Eternal Flame: Rise of the Spark Sovereign

Arion couldn't hold his neck upright.

It was the first thing that humbled him.

For a man who once debated with world leaders, who spoke at orbital tech summits before the age of thirty, who steered billion-dollar mergers without breaking stride—being reduced to a bundle of soft flesh that couldn't even track movement was humiliating.

His bones felt like wet cloth. His hands shook when he tried to grip his mother's finger. His vision blurred at the edges unless the light was just right.

The body of a child. The soul of a man.

And yet, the mind of Arion Drayke remained whole.

He spent his days observing. Silently. Relentlessly. Measuring everything. Every sound. Every face. Every routine.

He learned quickly.

The village was small—no more than thirty huts arranged in a half-circle around a muddy center. No walls. No guards. Just people scraping by on what little they could grow and hunt. No names on the doors, no signs, no records. There was no school. No books. Just oral memory and passed-down tools made of bone, wood, and crude copper.

Spirit energy flowed faintly through the land, but no one seemed able to harness it properly here. He would later understand why—but for now, he simply watched.

The woman who nursed him—his mother—had a strong back and quiet eyes. She spoke little. She worked much.

His father, the one with the scar and hardened hands, rarely stayed in the hut. He would leave before dawn and return after dark, covered in dust and silent anger.

There was no warmth between them.

Only survival.

Sometimes Arion was left alone in the hut, swaddled in rough furs on a cracked wooden board.

He never cried unless absolutely necessary. The faster they believed he was normal, the more freedom he would have.

And so, he adapted.

He slowed his reactions. Delayed his head movements. Timed his sounds. Pretended not to understand. But when no one looked?

He stared at the fire pit and memorized its structure.

He listened to the conversations and learned their cadence.

He noted when the wind shifted directions and how the villagers reacted to the sky.

They feared the east. That much was clear.

Once, when he was no older than six months, a group of ragged cultivators rode through the village on dust-coated horses. Their robes shimmered faintly, marked with bronze emblems Arion didn't yet understand.

But the people bowed. Every one of them. Even his father.

The cultivators didn't speak. They looked. Sneered. Tossed down a bag of black stones in exchange for two trembling boys. One screamed. The other didn't.

Then they left.

The next day, no one mentioned the boys.

No one ever did.

That night, Arion stared at the ceiling and swore something—not with words, not yet—but with will.

He would change this.

Not now. Not as a lump of flesh in rags.

But soon.

As months passed, Arion began moving more freely. He learned to crawl faster than expected, walk a bit later—on purpose—and speak in short, broken phrases. The villagers considered him quiet, maybe slow. But he didn't care. Their expectations were not his concern.

What mattered were patterns.

He saw them in the way the hunters moved, in the rhythm of their footsteps. In how the mothers measured flour with their hands. In how the fires burned stronger when certain stones were placed beneath the pot.

He noticed illness spreading after shared water. Insects burrowing too close to food. Spoiled grains fed to the old and dying.

And all the while, his mind sharpened.

By the age of four, he could count better than anyone in the village.

By five, he'd already memorized the positions of stars visible through the cracked roof above his bed.

But he said nothing.

Not yet.

His father still didn't look at him.

His mother still sang him to sleep, quietly, like a promise against the dark.

And on the night of his fifth birthday—though no one in the village counted such things—Arion stood outside the hut, staring out across the dry grasslands.

The wind blew cold, and the moon was sharp.

He clenched his small fists, the muscles still awkward and clumsy.

But in his eyes, the fire was starting to burn.

Not just of anger.

Not just of memory.

But of purpose.