“Teo, I need to ask you a favor,” Isgalis said, her voice pleading.

  “Anything you want, Isgalis.”

  “For now, I’d rather we keep the possibility of you being the Founding Father’s reincarnation a secret. My heart tells me it’s true, but I worry my imagination is just trying to give you his name to bring peace to my spirit.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. It seems like the most prudent thing to do.”

  “Isgalis is here! Isgalis is here!” shouted a six-year-old girl, running up the road and jumping with joy. Behind her, a group of about fifteen children joined in the merriment.

  The girl was the first to reach the teenager, much faster than her short legs suggested.

  “Teo, this is Tania,” Isgalis said, lifting her into her arms. “She’s the youngest in the village.”

  Immediately, the other children joined in. Everyone wanted to hug and kiss Isgalis. Only a small girl of about twelve had noticed Teo. The others were so enthralled by the arrival of the village guardian that they hadn’t noticed him.

  “Guys, I have an announcement!” Isgalis exclaimed with a big smile. “Today, a new friend joins us: please welcome Teo!”

  All eyes suddenly fell on him, and Teo was overcome with shyness. He wasn’t used to being the center of attention, and the situation made him uncomfortable.

  After the first few seconds of curiosity, during which they examined him from head to toe with wide eyes, laughter and cheers erupted, and they rushed to hug him. Except for a teenager with a sullen and cold look, who had noticed how the little girl was looking at Teo.

  Noel watched the children, overwhelmed, curled up in his master’s arms. Tania felt a strong desire to pet him, and Teo brought the cat’s head closer to her hands, which purred contentedly.

  Tania reminded him of Steffi. Suddenly, he realized how much he missed her. He wanted his little sister to be well. He knew Dromegard would take care of her; after all, he had raised Isgalis, and she was a wonderful young woman.

  That night, a party was held in Teo’s honor. It was customary among the villagers to welcome a new member with a great feast, dances, and challenges. The most popular one consisted of displaying the skills they had acquired under the instruction of Vin’s guardian. Although all the villagers were human, they were not exempt from magic. Isgalis had taught them that within all living beings flows a vital force that the Ardorians called “kanach,” the universal and immortal principle of life. A human being, with discipline and arduous training, could control their kanach and perform some magical feats, including producing flashes of light with their hands, levitating a few inches off the ground, accelerating their movements, or creating specularities.

  “A specularity is a virtual image of oneself that floats in the air and disappears after a few seconds,” Isgalis taught them. “It’s a very useful defensive technique that can be used to mislead pursuers or opponents in hand-to-hand combat.”

  However, human kanach was far from resembling that of the inhabitants of Ardoras. The race with the most powerful kanach were the Vendalions, followed by the Ixarions, the Common Mages, and the Sigmodelles. The rest of the beings of Ardoras ranged on an intermediate scale between the lowest of the superior races and the most powerful of humans. In the infinite darkness of the universe, human kanach would be just the fleeting glow of a campfire, and that of a Vendalion, the eternal radiance of the sun.

  The exhibitions, or Totemic Games, as they were called, consisted of a ritual in which the villagers worshipped the totem in the public square. The totem in question was a large granite base on which stood the sculpture of an oxymatron, a bull-like beast without eyes, sixteen feet tall and nearly twenty-three feet long.

  The base was carved with the animal’s history: it had been extinct for at least four millennia. The oxymatrons had migrated from the North to the South, devastating many populations on The Continent along the way. The origin of these creatures remained a mystery, even to the wise Ixarions. They were wild beasts thirsty for blood. Lacking eyes, they had developed a refined echolocation system, like that of bats, emitting a shrill snort whose sound waves could travel several miles in the air and bounce off their victims. Decoding the echo allowed the oxymatrons to know their dimensions and distance.

  The abominable thing about these beasts was that they killed not only for food but also out of a mere instinct for destruction. They were finally exterminated by the Ixarions, but the memory of the terror they sowed on The Continent still lingered. The totem of Vin’s Village was erected by the great race of the South as a testament that blind and unbridled power can only lead to destruction. Isgalis, therefore, was in charge of teaching its inhabitants to know and master their inner power, to use it with prudence and wisdom.

  That night, the Totemic Games began with an exhibition by little Tania. Despite being the youngest of the group, she had proven to be a brilliant apprentice with exceptional progress. Before the amazed eyes of her companions, the girl had made tiny tongues of fire emerge from her fingers, which, when detached from her hands, floated in the air, moving from side to side at her will.

  Next came Baruch, a mute nine-year-old boy who never knew his father and had lost his mother after a long battle with cancer.

  Baruch stood in the center of the circle formed by the children next to the totem and remained perfectly still, hands behind his back. Seconds passed, and the boy remained motionless, expressionless. Impatience grew among everyone, and whispers began. “I think his nerves got the best of him,” some said. “It’s obvious he has nothing prepared for the exhibition,” others rebuked. “He should pay more attention in class,” others added. “We shouldn’t be surprised that a child with his limitations is behind in his studies,” others concluded.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Don’t waste our time, freak!” Marc, one of the group’s bullies, shouted. “Give your turn to someone else!”

  “Don’t waste our time, freak!” Marc’s voice repeated, echoing in the air. “Give your turn to someone else!”

  Everyone looked at each other in shock, unable to believe what was happening. Marc’s voice was no longer coming from Marc, but from thin air.

  “What happened?” Jayden, one of the pretty girls in the group, exclaimed in fright. “How is this possible?”

  “What happened?” the girl’s voice boomed without coming from her. “How is this possible?”

  The secret behind all this was that Baruch had perfected the technique of phonoreplication, which consisted of mentally manipulating the sound waves of another person’s voice, adjusting the amplitude and frequency, so that when they vibrated and traveled through the air again, they sounded identical to the original voice.

