Blackness. Endless and suffocating.
Tesla drifted in the void, his existence reduced to scattered fragments of awareness. There was no sound, no sensation—only the weight of nothingness pressing against him from all sides. Time held no meaning. He simply was.
Then, something changed. A distant hum, not quite a sound but a vibration, a pulse of energy rippling through the darkness. It was weak, fragile, but it grew. The void wavered like disturbed water, and Tesla became aware of something beyond the nothingness.
Pressure. Dull, formless. Then warmth, the slow, rhythmic pulse of something near him, anchoring him to existence. He did not understand it, only that it was familiar. A heartbeat.
His mind stirred, but it was sluggish, tangled in haze. He was not the man he once was. His thoughts were slow, rudimentary, like a flame struggling against the wind. The knowledge, the understanding of all he had once been, remained locked away, distant echoes of something grander. But there was something—an image, fleeting, just beyond reach. The crackle of electricity. The sterile walls of a room. The heavy weight of regret, pressing against him like the darkness itself. And then, the final moment. The last breath. The resentment. The wish.
Light came next, faint at first, then intrusive. His vision—blurry, unfocused—captured shifting forms. Voices murmured, carrying exhaustion and routine. Rough hands lifted him, their warmth fleeting against the creeping chill of open air. Instinct overtook him, a cry escaping his lips—pathetic, feeble. The voices carried on, barely shifting in tone.
Time passed. Tesla knew nothing of days, only the cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold, hunger and fulfillment. His world was small, confined to cramped spaces and the hushed voices of people who barely acknowledged him beyond necessity. He learned without realizing he was learning. The faces of those around him became familiar, their movements predictable. They worked—always working. Hands roughened by toil, eyes dulled by the weight of expectation.
The orphanage, Braelor's Rest, was no place of warmth. The walls were sturdy but worn, built upon the land of a noble long dead, his generosity stretched thin over generations of hardship. It was not cruelty that ruled here, but exhaustion. The caretakers worked as hard as the children, their lives tethered to endless labor. Some toiled in noble houses, performing menial tasks for the highborn. Others were sent to the fields, their sweat exchanged for coin they would never hold. It was survival, no more, no less.
One face stood out among the weary caretakers—Marga, an older woman with broad shoulders and a gaze that had long since lost its softness. She spoke little, and when she did, her words were curt, practical. Unlike the others, she did not look at the children with pity or disdain. She simply worked, as they did, tending to their needs without indulgence. But her hands, though rough, were careful. She never struck the children, never wasted words on empty threats. To Tesla, she was the closest thing this place had to a constant.
Among the children, a few stood apart. There was Aldric, a boy with a sharp gaze, older than most, always watching. He spoke in murmurs, gathering scraps of knowledge wherever he could. Then there was Lirien, younger, slight, with a habit of hoarding things—bits of fabric, broken trinkets, anything that might prove useful. And lastly, Mira, whose silence was her armor, her presence a shadow that slipped between spaces unnoticed.
Even as a child, Tesla felt it—something beneath the surface of this world, unseen yet ever-present. It hummed through the ground, clung to the air like a forgotten whisper. He could not name it, did not yet understand it, but it was there. A presence beyond sight, beyond sound, woven into the very fabric of existence.
Magic.
He saw it before he knew what it was. In flickering candles that did not burn to the wick. In whispered words that carried weight beyond sound. In the way certain hands could mend wounds with a mere touch, while others called forth fire with nothing but a thought. It was part of this world as much as breath and blood, yet it remained distant, unreachable.
For now.
Tesla did not speak. Not yet. He listened, he watched. He learned. His thoughts were slow, simple, but they were growing, expanding with each passing moment. He was not just another orphan in Braelor's Rest.
He was waiting.