---
The room had grown quiet.
Giovanni sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the empty space in front of him. He had been sitting there for a while now. How long, he wasn't sure. His room was familiar. The curtains, the furniture, the faint scent of the candles that had burned earlier in the evening. Everything was where it was supposed to be. And yet, something felt wrong.
*What did I see?*
He lowered his gaze to his hands—small, pale, the hands of a child who had never worked a day in his life. Wavy blond hair fell across his forehead, catching the candlelight. His turquoise eyes, inherited from his mother, stared back at him from the mirror across the room.
The memories were still there. Not like ordinary memories. He could remember his breakfast that morning, his instructor's voice, the feel of the training yard beneath his shoes. Those things belonged to him. But the others...
They felt like someone had opened a door inside his head and left it ajar. He could see fragments. A strange world. Unfamiliar faces. Words he somehow understood. And a story. A story about magic.
Giovanni drew a slow breath.
*Magic. Right. That was something he understood. Or at least, something he was supposed to understand.*
He began recalling the lessons he had received about grimoires. Every mage possessed an affinity for a particular kind of magic, and a grimoire served as the medium through which that magic developed. It recorded spells as its wielder grew, allowing them to refine their abilities and reach heights they could not achieve through raw mana alone. He knew that much. He had been taught it since he was little.
His thoughts drifted toward the grimoire itself. The diamond insignia. The symbol of his kingdom. He remembered the lessons about its meaning. The diamond represented fortune, prosperity, and the potential for greatness. A five-sided diamond was said to be a rare blessing, a sign of extraordinary good fortune.
And then there was the other story. The one his instructor had told in a lower voice. A cracked five-sided diamond. A grimoire marked by great misfortune. A devil said to reside within it.
Giovanni's fingers tightened against the bed.
*Why am I thinking about that?*
He shook his head. It was only a legend. A story told to children, perhaps, or something nobles repeated because it sounded impressive. Still... He glanced toward the small table beside his bed. His grimoire rested there. The familiar diamond emblem caught the candlelight.
Giovanni stared at it for a moment longer than he intended. Then he looked away.
*No. That's not it.*
Whatever had happened to him, it had nothing to do with some old story about a cracked diamond. Probably.
He rubbed his eyes. The memories. That was what he needed to understand. He tried to bring them back. At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, something surfaced.
Giovanni frowned.
*Come on...*
He tried harder. The fragment shifted, as though he were trying to hold water in his hands. He caught glimpses of something else—something beyond the estate, beyond the kingdom, beyond anything he had ever seen. His breathing quickened.
*What is this?*
He pushed deeper. And then—
Pain. A sharp headache struck him without warning. Giovanni gasped and immediately clutched his head. The fragment vanished. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain to subside. For a moment, he was afraid to move. Then the headache began to fade. He lowered his hands slowly.
*...What was that?*
He sat there, breathing quietly. The memories had not simply been difficult to recall. Something had stopped him. Or perhaps he had stopped himself. He wasn't sure.
Giovanni looked at the grimoire again. The diamond emblem seemed perfectly ordinary. He swallowed.
*Maybe I shouldn't try that again.* At least, not tonight.
He climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over himself. The room was still quiet. But his thoughts were not. He kept remembering the strange fragments. The unfamiliar world. The story about magic. The feeling that he had somehow known things he had never been taught. And beneath all of it was the same question.
*What did I see?*
Giovanni stared at the ceiling for a while longer. Eventually, his eyes grew heavy. His thoughts became slower, less organized. The memories drifted farther away. And, without realizing it, he fell asleep.
---
Morning came too quickly.
Giovanni woke to the sound of curtains being drawn back, pale winter light spilling across his bed. A servant moved quietly around the room, setting out his clothes for the day. She didn't speak. The servants never spoke unless spoken to.
He sat up slowly, his head still thick with sleep. For a moment, he didn't remember why his chest felt so heavy. Then it all came back.
The fragments. The pain. The question.
*What did I see?*
"Your uncle requests that you join him for breakfast, young master," the servant said, her voice carefully neutral. "He wishes to discuss your new instructor."
Giovanni nodded, though his stomach tightened at the mention of his uncle. Breakfast with Lord Rosenthal was never simply breakfast. It was an evaluation. A test. Every word, every gesture, every moment of hesitation was catalogued and judged.
He dressed mechanically, his mind elsewhere. The crimson robes felt heavier than usual. The gold embroidery seemed to catch the light mockingly, a constant reminder of what he was supposed to be.
