The following year of Kayn's new life was filled with discovery and the struggle to maintain the childish actions of a baby so as not to raise any suspicion. He spent his days being fawned over by his older sister, Ranni, and watching his older brother, Jayce, carve pendants and cutlery from wood.
His father spent all day away from home working as a patrolling guard for the small village. From what he could gather, his father was a well-respected swordsman, as other guards adorned with different colors representing their villages would come to the house asking for his guidance.
Erza's time was consumed by either tending to the children's needs, knitting blankets and other apparel for sale, or tending to her pride and joy, the garden. The housework was handled by the older children, and cooking was used as an opportunity for Erza to teach Ranni how to prepare ingredients and cook delicious meals.
Life was bliss. The days rolled by with the only differences being that Elric would sometimes venture into the surrounding woodlands to hunt with some of the other villagers and bring home a feast of meat, a rare commodity in the village.
Throughout the year, Kayn would often watch his mother perform small acts of magic. Sometimes it was to produce drinking water, start a fire, or heat water to boil the potatoes she had grown. Each act of magic was so effortless that it always filled him with uncontrollable excitement.
During his alone time, not that he had much of it, he would try to understand the process of creating these magic acts. In his old world, magic was brought about through utilizing magic gems that sorcerers would collect essence from the surroundings and store in these gems.
He had only seen this during the Golden Age March on the 1000-year anniversary of Nancolle's royalty being in power. The royal family was known for their extremely powerful magic and understanding of runes that they used to revolutionize the machinery of the time. It was a common rumor among the poor in the Underdark that the royal family created scrolls to detail the spells that each generation of the family had developed, and that one of these scrolls was equivalent in value to the income of ten generations of a poor family.
However, the magic of this world must work differently. First, his mother used a chant sometimes when the magic was more powerful. The smaller spells, such as creating drinking water, were done chantlessly, whereas generating heat to boil water required a small, single-word chant. Second, it didn't seem to utilize any essence from the surroundings but instead used some form of energy within the body.
When lying alone in his cot, pretending to be asleep, he would use this spare time to try and search within himself to find some of this energy that he assumed was being used during magic. Although he had absolutely no previous education in magic nor any real idea of what he was supposed to do, he failed over and over.
*'Well this sucks, maybe magic just ain't my thing. I guess I'll just have to wait until I'm old enough to ask Erza to teach me.'*
After the one-year mark, he started to crawl around his cozy little home. A wooden single-story house atop a short hill with four bedrooms which were occupied by Erza and Elric, Jayce, and Ranni each had their own rooms, and Kisara and Kayn were to be placed into the final room when they were of age. For now, they spent every night with their parents.
There was one larger room that served as both a dining and living room, and another that acted as a small kitchen. There was a small fireplace where food was cooked, as well as a few cupboards storing various ingredients, cutlery, and other miscellaneous items.
A perimeter of land surrounded the house that was used for Erza's garden, where she grew various vegetables, and Elric kept a small coop of four chickens for eggs. Although it was mostly Erza who had to take care of the them as Elric always came home to exhausted to do more labor.
When exploring the garden and sitting on the wooden fence, he had a good view of the village from atop the hill.
There were a dozen wooden houses similar to his scattered around and a large three-story wooden building decorated with blue cloth sheets with a crest that looked like a crescent moon with stars surrounding it.
Another large wooden building sat across the other side of the village. Within its walled-off area, there was another smaller building, but that's all Kayn could make out from his vantage point.
The clinic where he was born was also on the other side of the village, situated on top of a hill much larger than the one his house sat on. It was difficult to make out any intricate details from that distance, but it looked like quite a large building with a exhausting series of steps leading up to it.
*'A bit of a stupid place to put a clinic honestly. Hope I never break a leg; it'd be a nightmare hopping up all those steps.'*
By the time he reached his and Kisara's first birthday, Kayn had developed a strong bond with his family. The celebrations were modest but heartfelt. Ranni presented him with a small, clumsily wrapped gift, a wooden ring etched with runes that she had carved with the guidance of Jayce and Erza showing her some protective runic magic. Kisara got a matching ring etched with a different set of runes.
Jayce had carved a duo of intricate wooden pendants in the shape of a wolf for Kayn and an owl for Kisara. Kayn was suspicious about how his siblings were acting weeks prior to his birthday, as they both ventured into the woods with the lumber axe. Quite unusual for Ranni, much less so for Jayce. They had small arguments about the quality and type of wood they were finding, but it seemed like they just wanted the best for these gifts.
The blonde woman who had held Kayn during his birth was also in attendance. It turns out she was the younger sister of Erza and that they had an tightly bonded relationship. Aunty Ada had come with clothes for both of them that she had hand-sewn, as well as a pair of comfy blankets with the crescent moon embroidered on them.
Elric had gone hunting with Jayce a couple of days before to make sure that there was a feast for everyone involved.
It was a completely different experience from Kayn's previous life. The poverty he was confined to before had limited him from enjoying his birthdays. The only repeating tradition was him and his father going to the market to look for easy marks for pickpocketing and to steal merchandise from vendors who let their guard down for a moment.
Throughout the celebration, Aunty Ada would spend her time tending to the children to give Erza a break and give Elric a chance to boast about his days as an adventurer. He told epic tales of fighting massive magical beasts and escorting princesses and princes across the great deserts and forests to Elven kingdoms. His wild stories had the entire family enthralled, all while teaching important lessons he had learned through his trials and triumphs.
As the year drew to a close, Kayn felt a growing sense of anticipation. He managed to maintain his guise of a regular baby but couldn't stop thinking about the path that he should take in this life and how to further progress on his road to mastering magic.