CASSIAN AND THE INFINITE THRONE

CASSIAN AND THE INFINITE THRONE

Volume 1: The Frontier Years

Chapter 13: The Hunt Begins

The departure of Roland’s expedition changed Frostwood more than Cassian expected.

The village had spent weeks living beneath the shadow of the Ironclaw. Every conversation eventually found its way back to the monster. Hunters discussed tracks and attack patterns whenever they gathered. Farmers checked the tree line more often than their fields. Parents watched their children closely whenever they played near the outskirts of the settlement. Fear had become such a constant presence that many villagers no longer noticed how much it influenced their daily lives. When Roland, Cedric, Gareth, Rowan, and the others finally marched south to begin the hunt, Cassian thought the village might feel lighter. Instead, the absence of those people created a different kind of tension.

Nobody knew whether the expedition would succeed.

The uncertainty followed the villagers throughout the day. Some believed the knight commander would return within a few days carrying the Ironclaw’s head. Others quietly feared that the creature would prove far more difficult to kill than anyone wanted to admit. The older hunters appeared especially cautious. Unlike the younger villagers, they understood how easily confidence could turn into tragedy inside a wilderness filled with monsters and magical beasts. Cassian noticed those concerns during conversations near the square, at the communal well, and even during the evening meal. The monster had left the village physically, yet it remained firmly inside everyone’s thoughts.

Cassian listened without contributing.

His own attention had gradually shifted toward a different problem, one that had little to do with monsters and far more to do with knowledge. The realization had begun after Cedric’s arrival. Before meeting a professional mage, Cassian’s notebooks had seemed harmless. They contained observations, theories, and experiments recorded by a curious child. After watching Cedric work, however, he understood that people existed who possessed the education and experience necessary to recognize unusual information when they encountered it. The thought had bothered him for several days, growing stronger each time he remembered the mage examining records inside Aldric’s office.

By the third day after the expedition’s departure, the discomfort had become impossible to ignore.

The decision formed during breakfast while Lena discussed household chores with Darren and Elara. Nobody paid particular attention to Cassian as he finished eating and gathered several notebooks from beneath his bed. The journals represented months of observations. Some pages contained notes regarding ambient mana. Others described levitation experiments, monster theories, and questions he intended to investigate later. None of the contents appeared especially dangerous when viewed individually. Together, however, they revealed patterns that could attract unwanted curiosity from the wrong person.

That possibility alone justified caution.

Cassian carried the notebooks toward a quiet section of the house where he could work without interruption. Sunlight filtered through a nearby window and illuminated the worn covers resting before him. Looking at them now, he realized how disorganized they truly were. Observations appeared in whatever order they happened to occur. Some theories had later proven incorrect. Several experiments lacked proper follow-up. Important discoveries sat beside meaningless speculation because he had written everything down as quickly as possible rather than developing a systematic approach.

The notebooks reflected a child learning through trial and error. Cassian intended to become something else.

The realization lingered while he opened the oldest journal and slowly turned the pages. Many entries remained useful. Others deserved correction. A surprising number required additional context that only existed inside his memory. As he reviewed them, another thought emerged. Protecting information did not simply mean hiding it. Proper protection also required organization. Knowledge scattered across random pages became difficult to understand, difficult to expand, and difficult to verify. If he intended to continue researching mana seriously, he needed a better system than the one he currently possessed.

The solution had already presented itself.

English.

The language belonged to Adam’s previous life and did not exist within this world. Nobody in Frostwood could read it. Cedric could not read it. Aldric could not read it. Even if somebody discovered the journal years from now, the contents would appear to be meaningless symbols arranged according to unfamiliar rules. The protection was not perfect, but it was far better than leaving sensitive observations written in the common language where any educated reader could examine them freely.

Cassian placed a blank notebook beside the older journals and began planning its structure.

For the first time, he approached the task like a researcher rather than a student. Instead of recording observations wherever empty space existed, he divided the notebook into sections. Ambient mana received its own category. Internal mana received another, though the pages remained mostly blank because his understanding of the subject remained limited. Additional sections covered levitation, magical beasts, monsters, and future questions requiring investigation. The process consumed far more time than simple copying would have required, but the result already felt cleaner and more useful.

