The next day, Evan woke up with a groan and tried to rub his sleepy eyes as a habit.

‘God, I feel so tired. What happened?’

‘Wait…’

‘Huh? I’m alright?’

Evan couldn’t believe it. There was not a single scratch on him, not even on his palms where his nails had dug in to resist the pain. In fact, his body felt lighter and more energized. Curious, he tried to activate Mana Sense, the meditation technique he developed to sense mana, and what he saw shocked him.

‘What the hell?! What happened to my heart?’

Under mana sense, he could see the mana interact with the world, from the water inside his body, the air he breathed, the iron in his blood, and the warmth from his body. Everything formed an accurate, life-size replica of the human body, except where his heart was.

A pentagram construct sealing what appeared to be a star of compressed mana floated right in the middle of the organ.

‘Huh, well this is new.’

Evan kept observing the phenomenon. Luckily, the construct seemed to be relatively harmless, merely leaking a small stream of mana into his bloodstream with every heartbeat.

‘My first attempt at magic ended up nearly killing me.’

‘Heh, finally something challenging.’

Beside him, Cara stirred awake. Seeing her baby smiling and laughing to himself brought a smile to her face.

"My baby, you're alright."

'Oh shit, did she see anything?' Evan thought to himself.

Cara checked his temperature and, finding that his fever had gone, sighed in relief.

"Thank gods you're okay. Now, is baby Evan hungwy?"

As she fed him, Cara could have sworn Evan's face turned a shade of red.

…

Leon returned that morning with Mage Erso who was staying at The Old Boar and Sister Felicia who was present when Evan was born.

“Thank you once again for coming, Mage Erso,” Cara said, bowing her head respectfully.

“It’s no trouble at all, Mrs. Galien. I’ve long been a patron of the Galien Trading Company and I’m more than thrilled to help.“

“It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Galien.”

“Please, Sister, we only just met yesterday. Do come in, both of you. I’ll bring Evan down in a moment.”

Leon showed the two of them to the guest room and chatted with the both of them. Soon, Cara returned carrying Evan in her arms, seemingly fast asleep.

“Is this your newest one? He certainly looks like his father.” Mage Erso remarked.

“Thank you, and yes he is. His name is Evan,” Leon responded.

Sister Felicia laid her hand on the baby.

“Illyum Medea,” she chanted. Her hand began to glow as mana flowed from her core to form the spell.

Illyum, Illum, Light.

“Well, the baby seems healthy to me.” Sister Felicia said after a while.

“Are you sure?”

“The spell detected no signs of injuries on the baby whatsoever. He is completely fine.”

“I’m sorry, Sister. I don’t mean to doubt you but Mage Erso, could you also check up on Evan?”

“Sure. I doubt I could find anything a Sister of the Church missed but I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

Mage Erso repeated the spell on the baby before shaking his head.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t find anything. On another note, do either of you come from any magical bloodlines?”

Both Leon and Cara shook their heads.

“Well it seems you might just be one now. This baby has one of the most vigorous mana flows I have ever seen.”

Cara’s eyes widened while Leon’s jaw dropped in shock. They thought they had gotten lucky with how Zed and Wyra appeared to be Attuned, but with the addition of Evan, it was too much luck to be a coincidence.

“I can see you both need some time to process this news. I think we’ll both show ourselves out.” Mage Erso said, bowing his head.

Leon regained his senses and bowed his head, “No, it’s alright. Thank you both for your help. Please do stay for lunch. It would be rude to let you leave after calling you here for a false alarm.”

Both accepted the offer happily. The whole event had taken quite some time and it was now noon. Not wanting to risk any more incidents, Cara placed Evan in a cradle near the dining room.

…

‘Gah! Why do babies need to sleep so much!’ Evan thought, rubbing his eyes.

As he looked around, trying to get a sense of where he was, he could hear people nearby. From his cradle, he could see his parents and the twins talking with a nun and a stranger over some food.

He was a 1.73 m tall male with dark, tanned brown skin. He had wavy black hair that fell to his sides and a well kept beard. He appeared to be quite friendly, even animatedly refusing a pouch of what Evan assumed to be money that his parents were trying to give him.

The nun, however, looked to be the stranger’s exact opposite. She was a 1.63 m tall female with light, pale skin. She had light orange hair and was quite shy around the table, only giving polite nods and eating her food daintily. Evan guessed that while the mage seemed to travel a lot under the sun and was used to talking with strangers, the sister seemed to be more of a shut-in.

‘Wasn’t she the one who came with that midwife when I was born?’ Evan thought to himself.

‘Eh, maybe.’

‘Looks like they’ll be talking for a while. Might as well practice Mana Circulation where I left off.’

Evan closed his eyes and activated his breathing technique. From there, he could see the energy permeating throughout the world. What he noticed, however, was that the stranger, the nun, and surprisingly, Wyra had a more vigorous flow of mana compared to his parents and Zed.

'Is this what separates mages or magic users from everyone else? They somehow draw in this energy to themselves naturally while regular people can’t. I guess I have a way to tell if a person is a mage or not now.' Evan panicked.

Evan spent the rest of the time during lunch practicing his breathing technique, familiarizing himself with the feeling of mana inside his body. After a while, he noticed that the mana around him was composed of different colours.

The air consisted mostly of light green mana, the stone floor of brown, water of blue, and fire of red.

‘Elements?’

The mana inside of people's bodies, however, were made up of different colours with certain shades being more dominant than others. They also seemed to converge into a sphere, similar to the ball of compressed mana sealed by the pentagram in his heart. Evan named these spheres, mana cores, for a lack of a better term.

'If I assume that mana acts like light where different colours mix together to create white, then it should be safe to say the whiter a person's core, the more powerful they are and the more mana they will have.' Evan thought.

The stranger's core was solid grey with some dark blue shades, while the nun's core was dark grey with silvery hues. Wyra’s core was dark grey, having solid red and black shades.

‘I guess that confirms my theory.’

Also, Evan noticed that although his parents had no core whatsoever, Zed appeared to have a dark grey one. The twin’s cores also seemed to be somewhat unstable with the mana sometimes converging and other times flowing freely throughout the body.

‘

That’s odd. Is my brother also a mage? I don’t think so, otherwise, he wouldn’t look so envious of my sister when she used magic. Maybe there’s another type of mage that can’t use mana for spells? Either that or my sister is learning things my brother isn’t although I doubt it.’

Eventually both guests finished their meals said their farewells and left the house. Lunch made the twins drowsy so Leon took both of them to their rooms while Cara carried Evan to the living room, rocking him gently.

“I love you, my little baby.” She whispered to him.

Though he couldn’t understand what his mother was speaking, Evan could feel the emotions behind her words.

Love.

‘I love you too, Mom. I am sorry for making you worry.’

‘I swear, I’ll protect and make you and the rest of our family happy.’

‘In my previous life, dad died in some kind of accident, grandpa died of lung cancer, and mom of leukemia.’

‘I felt so helpless because I couldn’t do a thing to help them so I buried myself in my work and detached myself from the world so I wouldn’t have to feel any more pain.’

‘But now, I have power and I will use it to protect you guys.’ Evan vowed to himself before drifting off to sleep.