Tales of Neglected ones

Sylas pov

Sylas was ten when he found the book.

It was buried beneath a collapsed bookshelf in the far corner of his family's neglected library—half-covered in dust, gnawed by insects, the leather cover hardened by age. The air smelled of mold and parchment, but the silence was a welcome thing. No shouting. No footsteps. No cold stares from a father who looked through him.

He wasn't supposed to be in there.

But the quiet corners of the house were the only places that didn't make him feel like a ghost.

He knelt beside the ruin of books and rubble, brushing ash and paper crumbs aside. Something old pressed against his palm—a heavy spine, half-torn but unburned.

He wiped it clean with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Foundations of Ether-Craft and Core Mechanics."

He didn't know what it meant. He could barely pronounce the words. But the moment he opened the book and saw the diagrams inside—interlocking glyph circles, sketched focus crystals, rune-linked gear layouts—something stirred.

He stared for hours. Tracing symbols with his fingers. Turning pages slowly.

He didn't understand most of it, not yet. But part of him felt like he would.

Like this wasn't just a book—it was a memory he hadn't lived yet.

A blueprint waiting to be rebuilt.

He stole parchment from the dining room. Copied diagrams by candlelight. Whispered unfamiliar words to himself like spells that belonged to no one.

That was the first secret he ever kept.

---

Three years later, the book was gone. Left behind.

His home was gone too—traded for coin.

His name was still Sylas… but most just called him "boy," or "him."

Now, he lived under the estate roof of a noble girl named Seraphina—a girl only a year younger than him, but treated like royalty.

He'd been here a year now.

And no one had hurt him. Not yet.

They fed him. Gave him a place to sleep. Even allowed him to wander parts of the grounds, so long as he didn't go where he wasn't wanted.

To others, he might have looked like a quiet servant.

To himself, he was something else entirely.

---

Sylas crouched in a forgotten storage chamber at the far end of the estate grounds—just beneath the old tower no one used anymore.

He'd found it unlocked months ago. Claimed it in silence.

One table. One chair. One locked trunk filled with copper scrap, scorched wood fragments, and handmade tools carved from broken brushes and bent wire.

On the table in front of him was his newest project: a mana stabilizer core.

It was small—no larger than a chicken egg. A smooth glass sphere with rune lines barely visible under the surface. It pulsed faintly in the low light, reacting to the mana in the room.

He held it up to his eye, studying it, adjusting a thread of silver solder no thicker than a strand of hair.

The pulse evened out.

He allowed himself a breath.

It had taken weeks. Alchemical solutions to insulate the core. Runes drawn and redrawn. Experiments with temperature, pressure, even the effects of breath on active glyphs.

He had no teacher. Only memory.

Only instinct.

But it worked.

Just like the first time he brewed a potion that didn't poison his fingers.

Just like when he made a quill that adjusted to his grip using a pressure-thread rune.

He was building something the world no longer cared to remember.

Magical engineering.

And it was alive in him.

---

His fingers bore tiny scars. Not from combat—but from creation.

Burns from overheated circuits. Tiny nicks from mana coil backlash. Ink-stains from glyphs he drew over and over until they resonated.

Some nights, he mixed potions.

Other nights, he carved metal, infused stone, copied from memory.

Both crafts flowed into one another—alchemy sharpening magical engineering, and vice versa.

He used potion-based varnish to insulate rune plates.

Used engineering concepts to craft potion-release triggers into wearable tools.

Every failure taught him something.

Every success gave him a piece of himself back.

---

He'd never told Seraphina.

She wasn't cruel to him—far from it.

In her own quiet way, she had been more… decent than anyone else in his life.

She never yelled. Never raised her voice. Never looked at him like he was less.

Sometimes, she watched him longer than she needed to—like she was trying to puzzle something out. Like she knew there was more to him than the silent servant who came and went without a word.

But he didn't speak.

He wasn't ready.

She was kind. But kindness was not the same as safety.

Not yet.

---

He placed the stabilizer in a padded box, nestled beside his older projects.

A mana tracker that responded to personal essence.

A palm-sized orb that recorded sound when tapped three times.

A prototype cloak clasp that released a smoke burst when snapped a certain way.

None of them had names.

But they were real.

They were his.

He locked the box and pushed it beneath the floorboard.

Then he rose, dusted his hands, and left the room as silently as he came.

---

The garden path was cool under the moonlight.

He passed the flower beds Seraphina favored. He'd helped her plant them once—awkwardly, silently, before she realized he didn't like being spoken to too much.

She never pressed after that.

Maybe that was why he could stand being near her longer than most.

He paused beside one of the benches where she sometimes read in the afternoon. A few books lay forgotten beneath it.

One of them had a torn corner.

He bent, gently fixed it, then turned to leave.

She hadn't seen him.

No one had.

And that, for now, was the way he wanted it.

---

He returned to his room and sat at the edge of the bed. Pulled out a worn journal—half full of diagrams, potion measurements, experimental notes.

He wrote without thinking, sketching the next version of the stabilizer.

The next piece.

The next step.

Because though the world had forgotten magical engineering…

Sylas hadn't.

And as long as he remembered,

as long as his hands could build,

he wouldn't let it disappear again.

---

End of chapter