The alarm on his phone went off at six‑fifteen, the same generic chime he'd never bothered to change. Caelan Ashford lay still for a moment, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that had been there since they moved him to this room three years ago.
He could hear his younger brother through the wall.
Leo was thirteen, and already louder than anyone else in the house. Probably heading to the east wing for morning practice. Cale pictured him moving through the corridors with that easy confidence, the way he carried himself like he already knew he mattered.
Cale hadn't woken up that way since he was ten. Back when his parents still looked at him like he might be something.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His room was cold—the old section of the manor never got proper heat—and the floorboards creaked in the same spots they always did. He dressed without thinking in a dark sweater, worn jeans, the same things he wore most days. No cool outfit for him. He wasn't really going anywhere.
He caught his reflection in the window. Dark hair, pale skin, eyes that looked older than sixteen. The Ashford features, as his mother liked to call it. The blood of the Golden House.
The blood that had apparently skipped him. He thought.
Before leaving, he pulled up the system interface—by thinking about it. A translucent screen appeared in his vision, grey and inert.
User: Cale Ashford
Status: Dormant
Sign: —
Affinities: —
Echoes —
Memories —
The same thing he'd seen every day for the last two years. Useless. He dismissed it with a blink and headed downstairs.
In the hallway, he passed his sister Valeriana's room. The door was open, and she was sitting at her desk, her back straight, a small flame of sticky crimson blood dancing in her palm. She was turning fifteen later this year, and she'd awakened last year. Already she could control it better than most her age.
She looked up as he passed. Her expression flickered—something between pity and guilt—before she looked back at her "practice of art".
He didn't stop.
Downstairs, the house was already awake. Servants moved in the kitchens. Through the dining room doors he caught a glimpse of his father reading a tablet at the head of the table, his mother beside him with coffee. Neither looked up.
His youngest Sister, Livia, was at the sideboard spooning yogurt into a bowl. She was seven, still too young for an awakening, but she already had that Ashford confidence. She gave him a small wave smiling showcasing her gold braces which made her look quite cute. He waved back, grabbed an apple, and slipped out through the garden entrance.
The morning air was sharp, smelling of damp stone and the sea. He walked the path behind the manor, past the old training yard where he used to watch his siblings practice. It was empty now. The targets were scorched and pitted from years of use. A training dummy had a neat hole burned through its chest—Leo's work, probably.
Cale took a bite of his apple and kept walking.
The path led to the family mausoleum, a squat stone building tucked against the cliff. He didn't go inside. Instead he sat on the low wall surrounding it and looked out at the city below.
Veridian spread out beneath him. The academy sat on its own hill across the bay, where everyone in the city could see it far off. The Zōdiakos building was catching the early sun. He'd been inside once, when he was twelve, before everyone gave up on him. The halls had seemed impossibly large, filled with students in his present age then, who could already summon fire and shape stone.
He pulled up the system again. Still grey. Still silent.
User: Cale Ashford
Status: Dormant
Sign: —
Affinities: —
Echoes —
Memories —
He'd read everything he could about the system. Every awakened had one, though most got it just before they turned 15. With powers to prove it. For some reason his had appeared two years ago, blank and useless. The instructors at the academy had looked at it and shaken their heads. An anomaly, they'd said. We've never seen anything like it they said. But according to similar experiences He'll likely never awaken.
He dismissed it and finished his apple.
When he got back to the house, his father was leaving for the Conclave. His mother was in her study. Valeriana and Leo were in the east wing training together. Livia was in the garden with one of her many tutors.
Cale climbed the stairs to his room, planning to spend the afternoon with a hard sleep and maybe read a web novel or two.
He was halfway up when he heard voices below.
"—waste of space, honestly. Can't even do a basic stuff. His practically the most useless in this house."
"Shh. He might hear you."
"Who cares? He knows that it is the truth."
He kept climbing. He'd heard worse.
The afternoon passed like most afternoons. He read a history of the Fracture from the sky—the same one he'd read a dozen times—and tried not to think about the grey translucent screen that followed him everywhere. By evening, the house had filled with the sounds of dinner preparations. He stayed in his room.
A knock came, he almost didn't answer. He focus was on his phone reading a web novel a chapter that was released today.
"Cale?"
His mother. He opened the door to find her standing in the hallway in a silk dress, her dark hair pinned up. She looked like she was going out.
"We're dining with the Leonis family tonight," she said. "I wanted to remind you to stay in or do whatever it is you do while they're here. Just stay out of sight at least in the diner"
He nodded. It wasn't a surprise.
"I know it's difficult," she added, and for a moment her voice softened. "But help me and help yourself. You know the Leonis are… particular. They wouldn't understand.An that wouldn't be nice for the Ashford kin would it?" she said. She probably was the only person who felt his pain and tried to sympathise with him some times. But he wasn't even sure that was genuine.
