Those two years - what people now call the Wild Years - felt like the world had tripped over something ancient and dangerous, and tried to act like everything was still normal. It wasn't. Magic had arrived, loud and strange, and no one was ready. Not governments. Not scientists. Certainly not Albert.
He'd lived through it with wide eyes and a notebook. And looking back, he didn't really see heroes or villains - just people. Some scared. Some greedy. Some trying to help and making it worse.
Magic, he wrote once, wasn't good or bad. It didn't care. It could close wounds with a flick of the hand, make animals understandable, paint illusions that danced in the air like dreams. It could also burn down homes, twist memories, or dig up the dead. Same force. Just different choices.
Those first years were messy. Everyone wanted to be the first to understand it. To control it. But it wasn't that kind of thing. Magic didn't slot neatly into boxes or follow the rules people liked to build around power. It went where it wanted. And it didn't ask for permission.
Albert kept a list once - places lost, people changed, spells gone wrong. It got too long.
Still, something shifted. After enough fire and fallout, people started treating magic less like a toy or a weapon, and more like something real. Something that could stay. Laws were written. Schools opened. Words like "mana regulation" and "ethical casting" made their way into news reports.
No one had tamed it. But they'd stopped pretending it wasn't there.
Toward the end of that chapter in his notes, Albert scribbled:
"Magic doesn't reveal who we want to be. It shows who we are when nothing is stopping us."
And under that, in smaller letters, almost an afterthought:
"We had our turn to play. Now we have to grow up."