The night sky above Varn Island rippled with color. It was always like that during Crescent Tide, when the mana currents arced like ribbons through the atmosphere. Great rivers of glowing energy painted the heavens, and the villagers of Dallis lit lanterns to honor the God of Will, the one who had gifted magic to mortals.
Beneath those shifting lights, a boy sat on a stone cliff, legs dangling over the edge, eyes lifted toward the sky.
Vanila.
He was fourteen, or so the village elders guessed. His features were strange—eyes like molten gold tinged with white fire, too bright to be natural. His hair drifted in the air, weightless, like it remembered solar winds. And when he was alone, when no one was watching, his shadow moved on its own.
"Still brooding over the mana exam?"
Vanila turned. Serra climbed the path toward him, the glow of her crystalline veins flickering under her skin with each heartbeat. She plopped beside him, stretching her legs. "You'll do fine. Everyone's magic flares out before it finds its shape. Yours is just...weird. Really, really weird."
"I shattered the training stone last week," Vanila said, voice low. "Didn't even touch it. It just… folded."
Kael arrived seconds later, hopping silently up the slope like a ghost. He twirled a brush between his fingers, the tip already wet with black ink. "Weird is good," he said with a grin. "Weird means powerful. Maybe you're the next Saint. Or a prophet. Or cursed. Definitely one of those."
Serra elbowed him. "Not helping."
Vanila stared back at the sky. "Do you ever feel like… there's something inside you? Something huge. Cold. Old. Like it's sleeping under your ribs and dreaming of stars?"
A wind passed between them. The mana in the air crackled.
Serra glanced sideways at him. "You're being poetic again. You only get poetic when your magic flares."
"I had a dream last night," Vanila said, voice barely a whisper. "There was a voice calling me. It said I was a mistake. A cosmic flaw. A…" he hesitated, the word sour in his mouth, "...weapon."
Kael's expression darkened. "You've never told us that before."
"I only just remembered."
A distant bell tolled from the village center—the Obelisk had awakened. Time for the Arcaniad.
"Come on," Serra said, rising to her feet and brushing dust from her silver-clad boots. "Let's find out what kind of freak you really are."
The three descended the slope toward Dallis, where glowing banners danced and the Obelisk loomed like a tooth of the world—an ancient relic of stone pulsing with mana. Children and parents gathered in the clearing, each youth stepping forward to touch the pillar and awaken their Mana Crest.
One by one, they did. Fire. Wind. Crystal. Echo. Shapes of magic danced over them in patterns of light, their destinies forming visibly across their backs in glowing sigils.
Then it was Vanila's turn.
He stepped forward. The crowd murmured. The Obelisk pulsed slowly, ancient and calm.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the stone—
CRACK.
The Obelisk screamed. A pulse of darkness burst from Vanila's chest. Not shadow—absence. A wind rushed outward, howling with the sound of a million whispered screams. The mana in the air died. Torches blinked out. The other children's sigils flickered and vanished for a heartbeat, as if the very essence of magic was recoiling.
Then, silence.
The Obelisk stood in ruins. And in Vanila's palm, for a breathless moment, was a black sigil, shifting like a living void, its shape impossible to hold in memory.
Serra ran to his side. Kael stood frozen, eyes wide.
And far away, deep beneath the world, a long-dead god opened its single, rotting eye.