Aryn POV
Aryn didn't feel the accomplishment he was hoping for.
He had just woken up on his bed and was currently staring at the ceiling in his room. It was just as he remembered it. He lay on the same bed, under the same blankets, with the same paint on the walls.
'But not everything is the same...'
He lifted his right hand from under the blanket.
'How much time has passed?' He was coming to a numb realization.
His hand was bigger than he remembered. His nails were longer, his fingers thinner, they were sore when he moved them.
'Was it worth it?' He turned his focus inside himself.
His heart had completed its transformation. If one could see inside Aryn's chest, they would behold a beating heart of faintly glowing crystal. It beat once every four seconds, not only flowing blood, but also mana through the body.
This mana was drawn into his heart without Aryn's interference and underwent a change as it flowed through the crystal flesh of the outer layer before being stored in its chambers.
The altered mana then flowed along his circulatory system, nourishing his body systematically. If he had been moving his body and getting proper exercise in however long he was asleep for, he may have already reached the genetic limit of his body's physical fitness.
'It's too early to tell...'
He didn't know exactly what he had created in his moment of greed-fueled mania. It may not be anything ground-breaking now, but all that matters is how far he can take his little crystal heart.
'That'll do for a name. Crystal Heart.' A simple name, there was no need to get complicated.
But now it was time to face reality.
Aryn slowly sat up in his bed, his body aching all over. It was clear he hadn't moved in quite some time. He turned and put his feet on the floor...
He couldn't do that before.
Standing up, Aryn leaned against the desk in his room to catch his waning balance. His body felt alien once again. With more effort than should be necessary, he reached the door to his room and turned the knob before pulling it open.
He looked left and right down the hall. No one was there, so he walked to the stairs leading to the main floor and tightly gripped the railing, slowly inching his way down despite his atrophied body.
Halfway down the steps, he locked eyes with one of the two maids, Michelle.
She had been laying a plate before a man he didn't recognize in the dining room when she froze as they locked eyes. With the dining room door just to the right at the bottom of the staircase, one could barely see the end of the dining table if they were clutching the railing as he was.
With her blue eyes stuck widened on Aryn's thin figure as he struggled his way down two more steps, she seemed to finally get a hold of herself, placed the plate in front of the man — who was watching with a smile — and nervously strung a few words together.
"U-um, Mr. and Mrs. Mayer..." That seemed to be all she was capable of eking out as she simply pointed to Aryn with a fidgety disposition.
But before his parents — just out of view at the dining table he presumed — could realize what was happening, the man he didn't recognize chimed in with an irritating smirk and a teasing tone, "Sleep in?" before going in for a bite from his fork.
'Who's this asshole?' Aryn stopped inching his way down the stairs.
He felt like shit. But this guy thought it was the time to joke? Only he was allowed to joke about this!
Knowing what he had to do, Aryn prepared himself mentally. This would be no easy task, despite how simple it was in theory. Before his coma, he had only had the body of a one year old boy. His dexterity hadn't been good, but it was only worse now that his muscles were atrophied.
Regardless, he lifted one hand from the railing, raising it to the unfamiliar man.
*cough*cough*
And gave him the finger, before continuing on his way down the stairs with a smile plastered across his emaciated face at the pleasant sound of the man choking on a piece of broccoli in his surprised laughter.
"What? What's going on?" He heard his father ask the poor maid. She was caught between helping Aryn down the stairs, answering Maros' question, and making sure the man in the seat of honor didn't die to a piece of broccoli.
*COUGH*plop*
Luckily she was saved as the broccoli made its way out of the man's airpipe and onto the floor in a manner that was rather displeasing to the senses.
Acting as though such a thing never happened and ignoring the broccoli on the floor, the man casually turned his head to where Aryn couldn't see and said like he was telling the time, "He's awake." Before stabbing a piece of meat with his fork.
""What!?"" The sound of silverware clattering on plates was followed by chairs moving harshly over the hardwood floor.
His mother was the first to come into view. But only for a moment, before she appeared in front of Aryn and scooped him into a bone-crushing hug, her eyes tearing up. His father was soon to follow around the corner, adding to the crushing-power.
"Aryn!" His mother was at a loss for words, instead opting to express herself in only the crunching of his bones and a shout of his name.
"Mom, Dad... you're gonna break me!"
***
After everyone had calmed down, and Aryn had eaten his first real meal in — presumably — years, he was helped upstairs to the family room where he could be caught up on the situation.
He sat across from his parents. He was set into a cozy chair before they took their seat on a couch across a coffee table. The unfamiliar man — his great-grandfather — sat in another chair next to the couch his parents had claimed, picking at his teeth.
Aryn ignored him for now and waited for his parents to speak.
They looked at each other for a while. Seemingly debating how to break this to their son. They didn't know how he would take it. When he went into a coma, he had only been one. This would probably be overwhelming for him, but they couldn't keep it from him either. That simply wasn't possible.
"Well, Aryn... There isn't an easy way to tell you this." His father paused, he was having a hard time. He looked over to his side.
