
My face had changed too.
The youthful softness around my cheeks had faded. My jaw was more defined, the lines of my face sharper, more mature. The silver-blonde hair—so unmistakably Vinterheim—had grown just long enough to brush against my brow, though I kept it trimmed. I didn't like it when it got in my eyes.
And those eyes…
Pale, glacial blue. Still the same, and yet not. There was something deeper in them now. Not age, not quite. But weight. Awareness. I remembered too much for someone my age—memories from before this life and after. The kind of knowing that didn't belong in the face of a fourteen-year-old noble boy.
The servants said I was handsome now.
They didn't say it to me directly—just little murmurs I overheard when they thought I wasn't listening. "His Highness has grown so tall, hasn't he?" "He looks just like Lord Alistair at that age—so striking." "There's a calmness about him, like the snow before a storm."
I didn't know what to make of that.
Handsome felt like a word that belonged to someone else—someone with more confidence than I had yet earned. But when I passed the glass and saw the subtle way I carried myself now—the straighter spine, the steady gaze—I couldn't deny that I'd changed.
"Claude?"
I turned.
Father stood at the door, dressed not in court finery but in the dark velvet tunic he wore when we were alone. His hair was swept neatly back, his presence as composed and commanding as ever.
"You've been quiet this morning," he said, stepping into the room.
"I was just... thinking." I looked down at my hands. They were bigger now too. Less like a child's, more like a young man's. "I don't feel like a child anymore."
Father studied me for a long moment, then approached. He placed a firm hand on my shoulder.
"You're not," he said simply.
I looked up at him.
He didn't smile, but there was warmth in his gaze—a rare thing, from him. "You've grown well, my son. Not just in body. In presence. In restraint."
"Is that a compliment?" I asked lightly.
"It's truth. You're of Vinterheim blood, Claude. You carry it well."
I nodded, unsure what to say.
Father gave my shoulder one last squeeze before stepping back. "Come down when you're ready. Your mother is waiting."
He left me alone again.
I looked back into the mirror, slower this time. Not searching for flaws. Just seeing myself—truly—for the first time in a long while.
Fourteen.
And already, the path ahead had begun to frost over.
But I would walk it still.
The frost in my veins stirred differently now.
Where once my mana had been like the soft hiss of falling snow—quiet, scattered, and unpredictable—it now pulsed with rhythm. It responded to me, not like a wild animal to be tamed, but like a companion that recognized its master's voice.
I had leapt a tier.
From Awakened—Stage V to Initiate—Stage III.
It had not been loud. No burst of light. No storm of ice. Just… a stillness. A moment, during morning meditation, when everything aligned. The threads of mana in my core had solidified with clarity—no longer a fragile shell, but a structure. Defined. Purposeful.
It hummed now when I drew upon it.
The difference was undeniable. My control was tighter. Ice obeyed my will faster, forming into cleaner shapes, more refined edges. The cold no longer numbed my fingers. Instead, it welcomed me—wrapped around my thoughts like silk.
I hadn't told anyone yet.
Not Father. Not Mother. Not the court instructors. Not even the retainers who oversaw my daily routine. There was something precious about keeping this one thing to myself for now. A quiet pride. A step forward taken in silence.
Later that morning, I stood at the edge of the courtyard, the winter wind brushing past, and raised a gloved hand.
A flick of my fingers.
Thin shards of frost crystallized in the air, dancing in delicate spirals before they faded. No longer jagged and unstable. No longer draining. I could summon them and dismiss them with ease now, without strain, without trembling.
My breath came out in a slow exhale. I watched it coil in the cold.
'Initiate.'
I repeated the word silently to myself. It sounded heavier. Older. Like a title earned rather than inherited.
This wasn't the limit.
I had tasted strength before—true strength. In another life. I remembered what it felt like to command power that bent the very laws of nature. This… this was only the beginning.
But here, at fourteen, I stood taller. Sharper. Stronger.
And I hadn't even begun to climb.
I no longer recognized the boy I used to be.
There were still echoes—faint reminders in the mirror of soft features and curious eyes—but they were fading fast. My jaw had begun to sharpen, shedding the last hints of childhood's roundness.
My limbs were longer now, shoulders broader, though they had yet to fill out with the full weight of adulthood. Even my voice had started to shift—lower, quieter when I spoke, but firmer, more resolute.
There were times I caught the servants glancing twice, pausing with a tray or bowing a heartbeat slower. Not out of fear—Vinterheim bred no tyrants—but out of recognition. Of change. The boy who once trailed behind his father now stood taller than many of them.
I moved differently too. Not just from training—though there had been plenty—but because I understood my body now. Every step, every breath, every glance in a corridor felt deliberate. No wasted energy. No childish flinching. Only presence.
It was strange, in a way. The soul inside me had lived far longer than these fourteen years, yet this vessel still carried the awkward beauty of youth. Caught between boy and man. A contradiction, wearing a crown of ice no one else could see.
Sometimes I stood before the tall glass in my chambers, ungloved, and stared at my hands.
There were callouses now—new ones. The faint trace of bladework, of mana channeling. I flexed them slowly, watching the tendons shift beneath the skin. Not large hands. Not brutish. But precise.
The kind of hands that would one day hold a kingdom—or crush one.
'Is this what they see?' I often wondered. The servants. The knights. Even Mother and Father. 'Do they see what I am becoming, or just the polished heir they always expected?'
I wasn't sure yet which was worse.
The wind carried a bite, as it always did in the north, but I welcomed it now.
I pulled my fur-lined cloak tighter around my shoulders as I stepped through the archway of the eastern wing. The estate sprawled wide and proud beneath the overcast sky, its rooftops dusted with pale frost that never truly melted. Ice clung to the edges of the stone like it belonged there—as if the manor itself breathed winter.
This was Vinterheim.
And it was mine to know.
I moved through the grounds with a quiet ease, nodding once to the gatekeepers stationed at the courtyard edge. Their bows were crisp, respectful, but no longer overdone. I had grown among them. They were familiar now, yet no less formal.
The training yard stood empty at this hour, save for the faint scuff marks of worn boots and dulled blades left behind in the snow-packed ground.
I paused for a moment beside the northern balcony, the one overlooking the lower village path. My eyes traced the winding road that led out into the valley, where smoke curled gently from chimneys and the people of the Vinterheim domain carried on with quiet strength.
'My people,' I thought.
It felt strange, that word.
I hadn't earned them, not yet—not truly. But I would. One day.
Past the stables, where the horses stamped and breathed steam into the air, and beyond the frost-covered gardens that slumbered in seasonal silence, I stopped at a small marble alcove tucked between the main manor and the watchtower wall.
It was a forgotten place. Few visited it now.
The old fountain, long dry, was etched with the faded crest of the Vinterheim bloodline—ice blooming from a sword's hilt. I brushed snow from the edge of the basin, fingers lingering against the cold stone.
'I'm not the same boy who used to run past this place always sneaking out.'
The estate was still familiar, but I no longer saw it with a child's eyes. Every corridor, every wall, every tower carried a weight I hadn't understood before. Responsibility. Legacy. Power.
I straightened, my breath rising in mist.
This was the domain that had shaped me.
And it would become the first stone in the foundation of the world I intended to build.