"Before the world was shaped by hands, it was shaped by song."
— Fragment, "The Canticle of the Hollow Flame"
In the beginning, there were no spells.
There were no runes, no grimoires, no academies or tomes. No Guild of Arcanists, no Division of Thaumaturgical Sciences.
There was only mana.
And mana was not a thing.
It was a memory.
Of fire. Of breath. Of motion. Of grief.
A wound in the fabric of the world, still bleeding.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
They called it many things.
The Church called it Sin.
The Academy called it Theoretical Vectored Arcanum.
The common folk called it Witchlight or Ghostfire.
But those who touched it knew the truth.
Mana was the record of the world's pain.
Where death occurred, mana pooled.
Where life was lost violently, it twisted.
Where grief lingered too long, it became volatile.
And some—few—could hear it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The Gifted
Those who could sense mana were called many names.
Whisperers. Wyrdfolk. Curseborn. Children of the Fold.
To most, magic was madness.
A whisper too loud. A song too sharp.
It warped the mind before it bent the world.
But to the Gifted, it was clarity.
They could see the lattice beneath reality: threads of echo and flame, suspended in infinite tension.
They were not taught magic. They remembered it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
System Note: On the Weave
Mana is not cast. It is aligned.
Magic is not summoned. It is chosen.
Magic in this world is governed by three principles:
1. Affinity
Every soul harmonizes with mana differently.
Affinities reflect the fundamental shape of one's self.
Common affinities include:
Fire — Passion, wrath, rebirth.
Ice — Stillness, memory, preservation.
Thought — Insight, madness, revelation.
Flesh — Blood, hunger, transformation.
Echo — Voice, history, recurrence.
Wood— Life, recovery, warmth.
Machine — Control, rhythm, progression.
Veil — Obscurity, concealment, truth denied.
Some souls carry multiple affinities. These are called Split-Souled, and are often unstable.
2. Resonance
Magic is not drawn from the world—it is coaxed from within.
A mage must synchronize their emotions, thoughts, and will with the mana they wish to invoke. This is called Resonance.
The deeper the resonance, the more dangerous the result.
"He who sings too deeply drowns."
3. The Fold
All mana originates from the same source: The Fold.
A dimensional veil that separates the waking world from what came before.
The Fold is not a place, but a state—a memory of the First Fire.
"To touch the Fold is to remember the death of God."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spellcasting
Modern spellcasting relies on focus.
Most use ritual, devices, staves, or channeling masks—artifacts that stabilize resonance and prevent emotional collapse.
But this is a crutch.
True mages, the ones who vanish from the histories, need no focus.
They cast by breathing.
They command reality by remembering how it used to be.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
System Note: On Mana Burn
Magic is not free.
Channeling mana imposes strain on the soulframe, the invisible lattice binding mind, flesh, and spirit.
When overtaxed, the soulframe fractures.
This is called Mana Burn.
Symptoms include:
— Hallucinations
— Blood inversion
— Memory loop
— Sudden aging
— Becoming an ghastborne
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Alchemy, Enchanting, and Mechanomancy
This is a world of brass and steam.
Magic is not separate from machinery—it feeds it.
Alchemy binds affinities into liquid form—distilled emotion bottled into glass.
Enchanting weaves resonance into objects, binding function to meaning.
Mechanomancy is the art of using logic engines and steam constructs to interface with the Fold, forcing stability through calculation.
But all are merely methods of manipulating what already remembers.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The Truth Buried
The world once sang.
Then it burned.
Now it remembers.
Those who listen to the Fold do not learn magic.
They learn to suffer correctly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[System Initialization Complete]
Magic Classification: Soul Resonant Memory-Driven Architecture
User: ???
Primary Affinity: ???
Fold Connection: Dormant
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
To be continued…