Hours passed while he worked.

The transfer forced him to revisit observations he had not considered for months. Some discoveries appeared more significant than he remembered. Others looked embarrassingly naïve in hindsight. Several theories regarding monster evolution still interested him, particularly after Cedric’s comments about magical beasts and intelligent monsters. Whenever he encountered an error, he corrected it. Whenever he discovered a gap, he marked it for future research. By the middle of the afternoon, the new notebook had already become more valuable than the collection of journals that inspired it.

The first unusual pattern appeared while reviewing his levitation notes.

At first, Cassian almost overlooked it.

The observation had been recorded many times, yet never examined directly. Early experiments involving pebbles, sticks, and small stones consistently described similar difficulties. Larger objects demanded greater concentration. Heavier objects required finer control. Maintaining stability often proved harder than initiating movement. None of those conclusions surprised him because they matched common sense. What caught his attention was a separate group of entries describing attempts to reduce his own weight or lift himself slightly above the ground.

The numbers did not match his expectations. Cassian leaned closer to the notebook and reviewed the pages again. The pattern remained.

Whenever he attempted self-levitation, the process seemed easier than equivalent manipulation involving external objects. Not dramatically easier. The difference was subtle. Nevertheless, the discrepancy repeated too often to dismiss as coincidence. A child his size weighed considerably more than a handful of pebbles. By every reasonable measure, moving his own body should have demanded far greater effort. The records suggested otherwise.

That contradiction refused to leave his thoughts. By the following morning, curiosity had overcome caution.

Cassian gathered the materials needed for another series of experiments and traveled toward a quiet grove located near Frostwood’s edge. The location provided privacy without placing him beyond the village’s protection. More importantly, it contained numerous rocks, fallen branches, and other convenient test subjects. If the discrepancy truly existed, repeated testing should reveal it.

The first experiment involved a pebble.

Cassian selected one from the ground and focused on the ambient mana surrounding it. Months of practice had improved his sensitivity considerably, but manipulation remained far more difficult than perception. He gathered nearby mana, directed it beneath the pebble, and slowly lifted. The stone rose several inches before wobbling. Cassian corrected the instability, maintained control for several breaths, then lowered it carefully back to the ground. The result matched previous observations almost perfectly.

Several additional trials produced similar outcomes. Next came larger stones.

The increase in difficulty appeared immediately. More mana had to be guided into position. More concentration became necessary. Small mistakes produced larger consequences. Cassian recorded each observation carefully before moving on to the next test. By the time he finished, the pattern remained consistent with every previous experiment recorded in his notebooks.

Then he turned his attention toward himself. Self-levitation always felt strange. Not frightening. Strange.

The sensation resembled standing on solid ground while simultaneously convincing his body that gravity mattered slightly less than usual. Cassian gathered ambient mana and repeated the same process he had practiced dozens of times before. Gradually, the pressure beneath his feet changed. The world felt lighter. Moments later, he rose several inches above the ground.

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The familiar sensation returned immediately. This time, however, he paid closer attention.

Ambient mana remained present. He could feel it moving around him exactly as expected. Yet another feeling accompanied the process, faint enough that he had never examined it directly. The sensation reminded him of something he had observed recently. At first the connection remained frustratingly unclear. Then a memory surfaced.

Cedric. More specifically, the internal mana moving through Cedric’s body while the mage cast spells. Cassian descended slowly and sat beneath a nearby tree. His pulse quickened, not from exertion but from curiosity.

The similarity felt incomplete, like recognizing part of a picture without seeing the whole image. He closed his eyes and reviewed the memory carefully. During every spell, Cedric’s internal mana circulated before the chant produced visible results. Cassian had focused primarily on the spell itself at the time. Now he wondered whether he had overlooked something equally important.

The possibility unsettled him. Not because it seemed impossible. Because it seemed plausible.

Cassian opened the new notebook and recorded the observation in English. He avoided conclusions. The evidence remained insufficient for that. What he possessed was a question, and experience had taught him that good questions often mattered more than premature answers.

When he finally looked toward the distant southern forest, the Ironclaw briefly entered his thoughts once again. Roland and the others were hunting an intelligent monster somewhere beyond the trees. Cassian suspected he had begun a hunt of his own. The difference was that his quarry could not be tracked through footprints, broken branches, or scattered blood. His quarry was understanding.