---
The dining room was smaller than the main hall, reserved for family meals. Giovanni's uncle sat at the head of the table, already halfway through his meal. Lord Cassius Rosenthal was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with the same dark hair and sharp features that Giovanni's father had once had. His eyes, however, were different. Warmer. Sadder.
"Giovanni," he said, looking up with a tired smile. "Sit. Eat."
Giovanni obeyed.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the soft clink of silverware and the distant murmur of servants in the corridor. Giovanni kept his eyes on his plate, though he wasn't hungry.
"The courtyard has been repaired," his uncle said finally.
"Yes, Uncle."
"The cost was considerable. Three centuries of marble, replaced in a single afternoon." Lord Rosenthal set down his fork. "The Viscount of Greystone was visiting when it happened. He saw everything."
Giovanni's chest tightened. He had known there would be consequences. He had just hoped they would be private ones.
"What did he say?" Giovanni asked, his voice small.
His uncle was silent for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair, studying Giovanni with those tired, sad eyes. "He said that House Rosenthal's heir shows... promise. That with proper guidance, you might become one of the finest spatial mages in the kingdom."
Giovanni blinked. That wasn't what he had expected.
"But," his uncle continued, "he also said that promise without discipline is merely potential wasted. And he is not wrong." He picked up his fork again, though he didn't eat. "Your training will intensify. Magister Vell has been dismissed."
"Dismissed?"
"A tutor who cannot control his student is of no use to this house. You will be assigned a new instructor by the end of the week. Until then, you will practice restraint. No magic. No training. You will sit in your room and reflect on what happened."
Giovanni's hands clenched beneath the table. *Reflect.* As though the incident had been some kind of moral failing. As though he had chosen to destroy the courtyard.
"Yes, Uncle," he said.
Lord Rosenthal nodded. Then his expression softened—just slightly. "Your aunt asked about you this morning. She wanted to see you before your lessons."
Giovanni looked up. "How is she?"
"Tired. The physician says the pregnancy is progressing well, but she needs rest." His uncle's voice carried a weight that Giovanni didn't fully understand—worry, maybe, or fear. "She has been asking for you. Would you visit her later?"
"Of course," Giovanni said, and meant it. Aunt Elara was the only person in the estate who treated him like a child rather than an heir. She would ruffle his blond hair and call him "little star" and tell him stories about his mother. She never looked at him like he was a project. She just... loved him.
"I'll visit her after my morning lessons," Giovanni promised.
His uncle nodded, a flicker of something like gratitude passing across his face. "Good. She would like that."
The conversation drifted to other matters after that—the estate's finances, a dispute with a neighboring house, the upcoming winter festival. Giovanni listened, but his mind was elsewhere. The fragments were still there, just out of reach. And the question was still there, waiting.
---
Back in his room, Giovanni sat on his bed and stared at the wall.
*Reflect.*
He was tired of reflecting. He was tired of sitting still, of being patient, of waiting for his magic to make sense. He was tired of the way his uncle looked at him—like a responsibility, not a nephew. He was tired of the servants' careful deference. He was tired of *everything*.
*If the Diamond Kingdom was so great,* he thought, *why does it feel like I'm always failing it?*
The thought surprised him. It had come from nowhere—or rather, from that place inside him where the fragments lived. He frowned, turning it over in his mind.
The Diamond Kingdom was great. He had been taught that since he could walk. The strongest of the four kingdoms. A nation built on fortune and prosperity. The diamond on his grimoire was proof of that—a five-sided blessing, a sign of extraordinary good luck.
But the story had said something different.
He tried to remember. The fragments were still there, just out of reach. He didn't push this time. He just let them drift, waiting for something to surface.
And slowly, it did.
A world of magic. A kingdom called Clover. And a boy—a peasant boy—who had nothing. No noble blood. No wealth. No magic of his own. And yet, he had refused to accept his place. He had fought, again and again, against people who were stronger, richer, better born. He had *demanded* to be great.
Giovanni's breath caught.
*That's not how it works,* he thought. *You can't just... decide to be great. You have to be born with it. You have to be chosen.*
But the memories didn't agree. In that story, the peasant boy had been chosen. But only after he had chosen himself first. He had refused to accept the limits placed on him. He had refused to bow.
*If we were truly the stronger kingdom... why did it feel like we were always fighting to prove it?*
The thought came again, sharper this time. Giovanni didn't have an answer. He didn't even fully understand the question. But something had shifted inside him. A crack had formed in the image he had always accepted without thought.
