Inside an old stone tower, in the middle of the night, I used to sit by the window with a book in my hands. The candlelight cast my reflection in the foggy glass, and my eyes - fixed on the dark characters on the yellowed pages - barely blinked. The flickering flame partially illuminated my pale, thin face, the face of a child who had barely turned six.
My hair was dark, as were my eyes. My skin, sickly and pale, contrasted with the shadows of the tower. I had always been small for my age, but nobody seemed to notice - or if they did, they didn't say anything. They were used to my silent presence in the corners of the castle.
Visiting the Tower of Books had become a daily habit, especially on cold, lonely winter nights. While my brothers slept or were distracted by games and conversations, I took refuge between those cold, silent walls, surrounded by red wooden bookshelves. There were only three, arranged in the corners, but each one held old, heavy volumes - rare, hand-copied books, true relics in an era when few words were preserved on paper.
At that time, I already understood that my access to that place said a lot about who I was. No ordinary child could read those books. And I was no ordinary child.
My name is Zaatar Urik, the first son of Rillen Urik. As the direct heir, I had privileges that my younger siblings would never know. From an early age, I was introduced to the family library - and it wasn't long before I fell in love with it.
The books there weren't fictional stories or invented adventures. They were biographies. Each one recounted the experiences of our ancestors, men who shaped the destiny of our lineage. My family's story began three hundred years before me, with Urik First - a simple soldier who, during the war, demonstrated enough valor to receive a title and a piece of land on the borders of the Empire of Dawn, on the west coast.
Since then, the Urik family has had only two rulers: Urik the Second, who lived for two hundred years and had ten children, and my father, Rillen, the youngest among them - but the only one to stand out enough to inherit the name, even without being the firstborn. That always struck me.
The biographies were long and detailed. Each line revealed difficult choices, struggles, knowledge acquired through pain and time. And I read it all, enthralled. I felt as if I could see every moment, as if I were present at battles that took place centuries before I was born.
I was never the same as the other members of my family. From an early age, I showed strange behavior, an unusual genius. While my siblings were still babbling their first words, I learned to speak when I was just over a year old. At three, I was already literate. I knew that this was unusual, even if no one had to tell me.
I've always had a calm, observant temperament and a sharp memory. As I grew up and received a more formal education, I realized that my mind absorbed everything with frightening ease. I was a fast learner. Very quickly.
What normally took a child years to learn, I had mastered by the age of six. My father noticed this - even if he never said it out loud - and started to look at me more closely. Perhaps with pride. Or curiosity. It was hard to tell.
I closed the book carefully, listening to the sound of the pages meeting. I looked out of the tower window and saw darkness already covering the entire castle courtyard. It was time for bed. But there was still something on my mind.
Who was my mother?
My father had three wives - Tila, Ella and Gresy - but none of them looked like me. Even he didn't have my features. When I asked him about her as a child, he just said that my mother had died in childbirth. He never said anything else. Whenever the subject came up again, he became aggressive. He closed his face. His mood changed. As if I had touched something forbidden.
- Who was she...? - I muttered, as I returned the thick book to its shelf.
I began to descend the steps of the tower in silence, the question still eating me up inside. On the second floor, I found Benta waiting for me with a candelabra in her hands. The flickering light of the fire danced across her gentle face. She had been my personal maid for as long as I could remember, responsible for keeping my routine in order. I liked her. She was perhaps one of the few people I really liked.
- How was your reading, young master? - she asked as politely as ever. That was his catchphrase every night, part of the ritual.
- Things are clearer now. The dialect has changed a lot over the last three hundred years. Some words still confuse me, but I'm understanding them better. - I spoke with restrained excitement, as always. - The first Urik was... fascinating. His biography talks a lot about the military procedures of the Dawn Empire, the bureaucracies, of course, but also about how to survive in forests, hunt, erase traces... There's even a catalog of useful materials. Incredible.
Books always seemed incredible to me. Since I couldn't leave the castle, they were my only way of seeing the world beyond the walls.
My life was made up of private lessons, calculated interactions with the family, and long periods of solitude. I didn't know any other children. And I didn't think that was wrong. From an early age, I was taught to act like a noble of House Urik. I grew up with the certainty that I was special. That I was above the others because of my title. That was the reality of the world - I was just a reflection of it.
But that began to change.
The more I read my family biographies, the more I realized the truth. My great-grandfather, for example, was not a nobleman. He was a peasant. A man who could barely read and write. And it was because of him, through his choices and merits, that our family rose.
The idea of being superior seemed a little less solid now. A little emptier. With each page, I understood that my blood didn't make me special. What made us noble was someone who had once been nothing.
I understood. And I accepted it.
With each reading, with each lesson, I felt something inside me change. It was subtle at first - a new way of thinking, a silence before speaking, a more attentive gaze. But over time, it became something bigger. Natural. As if I was aging inside faster than the rest of the world. While others remained stuck in the same attitudes, I felt my mind moving forward, one step at a time.