"Honey... It's been eight years since you fell asleep." His mother helped out her husband, trying not to tear up.
Aryn fell into a deep thought as the words fell into place in his mind. His parents let him think.
Saying he had mixed feelings would be an understatement. On one side of things, he would be able to skip most of the awkwardness of being a man mentally and a child physically.
At nine, he could now properly maneuver his body and begin training it properly. Once he restored his body to an acceptable level anyway.
On the other, the sheer amount of mana manipulation training that could've been done in that time is astronomical. Not to mention that he would've long become a Mage in that time. He had already saturated his Conduit by about 30% when he shattered it.
Aryn started to regret his hastiness a bit. If he had simply followed the path of practicing both Mage Heart and Crystal Conduit mana manipulation, he would probably already be in the top 0.1% of his age group in terms of power alone.
At least he thought so.
He admittedly didn't know the level of the people in this world. He had only left the manor when his mother decided to go to the town market personally instead of just sending a maid. And that had only happened twice.
For all he knew, there could be ten year old Archmages casually walking around.
He reigned in his thoughts and looked back to his parents, who looked at him pitifully. They probably couldn't imagine what was going on in his head at the moment.
"So I'm nine... What now?" He knew his parents would most likely have some plans for him. He certainly would if his son went into a coma for eight years.
To Aryn's surprise, it wasn't his parents that answered. But his great-grandfather, who finally seemed to be paying attention. "Before we decide that, we need to know what happened. How did you shatter your Conduit? What exactly were you trying to do?"
'Shit!' Aryn realized he had overlooked how he would answer this particular question without making himself look suspicious.
When he decided to try his hand at forming a Mage Heart-Conduit hybrid, he was too blinded by his own excitement to think about what his parents would think. What would he think in their position?
'I have no idea, I've never been a parent!' Aryn's mind was racing.
If he had succeeded smoothly, he could've made up some story about following his instincts or something, further reinforcing his image of a genius. But he didn't. Instead he sent himself into an eight-year coma, with no way of anyone knowing how or why.
'How do I salvage this in a believable way?'
The problem wasn't making up an excuse as to how or why he destroyed his Conduit. The problem was that no matter what he came up with, it would greatly affect the next few years of his life.
Should he say it came to him in a dream? That could either go very well, or very poorly. It depended on if dream focused magic was a thing.
'I simply don't know enough about what magic there is in this world.'
Aryn's only real option was to tell a half-truth to avoid stumbling into a pitfall. So, he put on his best embarrassed face and opened his mouth to speak.
"Well... I wanted to try to make a Conduit in the middle of a Mage Heart." The less he told them, the better. So he stopped there in the vain hope that that would be the end of that conversation.
The words settled for a moment before anyone spoke again. He had already known that wouldn't be enough.
"And how did you shatter your Conduit in the first place?" Maros repeated his grandfather's question.
Not answering twice would only be more suspicious than the truth, so Aryn didn't hesitate too much before answering. Only enough to seem like a child ashamed of his actions.
"I started forming one in the shell of the first to make a hole... I'm sorry." He really was. His parents had been good to him and didn't deserve to worry over him for eight years due to his greed.
At this, his great-grandfather fell into thought and his parents moved over to the couch he was seated on to comfort him.
"You don't need to apologize. We're just glad you're finally awake." His mother said gently as she brought him into another hug, her wavy red hair covering his vision like a winter sunrise.
"But don't try anything like that again okay? You could've died." Maros joined in. From Aryn's perspective, he could make out a few gray hairs that had made their way into his beard.
That wasn't a promise Aryn could make. So he simply stayed silent, a tear making its way down his left cheek onto his father's black, scale-patterned sleeve.
He didn't know he had cared this much about his new parents. He was too blinded by the excitement of being reincarnated in such a world to take a look at the others that lived in it.
The touching moment was interrupted by his great-grandfather posing another question.
"How did you know that would work?"
"How did I know what would work?" Aryn returned a question of his own from the embrace of his parents. He knew what the question was referring to, but needed a moment to think on how to answer.
"How did you know forming a second Conduit within the shell of the first would work to make a hole?" The look on his face when he asked the question oozed intrigue.
"I didn't. I just felt like it would, so I tried it." Aryn decided that in this case, the truth was as good an answer as any.
With a nod to himself, Elder Aryn got up off his chair and stretched. "Good. That means I don't have to wait around just incase anymore. Good luck on your journey to becoming a Mage. Pick something fun when you get there, don't be like Maros, or you can't have my name anymore, brat."
Aryn had no idea what half of that meant. What would he pick when he became a Mage? An element perhaps? And what about having his name? His parents had only told him that this man was his great-grandfather and that he was a High Mage.
"What do you mean pick something fun? And what about your name?"
"You're named after me. As for picking something, finish the book before you try to commit suicide next time... I'm going to bed." With that, Elder Aryn left he and his parents alone in the family room to catch him up on their plans for the future.