Silver's fascination with the world around him only grew stronger as he neared his seventh birthday. He seemed to sprint from one question to the next, always in motion, forever curious. One day, while he was helping Marlen in the workshop, he noticed an odd sensation tug at his awareness. It was like a gentle warmth brushing the edges of his mind, beckoning him out beyond the fences of their yard. He asked his father if he could take a break, then hurried off toward the old forest path. Marlen, used to Silver's roaming, didn't think much of it. He simply called after him not to wander too far.
Silver walked down a trail of dappled sunlight, leaves rustling overhead. Eventually, he found a small clearing where wildflowers grew in clusters of pink and yellow. As a soft breeze passed through, he could have sworn it carried a whisper that wasn't the wind. He crouched to examine the soil, noticing how an insect scurried under a rock. He smiled. The sense of warmth in his thoughts pulsed again, and he placed a hand on the trunk of a nearby oak. That gentle voice—if voice it was—seemed to resonate more clearly here, like the forest itself was breathing secrets into his ear.
He couldn't name what he felt, but it gave him the same thrill he got whenever he expanded his Planet Mind. Ever since he'd managed to create that mental world, new insights and possibilities popped into his head almost daily. He absorbed facts like a sponge, then tucked them away into vast continents and libraries inside his imagination. It was glorious, it was exhilarating, and it made him feel like there was no limit to what he could learn or do. Yet this feeling was different, more mysterious. It didn't come from inside him but from outside, from the forest, or maybe from the air around him.
When he got home that evening, he tried to explain the experience to Elena. She was stirring a pot of soup by the hearth, the smell of vegetables and herbs filling the room. At first, she thought he was talking about the birdsong or the rustling of branches, but as he kept describing it, she realized this was something more. She told him it sounded like a kind of magic, though she wasn't sure how such power worked or even if it truly existed. Magic was something that lived in old stories and legends, not in everyday life in Lumeria. Silver shrugged but couldn't shake the lingering tingle in his chest.
A few days later, a traveling herb-gatherer came through town. Her name was Mira, and she was known for supplying rare leaves and roots to healers across the region. Mira camped near the forest edge, unbothered by the isolation. Silver, driven by the memory of that strange whisper, followed her one afternoon. He found her kneeling beside a patch of glowing mushrooms, carefully harvesting them with a small knife. She glanced up, noticed the boy watching, and gave him a half-smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes.
He approached timidly at first. She didn't shoo him away or act suspicious. Instead, she asked, "Are you looking for something?" He explained what he'd felt in the clearing. Mira listened intently, then spoke in a low, steady voice about energies that flowed through nature, energies some people called mana or aether. She suspected that whatever Silver felt was the forest's own magic weaving around him. He was too stunned to speak at first. He'd been devouring knowledge of science, machines, languages, but he'd never quite thought that nature itself might host a living power. He pressed her for more details, but Mira merely said, "Such things aren't taught in Lumeria. You feel them or you don't."
From that day on, he visited her camp whenever she passed through. Mira showed him basic ways to sense the life force in plants and soil, little exercises that felt a bit like the meditations he'd found in his book about Mind Balance. Closing his eyes, he'd focus on the land beneath his feet, imagining the roots of trees spreading out in every direction. Every so often, he'd catch that same warm whisper again, and each time, it felt a bit stronger, as though the forest recognized him.
He tried to incorporate these sensations into his Planet Mind. At night, while lying in bed, he'd picture entire regions in his imagination made of twisting vines and glowing flora, all pulsing with the energy he'd felt in the clearing. The effect was explosive. He noticed that his mental planet felt more alive, more robust, as though these new ideas of magic were fueling it. He tested small experiments in the real world: focusing on a wilted flower to see if he could make it perk up, or staring at a spot on the ground to detect any hidden bug tunnels. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, but the possibility thrilled him.
During one of these attempts, he called Elena into the yard to show her a patch of basil he'd been caring for. He knelt beside it, closed his eyes, and softly hummed the same melody he once used for a lullaby. When he opened his eyes, he could swear the basil looked a bit greener, its leaves more perky. Elena's eyes widened, but she said nothing for a long while. She simply patted his shoulder and whispered, "Be careful, Silver. People might not understand."
Most of the village remained oblivious to Silver's growing connection to magic. They saw only the bright-eyed boy who spoke in an oddly formal tone about how water pumps could be improved or how using a pulley could save them effort in hauling cargo. A handful of villagers, particularly some older men who liked to gather by the well, grumbled about how "that kid is too smart for his own good," but no one openly confronted him. The farmland was producing well, the livestock were healthy, and so, for most folks, life in Lumeria went on as usual.
Unbeknownst to all of them, something much larger was stirring. Each time Silver added to his Planet Mind, each time he connected a new insight or harnessed a flicker of that natural energy, the force he was building inside grew more potent. It wasn't just that he could remember more facts. He was, in a way, rewriting how memory and magic could interact, forging a hidden system that relied on knowledge as fuel. The more he learned, the more powerful he became, and the more the world around him seemed to yield to his subtle influence. If he kept going unchecked, it might elevate him to heights no ordinary mortal had ever reached.
