MTLNOVEL Chapter 6: The Weight of Light
Chapter 5: The Weight of Light
Year X782 – Age 9
There was a moment just before dawn when the world paused.
The wind stopped.
The birds waited.
The grass held its breath.
Caelion stood in the center of the hill, barefoot, arms outstretched, a halo of faint stardust swirling lazily around his fingers. The breeze was soft against his face, warm for a late spring morning. Behind him, the village still slept, unaware of the boy who rose before the sun just to fail a little better than yesterday.
He exhaled slowly. Focused. Reached.
A shimmer of light spun off his palm—a curve of dust, soft as snowfall, catching in the amber hue of the sky. It scattered like sugar on wind.
He tried again. This time, he shaped the glow into something more: a shard of light. Narrow. Concentrated. A spark with weight.
It lasted three heartbeats.
Then it fizzled, flickered, and died.
Caelion didn't curse. Didn't scowl or stomp. He just breathed again. Tried again.
Stardust Magic was delicate. Beautiful. But maddeningly fickle. It danced when it pleased, flared when uncalled, and vanished the moment he thought he understood it. But he refused to stop.
Because it was his. And he was still learning how to deserve it.
Later that morning, after washing the dew from his feet in the river and stuffing his satchel with leftover bread, Caelion made his way to the village square. The fountain had dried weeks ago, but children still gathered around it like it held something sacred. He didn't join them. He never did.
But he lingered.
Watched.
He liked the way laughter looked when it wasn't pointed at him.
"Caelion," called a voice, sharp and stern. "If you've time to hover, you've time to help."
He turned. It was Marella, a tall, wiry woman with arms like bundled rope and a voice that could cut steel. She ran the herb shop and, by some cruel twist of fate, had taken to treating him like free labor.
Caelion didn't argue. He just nodded and followed.
They gathered lavender and skywort in the hills that day. Marella moved fast, her hands calloused and clever, snipping only what was ripe and healthy. Caelion followed suit, careful, precise. He liked the quiet of the work. The way the scents mixed. The scratch of sunlight on his shoulders.
"You're getting better," Marella said at one point, almost to herself. "Less useless than last spring."
Caelion blinked. From her, it was practically a poem.
That night, he returned to the hill again.
The stars were already out—sharp and clear in the black velvet sky. He laid on his back, arms behind his head, letting his breath slow until he could almost hear the hum of magic in the air. Like a distant song.
He reached out, palm up.
"Come on," he whispered. "Just a little brighter this time."
The dust came slowly. It always did. Soft pinpricks of light swirled above his hand. This time, he shaped them into a circle. Then layered that circle into a spiral.
The edges wobbled.
He grit his teeth and concentrated harder.
The spiral flared… then collapsed inward, shooting one single fleck of stardust into the air like a firework.
It burst with a pop no louder than a blink.
Caelion laughed. Just once. Quiet, startled. But real.
That had been intentional.
It wasn't much.
But it was his.
By midsummer, the villagers had started to notice things.
The old well stopped creaking after Caelion spent an afternoon reinforcing it with layered dust. The chickens began to roost closer to his barn, comforted by the soft shimmer he sometimes left trailing in the air at night. Children whispered that he could make flowers bloom with a thought—an exaggeration, of course, but he didn't mind the rumor.
He still wasn't one of them. Not really.
But they no longer stared at him with suspicion.
That was enough.
One market day, a traveler passed through—a mage with robes dyed deep navy, runes inked along his sleeves. He paused outside the apothecary, narrowed his eyes at Caelion as he swept the steps.
"You," the man said. "Your magic. Show me."
Caelion stiffened.
The man didn't ask again.
He just stepped closer, and suddenly the air felt different. Thicker. Pressurized.
Caelion raised his hand without thinking.
Dust gathered. A slow spiral. Faint light. Controlled breath.
He shaped it into a thin lattice of glimmering threads—like a spiderweb of stars suspended between his palms.
The traveler watched in silence, then grunted. "Not much power. But precision."
He turned to leave.
"Wait," Caelion asked before he could stop himself. "What kind of magic do you use?"
The man paused. His eyes, a cool gray, studied Caelion's face.
"Wind," he said finally. "But not the kind that dances."
And then he was gone.
Caelion stood there a long time, staring at the empty road.
He hadn't said goodbye.
But he had spoken first.
That was new.
Summer deepened. The skies burned with heat and insects. Caelion worked, trained, read when he could. He memorized the names of every spell he could find, even if he couldn't cast them. He taught himself focus, balance, control.
He learned that stardust, if shaped thinly enough, could reflect sunlight into a beam bright enough to blind. Temporarily.
He learned that too much concentration shattered the magic like overblown glass.
He learned that magic, like people, couldn't be forced.
Only invited.
On his ninth birthday, which no one remembered, Caelion climbed the hill alone.
He brought no food. No books. Just himself and a quiet question.
"Am I growing stronger?" he asked the stars. "Or just… more stubborn?"
They didn't answer.
They never did.
But they shone just a little brighter that night.
And that was enough.