The wind still howled in my ears when I touched down on the ridge above the village. I had left the Academy in chaos, students gaping, my fellow instructors shouting after me, Elara tugging at my sleeve asking where I was going. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Two words on a scrap of parchment had lit a fire under me that no amount of common sense could smother.

  “I won.”

  Alicia’s handwriting. Alicia’s owl. Alicia’s unbearable, centuries old smugness.

  Fifty three years ago, drunk on starwine and youthful arrogance, we made the bet in the Academy’s moonlit courtyard. Whoever found and nurtured the greatest magical prodigy of the century would own eternal bragging rights and the loser would owe the winner a favor of any kind, no questions asked. I had spent every year since hunting. I had scoured elven bloodlines, tested hundreds of children, and finally, finally, I thought the prize was mine.

  Elara: First Ring at five years old.

  Thorne: First Ring at six.

  Two living legends. The Council was already writing songs about them.

  And then Alicia, hiding in a human village like a disgraced hermit, sends me “I won.”

  I hated her so much right then that my teeth hurt.

  The village came into view below me, and my anger curdled into disgust. Mud. Thatch. Smoke that smelled of pig and unwashed wool. Humans in threadbare clothes shuffled through the filth like animals. Children with snot frozen to their upper lips. A woman carrying water in a bucket that leaked almost as fast as it filled. This was where Alicia claimed victory? This was where the greatest prodigy of the century was hiding?

  I almost turned around and flew home.

  But the bet ...

  I walked the main path ,if you can call a strip of churned mud a path, and swept my mana sense over every living soul. First Rings everywhere. A handful of Seconds. Nothing. Not even a spark worth noticing. Alicia was mocking me. She had to be.

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  I reached the healer’s hut, kicked the door open so hard the hinges screamed, and stormed inside.

  “Alicia!”

  "What is the meaning of this?!"

  The room froze. Children scattered. A teenage boy yelped and leapt onto a stool. A broad shouldered human hunter and his wife stepped protectively in front of a blanket on the floor.

  And there sat Alicia, disguised as a wrinkled old human crone, calmly sipping tea like she’d been expecting me for tea and biscuits.

  “Calista,” she said, sweet as poisoned honey. “You look terrible.”

  “You wrote two words,” I snarled, slapping the parchment onto her desk. “Two words! After fifty three years, that’s all you have to say? I have Elara. I have Thorne. First Rings at five and six. The Council itself—”

  Alicia raised one eyebrow and pointed.

  I followed her finger.

  A black haired human toddler sat on the blanket, chewing on a wooden horse, staring at me with eyes that were far, far too aware.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sound came out sharp enough to cut glass.

  “You’re joking. The prodigy of the century is a drooling human infant?!”

  Alicia’s smile widened. “Look at his wrist.”

  I did.

  A dark woven bracelet. Simple looking. Child sized.

  My blood turned to ice.

  I designed that weave myself, decades ago, back when Alicia and I were still stealing each other’s research notes. Variable Density concealment. The kind of artifact you craft for a prodigy who must be hidden from assassins, not for some village brat.

  My legs moved before my brain caught up. The parents tensed ,the father’s hand drifting toward an axe I could feel humming with old runes, but Alicia waved them off with a lazy flick of her fingers.

  I knelt, unclasped the bracelet, and let the weave fall away.

  Awake.

  At one year old.

  I stared until my eyes burned.

  The boy ,Vivian, I think his mother whispered, tilted his head and gave me the faintest, knowing smirk.

  I snapped the bracelet back on with shaking fingers.

  Alicia’s voice floated over my shoulder, dripping with victory. “So. Do you concede?”

  I stood slowly. My pride tasted like ash.

  “I concede nothing .” I said, forcing the words out through a throat gone dry. “Let me stay. A few days. I need to see it with my own eyes.”

  Alicia’s grin could have powered a city. “Of course. Stay as long as you like.”

  “I want him under observation. Constantly.”

  The parents exploded in protest. Something about “our son” and “not a lab rat.”

  In the end I settled for a straw pallet in the corner of the healer’s hut ,Sophiel give me strength, and the promise that I could watch the boy every waking hour.

  I lost the bet.

  I lost it to a human baby who shouldn’t even be able to sit upright yet.

  And as I sat on that lumpy straw mattress that night, I felt something I hadn’t felt since I was a student myself.

  Excitement.

  Because whatever that child is… the century just changed.