  Baruch was followed by Tiziano, who had mastered the art of photoconvergence. The child could concentrate the light radiation that had been dispersed around him onto any object, simply by placing his hands on it. During the exhibition, he had provided his own light to the large totem in the square, which from a distance looked like a gigantic fluorescent lamp.

  Then it was Jayden’s turn, the pretty girl everyone—or almost everyone—had a crush on, who had nearly died of fright during Baruch’s demonstration.

  Facing the complete expectation of the group, Jayden stood in the center of the circle with her back straight, head bowed, eyes closed, and hands together, as if preparing to pray. For several seconds, there was complete silence, until a hum began to be heard, like the sound of current passing through a high-voltage cable. The entire outline of Jayden’s body began to be covered in a soft pink halo of light, and her blonde hair turned first red, then green, and finally blue. When she opened her eyes, her blue irises turned successively gold, black, brown, gray, and fuchsia. While still in the early stages of developing her ability, Jayden was a shapeshifter, meaning she could eventually take on anyone’s appearance at will.

  She was followed by a bunch of other children with lesser abilities, such as moving at double or triple the speed of normal, climbing trees with the same dexterity as a monkey, holding their breath underwater for several minutes, or showing resistance to fatigue markedly higher than that of the best athletes.

  The last two exhibitors of the evening were Roderic and Milena.

  Roderic, the teenager with the sullen, cold look who’d resisted welcoming Teo with the same joy as the others, was the son of an alcoholic father who beat him and sent him to beg on the street for money to buy more alcohol. His mother was an upper-class girl who, in a fit of rebellion to upset her parents, had gotten involved with the maid’s son. The Iturriagas believed Kara’s pregnancy brought dishonor and shame to the family, but being devout Catholics, they wouldn’t allow an abortion. They hid her in a country house throughout her nine-month pregnancy, and when the child was born, they got rid of him. They gave him to his father and grandmother and threw them out into the street, threatening they’d never see daylight again if they returned or demanded money for the newborn.

  Roderic, with his usual reluctant demeanor and devastated look, stood in the center of the circle and carefully observed his companions. His demonstration was brief, shocking, and forceful. He took a small mantran steel dagger and made a shallow cut on his left forearm. Threads of blood dripped from his fingertips to the ground.

  “What have you done, Roderic?!” his companions shouted in unison, completely horrified. “Have you completely lost your mind?!”

  Roderic made a grimace, a macabre smile. But what happened next was truly incredible. Roderic healed. Within minutes, there was no trace of the cut on his arm. Not even a scar. Nothing. Roderic was what the Ardorians called a “regenerator,” an extremely rare being capable of spontaneously healing from injuries.

  Isgalis stared at him in shock. Why hadn’t she realized this before? How had Roderic kept it from her for so long? She was determined to find out.

  Finally, it was Milena’s turn, the girl who hadn’t taken her eyes off Teo since he’d arrived in the village.

  Milena was an orphan and had never met her parents. She was raised in an orphanage until she was five, when she was adopted by a doctor couple who couldn’t have children. The first years with the Kilstroms were peaceful and happy. However, when Milena reached puberty, something changed in Mrs. Kilstrom’s mind. She treated her with contempt and harshness, looked at her with distrust, and even once locked her in her room and deprived her of food for two days.

  It all ended tragically one day when Mr. Kilstrom went to her room to wish her goodnight and his wife saw him caressing his adopted daughter’s forehead. The woman, consumed by a blind rage she seemed unable to control, claimed the girl had been trying to seduce her husband for a long time, that she should never have been adopted, and that she was trying to poison her. Saying this, she pulled a knife from under her nightgown and, before her husband’s terrified eyes, tried to stab her. She would have succeeded if her husband hadn’t stepped between Milena and the blade, which fatally ended up buried in his heart. Walter bled to death moments later.

  Milena escaped and never heard from her adoptive mother again. Had she, she would’ve learned Laura had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, suffering from a psychosis hidden behind a facade of normalcy for years, likely a consequence of a rape she suffered at Milena’s age by her father.

  Shyly, the young girl stood before her classmates and took a long sigh. She held a small inex, a bird native to Southern Ardoras, about the size of a golf ball, beautiful with bright, vivid colors, but extremely fragile. Even the slightest impact could harm an inex—a gentle breeze could damage their wings, and a strong storm could kill them. That’s why they were rarely seen; they mostly stayed in their nests, only venturing out on warm, windless days to find food.

  The inex Milena held had a broken wing and was dying. Surely, Mantra’s unpredictable weather had caught it off guard, and a strong gust had left it exposed to its current critical state.

  With extreme care, the girl covered the little bird with her open palm and sighed deeply again. After a few seconds, an intense white light radiated from within her hands. Upon opening them, the little inex, infused with vitality and energy, spread its wings and beat them rapidly, disappearing into the trees.

  Every single one of Vin’s inhabitants was amazed. But the attraction Milena’s magnificent display generated in Teo was irresistible.

  He still had the list of bird sightings Naughty Tommy had given him before leaving Marco Della Francesca’s house, and he remembered his words, “Maybe you can add some names I missed.” So, Teo decided the first thing he’d do in the morning was add the inex’s name to the list. He was sure Naughty Tommy would be happy to know he was preserving his legacy, and he was also thrilled at the thought of perhaps finding Mr. Piero in Luria. After all, Sir Phleas had told him that all those who embraced life with love and died against their will on Earth were reborn on Ardoras. So why couldn’t he dream of finding Mr. Piero there too?

  He would have continued lost in his musings and memories if, at that moment, Milena hadn’t collapsed to the ground as if struck by lightning.

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