Kaine learned to read before he learned to kneel.
Not because someone taught him. Because someone assumed he shouldn't.
The House of Anara prided itself on piety and protocol. To the world, it was a monastery. To the boys inside it, it was a funnel.
Each child born within its care was raised in the Monastery of the Fourth Breath, an ancient sanctum carved into the side of a mountain draped in mist and echo. Outsiders saw prayer halls, meditation chambers, temple bells. They never saw the sorting floors.
It was said the matriarchs could smell a boy's worth by the age of eight.
The beautiful ones were trained in posture and pleasure—sent to the noble courts as Ornaments.
The clever ones were sent to the archives, taught to obey and catalogue—turned into Functionaries.
The strong, if docile, became Companions—bodyguards with pretty faces and clipped tongues.
Kaine, at first glance, was too quiet to be anything.And far too dangerous to be discarded.
So they sent him to the library and watched.And waited.
The library itself was a layered maze.Low-ranking boys were only allowed on Tiers 1 through 3.Tiers 4 and above were sealed by language.
Not locks.Words.
High Script: a spiralled, tonal form of ink-rune glyphing used in ceremonial cultivation texts and ancient spell theory.All sacred knowledge was written in it. All "unfit minds" were forbidden from translating it.
The flaw?No one expected the "unfit minds" to remember.
Kaine remembered everything.
By six, he'd memorised thirty-nine characters. By seven, he could recognise two dozen variants of pattern-logic embedded in war chants.By eight, he was reading old laws sideways.By nine, he was writing his own.
The House librarians thought he was obedient.
He never asked for scrolls above his caste. Never touched restricted seals.He waited until they weren't looking.He bent behind lower-tier shelves.He read with a slouch, eyes half-lidded, posture demure.
He wore submission like a robe.But inside his head, the gears were spinning.
One night—his ninth birthday, though no one marked it—he found it.A ruined war manual, brittle with age and scorched by Ki backlash. Most of the writing had been blotted out by sacred wax.
But someone had left a single line in the margin.
"The stars do not burn. They remember."
Kaine stared at it until the candle bled out.
He didn't understand it yet.But something in it felt true in a way no sermon ever had.
Like the universe had whispered a private joke and was waiting for him to laugh.
The monastery noticed him after that.
Not publicly. Not with reward.But with eyes.
The other boys called him strange.One tried to mock his voice, so Kaine mimicked his speech for three days—intonation, grammar, rhythm. Perfectly.
On the fourth day, a visiting Matron overheard him reciting a blessing.
She called him original.
The other boy was reassigned to garden duty one mocked Kaine after that.
He was ten when the summons came.
A slip of parchment. No signature. No explanation.Just a time, a bell tone, and a location:
Stone Hall of the Seventh Dome. Speak only when asked. Breathe only when permitted.
He bathed. He dressed in ash-grey linen. He did not flinch.
This was not a gift .This was a test.
The Stone Hall was older than the monastery.Built before the empire was matriarchal, some said. Before breath had laws.
Kaine entered alone.
Inside sat three women, spaced like stars across a wide ceremonial circle. One of them wore silver rings across her fingers—nine total, each etched with a seal. She didn't look at him when he entered.
The second wore white. Hooded. Her eyes were clouded, but she tracked his movement without fail.
The third… watched him like a hawk dissecting a corpse.
"Step forward," she said. Voice low, but sharp.
Kaine obeyed.
This was Seeress Malari Vohn, Third Ascendant of Anara, Keeper of Oaths, Matron-Watcher of Breathline Deviance. And she hated wasting time.
She did not smile. Did not posture.
She studied Kaine with the focus of a tactician reading an enemy's surrender letter for hidden ink.
'He has no surname. Pale eyes. No trace lineage. Are we sure he's a House birth?'
"She's baiting me," Kaine thought.
He didn't answer. He hadn't been asked.
Finally, Malari tapped a single ring on the armrest beside her.It lit briefly.
"Tell me, boy," she said."What's the most valuable thing in this House?"
He'd been preparing for a question. Not that one.
But he didn't pause.
Kaine looked her in the eyes.
"What I haven't said yet."
The other two women shifted. One inhaled slightly.
Malari didn't move.But something behind her gaze… flexed.
Not amusement. Not approval.
Recognition.
A predator recognising another, smaller, caged one.
She stood, slowly. Walked to him. Tilted his chin up with two fingers. They were cold. Her nails had ink under them.
"You think you're clever," she said.
"No, Matron," he replied. "I remember things. That's all."
She held his gaze for one heartbeat too long.
Then smiled.
"Then remember this:Speak only when asked.Think only when permitted.And never—ever—speak like that in court."
She released him. Turned.
"Dismissed."
Kaine bowed. Lower than needed.
And when he rose, her shadow had already retreated to the dais.
He left with no marks, no robe, no reward.
But her eyes had lingered.And one of the watching attendants—a girl his age with sharp lips and narrowed brows—was still staring long after the doors closed.