The Diamond Kingdom was great. That was what he had been taught.
But was it true?
He didn't know. And for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure he could trust what he had been told.
---
*My magic,* he thought.
The fragments had faded, leaving him alone with his questions. But there was one thing he could still hold onto—one thing that belonged to him, no matter what else was true.
Spatial Magic.
He closed his eyes, thinking back to his lessons. Spatial Magic was rare. Even among the noble houses, only a handful of mages possessed the affinity. It was a magic of distance and dimension, of folding space and bending reality. The Rosenthal family had wielded it for generations, refining it into a weapon that had earned them their place among the kingdom's elite.
But Giovanni had never been able to control it.
He thought about the courtyard. The way the marble had fractured, not breaking but *disagreeing*—becoming multiple versions of itself, each insisting it was real. That wasn't supposed to happen. Spatial Magic was supposed to create portals, to teleport, to compress distance. It wasn't supposed to *unmake* things.
*What if my magic is different?*
The thought was frightening. Exciting. He didn't know which.
He looked at his grimoire again. The diamond emblem caught the morning light, seeming to shimmer. He remembered the story of the cracked diamond—the devil within. He pushed the thought away. That was just a legend. It had nothing to do with him.
But the fragments. The memories. The story about a peasant boy in a kingdom called Clover.
*What if I could use them?*
He didn't know how. He didn't even understand what they were. But they felt important. They felt like *his*—more than the lessons, more than the expectations, more than anything else in his life.
He thought about the peasant boy again. The way he had refused to accept his place. The way he had fought, even when he had no chance of winning.
*Maybe I can do that too.*
He didn't have a plan. He didn't have answers. But he had a question, and that was more than he had before.
*What kind of mage do I want to be?*
He didn't know. But for the first time, he felt like it was a question worth asking.
---
The day passed slowly.
Giovanni stayed in his room, as he had been told. He didn't practice magic. He didn't train. He just sat, and thought, and let the fragments drift in and out of his awareness. He didn't push. He didn't chase. He just... waited.
True to his word, he visited his aunt in the afternoon. Aunt Elara was resting in her chambers, propped up against a mountain of pillows, her dark hair spread across them like a shadow. Her belly was round beneath the blankets—Giovanni's cousin, still months away from being born.
"Little star," she said, her voice warm despite its weakness. "Come here."
Giovanni climbed onto the bed beside her, careful not to jostle her. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.
"I heard about the courtyard," she murmured. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he said, though his voice wavered.
"You're not," she said gently. "And that's okay. You're allowed to not be fine."
He didn't know what to say to that. So he just leaned into her warmth and closed his eyes.
"I'm going to be a great mage someday," he said quietly. "I'm going to make you proud."
Aunt Elara laughed softly, her hand stroking his wavy blond hair. "I'm already proud of you, little star. You don't have to be great for that."
Giovanni didn't answer. He didn't know how to explain that being great felt like the only way to be worthy of anything. So he just stayed there, in the warmth of her embrace, and let himself be a child for a little while.
By evening, he was exhausted. Not physically—he had done nothing all day—but emotionally. The questions had worn grooves in his mind, circling endlessly without resolution. He was tired of thinking. Tired of wondering. Tired of not knowing.
He climbed into bed as the last light faded from the sky. The room was quiet. The candles had burned low, casting soft shadows across the walls. His grimoire rested on the table beside him, the diamond emblem dark and still.
*What did I see?*
The question was still there. But it was softer now, less urgent.
*What kind of mage do I want to be?*
That one was harder. That one didn't have an answer yet.
He stared at the ceiling, his turquoise eyes tracing the familiar cracks in the plaster. The fragments drifted through his mind—a strange world, unfamiliar faces, a boy who refused to bow. He didn't understand them. He didn't know why they were there.
But they felt important. They felt like the beginning of something.
He thought about the peasant boy. The way he had refused to give up, no matter how many times he was knocked down. The way he had kept fighting, kept believing, kept *demanding* to be great.
*If he can do it,* Giovanni thought, *so can I.*
He didn't know how. He didn't know when. But he knew one thing for certain.
He was going to be the greatest mage there ever was.
And with that thought, he slapped his cheeks—hard—and pulled the blankets up to his chin.
"Alright," he said out loud, his voice small but determined. "I'm going to be the greatest there is."
The room didn't answer. The fragments didn't answer. Even the void behind his ribs was silent.
But Giovanni didn't need an answer. He had made a decision.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep claimed him within minutes.
---
**End of Chapter 2**