A long forgotten yet treasured memory suddenly pops up.
It struck—sharp and sudden—like a blade drawn quickly, cutting through the present before Alexis even realized he was bleeding into the past.
One moment, he was seated in the dim war chamber, the scent of ink and oiled steel thick in the air, his fingers tightening around a sealed decree bearing the crest of the King of Ro—his uncle.
A command, cold and absolute: mobilize, march, conquer. The wastelands at the Eastern Empire's border were to be taken, subdued, erased of resistance.
For Glory, for Ro!
A familiar command. A predictable one.
And yet—
His eyes lingered too long on a single word.
Wastelands.
The parchment blurred.
Something in his chest tightened—not with duty, not with irritation—but with something warmer, gentler.
And oh so fragile…
The memory then unfolded, rising like heat off summer stone.
He was seven years old, perched high on a swaying camel's hump, the world vast and endless beneath a sky too wide for a child to understand.
The wind smelled of sun-baked earth and distant storms, carrying whispers of lands untouched by courtly politics or the suffocating weight of lineage.
He remembered the way his small hands clutched at his father's cloak—not out of fear, but excitement barely contained.
The diplomatic caravan had shed its royal banners three days prior, exchanging the proud crimson and gold of Ro for the muted greys of wandering merchants.
What had once been a procession of power was now a quiet line of travelers swallowed by the horizon.
Incognito.
Unannounced.
A royal family, for once, was simply just a family.
His father—the Grand Duke, brother to the king—had laughed when his mother first proposed the journey.
"You want to take our son to the edge of the known world, Alethea? To chase old stories?"
"Not chase," she had corrected, her voice calm but alight with that quiet, unyielding fire he had never once seen denied. "To understand them. To see what remains when history forgets to remember the mystical past, far more fantastical. For adventure… for grand exploration."
Alexis had leaned forward at that, eyes bright—too bright—caught between the promise of danger and the thrill of being included in something important.
His father had only sighed, shaking his head with helpless amusement.
And because he had always been powerless before that fire in her eyes, he had made it happen—pulling invisible strings across kingdoms, trading favors, silencing questions.
A family outing dressed as trade.
Seven-year-old Alexis had pressed his nose against the curtain of the litter at every waking hour.
"Mother, what is that?" he had asked, pointing at a spiraling column of dust that twisted toward the heavens like a living thing.
"A desert spirit dancing," she replied without hesitation.
"Or a stubborn wind refusing to rest," his father added with a chuckle.
"Father, why does the river run backward here?" he asked another day, watching muddy waters curl against every rule he had been taught.
"Because the land remembers a time before logic, Darling," his mother said.
"Or because it refuses to listen to reasons like someone I know," his father countered as he poke his son on the cheeks.
Alexis faked a pout then his father tickled his side making Alexis laugh merrily.
Alexis' parents answered every curious inquiry.
His mother with wonder.
His father with warmth.
And Alexis—he believed both.
The days slipped together in a rhythm of rolling wheels, crackling campfires, and a land that grew stranger the deeper they traveled.
Jagged rock formations stretched like frozen lightning across the earth.
Trees peeled silver bark that shimmered under the sun.
And at noon, the sky—impossibly—turned violet, as though the world itself had exhaled something ancient.
"We're close," his mother whispered on the fifth night.
She held an ancient scroll in her lap, its edges worn and fragile, traded for three bolts of silk at the last outpost.
Her fingers trembled—not with fear, but anticipation.
"The tribe that keeps the old stories. The one about the Sage and the Fool."
Alexis knew that story.
He had lived in it, in a way—curled beside her in her study, wrapped in furs, listening as lamplight danced across her face.
The Sage who built walls of perfect logic.
The Fool who tore them down with laughter.
Enemies for a thousand years.
Until, one winter, when exhaustion stripped them of pride, they found themselves sharing the same stone against the cold.
Bread given.
A terrible joke told.
And for the first time—
The Sage laughed.
"They created the wastelands?" Alexis had once asked.
