The cold in Isvan was not a backdrop; it was an aggressor. It seeped in everywhere, even beneath the thickest layers of fur, to bite the skin. Kaelen woke with the unpleasant sensation that his lungs were lined with frost.
Through the small skylight of the cabin, the day was barely breaking: a gray, dirty light that struggled to pierce the howling blizzard outside.
He sat up slowly, every joint protesting with a sharp crack. A few feet away, Gray was already sitting on a rough wooden bench, his gaze lost in the dying embers of the hearth. He stared at his hands, clenching and unclenching them constantly, as if he feared seeing them disappear. On the other side of the room, Lyon was still snoring, bundled up in his corner as if trying to forget the world existed.
The door swung open abruptly, letting in a gust of snow. Ur entered, a pile of firewood in her arms which she dumped near the fireplace with a crash that made Gray jump.
"Wake up, sleepyheads. The sun is up, even if we can't see it," Ur called out in a voice that left no room for laziness.
She approached the pot hanging over the fire and began stirring what remained of the previous night's soup. Gray stood up, dragging his feet, his black eyes briefly meeting Kaelen's. There was a mix of suspicion and a sort of forced brotherhood in his gaze, the kind shared by two survivors who should never have met.
"Are we going to freeze our bones outside again?" Gray grumbled, approaching the table.
"It's the foundation, Gray. If you can't stand Isvan, Isvan will devour you," Ur replied without turning around. "Eat. We're heading out in ten minutes."
Kaelen approached in turn and sat in silence. The broth was hot, but it had no taste. Since waking up, everything seemed bland to him. His adult mind tried to process the events of the night of the massacre, but his nine-year-old body claimed nothing but rest.
"Hey," Gray said suddenly, his spoon halfway to his mouth. "Are you just going to keep sitting there watching us do nothing? You've been recovering for two days. Lyon says you're just dead weight."
Kaelen looked up at him. "I'm not watching while doing nothing. I'm observing. There's a difference."
"Yeah, well, observing doesn't build muscle," Gray retorted, returning to his soup with ill-concealed aggression.
Lyon, awakened by the voices, stretched with a loud yawn before joining the table. He cast a disdainful look at Kaelen.
"He's observing, Gray. It's his new specialty. He wants to become the master of the storm, but for now, he's mostly the world champion of napping. Do you really think that by staring at the snow, it's going to turn into lightning just to please you?"
Kaelen didn't take the bait. Lyon was annoying and full of himself, but he was just a nine-year-old kid trying to prove his worth. He had no desire to waste his energy on childish verbal sparring.
"Eat your bread and be quiet, Lyon," Ur cut in, placing a loaf of bread on the table. "Kaelen makes his own choices. But he's right about one thing: if he doesn't move, he'll end up freezing where he stands."
Once outside, the wind hit them full force, like an icy slap. Gray and Lyon immediately moved into position, stripping off their tunics under their master's orders. Kaelen remained bundled in his fur coat, holding a rusty old axe he had found in the shed.
Ur approached him, the snow crunching under her boots.
"Still not want to try ice, Kaelen?"
"It's not for me, Ur. I feel that if I try to freeze energy the way they do, I'll just... go out," he replied, watching Gray and Lyon begin to sculpt pillars of frost.
Ur nodded, a small smirk playing on her lips. "You're stubborn. Very well. If you refuse to freeze the world, at least try not to let it freeze you. Go to that dead tree over there."
Kaelen moved away from the group. He stopped before a lightning-struck tree trunk, blackened by an old storm. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the sensation from the day before. He didn't want to sculpt. He didn't want a shield. He focused on friction.
Movement. Pure speed.
He gripped the wooden handle of his axe and began to rub his palm against the rusted iron with increasing intensity. He wasn't looking for a shape, but a shock.
"Come on... move," he whispered to himself.
Suddenly, a sharp crack rang out. A blue spark, tiny but blindingly bright, jumped between his fingers and the metal. The discharge was so violent that his entire arm vibrated with pain, forcing him to drop the tool, which fell heavily into the powder.
"Whoa! Did you see that?" Gray exclaimed, his ice lance crumbling in his hands as he lost focus. "Ur, he made light!"
Lyon approached, looking skeptical, though his eyes betrayed a certain surprise.
"What was that? A lighter spark? Are you going to light the fire for dinner, ghost-boy? Is that your great storm power?"
