Astra's inner domain was unlike any other he had known this for as long as he could remember, yet he had never spoken of it aloud.
Trust was a rare and brittle thing for him. He had grown up on the outskirts, in streets steeped with hunger and betrayal, among people who would sell a soul for the stale crust of a loaf. In such a place, secrets were survival. Knowledge was power. A mistake often meant death.
He never fully trusted even his one and only true friend who had left for adventure years ago. Iskander.
Now, he stood upon the threshold of that secret—his inner domain. Here, reality folded upon itself, time scattered and slowed, and the very air seemed to recognize him.
The celestial expanse above stirred at his arrival. Stars did not merely shine; they shifted, their brilliance bending as though alive, twisting and undulating in response to an unseen rhythm. The heavens quivered, galaxies unspooling in slow, deliberate spirals, their vast arms stretching toward the abyss. Light bled into darkness like ink poured into deep water—an ancient stain spreading through infinity.
In the distance, nebulae bloomed: veils of violet, gold, and deep crimson drifting through the void in a slow, hypnotic waltz. Their colors bled together like the dying breath of distant stars.
It felt as though the universe itself was holding its breath for him. Every shimmer and flicker in the boundless dark was an invitation to touch the unknown, to claim the power that lingered there.
Below, an ocean of infinity stretched into the abyss, a surface of black glass so perfect it might have been carved from obsidian. It was still, not lifeless, but waiting. The faintest ripples tremored across it, as though some colossal leviathan stirred far below as if it wasn't even made of water. This was not the restlessness of wind or tide, it was a movement born of purpose, and it was aware of him.
No shores. No horizon. Only a vast and eternal sea, pressing against the edges of his mind, pulling at him with the promise of truths buried deeper than memory, deeper than time.
Above it all, his core pulsed, a single radiant star burning brighter than the galaxies that surrounded it. It was more than light; it was a living presence, the echo of a thousand lifetimes compressed into one heartbeat. Its glow was a piercing white-blue, so bright it fractured the fabric of the void around it, sending shivers of reality rippling outward. The hum of its power resonated in his bones, its rhythm one he could neither resist nor escape.
And there, suspended within that expanse, hung his sun, the manifestation of his mana core. But this was no sun of warmth or spring; it was a sun of stillness, of eternal calm. It bathed the cosmos in a dim, strange light that seemed to slow time itself. It felt cold. Distant. Untouchable. Yet it anchored him here, the axis upon which his entire power turned. This much was normal about his inner domain.
At the fringes of sight, shadows moved, tendrils of half-remembered fears and forgotten dreams, winding between the starlight. They beckoned like ghosts with the answers to questions he had not yet dared to ask.
Then, the coin appeared.
Astra's fingers closed around it, and it pulsed—deep and resonant, like the sound of a door unlocking somewhere far beyond sight. The stars flickered. The shadows whispered more insistently. The infinite sea shivered. The Pawn coin shimmered in his grasp, casting lines of information.
He sighed as he stared at his coin.
Astra had always known mana was alive. Not metaphorically—truly alive. It breathed between the spaces of reality, pulsed beneath the skin of the world, and when he quieted himself enough, it answered him. Not with words, never with words, but with impressions: the subtle tightening of instinct, a flash of clarity, a whisper of warning felt somewhere behind the heart.
Most people would describe mana as energy. They were wrong. It was will—primordial, restless, half-feral. And the coins, a fragment of ones soul earned once one dares to wield mana, existed only to make that will understandable. With them, mana could be guided, shaped, civilized into something a mortal mind could comprehend without breaking. Yet Astra had learned early that this was only the surface.
The coins helped.They gave out quests, hinted at key opportunities for growth and demanded what the soul craved. To become divine.
The world liked to pretend its magic was simple. Four elements, four pillars upon which all power rested: earth, fire, water, wind. Every child in Duskfall learned this before they could write their own name. And in the simplest sense, it was true. These elements were everywhere—woven into stone, flame, river, sky. Almost every Rank One mage could tug at least one of them into their grasp, and most could brush against all four the same way anyone could hum a tune or balance on one foot.
There existed other rare elements, such as the fabled celestial mana, mysterious soul mana, the infamous demonic mana and holy faith mana, all having their very own unique properties and rare inheritance. There of course were other unknown types that may vary and evolve throughout the eras, Unique magics pioneered and innovated at the earliest of ranks and in abundance at times. But even with all these mana different and unique mana types what truly matters is affinity.
Affinity..affinity was different.
