The little boy tested his uncle’s patience every chance he got. Quite thoroughly, too.

“Go to class and pay attention to everything! Take notes! Study!” That was what his uncle had said before leaving home. In seven-year-old Sven’s mind, however, the words had sounded more like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

Restlessness came naturally to him. He could never sit still and focus on one thing for more than a few minutes. Before long, that familiar look would settle over his face: bored, sleepy, or hungry. Anything in the world became more interesting than whatever happened to hold his attention.

That day, he sat inside a classroom at Ahamura’s small and humble yet lovingly tended School of Knowledge. The town lay far to the north of the continent he called home, known as the Western Heart.

“What are you doing?” Gray whispered from the desk beside him. He was Sven’s best friend.

“Trying something new!” Sven whispered back.

He kept his hands beneath the desk, hidden from the teacher, and pressed his thumb against his middle finger. Tiny sparks of blue electricity snapped between them, like two live wires drifting too close together.

Gray watched uneasily. His gaze darted between the teacher and his friend as though he were keeping watch, though all he truly wanted was for Sven to sit quietly through one entire lesson.

“Do it outside... She’s going to see you...” he whispered, close to pleading.

Sven remained utterly focused.

Every failed attempt to summon electricity only made him more determined. He tried dozens of times without hearing a word of the lesson. Beside him, Gray somehow managed to keep a masterful watch over his friend, follow the teacher, and take notes, all while teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Had Sven been paying attention, the lesson might have helped him achieve the very feat he was chasing. It was about ether, after all: the driving energy behind everything in the world of Leruth, the mysterious force that gave ordinary people an affinity for water, earth, fire, air, or lightning.

Sven was definitely a cloudhead.

“May I ask what you two boys keep whispering about?” Sigrid said from the desk behind him. She leaned forward, trying to peek at whatever Sven held beneath the table.

That was when disaster struck.

Like a cat so intent on its prey that the slightest prank sends it flying, Sven SCREAMED at the sound of Sigrid’s voice and drew every eye in the classroom. Blue lightning burst from his hands, then from his entire body. Wild, aimless bolts struck the ceiling and floor, tearing through walls that had already seen better days.

The teacher swept her hands through the air. A colossal hand of earth rose from the floor and closed around Sven, pinning his body in place and grounding the uncontrolled current pouring from him.

Sven wore an enormous smile.

Delighted. Proud of himself.

His teacher looked horrified.

Seven-year-olds did not awaken their ether on their own every day, especially in such spectacular fashion.

The poor woman would have been better off taking the rest of the day off. Then she might have avoided a second shock when Gray froze the classroom, along with every other student in it, before the lesson was over.

Those boys were unlike anyone Ahamura had ever known. To make matters worse, they belonged to a group of five children, all the same age: Sven, Gray, Sigrid, Toph, and Scarlet. The last three were adoptive sisters.

Those were peaceful times, and they were only children.

Children who laughed at silly things, helped their families with the local businesses, and caused trouble every week by destroying something in town. Through it all, they stayed together.

Whether affinity had anything to do with it or not, they could never remain apart for long.

Some instinct seemed to warn them that they would need one another in the days ahead.

They were only seven years old. At least eleven more peaceful years awaited them before they began to discover why they were so different.