I don’t know for how long I slept. I dreamt of the cold embrace of the Dark Waters. The silence and the peaceful embrace of death covered me head to toe. That thought jolted me out of my slumber. I did not have a human form. Not in the Dark Waters. No one did. We were all formless glowing balls of essence in the waters, traveling from life to death. And still, I felt I was walking. My feet moved and the currents didn’t drag me away.

  I opened my eyes and stumbled. I was walking.

  Walking behind my father. His broad back blocked my vision. So, I twisted my neck and looked around. We were alone, walking through a stone corridor lit by torches every few steps.

  “Ah, welcome back to the land of living, my Truechild.” Father greeted me with a smile and guided me into a room.

  He grabbed me by my shoulders and held me in his arms. He looked at me with pride in his eyes and turned to a large mirror. The sight I saw made me recoil. I didn’t have a face. I didn’t even have a body. Not in the usual sense. I was made from a transparent crystalline mass. I was no one and nothing.

  “Look at yourself, child. You are a manaborn.” Father waved at the large mirror.

  Manaborn. What was that? Mana. I thought the word and nothing came to me. That meant that there was nothing to recall.

  “Don’t worry, child. You will have a face and body. In a few days, you will be given a mana bond. But before that…” Father turned to me with a concerned look and started again. “It is natural to retreat to the familiar after a harrowing experience. But retreating into the Dark Waters is not a solution. Embracing this life is. Fight for it, Truechild.”

  Fight for it. How was I supposed to fight? I looked at Father and considered his words. I could feel the Dark Waters just beyond the surface of this world. I could slip into them and bob up and down. It was natural. Meditative.

  Father saw reluctance in me and shook his head. “If you keep retreating, your mothers will be upset. We don’t want that, do we?”

  I considered his words and after a moment shook my head.

  Father held out his palm. It had four glowing stones in them. “These are knowledge stones. They help you learn new things. We have already given you a few of them. But now you need to consume them on your own. At your own pace.”

  I took the stones and looked at them with curiosity.

  “Stop when your head begins to hurt,” Father warned and continued, “Soon, we will attune you to an element. But before that, you need to learn a lot about living.”

  I gave Father a questioning look.

  “Like walking, boy.” Father replied with laughter in his voice. “I hold you with mana and help you walk everywhere.”

  I nodded.

  Two days later, I was lying on a soft bed in an infirmary. One of the knowledge stones I had consumed had been about healthcare. I found the topic bland and boring. But concepts like hospitals, infirmary, and emergency care stuck in my brain.

  Lying here on the white sheets I realized something. I did not like hospitals and infirmaries. They made you feel vulnerable. I did not like that.

  Father walked into my line of sight and asked, “So, my boy, how are you doing?”

  I closed my fist and jutted out a thumb. Another knowledge stone had taught me to do that. It was better than talking. Why did everyone around me like talking so much?

  Father chuckled and held out a fiery red crystal in his hand. Behind him came Sage with another stone. This one glowed a deep blue. They were both big enough to fit in my palm.

  But Father balanced his crystal on a tip of his finger and spun it.

  “So, Truechild.” Father showed me the spinning crystal on his finger and asked, “Which one will it be. Fire or Ice?”

  I looked at the two stones. Fire or Ice? Fire. I had felt the touch of fire. It hurt. It made me recoil. But at the same time, I knew that with that stone, I could control it. Fight against that element. And use it to hurt the creature that had burnt me.

  But ice. Ice felt so familiar. So natural. So light. So warm. Like a blanket made of snow. It was pretty. It was deadly. And it was close to the Dark Waters that I had lived in forever. I turned my head to the blue stone.

  “Ice?” Father sighed and gave Sage an amused look.

  “You owe me ten gold, Father.” Sage grinned.

  Father chuckled and asked, “How did you know?”

  “I am a healer, Father. I need to understand people’s body movements.” Sage waved at me. “He doesn’t talk. Even when he can. He doesn’t go out in the sun. He doesn’t walk the streets. He doesn’t even light a fire in the fireplace. He just sits quietly in the dark and consumes knowledge stones. So, the choice was simple. Ice or stone. We don’t have stone. Hence, the ice.”

  “So, you gambled?” Father chuckled.

  “I made an educated guess, Father.” Sage responded with a smile of his own and turned to me. “Hello brother. My name is Sage.”

  I gave him a thumbs up.

  Sage rolled his eyes. “A thumbs up to you too, brother.” He looked at the box. He read a label on top of it and nodded. “And you will be Voss Truechild. The new lord of Clan Voss.”

  Father exhaled. “We can get to all that later. For now...”

  Sage nodded seriously and said, “Now, lay back down and try not to move.”

