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Chapter 2: Rebirth in the Fractured Realm

  The first sensation was not sight.

  It was heat.

  A warm, pulsing core somewhere deep in his chest—beating against a body too small, too soft.

  He gasped, flailing tiny arms against invisible air. His mind, still tangled between two lives, clung to flashes of cold laboratories and roaring fires.

  Then—voices. Murmured, distant, like ripples in deep water.

  


  "Poor thing. So small… the Marchioness barely survived the birth. I heard the mana tests were terrible too."

  


  "Terrible? I heard it's worse. The child can hardly move mana particles at all."

  A clatter of metal. A whispered curse.

  He squinted against the blur of light, trying to focus—an ornate ceiling, golden trim, curtains so heavy they looked like waterfalls frozen in place.

  A noble's house.

  And they were speaking about... him.

  The voices continued.

  


  "Mark my words, Sarah. The Lord won't waste resources on a cripple. Not when he already has three strong heirs."

  


  "Hush! If anyone hears you—"

  "—what, they'll agree? Everyone knows! No mana strength, no worth."

  Their footsteps faded, and silence fell, broken only by the crackle of a fireplace and the distant caw of a crow perched outside.

  He lay there, heart hammering, eyes burning with unshed tears.

  Not from fear.

  Not from sadness.

  But from the feral, furious thrill of it all.

  They thought he was weak.

  They thought he was discarded trash.

  Perfect.

  Let them believe it.

  It would make their downfall all the sweeter.

  He curled his tiny fingers, feeling the mana particles in the air—the raw building blocks of this world—thrum against his skin.

  So clumsy. So chaotic.

  But within that chaos, he could already sense it: the patterns, the precision, the laws beneath the lies.

  This world ran on magic.

  He would run it on science.

  And so, in the cradle of aristocracy and arrogance, the child were born.

  The heavy doors creaked open.

  Through the haze of baby-fatigue and newborn senses, he caught glimpses—figures in black and silver robes, their steps solemn, their faces veiled by translucent mana gauze.

  Priests.

  Mana soul examiners.

  One knelt before him, chanting softly.

  Silver dust poured from an urn into the air, forming floating rings of glyphs around his crib.

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  Each ring shimmered, awaiting resonance—awaiting the stir of his mana soul.

  A hush fell over the chamber.

  


  "By Eberu’s breath," the priest intoned, "Let the child's soul reveal its measure."

  He understood enough.

  This was a ceremony—a measurement.

  In this world, newborns were judged not by birthright alone, but by the power of their mana souls.

  The number of particles they could command—their future worth—would be decided here, now.

  The glyphs pulsed.

  The rings spun.

  And then—

  A faint, pitiful shimmer.

  The glyphs barely twitched, barely responding to him.

  A gasp rippled through the noble spectators. Whispers ignited like dry tinder.

  


  "So low..."

  "A defective mana soul?"

  "The Marchioness must be cursed."

  "The House of Vaeren cannot afford weakness."

  The priest hesitated, glancing nervously at the Lord and Lady Vaeren seated on their thrones above.

  


  "The child's... mana soul synchronization is under threshold," the priest announced carefully. "Survival possible. Future aptitude... unlikely."

  A final ring dissolved into the air like mist.

  The Lord Vaeren's face hardened like chiseled stone.

  


  "Name him," he said, voice cold.

  The Marchioness, pale and trembling, whispered back:

  


  "Caelum."

  A name from ancient tongue.

  It meant sky.

  A wish for greatness.

  The Lord only grunted, unimpressed.

  The priest bowed low. The ceremony ended.

  And little Caelum Vaeren, dismissed and forgotten, was left to rot in a cradle too golden for the dreams that burned in his tiny mind.

  Night fell quietly over the House of Vaeren.

  The grand halls, once filled with murmured judgment and perfumed nobles, lay silent, bathed in moonlight spilling through jeweled windows.

  In a small, tucked-away nursery, hidden from the family's more "important" affairs, Caelum lay awake.

  He was alone.

  Except for the soft breathing of a woman slumped in a chair beside his crib — the Marchioness herself.

  His mother.

  Even through blurry newborn eyes, he could feel it.

  Not just see — feel: the thin tendrils of mana weaving from her heart, fragile and aching.

  


  "I'm sorry, my little one," she whispered into the night, not realizing he could understand more than any babe should.

  "You deserved... so much more."

  Her voice cracked.

  She reached out, hesitating, then brushed his forehead lightly.

  Her fingers trembled—not from fear of him, but from helplessness.

  


  "Survive, Caelum. Even if the world doesn't want you to."

  She kissed his brow, left a worn silver pendant beside him, and slipped quietly away, leaving only the faint scent of lilies behind.

  Silence.

  But Caelum was not weeping.

  He was thinking.

  Analyzing.

  Feeling.

  The mana in the room was a living ocean:

  particles swirling, eddying, forming chaotic storms invisible to ordinary eyes.

  He reached out with his tiny will, instinct sharpened by two lives of relentless obsession.

  He didn’t seek to control thousands of particles like the fools who mocked him.

  He sought... one.

  There—a speck, vibrating in the air.

  He touched it.

  Grasped it.

  Bent it.

  It obeyed. Instantly.

  Where others roared with fire and thunder, he whispered—and the world listened.

  A surge of fierce triumph ignited within his infant chest.

  They had measured him wrong.

  They had weighed him by size, by brute force, by childish metrics.

  But what he possessed...

  was something they could not even imagine:

  Precision.

  Atomic precision.

  Subatomic symphony.

  A single mana particle reshaped an atom.

  A single atom reshaped a material.

  A single material reshaped reality itself.

  He smiled — or tried to.

  A twisted, toothless grin more terrifying than any noble decree.

  They would regret discarding him.

  They would all regret it.

  In the darkness, the first true weapon of the new age stirred — not of magic, but of mad science reborn.

  And so, as the stars wheeled over a world oblivious to its impending doom, the Precision Devil took his first breath of defiance.

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