Affinity was the soul leaning toward a path before the mind ever understood it. It was the quiet preference, the way a person's nature fit more comfortably within one element than the others. Light was only fire distilled. Shadow existed only because light failed. Ice was water slowed down at its very molecules to stillness; steam, the same water urged into frenzy. The elements obeyed a sensible rhythm, as predictable as breath.
There were countless affinities in the world, threads of mana woven through reality, waiting to be grasped by those capable of shaping them. From the humble elements to conceptual magics, every soul carried a path within them, even if they never learned to walk it.
At the base of all things stood the four pillars—Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind. They were the foundation upon which all other magic rested meaning others can easily innovate or find another sub type or unique magic from the four most common pillars. Nearly every Rank One mage could touch at least one of them, and most could coax faint traces of all four. After all, everyone held slight affinities: the way anyone could cook or run or learn, even if not all were destined to excel. Just because one could channel an element did not mean they should. Instinct and resonance dictated everything.
The two less seen uncommon pillars were Light and Shadow, To illuminate without a source can be incredible powerful and shades in turn, were not their own force but simply the absence of that light—a negative space carved from fire's reach. Ice was water slowed and compressed; steam was water hurried and heated, its particles dancing. It was all logical, almost mechanical, a shifting of pace, density, temperature.
But to a mage, logic was only the doorway.
The four pillars were not meant as destinations but beginnings—paths leading to higher, more dangerous, more intimate truths. To truly walk a path, one had to embody it. No one could become fire while clinging to the stillness of earth. No one could reach the serenity of water while yearning for the freedom of wind. Conflicting natures stunted growth; harmony accelerated it.
Some affinities intertwined naturally—fire with wind, earth with water, water with wind, earth with fire. These combinations created possibilities, but mastery demanded devotion. And with devotion came transformation. As a mage deepened their affinity, their mana reflected their nature; their nature reflected their mana. Fire bred radiance, volatility, hunger. Water taught patience, adaptability, endurance. Wind cultivated freedom; earth, resilience. The element carved into the soul.
A mage may even have C grade affinity in say water yet have A grade affinity in Ice. It was truly daunting, if it weren't for the mage coins, some may never find their true path.
Most mages awakened with two main affinities. A main affinity being the highest rating granted by mana. The blessed, the rare ones scattered throughout the realms' history, were born with three—sometimes, impossibly, all four. These prodigies were numbered in legends, their talents spoken of in reverent whispers.
It was true that every living being held all affinities to some degree, but these faint traces were negligible, barely sparks when compared to a main affinity. A main affinity was measured by rating:S, A, B, C, and so forth.
An A in fire with a set of weak C's elsewhere produced a one-dimensional mage—focused, specialized, sharp as a blade. Yet even BB or CC grades made profound differences in potential and foundation. Naturally just because one was one dimensional this did not mean one was weak. A grave mistake to those who dare commit it.
One main affinity meant purity of direction—fire mages could wield flame, light, even lightning if their talent flirted with its extremities. But two affinities broadened the world dramatically. Fire paired with water, for example, could birth steam,(the more the affinities conflict with each other the lesser the potential). Combine fire and earth, magma emerged. With talent, even metal or crystal magic could be born.
Three affinities? That was when possibilities bordered madness. With three pillars beneath them, a mage became versatile, unpredictable, when realized a force few could counter.
Thus the ranks meant more than power. They represented clarity.
Rank One was discovery. A mage fumbled through one or two affinities, learning what resonated, what resisted, what called to them.Rank Two was identity. By this stage, paths solidified, affinities sharpened, and weaker ones fell away. Talent and innate affinity mattered more than effort—they decided how far one could push, what doors remained open, and what risks would break them.
At this stage, a mage's two main affinities defined them. Trying to advance conflicting affinities could be disastrous, even crippling. In some cases however it could be ingenious. It depended on the person!
Everyone knew this. It was taught in the first lectures of spellcraft.
But Astra knew the truth hidden beneath the lessons—something most mages never understood:
Knowing is nothing. Understanding is everything.
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, the faint ache of exhaustion mixing with wonder. One day, he told himself. One day I'll find the real reason.
For now, he knew what his path was meant to be. Shadow and Star. The twin halves of night.
He was most attuned to those two, the loyal silence of the dark and the unreachable brilliance above. The stars might not yet obey him, but they whispered to him all the same, their distant light reflecting in his mana when he cast. The shadows, on the other hand, needed no invitation. They moved for him naturally, bending, curling, almost eager to serve.
Astra steadied his breathing as the last threads of mana settled around him. He raised his hand, and the elements stirred in his inner domain.
