By the time I was six, I had already died once. That was enough to make me different.

  They thought I was quiet because I was sad.

  Because I was an orphan, because I didn’t ugh at spstick jokes, didn’t join in the chaotic brawls over ragged toys or stale bread. The truth was far simpler: I didn’t see them as people. Just variables. Walking, breathing bundles of noise, hunger, and need.

  And I’ve never been sentimental toward noise.

  I sat by the window that evening—rain snting against the gss in hard gray veins, thunder grumbling behind the hills—and watched the other children shift in their bunks. Most had fallen asleep in the safety of numbers. Children, like prey animals, huddled to feel safe. But I’d learned early that closeness didn’t protect you. Sometimes, it made it worse.

  The orphanage was old. Stone walls. Rusted pipes. Rooms that smelled of bleach and mildew. The kind of pce that bred ghosts.

  I didn’t fear ghosts. I just wanted to understand them.

  I remember my death with a kind of surgical crity. The sounds—the engine, the scream, the twist of metal. I remember impact. The shock of pain, then the silence beneath it. A sterile, swallowing silence. Then lungs colpsing. The st, bitter pull of air and blood.

  And then… awakening. Not in white light. Not to celestial fanfare. Just breath. Hunger. Cries in the dark.

  This body was younger. Smaller. Unscarred. But my mind remained intact. Memory sharp as gss. Thirty-three years of life carried into a child’s shell. At first, I thought I’d gone mad—some final delusion. But the madness never frayed. Reality stayed consistent. Days passed. Language remained stable. And time… time moved forward, unflinching.

  No. This wasn’t madness.

  This was opportunity.

  My name was now Cain Williams. Plucked from some bureaucratic pile, no doubt. It fit too well.

  Biblical. Branded.

  There were no records of family. No visitors. No past. Just a name and a bed in a crumbling estate where caretakers kept order with alcohol and threats. It was a quiet enough pce to think. To pn. To adapt.

  And I adapted quickly.

  Children are easier to manipute than adults. They show you their needs immediately. Affection, attention, dominance. You just have to know how to withhold, when to give. A gnce at the right moment, a smile held a second too long. I experimented with them. Micro-adjustments. Behavioral triggers. Observations logged mentally, adjusted over time.

  The matron called me “strange.” One of the older boys said I was “touched.” But none of them bothered me. Not after the first few weeks.

  All it took was one night.

  She’d had too much gin. Came in screaming at one of the girls who wet the bed—backhand raised, the usual ritual. I didn’t move from my cot. Just looked at her. Watched her through the dim light as she stumbled forward, slurring.

  She saw me watching.

  I didn’t blink. Didn’t speak.

  But something passed between us. Not magic. Not yet. Just recognition. The way a predator knows when another is watching from the tall grass.

  She never hit anyone again.

  My days passed in silent routine. I fed myself. Cleaned myself. I read when I could—anything. Cereal boxes. Crumpled newspapers used for cleaning. I stole books when I visited town with the other children. A tattered copy of The Rise of Grindelwald. A pamphlet on European witch trials. A children’s fairytale collection from 1891 that spoke far too confidently of wandlore and talking hats.

  The signs were everywhere, once I knew what to look for.

  Magic.

  Real.

  Undeniable.

  It began with the girl—Sarah, I think—whose temper made the lightbulbs flicker. I watched her argue with another boy, and for one second, her shadow snarled. As if something inside her pushed outward, showing teeth. She didn’t notice. But I did.

  Then the woman came. Dressed in robes too fine for any local. She vanished in a crack of sound and absence. The caretaker called it "imagination." I called it proof.

  And finally, the boy who bullied me. Jacob. He was six, loud, stupid, and fascinated by pain. He liked pulling hair, hiding things, poking where it hurt.

  I tolerated it.

  Until he shoved me.

  I don’t remember thinking anything cruel. I simply reacted.

  Or something did.

  The room went cold. The air turned sharp. And blue light—thin and cracking like frost—crawled over his hands. He screamed, clutching them. No burns. No fire. Just cold that shouldn’t exist. I watched him writhe. Tilted my head. Curious.

  The light vanished. He sobbed. I said nothing.

  He never touched me again.

  Neither did anyone else.

  The letter came on my seventh birthday. A woman arrived—not old, not young—with gray-streaked bck hair pulled tight and eyes like polished ste. Her robes were forest green, embroidered with silver that shimmered subtly when she moved.

  She looked at me the way scientists look at b mice that open their cages.

  “Caelius Aemilius Williams,” she said.

  I stood from the corner of the dormitory. “That’s me.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

  It wasn’t a question. She was watching for my reaction.

  I gave her none.

  “I accept,” I said.

  Her lips twitched. “No questions?”

  “One,” I said, stepping forward, voice low and even.

  “How soon can I begin?”