But great power never goes unnoticed. Far away, in distant lands and obscure corners of reality, there were entities—some human, some not—who specialized in feeling such surges. Some were monks in hidden monasteries, adept at sensing shifts in the world's magical balance. Others were creatures older than time, stirring in their slumber whenever the currents of power twisted in new directions. They didn't yet know Silver's name, but they felt the ripples. Something or someone was lighting a new flame in the tapestry of existence, and that flame was growing steadily, whether Silver realized it or not.
One evening, as the last red sliver of sun dipped below the horizon, Silver stood on the old fence that bordered the forest. He gazed at the darkening canopy, remembering Mira's words about aether. He wasn't afraid of the forest. If anything, he felt drawn to it more than ever. He spread his arms wide, trying to feel the wind between his fingers, and let out a slow exhale. In the quiet that followed, he thought he heard the trees whisper his name. Or maybe it was just the wind stirring the branches.
Marlen called from the doorway to come inside for supper. Silver hopped down, brushing dust from his knees. As he walked back, he felt that faint thrum in his chest again, the one that said knowledge could weave with magic into something unstoppable. The notion of unstoppable power didn't yet scare him, because in his mind, knowledge was a gift to be shared, not a weapon. He saw it as a path to help others—like building better irrigation for the crops or finding gentler methods to care for animals.
That night, after dinner, he pulled out his ragged notebook and tried to pen down all the new questions swirling in his head. How far did this energy extend beyond Lumeria? Could it move stones if he truly willed it? Could it be shaped into illusions or used to heal the sick? His Planet Mind buzzed with excitement at the possibilities. He felt unstoppable, even though he was still just a child on the verge of understanding a force that even some adults dismissed as fairy tales.
He dozed off with the quill still in his hand, slumped over the notebook. In the small hours of the night, Elena found him and gently guided him to his bed. She stood there, looking at her sleeping son with a mixture of awe and worry. She could sense how quickly he was changing, how each new discovery lit him up like a candle in the dark. She recalled the old rumors whispered after his birth—how a child with eyes like gold and hair like silver was bound to live an extraordinary life. She just hoped the world would be kind to him.
A day or two later, Silver went to see Mira again before she left town. This time he asked her outright if she believed in the existence of huge magical energies that could reshape the world. She regarded him with the same calm gaze as always, then told him that magic might be limitless, but mortal minds were not. If he wasn't careful, he could burn out or attract unwanted attention. Silver nodded, an uneasy flutter in his stomach. He knew what it felt like to be shunned for being different, even if most villagers only whispered behind his back.
She left him with a final piece of advice: "Never forget that real magic dances between knowledge and mystery. If you try to explain it all away, it loses its essence. If you stop studying it altogether, you lose your power. Walk the line carefully." He watched her vanish into the forest paths, her basket of herbs swinging at her side. Her words lingered, weaving themselves into the Planet Mind's tapestry.
That evening, Silver tested a new invention in the backyard—an odd contraption of wooden gears and a small funnel meant to filter water from the well. It was a modest success. Water trickled out cleaner than before. Elena clapped. Marlen gave an approving nod. Silver felt a swell of pride, but also a deeper sense that none of this was mere tinkering. Every gear he fit together, every drop of water he filtered, it all linked back to that overpowered system in his head. He was shaping the external world by channeling the internal one. And if he could do this at seven, what might he achieve at seventeen, or twenty-seven, when his knowledge and his control over that intangible magic multiplied?
Later that night, a gust of wind rattled the windows as he lay in bed, half-asleep. He sensed the forest pressing in on the edges of his dreams, showing him flashes of glowing lines in the ground, veins of energy pulsing beneath the roots of ancient trees. Through the haze, he almost glimpsed giant figures, or perhaps they were just illusions conjured by his mind's eye. He felt a strange collision of excitement and dread, as though destiny was preparing a path for him and he had little choice but to follow it.
Morning found him up before sunrise, rummaging through old notes, mapping out how to combine mechanical science with the intangible force he felt out in the wild. He wondered if, with enough study, he could invent devices that harnessed aether to do things nobody in Lumeria had ever imagined. The Planet Mind offered him infinite space to store new ideas, and the magic he sensed gave him the ambition to make them real. Standing at his window, watching the sun climb over the horizon, he felt something shift inside him—a conviction that learning was his true calling, one that might lead him to reshape not just Lumeria, but the entire world.
He had no way of knowing the storms that would follow. He only knew his heart beat faster with every new piece of knowledge, and the forest seemed to beckon him deeper into its secrets. In that moment, bathed in soft dawn light, he smiled to himself. The hush of morning felt like a pact between him and the universe, as if the day itself was whispering, "Keep going." So he did.