He could shape water better than most earth-mages could shape stone, coax sparks of flame, or stir the wind with a gesture. But all of that felt… small. Tricks. Tools.Shadows and starlight—that was different.
His soul belonged to the night.
He didn't understand what that meant yet, but he felt it every time he inhaled: the faint tension between darkness at his feet and distant brilliance overhead, two opposing forces tugging at the core of him.
The sensation sent a thrill up his spine.
Mana pulsed in answer, like it already knew where he was headed. The first step had been taken, and the world was waiting for him to shape it.
Astra looked around his soul and let his awareness deepen.
The shadows reached him first.
Not with words but in a language older than language. Their movements carried meaning. Their stillness, intention. They stretched toward him, coiling around his ankles and wrists, brushing against his neck like cold breath.
They recognized what he was.What lived inside him.
His S-Rank affinity to shadow wasn't passive—it was alive. It crackled through his veins like dark lightning, and the shadows responded to it with something close to eagerness.
They wrapped around him like a claim:
You are ours.You have always been ours.
He swallowed, pulse quickening.
Then the water answered.
The ocean's voice was different slower, deeper. Not demanding. Not urgent. It simply existed, a constant presence beneath everything else. A thin sheen gathered across the floorboards, rippling to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
His B-Rank affinity to water wasn't the same as true water-mages, but it was strong enough that the element leaned toward him, patient as a tide waiting for the moon.
No rush. No hunger.Just inevitability.
Astra exhaled, and the surface stilled again.
Hybrid affinities weren't too uncommon—fire and light overlapped, just as shadow and water did. Most people carried mixtures like that.
But the star…
That was something else entirely.
Astra's focus tightened, and the presence revealed itself in the center of his mana core. Bright. Constant. Unreachable. His second S-Rank affinity—but unlike shadow, it refused to move. It did not bow, did not whisper, did not yield.
It was a weight pressing at his back, absolute and immovable.
Not hostile.Not kind.
Simply beyond him.
Astra's jaw tightened.
Why won't you answer?
He reached for it again, and again it held its distance. A mountain would sooner bend than that star ever would. He had the affinity any evaluator would confirm it but affinity wasn't mastery.
And the gap between the two felt like a chasm.
The lesser elements flickered at the edges of his mana. Fire, C-Rank—glowed faintly beneath everything else, a coal buried in dead ash. It could burn, if he ever bothered to feed it. Earth and wind barely registered at all.
Even his "C-rank" in Light felt wrong, distant, barely a true affinity at all. Useless until he learned to wield it.
He knew the truth: someone like him could eventually nurture a third true affinity, water, perhaps, or even light—but that was a dream for nobles and prodigies.
He was seventeen.He lived in the ghettos.He had nothing but raw potential.
And yet…
Shadow and Star.Both S-Rank.A pairing so rare most people only ever saw it in legends.
On paper, it was the kind of talent that reshaped clans and founded dynasties.In reality, it was nothing more than raw ore, valuable, yes, but useless until refined.
Astra knew it painfully well.
He had no master.No formal training.No real combat experience.Nothing but scavenged pages from the mana network, half-forgotten theories, and the teachings of a friend far more gifted than he was.
He understood magic in principle, not instinct.In a real fight, he would drown in his own thoughts.
Yet the feeling persisted—that quiet certainty that something inside him ran deeper than letter grades and academy evaluations. Something tied to the star that would not bow.
The shadows tightened around him now, excited. The water shivered. The coin in his palm flashed, mana surging through it in shifting patterns—light and darkness folding over one another in precise geometries.
Symbols he could almost understand.
His heart hammered.
The coin was a key.He could feel that now, clearer than before.
But to what?
"There has to be a way," he murmured, his voice low and certain, the words swallowed by the abyss around him. His gaze fixed on the burning star."A way to make you hear me. A way to make the stars… heed my call."
And in the stillness that followed, he thought—just for an instant—that the star flared brighter.
Astra sighed.
As for Astra's combat skills… there was not much to boast about.
His swordsmanship was a crude, unfinished thing—shaped by necessity rather than instruction. He could cross blades with most warriors of his rank and walk away alive if luck favored him, but luck was fickle, and skill had a way of deciding whether the survivor stood or fell. His coin, ever blunt in its appraisals, loved to remind him of this fact. Inefficient stance. Unstable footing. Telegraphed swing. The criticisms were endless.
His Mastery for [Basic Swordsmanship I], a skill book he had bought for 50 silver standards was [5/7]. Terrible, Yet better than some.
