The sky above Abay was a living canvas.
From the terraces of Asten, the capital city perched between the Singing Mountains and the azure lakes of Valharen, the sky shimmered in hues that seemed too perfect to be real — soft golds at dawn, flame-orange at dusk, and deep sapphire at night, when the stars blinked like curious gods.
Here, the world was magic.
Not the cheap kind, not the kind traded in alleyways or locked in dusty tomes. In Abay, mana flowed through all things — in rivers, in winds, in the roots of ancient trees that whispered if you listened closely. And above it all stood will — that silent force that turned magic into something personal. Something dangerous. Something divine.
Everyone felt it. But not everyone commanded it.
And then there was Alkei.
At sixteen, he wasn't just gifted. He was something Abay hadn't seen before. Those who met his eyes spoke of a calm too deep for his age, as if he knew the ending of a story that hadn't yet begun. His talents weren't just wide — they were precise. Fire, gravity, shadow, spirit — he moved between disciplines like a scholar and a soldier, questioning everything and mastering more than most dreamt of.
But what made Alkei truly strange… was that he wasn't satisfied.
Asten buzzed with color and life as the Festival of Flow approached. Banners danced in the wind, laughter spilled from courtyards, and merchants sold glowing fruit, whispering that eating them would improve one's mana for a day. Children shaped small illusions to impress their parents. Birds trained in wind mana looped through the sky in patterns.
But Alkei wasn't among them.
He stood instead on the edge of the North Spire, high above the city, his coat fluttering behind him. His eyes scanned the horizon like a cartographer of the unseen.
"What are you looking for?" someone once asked him.
And he'd answered, "Structure."
Not power. Not glory. Something more subtle. Something deeper.
There were no chosen paths in Abay. No bloodlines that guaranteed greatness. No destiny set in stars. One chose their direction — be it flame, mind, space, or sword — and walked it. But some, like Alkei, didn't walk a path. They searched for the foundation beneath all paths.
He called it a system of essence, a structure that could connect forces beyond what was known.
He was obsessed with the way commands shaped reality. He studied the way powerful beings — legendary sovereigns, mythical beasts, ancient spirits — didn't just use magic, they declared it. They spoke, and the world obeyed. Not through raw strength. Through will shaped into structure.
And so, while others cultivated power, Alkei began something stranger.
He started writing things. Diagrams, theories, lines of logic. He spoke aloud to empty rooms to test the impact of his voice, not volume — but meaning. He measured cause and effect like a mathematician measuring gods. Where most students studied control, Alkei studied resonance.
What does it take… to make the world answer you back?
Late that night, the stars pulsed brighter than usual.
Alkei sat alone atop a ruined stone tower outside the city, ancient and mostly forgotten. His journal lay open, covered in symbols no teacher could recognize. He had begun naming things that had no names — feelings, reactions, fragments of thought that never became words.
He didn't meditate. He listened.
And then… the world changed.
The wind paused — not slowed, paused. Like it had forgotten what it was supposed to do.
The mana in the air began to swirl around him, slow at first, then with increasing speed. It wasn't violent. It was… reverent.
Alkei stood, his eyes narrowing.
A light — pale, silver, and impossible — blinked into being across from him, floating just above the cracked stones. It wasn't a beast, nor a spirit. It had no body, not really — only a shape, shifting like mist trying to become something. Something ancient. Something new.
He didn't move. The wind resumed.
And the voice came. Neither male nor female. Not a whisper — not loud — but heavy, as if the sentence was being pressed into his bones.
"You are close."
Alkei felt no fear. Only clarity.
"You reach for what was never meant to be found," the being said. "And yet you reach correctly."
The wind stilled again. Time felt… slow.
Alkei's mind raced, but he asked nothing. He only waited.
The shape pulsed, growing brighter, then dimmer. Its voice came again, more distant.
"A voice that commands… not by might, but by truth."
It hovered closer.
"You will not understand yet. But you will remember this moment."
The figure began to shimmer.
"When you speak, the world will listen. One day."
Then — just as it had come — it began to fade.
Alkei stepped forward instinctively, his hand out. "Wait—"
But it was gone.
And the only sound was the breeze through the trees. A faint echo of a word burned into his mind like fire across paper:
Formula.