  I did as I was asked. Sage closed his hand around the stone. With a crack and crunch, it turned to dust. Sage moved his hands methodically going from my chest, to my head, and to my limbs. Making sure every inch of me was covered in the blue dust.

  “Hmm...” Sage looked down at me. “That didn’t take long.”

  Father grinned. “He is strong.”

  Sage gathered another blue stone and repeated the process. This time with me on my back.

  “Father?”

  “Yes, Sage.”

  “Father, he can take more.” Sage said slowly and added, “Much more.”

  “Your brother has a name now, Sage.” Father's voice had a hint of reproach to it.

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  Sage replied unconcernedly. “Very well, Father. Your son, and my brother, Voss has sucked up the mana ice without a trace. He can take far more than these weak stones from the Voss clan.”

  “Sage!” Father’s voice gained some heat. “The Voss clan is an honorable clan. And now it is your brother's clan. Show some respect.”

  Sage tried to hurry father. “Father. We need to hurry before his soul pearl starts consuming the ice and transferring it to his tissues and bones.”

  “Relax, child.” Father straightened me and held out another stone. This one was a deeper blue and repeated the process.

  Once. Twice. And then a third time.

  Sage’s voice had a tremble in it when he spoke next. “He is like a void sucking in all that ice.”

  “No. He is used to the Dark Waters.” Father shook his head and gave me an amused look. “For him, these stones are a warm current.”

  Sage took a step back. “Dark Waters, Father? Are you sure he is not a death lord?”

  “No. He is no death lord. But he will be dead if he doesn’t let go of the Dark Waters.” Father gave me an annoyed look and pointed at my face. “Look.”

  “No, Father, those black streaks are mana veins.” Sage touched the streaks forming on my skin and leaned in closer. “They are blue at the edges.”

  Father followed Sage's words and his eyebrows lifted. “Quick, get the dragon crystals and the ones we got from the Lich Lord.”

  Sage gave Father a worried look. “Are you sure, Father?”

  “Do as I say, Sage. I know what I am doing.” Father ordered sternly.

  Father looked down at me. “Voss, those attunement crystals I have called for are powerful. They will make you almost immune to the call of death and ice. They will attune you to both ice and death. You must hide your death attunement. They will never accept you if they know that you are death attuned. They will also make you my executioner when you embrace your true nature.”

  The Emperor looked me in my eyes looking for comprehension. He found what he was looking for and nodded. “You will be the cold death I send to the battlegrounds. But that will be in the future. For now, I am going to put you to sleep. Because this will hurt. A lot. Just hold on. And don’t die on me. Savera won’t forgive me if anything happened to you.”

  Father poured a large vial of thick sea-green liquid down my throat and rested his hand on my eyes. A deep darkness fell upon me and I stopped thinking.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness. New stones were cracked and dust was poured into me. Pulsing darkness, so familiar yet so different, wormed itself into my flesh and blood. Cold, deathly cold froze my bones and reformed them. Father hadn’t lied about the pain. The pain made me delirious and when I began to convulse, I was tied down to the bed with chains.

  In between the death and ice, my mind was given something to focus on. Knowledge stones were brought to me. One taught me of the languages of the empire. Until then, I hadn’t realized that neither Father nor Sage had spoken to me vocally. Now that I knew the language, I could communicate. And I learned that to speak, I needed to have lungs to breathe. Another stone taught me about my body. I was different from the humans all around me. I was a manaborn. My body was forty percent mana. And just like Father, I could heal from grievous wounds. With that knowledge, I reformed my body. Bit by bit.

  In between bouts of pain, I consumed other knowledge stones. Stones that taught me about history. Stones that taught me about magic. How to use it and how to cleanse it. More stones. Some taught me about my family. The Truechildren. I was the ninth Truechild. Five of my siblings had perished fighting back the blighted hordes and the demons who created them.

  Ilya Truechild, my elder sister, had been injured in one of those fights. She was placed in an artificially induced coma while Father treated her wounds. Sage, the fourth Truechild, was a Light Mage and a healer. He had helped Father treat her. But he wasn’t Father and his priorities had shifted towards me.

  Our father was not a normal man. Emperor Larden Starbright was ancient. The elves called him a Fallen Star. Others believed him to be a Sorcerer King. And more believed him to be a god and prayed to him. He needed successors. Worthy ones. That was difficult. His fluids over the centuries had become mana-drenched. They had mutated to give him abilities that made him Emperor Larden. They also made normal methods of reproduction impossible. Three hundred years ago, when the best fertility mages couldn’t give his empire the heirs it wanted, he had taken over the task. He had studied and researched and come to one conclusion. If he needed heirs, he would need to create them.

