Year 1 – The Quiet Watcher
From the moment he opened his eyes, Liam seemed… aware.
He didn't cry often. He observed.Eyes wide, unnervingly focused. As if every wooden beam in the ceiling, every creak of the floorboards, every rustle of the wind carried meaning.
By the time he was six months old, he would hold his feeding spoon not like a child learning coordination—but like a judge holding court. If a spoon could look noble, Liam's did.
Avelyn often found herself talking to him like a grown man, and the oddest thing was—it felt right. He blinked at her in perfect rhythm, furrowed his brow at the proper emotional beats. It was as if he understood everything… except that he hadn't yet figured out how to talk back.
That changed quickly.
Year 1 and a Half – The Reader of Runes
While most babies gnawed on books, Liam read them.
They found him one morning with a gardening almanac twice his size propped open in front of him. Not only was he flipping pages, but he was humming in a tuneless rhythm as his eyes scanned from left to right—as if absorbing information.
By age one and a half, Liam had deciphered the family's old ledger and made a note in the margin correcting a miscalculated seed purchase from three seasons ago.
It wasn't even written in the language of the land. It was in ancient Glenic, a dead dialect only priests and historians bothered with.
No one taught him Glenic.
He just… knew.
Year 2 – The Tiny Scholar
It was at two years old that Liam first spoke the local language. Not in stumbling, toddler babble. Not one word at a time. But in complete, grammatically correct sentences.
"Uncle Frain, it's fewer apples, not less. 'Less' is for uncountables."
Uncle Frain dropped the basket in shock.
When Avelyn asked him how he learned to speak like that, Liam had simply shrugged and said:
"I heard people. They talk a lot."
From then on, he became a walking, talking lexicon. When the butcher's son wrote a love letter to the baker's daughter, it was Liam who corrected his spelling before he could embarrass himself. When the village scribe caught a fever, Liam offered to transcribe for him.
The scroll he turned in later included footnotes.
Year 3 – The Great Tree Mandate
It began innocently.
A few elderly cousins were arguing over how best to prune the peach tree. Liam, barefoot and carrying a wooden sword he carved himself, stopped beside them and listened.
Then he said:
"Actually, if you trim the overgrowth after the third moon but before the winter fogs settle, it maximizes the yield without exhausting the root system. Also—don't cut the eastern bough. It shelters the bee nests. Your honey crop depends on it."
No one listened—until the next season, when the trees that followed Liam's advice bore fruit so sweet and plentiful that even the local merchants asked for saplings.
Liam didn't gloat. He simply etched his plan onto a wooden tablet and hammered it to the garden fence.
"MANDATE ON THE PRUNING OF FRUIT TREES – BY ORDER OF LIAM."
The family still follows it to this day. They recite it at harvest festivals like scripture.
Year 4 – The Rain Collection Edict
The villagers had long struggled with their leaky barrels and poor irrigation.
So Liam spent three days drawing diagrams in the mud behind the mansion. Funnels. Angled troughs. Stone filters.
Then he taught the stable boys how to build them.
One rainy week later, the village had the cleanest and most efficient water system in all of the region.
When asked why he did it, Liam answered:
"Because drinking dirty water is unlawful. Against the law of common sense."
Year 5 – The Well Incident
When Liam fixed the crank of the ancient well, as mentioned before, he didn't just fix it.
He left behind a three-step process carved into the side with a pocket knife, titled:
"Emergency Mandate 4: Crisis Protocol for Rural Water Retrieval Devices."
No one questioned why he numbered it "4." There were no other mandates.
But it somehow felt like there should be.