"They created home," his mother had answered softly. "Out of the wreckage of their war."
****
The nomads found them at dawn.
But they were not the ones his mother had hoped for.
These riders came like a tightening noose—faces painted, spears drawn, their movements sharp and predatory.
Their language cracked through the air, harsh and unfamiliar.
Alexis felt his father's hand steady on his shoulder. His mother pulled him close, her heartbeat betraying what her voice did not.
"We mean no harm," she said—once, twice, three times—in every tongue she knew.
The circle tightened.
Then—
A voice.
Small.
Clear.
Cutting through tension like light through storm clouds.
"They want to know why westerners have come to the barren lands."
Alexis turned.
And saw him.
A boy.
No older than he was.
Perhaps smaller.
Clothed in dust and sun and something that felt… untamed.
And his eyes—
Obsidian.
Not dull, not lifeless—
But dangerous and yet so captivating.
His eyes, its depth was so unfathomable that it draws one to the edge of the abyss.
He spoke again, seamlessly shifting into the nomads' language—not cautious, not hesitant. Fluent.
Effortless.
The spears lowered. Not fully. But enough.
"My mother trades with them," the boy explained, as if it were nothing. "I've been learning their words since I could walk."
He grinned.
A missing tooth.
Mischief, unrestrained.
And yet—
There was something else.
Something older than his years.
The moment unfolded as if the world had paused just to make space for him.
He redirected danger as if it were a trivial inconvenience.
He offered solutions with the ease of someone who had never known the weight of hesitation.
A waterskin bearing his tribe's mark.
A map, drawn from memory.
A path forward when all seemed closed.
And Alexis—
Alexis could not look away.
He had met nobles.
Scholars.
Generals.
But never someone his own age who stood like that—
Unshaken.
Uncontained.
Unfathomable.
"What's your name?" Alexis had asked, the question escaping him before he could stop it.
The boy looked at him then.
Truly looked.
And something flickered—curiosity, perhaps. Or recognition of something neither of them yet understood.
"You ask a lot of questions, Jinga."
"Jinga?"
"It means 'the Fool.'" A grin. Sharper now. "The one who tears down walls."
Alexis flushed. "I'm not—"
"You never know."
Then the memory unraveled as it always did.
The call of the boy's mother.
The way he stepped back—already fading into the land that seemed to claim him.
"Wait!" Alexis had shouted, stumbling from the camel.
"You didn't tell me your name!"
A pause.
A glance over the shoulder.
Eyes catching sunlight like something sacred.
"Next time," the boy said.
Softer—almost carried away by the wind—
"Maybe next time."
And then—
Gone.
Tengerily.
The name had come later, caught on the wind, pieced together in whispers.
"Child of the Sky," his mother had translated, awe breaking through her scholar's composure.
"Or… Blue Sky."
Tengerily
Alexis repeated the word over and over until their expedition was done.
****
Hearing the footsteps, Alexis exhaled slowly as came back to the present.
The war chamber returned around him—the weight of stone, the silence of waiting advisors beyond the doors, the decree still clutched in his hand.
Tengerily…
A name too gentle.
Too open.
It had never fit.
Not for a boy who moved like a storm barely contained.
Not for someone who had stepped into danger without fear, who gain advantage without force.
If anything—
He had been something closer to thunder.
Something that arrived, shook the world, and vanished before it could be understood.
Alexis's gaze drifted back to the word on the parchment.
Wastelands.
A slow, unexpected warmth touched his expression.
Faint.
He wondered—
If the boy still walked those lands.
If those dark eyes still reflected skies no poem or painting could capture.
If—
perhaps—
they might meet again.
And if they did…
Would he finally learn his true name?
Or would the boy simply appear once more—unannounced, unbound—cutting through tension like laughter in a war-torn world, rescuing the moment without ever asking to be remembered?
Alexis found himself almost… hoping for it.
Not for war.
Not for conquest.
But for that brief, impossible feeling—
Of something vast and unknowable stepping into his path again.
Just once more.