They wouldn't understand, he thought after she had left. They wouldn't understand why the heir of House Ashford can't even boast of a Zodiac Sign.
He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled up the system, just to see it again.
User: Cale Ashford
Status: Dormant
Sign: —
Affinities: —
Echoes —
Memories —
For a moment—just a moment—he thought he saw something flicker at the bottom of the screen. A line of text, gone before he could read it.
He blinked. The screen was grey and still.
Imagining things, he told himself. But his heart was beating faster.
He stood up. He was tired of this room, tired of hiding, tired of being the secret the family kept from the other houses. He walked to the door and opened it.
He could hear them in the dining hall. Voices, laughter, the clink of glasses. The Leonis would be in there now, with their gold pins and their perfect manners, pretending not to notice the Ashford son who never appeared.
He turned the other way. Toward the east wing. Toward the training hall.
The hall was empty when he got there. The targets were set up. He stood in the center of the room and closed his eyes.
Do something, he told himself. Anything.
He reached for the cold knot in his chest, the way he'd done a thousand times. It was there, always there, but it never moved. It sat in him like a dead thing.
He pulled up the system. Grey. Useless.
Do something.
Nothing.
He opened his eyes. The room was still. His hands were dry. The cold knot sat stubborn and silent.
He slammed his fist into the nearest target. With rage and anger welling up at his core. He couldn't take this anymore.
Pain shot up his arm. Tears streamed down his eyes. The target barely swayed. He hit it again, and again, until his knuckles were raw and bleeding and his breath came in ragged gasps.
"Stupid, Stupid Stupid!" he muttered, striking his forehead against the padding. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
The cold knot in his chest twitched.
He went still.
It twitched again, like something waking up. He felt it spread—not the familiar pressure, but something deeper, something that reached into his bones and pulled.
The system screen flickered.
He stared at it, hardly breathing. The grey was bleeding away, replaced by lines of text scrolling too fast to read. A sound filled his ears—something between a chime and a hum—and then the screen settled.
User: Cale Ashford
Status: Awakened
Rank: E
Sign: Scorpio
Stage: Awakened
Aspect: — (pending)
Element: Water/Ice (ICE Dorminant)
Affinities: 1 (Scorpio)
Special Powers: Frostbite, Regenesis, Death Sense, Scorpion's Grip
Mauri: 0/400
Memory: —
Echo: —
Flaw: —
Orbs Absorbed: —
Seals: 12 (1 active)
```
Frost bloomed across his hands.
He stared at the white crystals crawling over his skin, spreading up his wrists. The air around him turned cold enough to see his breath. The system screen pulsed once, and a new line appeared at the bottom.
Sign detected: Scorpio
He now felt different, Stronger, cold power welling behind his soul.
Ice erupted from his palms, shattering the padded board into frozen splinters. The shockwave threw him backward, and he hit the floor hard, his head cracking against the stone.
He lay there, gasping, as the cold receded and the frost on his hands melted into water.
The ceiling spun above him. The room smelled of ozone and frozen dust.
He lifted his hands. They were wet, shaking.
The system screen hovered in the corner of his vision, no longer grey. He could feel it now, a presence in the back of his mind, it was no more like a card but like an operating system in a computer only in his mind. He heard people say this but he never really understood.
User: Cale Ashford
Status: Awakened
Rank: E
Sign: Scorpio
Stage: Awakened
Aspect: — (pending)
Element: Water/Ice
Affinities: 1 (Scorpio)
Special Powers: Frostbite, Regenesis, Death Sense, Scorpion's Grip
Aether Pool: Low
Memory: —
Echo: —
Flaw: —
Seals: 12 (1 active)
```
He stared at it for a long time, listening to his heartbeat slow. Somewhere in the house, a door opened and closed. Voices drifted down the hall. No one came to the training hall.
He sat up slowly, his head throbbing.
The target was gone, replaced by a pile of frozen shards scattered across the floor. The wall behind it had a crack running through the stone.
He looked at his hands, then at the screen, then at the door. He hoped no one would notice the cracks on the wall. Which was of course a pipe dream. But what does it cost to hope.
No one came.
He laughed. It came out sharp and broken, and he pressed his hand to his mouth to stifle it.
Right back at you, he thought. They have to find out.
But when he walked back through the house, past the dining hall where the Leonis family laughed with his parents, no one noticed him. No one saw his red bloody knuckles or his damp sleeves.
He went to his room, closed the door, and sat on the edge of his bed with his hands in his lap.
The system screen was still there, but he noticed something off.
Seals: 12 (1 active)
That line he hadn't seen it ever in any of the description of the system.
He didn't know what that meant. He didn't know why his screen had been different from everyone else's, or why it had appeared years before he awakened. But something had changed tonight. Something had begun at least for him.
He didn't sleep that night. He sat by the window, watching the lights of Veridian flicker across the bay, through his window and he waited patiently for the presence morning.