Cassian returned home before anyone noticed his absence had lasted longer than usual.

The village remained occupied with its own waiting. Lena spent much of the afternoon preparing food that could be kept warm in case news arrived suddenly. Darren helped repair a section of the animal enclosure, though his attention drifted toward the southern road every few minutes. Elara moved between houses carrying small errands for Mara, and even her usual energy felt restrained by the uncertainty pressing over Frostwood. The expedition had been gone long enough for imagination to begin filling the silence, yet not long enough for anyone to reasonably expect answers.

That unsettled everyone.

Cassian carried his new notebook beneath his arm and kept the older journals wrapped inside a cloth bundle. The weight felt strangely important despite how little the pages actually weighed. Those notebooks contained months of learning, mistakes, half-formed theories, and observations that no longer seemed harmless. They were not dangerous because every sentence revealed something extraordinary. They were dangerous because the right reader might connect the scattered pieces into a shape Cassian was not ready for anyone else to see.

He spent the evening transferring more notes.

The work required patience. Copying alone would have been easy, but Cassian had already decided that the new journal would not become another pile of thoughts arranged by accident. Each entry had to earn its place. Observations were separated from theories. Theories were separated from confirmed results. Failed experiments were preserved because failure often revealed the shape of hidden rules. Whenever he rewrote a passage in English, he found himself clarifying the thought rather than merely translating the words.

By the time the household slept, the new notebook contained the beginnings of a proper research system.

The first section described ambient mana as an environmental presence rather than a substance belonging to objects. The second section contained his limited observations regarding internal mana, including what he remembered from Cedric’s spellcasting. The third focused on levitation and included comparisons between external objects and his own body. Other sections remained unfinished, but their titles already suggested future work. Magical beasts, monsters, mana cores, materials that absorbed mana and unknown questions.

Cassian paused over the last heading for several minutes. Unknown questions had become the largest category of all.

The thought might have discouraged someone seeking certainty. For Cassian, it produced the opposite effect. Every unanswered question marked a direction. Every contradiction suggested a hidden rule. What mattered was patience. His first life had taught him that complex systems rarely surrendered themselves to desire, talent, or confidence. They surrendered slowly to disciplined observation.

The older notebooks still remained. He did not destroy them that night. Doing so immediately would have been careless. He needed to ensure every important entry had been copied properly first. Once the transfer was complete, however, the old pages would disappear into fire. The decision no longer felt dramatic. It felt responsible.

The following morning, Cassian returned to the grove with the new notebook hidden beneath his tunic.

He chose the same location as before because consistency mattered. The ground remained damp from thawing snow, and scattered stones lay beneath the trees where roots had pushed them from the soil. Birds moved noisily through branches overhead, unconcerned by monsters, knights, mages, or children attempting to understand invisible forces. The ordinariness of the scene helped Cassian settle his mind. Fear and urgency belonged to Frostwood. Research required a calmer place.

He began with external objects again.

The first pebble rose easily enough, though maintaining its height still demanded careful attention. The second stone wobbled repeatedly before stabilizing. A thicker branch proved far more troublesome than its weight alone suggested, perhaps because its uneven shape caused the surrounding ambient mana to shift unpredictably. Cassian recorded each trial in English, noting not only whether it succeeded but how the process felt. Sensation mattered because he had no instruments capable of measuring mana directly. Until he developed better methods, disciplined perception would have to serve.

After nearly an hour, the pattern remained unchanged.

External objects required shaping the ambient mana around them. The object itself offered no assistance unless it contained or absorbed mana in ways he did not yet understand. A pebble remained passive. A dead branch remained passive. Even when they moved, they did not participate in their own movement. Cassian had to provide the entire structure through the surrounding mana.

Then he tested self-levitation again.

He stood in the center of the grove and entered perception gradually rather than instantly. Ambient mana filled the air around him, drifting through the trees with faint density variations he could not yet fully interpret. Beneath that wider presence, he searched inward. At first, the effort felt clumsy. He had spent months looking outward, and turning perception toward his own body required a different kind of attention.

The internal sensation appeared slowly.

