The air around Ji-hyeon felt different ever since that morning in the woods.
He had unlocked something—touched something. But with it came a burden he had almost forgotten.
Mana wasn't just energy.
It was a presence.
A force that lived inside everything, waiting to be shaped—but not without consequence. In his previous life, he had tamed storms and shattered fortresses with a thought. Now, when he tried to gather even a fraction of that power…
His body trembled.
Veins stung. Breaths shortened. His chest tightened.
---
He was too young.
Too fragile.
Too human.
But he didn't stop.
---
Each morning before the sun rose, Ji-hyeon would slip out of his house and return to the woods. Not deep—just enough to be alone, where the world quieted. He began simple.
Touching mana.
Feeling it stir like a sleeping animal beneath the soil, in the wind, in his bones.
Then he tried guiding it. Calling it to his fingertips. Imagining it as water, light, fire.
The results were clumsy. Weak sparks. Air that shimmered. A warmth that flickered and vanished.
Still, it was progress.
And progress, no matter how slow, was everything.
---
One morning, his efforts ended with blood on his lips and darkness at the edges of his vision. He collapsed beneath an old oak tree, sweat soaking through his shirt, the leather-bound book beside him half-buried in leaves.
But through the exhaustion, he smiled.
Because for just a moment, before his body gave out—
The runes had answered him.
---
Later that day, back in the village, the baker's daughter whispered to her friends:
> "I saw Ji-hyeon in the forest again. He was… glowing. Just a little. Like candlelight."
Her friends laughed, of course.
But a passing traveler heard.
And he didn't laugh.
---
The next night, that traveler knocked on the door of a quiet house in the capital. He spoke only one sentence to the cloaked figure who answered:
> "The bloodline has awakened again."
And just like that, the gears of the world began to turn.
Unseen. Slow.
But unstoppable.