Kaelen picked up his axe, ignoring the mockery. His arm was numb, unpleasant tingling creeping up to his shoulder.
"It's a start," he replied simply, wiping the snow off the iron.
Ur approached slowly, hands thrust into her coat pockets. She observed the slight scorch mark on the wooden handle, then locked her gaze with Kaelen's black eyes.
"You are provoking your magic instead of letting it flow, Kaelen. It's a brutal method. If you don't quickly find a way to channel that discharge, it will fry your circuits before you can ever use it against an enemy."
"I'll find a way. I don't have a choice," Kaelen countered.
The rest of the day was a physical ordeal. Kaelen had to gather wood, clear snow around the cabin, and endure Lyon's hand-to-hand training, the latter never missing an opportunity to shove him.
That evening, as the fire crackled again in the fireplace, a strange lull settled in. Gray sat on the floor, poking the embers with a stick.
"Ur says your family was famous for their vision," Gray began without looking up. "Is that why you're always analyzing everything? What are you looking for, exactly?"
The Uchiha wasn't too surprised that Ur knew about his family, given that they didn't live too far away, but she preferred not to say anything more about them. Something he appreciated.
Kaelen sat against the wall, his aching muscles throbbing. "I'm just looking for a way to never be helpless again. My father told me that in this world, if you don't have strength, your name dies with you."
Gray nodded, a dark glint in his eyes. "Me, I just want the monster that broke everything to feel what I felt. Ice is cold. It's hard. It doesn't forgive."
Lyon, who was polishing a small ice knife in his corner, interjected with his usual arrogance.
"Me, I'm going to be the strongest mage in this country. And when I'm at the top, no one will be able to ignore me anymore. You, Kaelen, with your sparks and your rusty axe, you'll have to hang on just to keep up with us."
"We'll see about that, Lyon," Kaelen replied.
There was a long silence, broken only by the whistling of the wind against the windowpanes. Kaelen looked at his hands, thinking of the families he couldn't save and the eyepatch mage lurking somewhere in this vast world. He was lost. But listening to Gray and Lyon argue over who would get the largest piece of cheese, he felt, for the first time, a little less alone.
"Eat and get to bed," Ur called from the kitchen. "Tomorrow will be even harder."
------
The following days were a monotonous cycle of physical pain and freezing air. Ur didn't go easy on Kaelen just because he had rejected her specialty. If anything, she worked him harder. While Gray and Lyon spent hours shirtless in the snow, Kaelen was tasked with the "grunt work", clearing the roof of heavy snow, dragging frozen logs, and sprinting up the icy slopes until his lungs felt like they were bleeding.
It was three days after the axe incident. The blizzard had calmed into a persistent, biting wind. Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was surprisingly quiet. Lyon was sharpening a pair of ice daggers he had created, while Gray was sprawled on the floor, seemingly trying to nap while half-naked.
Kaelen sat in a corner of the cabin, staring at the old rusty axe resting on his knees. Since the massacre, one fixed idea obsessed him. He didn't know the technical terms of this world, but his adult mind sought a logical solution to his physical weakness.
If I can't carry everything I need, I must find a place to store it. Not a bag. A place... elsewhere.
"Are you going to spend the whole afternoon in a staring contest with that piece of iron again?" asked Lyon, who was practicing levitating small ice cubes in the palm of his hand. "It's fascinating, really. One can just feel the power radiating from you."
Gray, sprawled on a bench, cracked an eye open. "Leave him, Lyon. Maybe he's trying to melt it with his mind. It's his new method for avoiding training with us."
Kaelen didn't answer right away. He focused, not on the metal, but on the space just above his palm. He visualized a tear, an invisible pocket in the fabric of reality. He felt the Ethernano stir, not to create, but to push.
In Naruto, ninjas used scrolls to store items. Obito also used Kamui for his body. He wanted to try something similar to place items in another dimension.
Ur had told him about Requip, but that wasn't what he was looking for. He wanted something more advanced. If later he could use that same concept to make people's magic disappear by sending it to another dimension, or even perhaps use something similar to Sasuke's Rinnegan, he'd be all for it. But he's very, very far from that level. With his Sharingan, he believes he can achieve this in the future.
It was possible in this world because magic is much more versatile than Chakra, or so he believed.
"I'm not trying to melt it," Kaelen finally said, his voice low. "I'm trying to understand where the air ends and the void begins." He had his Sharingan activated, allowing him to see the fluctuations of Ethernano, even if it was only an early Sharingan of 1 tomoe it did the job.