Hand-to-hand combat was a different story. Life in the outskirts of Duskfall had been a perpetual education in brawling—one paid for in bruises and split lips. The streets and taverns had been his training ground, and his instructors came in the form of mercenaries, thieves, dockside drunks, and the occasional traveling master too far gone in ale to care who they fought. He had learned from all of them, often at the cost of a bloodied nose, and built a respectable arsenal of techniques from many schools and none. He could hold his own without a blade, and often preferred to.
[Intermediate Hand to hand combat ] was a [3/7]
But none of that—not fists, not steel, was what haunted him.
It was the star magic.
The very phrase carried weight. Even in thought, it felt dangerous to name it.To Astra's knowledge, no one alive possessed it—not openly, at least. The only references he had ever uncovered were whispers buried in the dust of history, fragments of accounts in which nameless exiles wielded impossible power on ancient battlefields. No diagrams of their spells. No listed incantations. Only vague descriptions of effects so varied it was impossible to tell where truth ended and myth began, teleportation without sigil or anchor, destruction on a scale that erased fortresses from the earth, distortions of space that swallowed entire companies without trace. Authorities and descriptions similar to that of the dead Night god.
The records were evasive to the point of deliberate censorship. Pages that should have contained tactical breakdowns instead offered poetic abstractions. The outcomes of these battles were listed, but not the means. And yet, Astra was no naive child—he had grown up knowing the world's darker machinery. He had seen how kingdoms erased inconvenient truths. How a day was enough time for a people to vanish, their memory ground into nothing.
Flaunting his star magic would be suicide. That much he understood. A mage who displayed an affinity that rare would vanish before nightfall, whether into the hands of a kingdom, a cult, or the cold embrace of death was a matter of chance.
The coin had confirmed as much in its own infuriating way.
It recognized the affinity, but gave him almost nothing of value—no beginner techniques, no guidance on shaping the star's power. Instead, it buried him in the usual assortment of quest objectives: mana circulation exercises, elemental control drills, basic spell refinements. All useful, all generic. The kind nobles received were different—tailored techniques, hand-forged sword forms, military-grade battle strategies, even arcane formations passed down through bloodlines. But those required coinwork commissions, and such commissions were priced for the wealthy.
He could buy quests, yes, but the quality was unreliable, the rewards uncertain.
Only one quest the coin had given him stood apart. A mana quest. Rare, potent. The kind that was said to unlock the deepest wells of one's strength if completed. And its objective…
[Know the Night]
That was all. No map. No guidance. No key.
He had turned the phrase over in his mind a hundred times, tried a hundred interpretations. Was it literal—an instruction to explore the hours after sunset, to chase some celestial alignment? Was it metaphorical—urging him to seek the darkness within himself? Or was it something else entirely, something only the star magic itself could reveal? He had even looked into the long exterminated House Night which was a major taboo in Duskfall. He had learned snipets nothing of importance bedsides that they were traitors to the world and the gods, heretics. Astra deep down felt that the answer to his dilemma lay with that house but what could he really do?
Yet he the more he sought answers, the more the search unmade him.
It became an obsession. He trawled libraries for forbidden archives, chasing footnotes into dead ends. He read battle reports from centuries past, tracing the patterns of wars that had no victors. And always, that same paranoid thought whispered through his mind: If someone is watching me, they will know.
Star magic was not the kind of thing one could research without drawing attention. If a stranger were to notice his particular fixation, they would draw the obvious—and correct—conclusion. And then…
He didn't finish the thought.
"Maybe I'm just paranoid," he muttered, a bitter laugh escaping him. It was not the laughter of a man amused, but of one trying to keep from sinking too deep.
It drove him close to madness—having a magic so rare that it lived only in legend, and yet finding himself unable to coax even a flicker of it into being. It was like being told he carried a crown in his blood, only to find his hands too clumsy to lift it.
Deep down Astra had theories, A bastard child of some royal, a lost lineage, Perhaps even the olden eradicated house Night which was rumored to actually use star magic, alas he had no way to know, he barley had access to public records let alone historical ones of importance. The mana Network? had near nothing he could access. Which was strangely terrifying to know that the Church of Knowledge, the followers of The Eternal Keeper of Knowledge herself had decided to suppress it. Making him even more paranoid.
He sighed, gaze sweeping across his inner domain one last time. The shadows swirled lazily at the edges of his vision. The ocean lay still again, mirroring the distant constellations. And high above, the star continued to burn—bright, remote, silent.
He pressed his will back into the waking world.