It did not resemble the atmosphere around him. It felt closer, quieter, and more difficult to separate from ordinary bodily awareness. If ambient mana resembled air surrounding the skin, internal mana resembled warmth beneath the skin. The comparison was imperfect, but useful enough to record later. When Cassian gathered ambient mana around his body and attempted to lift himself, that faint internal warmth shifted in response.

The reaction was small. It was also unmistakable. Cassian lowered himself before the levitation became unstable and immediately wrote down the result. He avoided excitement as much as possible because excitement distorted observation. The correct response to a possible discovery was not celebration. The correct response was repetition.

He repeated the test, again and again….dozens of time.

Each attempt revealed the same faint relationship. Ambient mana carried much of the external pressure. Internal mana responded from within his body, not strongly enough to lift him alone, yet clearly enough to change the difficulty of the process. When he consciously tried to ignore the internal sensation, self-levitation became less stable. When he acknowledged it without forcing it, the process smoothed slightly.

The conclusion remained incomplete. Still, the direction became clearer. Cassian had not been manipulating ambient mana alone.

He had unknowingly allowed the mana inside his body to cooperate with the mana surrounding him. Cedric’s spellcasting had shown him what internal mana looked like when used deliberately. His own process was less refined, less structured, and probably far less efficient, but the resemblance could no longer be dismissed.

The discovery created immediate caution.

If traditional mages trained internal mana through chants, structures, and controlled circulation, then Cassian’s accidental use of it might carry risks he did not yet understand. Cassian did not know whether his body possessed channels, nor did he know whether ambient mana could strain them differently. Continuing recklessly would be foolish. He ended the self-levitation tests earlier than planned.

Instead of pushing further, he sat beneath the tree and reviewed the entries he had written that morning. The English script looked both familiar and strange upon the page. In Adam’s life, it had been ordinary. In this world, it had become protection. The thought reminded him again that knowledge changed value depending on context. A language used by millions in one life became a private cipher in another.

By late afternoon, clouds gathered above the southern forest.

Cassian returned to Frostwood before rain began. The village felt more restless than when he had left. A few villagers stood near the southern road despite having no reason to remain there. Lena noticed the tension and kept dinner simple. Darren ate quietly, which was unusual enough that Elara teased him once before stopping. Nobody mentioned Gareth directly, but his absence occupied the table as clearly as an empty chair.

The first news arrived near dusk. Not from the expedition itself.

From a frightened woodcutter who had been gathering fallen branches near the western edge of Frostwood. He had seen movement near the trees, heard something large shifting through brush, and abandoned his load immediately. Under normal circumstances, villagers might have dismissed the report as nerves. After the Ironclaw attacks, nobody laughed. Several men took spears and investigated only far enough to recover the abandoned bundle before returning quickly.

The report spread through Frostwood before nightfall.

Cassian listened from the doorway while Gareth’s absence pressed heavily against Lena’s expression. The movement might have been a deer. It might have been a boar. It might have been nothing more than fear turning shadows into monsters. Yet the possibility that the Ironclaw had circled away from Roland’s expedition and approached Frostwood from another direction chilled the village more effectively than rain.

Cassian did not sleep easily that night. His mind moved between two dangers.

One danger waited outside, large enough to kill trained hunters and intelligent enough to deceive them. The other danger existed inside his own research, quiet and invisible but potentially just as consequential. He had discovered that his abilities were not merely different from traditional magic. They might combine two systems that no book he had read treated as one.

That realization changed the shape of his future experiments. From now on, he would move more slowly. He would record more carefully. He would trust conclusions less quickly. He would keep his notes hidden.

The next morning, before anyone else woke, Cassian removed the first old notebook from beneath his bed and opened it beside the hearth. He checked the transferred entries one final time. The important observations had been copied. The mistakes worth preserving had been rewritten. The dangerous fragments no longer needed to remain in the common language.

He fed several pages into the fire. The paper darkened, curled, and vanished into ash without ceremony. Cassian watched until the last readable line disappeared. Only then did he close the new English journal and hide it beneath a loose floorboard he had prepared the previous evening.

Outside, Frostwood waited for news from the southern forest. Inside, Cassian understood that he had crossed a quiet threshold of his own. He was no longer simply learning. He was protecting what he learned.

End of Chapter 13