Gray frowned and sat up. "What are you talking about? Air is everywhere. You're rambling again, ghost-boy."
Kaelen reached toward the axe. He pushed a fraction of his magic, not to produce a spark, but to warp perception. For a second, the air around the tool seemed to blur, like an image reflected in agitated water. The axe wavered, almost fading away, before snapping back into solid form with a metallic click.
"What was that?" Gray exclaimed, standing up abruptly. "The axe... it moved weirdly. Like it was about to disappear."
"That's what I'm looking for," Kaelen whispered, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple despite the cold. But he was happy; he knew that with more practice he could do it without flinching.
"You're wasting your time," Lyon cut in with a superior air. "Magic is about giving form. What you're doing is just... nothing. You can't even move it ten centimeters."
"It's not 'nothing,' Lyon," Ur's voice intervened.
She had just returned, her arms full of supplies. She set her bag on the table and approached Kaelen, her eyes searching the space around him with new intensity.
"Are you trying to practice again Spatial Magic, Kaelen? All by yourself?" She saw him do this during the last few days; at first she thought he was trying to practice Requip magic, but this kid was clearly trying to manipulate space.
Kaelen looked up at her. "Is that what it's called? I just feel like there are 'folds' in the air. If I can manage to open one, I could slip whatever I want inside."
Ur crossed her arms, visibly unsettled. "Spatial magic is not a toy. It is one of the most complex disciplines there is. Even mages with twenty years of experience don't dare touch it for fear of losing a limb in a rift. Seeing a kid your age try to distort space... it's either genius or pure madness."
"What's spatial magic?" Gray asked, looking totally lost.
"It's manipulating dimensions, Gray," Ur explained without taking her eyes off Kaelen. "It's not creating ice or fire. It's changing the rules of where you are. Kaelen is trying to create access to a sub-space."
Lyon seemed stung. "And he can do that? Him?"
"Apparently, he's trying," Ur replied. She placed a hand on Kaelen's shoulder. "But stop for today. Your magic flow is all twisted. If you keep going, you'll give yourself a brain hemorrhage. Your body isn't ready for that kind of strain yet."
Kaelen didn't argue and reluctantly regained his black eyes; his Sharingan was consuming far too much magic. He had to find a way to manage it. But for now, he just wants to take a nap.
That evening, the storm resumed with a vengeance outside, making the cabin walls tremble. Ur was preparing a stew whose smell finally began to mask that of damp wood.
Kaelen sat by the fire, his muscles aching. Gray came to sit beside him, remaining silent for several long minutes.
"Hey," Gray finally blurted out, poking the embers. "Your village... the people there, did they all do weird stuff like you?"
Kaelen stared at the flames. "My family was different. We didn't seek to impress people. We kept to ourselves. My father said our magic was a responsibility, not a show."
"Mine didn't even know what magic was," Gray whispered, his voice suddenly dull. "He just wanted us to have a quiet winter. And then... Deliora arrived. In a second, there was nothing. Just black."
Kaelen turned his head toward him. He saw the same burdens he carried himself.
"The black eventually fades, Gray. But it always leaves marks."
"Is that why you want your space magic?" Gray asked, finally looking at him. "So you can carry everything with you and never lose anything again?"
Kaelen was stunned by the boy's perceptiveness. "Maybe. Or maybe I just want to be ready when the black returns."
Lyon approached as well, losing some of his usual arrogance in the face of the gravity of the discussion. He sat on Kaelen's other side.
"Ur says you're crazy to try that," Lyon began. "But hey... if you really manage to open your spatial rifts, we can make you carry all our gear. You'll be our magic mule."
"Keep dreaming, Lyon," Kaelen shot back with a slight smile. "If I open a rift, it's to toss you inside when you become too much to handle."
Gray let out a genuine laugh, the first in days. "I'd pay to see that."
Ur watched them from the kitchen, a slight smile on her lips that she quickly hid. She knew these three were ticking time bombs, each carrying trauma too heavy for their frail shoulders. But tonight, in this lost cabin, the warmth of the fire finally seemed to reach their hearts.
"Dinner's ready!" she shouted. "And if I hear anyone talking about dimensions or demons during the meal, they finish their soup outside in the snow."
Kaelen stood up, feeling his body a little less heavy. As he sat between Gray and Lyon to share the meal, he realized that the void he was trying to create in the air was, bit by bit, beginning to fill within himself.