It started with small things.
A spoon wobbling on the table when I was frustrated.
A book falling from the shelf just as I reached for it.
The radio tuning itself to a station I'd been thinking about.
At first, I thought I was imagining it.
But my parents noticed.
They didn't say anything—not directly. But I caught the glances. The hushed conversations after bedtime. The way my father would pause mid-sentence when something odd happened, like the curtains shifting without a breeze.
Then, one night, I overheard them arguing.
"Charles, we can't ignore this anymore." My mother's voice was tense. "It's happening too often."
"I know." A long silence. Then, quieter: "I'll write to my father."
The Letter
I didn't know much about my grandfather.
Only that he lived somewhere in Scotland, that my father never spoke of him, and that his name—Alistair Clarke—was said in the same tone people used for war veterans or men who had seen too much.
The letter was sealed with red wax, stamped with a symbol I didn't recognize. A circle, a line through it. Like an old alchemical mark.
Three days later, the knock came.
The Stranger at the Door
The man standing on our doorstep didn't look like a grandfather.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with steel-grey hair tied back in a knot, he carried himself like someone who expected trouble. His cane—dark wood, topped with a silver wolf's head—wasn't for walking. I could tell by the way his grip shifted when he saw me.
"Eliot," he said, not a question.
I nodded.
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You've got the look of your grandmother."
The Truth in the Study
They spoke behind closed doors for hours. I pressed my ear to the wood, catching fragments.
"—thought the line was dormant—"
"—should have told me, damn it—"
"—not just tricks, Charles. It's in the blood—"
When the door finally opened, my father looked pale. My grandfather, though—he studied me like a puzzle he'd just solved.
"Come here, lad."
He led me to the fireplace, where the embers glowed faintly. Then, without ceremony, he reached into the flames.
I flinched—but he didn't burn. His fingers closed around a burning coal, holding it like an apple.
"Your turn."
I stared. "That's impossible."
"So was moving that spoon yesterday."
The Explanation
Magic, he told me, wasn't what the storybooks said.
No wands. No Latin incantations (usually). No floating castles.
It was older. Messier. A thing of bloodlines and bargains, of instincts honed over generations. Some families had it. Most didn't. And those who did? They kept quiet.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because the world's not kind to things it doesn't understand."
He told me about the Clarke lineage—not wizards, not in the fairy-tale sense, but people with a knack for bending chance. A whisper of influence over the world. Small things, mostly. Luck. Averted accidents. A sense for when storms were coming.
But sometimes, rarely, it woke up stronger.
Like in me.
The Training Begins
That night, he gave me my first lesson.
"Focus on the candle," he said. "Not with your eyes. With your gut."
I tried. Nothing happened.
"You're thinking too hard. It's not code, boy. It's like… remembering how to breathe."
I tried again. And again.
Then—a flicker. Not the flame. The shadow behind it. For a second, it twisted like smoke in reverse.
My grandfather grinned. "There it is."
The Warning
Before he left, he gripped my shoulder.
"This isn't a gift, Eliot. It's a responsibility. You'll see things others don't. Feel things you shouldn't. And there are people out there who'd kill for even a drop of what's in your veins."
"Why?"
"Because the world's full of hungry ghosts," he said simply. "And some of them are still alive."
Then he was gone, leaving me with a head full of questions—and a single, unshakable certainty:
Whatever this was… it wasn't mine yet.
But it would be.