The year Wade turned ten, his world got louder.
The village expanded, new homes, new faces. Trade caravans passed through more often. Theren took on extra work delivering lumber to the neighboring district. Mira was constantly busy organizing seasonal harvests and tending to sick children whose parents could barely afford candles, let alone medicine.
Riven, now thirteen, was in his golden age of recklessness.
He sparred daily with anyone who could hold a stick. His fire magic had evolved from raw blasts to refined arcs of heat, even a short range burst he used to knock weapons from opponents' hands. Wade watched his brother with awe and a twinge of something darker, something bitter.
Lira, at eleven, was quieter. Focused. Her Wind magic had matured into something precise—featherlight steps that let her run across shallow rivers without breaking the surface, wind barriers that could deflect arrows, even fine control over sound.
She could speak in whispers across entire fields now, her voice carried on threads of air.
Wade, meanwhile, could lift a bucket.
On a good day.
He said it didn't bother him.
And most of the time, it didn't.
He helped Mira garden. Helped Theren with firewood. He studied runes in old books, learned how to read the star charts Lira used for timing wind rituals. He found ways to be useful.
But on clear nights, when the moon lit the roof just right and he could hear Riven's fire whooshing behind the barn—he'd feel it.
That quiet, aching hollow.
Not jealousy. Not rage.
Just… emptiness.
The world around him was growing brighter. Faster. Stronger.
And he was standing still.
One night, he sat alone on the hill above the village, a small chalkboard on his lap, a stub of white chalk in his hand. Around him, fireflies blinked in the grass. The sky stretched wide and dark, full of silent stars.
He didn't cast spells. He drew them.
Circles. Sigils. Elemental arrays based on theories from Lira's scrolls. He didn't understand half of it—but he studied it anyway. He tried to replicate magical formations by drawing them over and over again, mapping their logic, trying to feel them with the tips of his fingers.
Nothing ever happened.
Still, he persisted.
If he couldn't command power… maybe he could understand it.
Then came the incident with the well.
It was late morning. Mira had sent Wade to the town well to retrieve water. Halfway there, he spotted a boy—Gavin, a light affinity brat from a wealthier family—harassing a girl half his size. She was crying. Her basket of apples had been kicked down the hill.
Wade didn't think. He stepped in.
No fists. No shouting.
He just grabbed Gavin's wrist and squeezed. Hard.
Gavin yelped. "You're just a squib! Let go!"
Wade held on. "Pick up the apples."
"I'll—I'll burn you with Light!"
"Pick. Them. Up."
The boy relented, hissing and muttering, and Wade stood over him until the apples were collected and returned to the girl.
The villagers watched.
And something changed.
Not much.
Just the way people looked at him afterward—quieter, a little more thoughtful. A little more careful.
That night, Theren sat beside him on the porch, sharpening a wood-handled axe.
"You know," his father said, "magic makes noise. Flash. Color. Spectacle."
Wade said nothing.
Theren smiled. "But strength? Real strength? That's usually silent. Doesn't ask to be seen. Just is."
Wade looked down at his hands. They were calloused from hauling water, splintered from the woodpile. Not a spark of mana in them.
"Then I guess I'm very strong," he muttered.
Theren chuckled. "You're getting there."
It was enough. For a while.
But the ache remained. That quiet longing for something more.
The thing the world said he should have had. The thing it decided he was missing.
He never voiced it. Never asked.
But sometimes—when he watched Riven dancing with fire or Lira spiraling through the air barefoot—he'd clench his fists and wonder
Why not me?
One night, he sat by the pond behind their house. The water was still, mirror flat. Lira sat beside him, legs dangling, wind brushing through the reeds.
"Hey," she said softly.
"Yeah?"
"You ever wonder if… you're just meant to do something different?"
Wade didn't answer.
She nudged his shoulder with hers.
"I mean," she went on, "if someone can't use magic, maybe they're meant to change it instead."
He looked at her then.
And she was serious.
Quiet. Thoughtful. And not pitying him—believing in him.
It struck deeper than he expected.
He managed a smile.
"I'm not sure I even want magic anymore," he lied.
She smirked. "Liar."
And then they just sat there, together, beneath the stars—two siblings, one with wind in her blood, the other with nothing but questions and ink-stained fingers.
But Wade didn't feel empty.
Not then.
Not completely.
Later that week, Wade tried something new.
He waited until the others were asleep, until the hearth was coals and the frogs had taken over the silence outside. He crept into the corner of the house where Mira kept her unused spell scrolls, bundled in faded leather sleeves that smelled of dried lavender and ash.
He unrolled one carefully. Not to steal a spell. Just to study.
The scroll was brittle, ink fading, drawn in a language older than any he'd been taught. But magic was a kind of math—structured, symbolic, ruled by rhythm and reaction. And Wade had been watching magic work his whole life.
He laid out a rough copy of the diagram on the floorboards. A basic wind manipulation sigil. Then, with chalk and ash, he traced it carefully, copying every stroke with near perfect accuracy. He stared at the finished shape. His heart pounded.
"Activate," he whispered.
Nothing.
He tried again. Louder. Then softer. Then without speaking at all. He moved his hands the way Lira did. Held his breath. Focused.
Still nothing.
But he didn't feel defeated.
He just felt… challenged.
Wade stayed up until dawn copying a second array.
Then a third.
Then one of Riven's old fire runes, the kind etched into sparring gloves.
By the time Mira rose for morning bread, Wade had ink stained fingers, black rings under his eyes, and a grin he didn't know he was wearing.
He couldn't cast.
But he could learn.
And someday… that might be worse for the world.
Because Wade never stopped.