  So, he created us. The manaborn. Made from mana, his flesh, and blood. He gave us his knowledge of the element of our choice, and the right to rule regions in his name. We were his princes and princesses. Our first task was to go to our beleaguered clan lands, clear the mana-mutated beasts, and protect the people.

  The pain drifted away into numbness and I began to focus on voices around me.

  “Why are his mana veins black?” A man asked.

  “I don’t know,” someone responded in a breathy voice.

  “He is a Truechild. Who knows how the Emperor makes his children,” another man answered.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the large sand glass at the end of the room. It was full. That meant someone had just turned it. It also meant that I had been in the attunement process for a week.

  “He is a manaborn isn’t he? Their mana veins represent the nature of their magic,” a young man asked a bearded mage.

  “I know where you are going with this. You need to stop. The Emperor has given his Truechild a deep attunement crystal from a dragon. Our lord is an ice mage. He is a Voss. The patriarch of the Voss clan now,” the bearded mage responded to the younger man sternly.

  The third mage—this one was ancient-looking—stopped them both in a breathy wheezing voice. “You both need to stop. Our lord is awake.” He turned to me and bowed.

  “Apologies, Your Highness. We will continue our work without disturbing you.”

  I nodded and looked around. I was now surrounded by humans. Father and Sage were nowhere to be seen. People stood on stools. They waved their hands and crushed a stone. These ones didn’t glow like the others. It had a muted steely look. The humans moved their hands slowly covering me with new dust. And slowly, gradually, I learned how to use a spear.

  I grimaced. Spears didn’t appeal to me. They were long and wobbly. And they needed two hands to wield properly. The next stones were crushed and I knew how to use blades. I knew swords. With another few stones, I understood the footwork. The movement of my wrists. The muscle groups to use. The positioning of my body. It all felt so natural. Almost like I had done this…

  No, I had learned something similar before. Something clicked inside me. I didn’t know how to use swords before. But I knew how to fight. I had fought barehanded and with a knife. The swordplay just added to that.

  “Uh… Did you see that?” The old man with the wheezing voice asked the others in the room.

  “Of course I saw that. Everyone did,” a gruff bearded man responded.

  The old man pointed at the youngest man and shouted, “Someone tell our princess that the Truechild has an affinity for swords.”

  “What are you doing?” The first man yelled.

  “Giving our clan lord better tools.”

  The old man cracked another stone and lowered the dust to cover me. Where the first stone taught me basic movements, this one taught a series of steps and moves to fight my enemies. A word came to me. A kata. An old word. Its meaning escaped me at first. The understanding bloomed inside me. I knew other katas.

  “Stop!” The bearded man waved his hands. “Ask Duchess Saha first.”

  “Quiet, man.” The old man shouted back and then in a softer voice said, “She is no longer the Duchess. She is a princess. For good or ill, this is our lord. We need to make sacrifices. Lady Saha will understand that. She understands that.”

  I liked swords more than spears. One after another stones were cracked and I assimilated more knowledge of swords. I learned about distance, about complex footwork, how to coat my weapons with mana. And how to create swords with mana. Then came the knowledge about new more complex katas and even ceremonial sword dances. The knowledge kept coming until I couldn’t take anymore. My mind began to get overwhelmed. Pain began throbbing in my temples and my mind felt like it was going to explode.

  I heard loud footsteps running towards me. I turned my head and looked at a bald Truechild skidding to a stop next to the old man with the stones. Followed by Sage.

  The bald Truechild looked down at me and snorted. His green mana veins pulsed as he looked at the old man. He asked, “What is this?”

  Sage stopped next me and wiped my eyes with a cloth. They came out bloody.

  The old man bowed. “Duke Tyran, I was just…”

  Tyran lifted the old man by his throat and blew out a breath on his face. The old man screamed and began to froth from his mouth.

  “Tyran. What are you doing?” Sage shouted.

  “What? He attacked a Truechild.” Tyran looked at me and I saw a stone snake gaze lock on me.

  My eyes focused on Tyran. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be…

  I retreated into the Dark Waters. I needed to check if what I was looking at was true.

  I opened my eyes in the Dark Waters and saw what I was dreading. A predator was swimming next to me. Its gaze was focused elsewhere but its snake-like body was ready to move to attack everyone around it.

  “Tyran, step away from him.” Sage ordered.

  “Or what?” Tyran responded in a challenging tone.

  I tried to get up. To move. But I couldn’t. My attunement and the knowledge stones weren’t done with my body. I was helpless and there was a predator ready to strike me down.

  “Or I will get Father.” Sage growled.

  “Pathetic weakling.” Tyran huffed and threw the old man on the floor.

  Tyran glanced back at me. “When you come to Voss Truechild. We will talk. That will decide the nature of our relationship.”