Time, in that new world called Aelyndor, passed with exasperating slowness for Velgar’s trapped soul. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months, and he—the former ruler of Earth—was still confined to the humiliating limits of an elven infant's body. He had surpassed his first year of life, a trivial milestone for his millennia-old consciousness, but a fundamental stage for the biological shell that now housed him.

  Frustration was a constant companion. Every morning he woke with a clear mind, his memories of past power as vivid as if they’d happened yesterday—high-tech command halls, decisions that moved armies of drones, absolute power over life and death for billions—only to find himself unable to articulate a complex thought or lift anything heavier than a berry. He was an Emperor in diapers, a Titan in a body made of putty.

  The first great battlefield was motor learning: learning to walk. For other elven children, it was a natural process, guided by instinct and the loving encouragement of parents. For Velgar, it was an exercise in biomechanical engineering and stoic endurance. He analyzed each failed attempt with the coldness of a technician studying a faulty prototype. He calculated angles of balance, weight distribution, neuromuscular coordination. He watched the other children, their unsteady but joyful steps, trying to decode the “logic” behind that seemingly simple movement.

  “Come on, my little one, one more step!” Maelyra encouraged, kneeling before him with open arms and a radiant smile.

  “Watch out for the stone, Velgar,” warned Eluthien more pragmatically, watching from the porch.

  Internally, he cursed the gravity of this planet, the weakness of his immature joints, the absurd necessity of having to relearn something so basic. But outwardly, he produced the required sounds and expressions: a hesitant gurgle, a clumsy attempt, a fall (often faked to avoid seeming too quick in learning), and then a small whimper mimicking infant frustration. It was exhausting. Every day was a performance.

  When he finally mastered bipedal locomotion—a triumph that cost him months of internal calculations and strategic falls—a new world opened before him. He could explore. Of course, exploration was limited to the home garden or the nearby village paths, always under the watchful eye of Maelyra or Eluthien, but for his analytical mind, it was like gaining access to an entire continent of data.

  He observed everything with insatiable hunger. The elven architecture: how houses were integrated into trees, how roots were shaped to form stairs and bridges, how every structure seemed to breathe in harmony with the forest. It was fascinating organic engineering, completely different from the cold glass and steel skyscrapers of his Earth. He noticed the runes etched on doorways, fountains, even utensils. They were everywhere. Complex symbols—some simple, others incredibly intricate. He memorized them, looked for patterns, tried to decipher their internal logic based on his vast knowledge of symbology, cryptography, and formal languages. He sensed they weren’t mere decorations; they were functional, channels for that strange energy they called mana. But how exactly they worked, what the syntax of that arcane language was, remained a mystery. He couldn’t experiment. He couldn’t ask too much without raising suspicion. All he could do was observe, memorize, and theorize in the silence of his mind.

  Learning to speak was another exercise in simulation. His mind formulated complex sentences, detailed analyses, precise orders. But his mouth could only emit baby sounds, broken words, simple phrases. He had to constantly filter, simplify, regress. “Mama.” “Papa.” “Flower.” “Light.” He pronounced those words with utmost care, mimicking the intonation of other children, hiding the abyss of knowledge behind every babbled syllable. He listened carefully to adult conversations, absorbing the Elvish language, its nuances, its idioms, building a vast mental vocabulary he could not yet use.

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  It was during this period, between the ages of two and three, that he began interacting more consciously with other children in the village. To his eyes, they were noisy, emotional, irrational creatures. Their games lacked strategic logic, their quarrels were trivial, their joys fleeting. Yet, he had to be part of it. He had to learn to blend in even among them.

  That’s when he noticed Talen. An elven boy slightly older than him, perhaps, with honey-colored hair and boundless energy. Talen was Velgar’s opposite: impulsive, loud, perpetually enthusiastic. He ran everywhere, laughed loudly, asked na?ve questions, and launched into reckless endeavors without a second thought. At first, Velgar considered him a nuisance, a chaotic element in his careful camouflage strategy. But then he realized Talen could be useful. He was the perfect example of elven childhood “normality.” By observing him, Velgar could better calibrate his own performance.

  Their early interactions were awkward. Talen tried to draw him into his wild games, and Velgar responded with studied monosyllables or calculated silence.

  “Let’s chase mana butterflies!” Talen proposed, already ready to sprint.

  “...Butterflies?” Velgar replied, feigning simple curiosity, while his mind calculated the insects’ flight trajectories and their interaction with local mana currents.

  “Yes! They’re fast! Come on!” And Talen was off, leaving Velgar to observe him with a mixture of annoyance and analytical interest.

  Over time, however, something began to change. Talen’s genuine and disarming cheerfulness, his total lack of malice, began to slightly crack Velgar’s armor. He no longer saw him just as a subject of study but… almost as an interesting variable. Perhaps even pleasant, in a strange and entirely new way for him. Talen never asked for anything, never judged his silence—he simply accepted his presence. And sometimes, very rarely, Velgar found himself responding to his invitations with an almost spontaneous nod, or watching his antics with a faint trace of amusement in his eyes. It wasn’t friendship, not yet. But it was a beginning. A seed planted in the arid soil of his soul.

  His mask with his parents was also improving. He had learned to ask for hugs at the right moments, to smile when offered a treat, to pretend interest in the forest tales Maelyra told him before bed. He had become a master of emotional dissimulation. Yet sometimes, the genuine warmth in his mother’s gaze or his father’s proud pat on the shoulder provoked an unexpected reaction: a slight tremor, a momentary mental blank, a nearly painful sensation of something he had lost on Earth without even knowing what it was. He quickly pushed those feelings away. They were weaknesses. Dangerous ones.

  Years passed. At four years old, Velgar was an apparently normal elven child. He walked, talked (little and simply), played (clumsily and without real enthusiasm), and interacted. His mask was nearly perfect. No one, not even his parents, suspected the abyss of knowledge and power hidden behind those silver eyes. He had learned to read the most common runes carved into buildings, understanding their basic functions (protection, lighting, plant growth), though he could not activate them. He had mentally mapped the main mana flows around the village. He had even begun to perceive faint echoes, disorganized fragments of data in his mind, which he recognized as the dormant remnants of ATHENA—still too weak to be contacted.

  He was on the right path. Hidden. Patient. Waiting.

  One evening, as Maelyra tucked him into bed, she stroked his hair and pulled the blanket over him.

  “You’re such a good and quiet child, my love,” she whispered. “Sometimes you seem so… wise. As if you already understand everything.”

  Velgar gave a small sleepy smile, his standard response. But inside, a cold voice commented, “I understand far too well, mother. And one day, so will you.”

  He closed his eyes, pretending to fall asleep, while his mind was already planning the next steps.

  The mask held. But beneath it, the Emperor watched, calculated, and waited for the right moment to begin rebuilding his world.