Three hundred years ago, the people of Earth—or Terra, as it was known then—looked to the skies with hope. They saw a meteor shower of unparalleled beauty painting the void, a cosmic ballet that promised nothing but wonder. They were wrong. The meteors did not burn up in the atmosphere; they pierced the world's veil, slamming into the remote corners of the planet with a force that should have ended civilization. Instead, they brought Mana.
It was a silent invasion at first. The strange, blue energy radiated from the impact sites, defying the laws of physics. It accelerated plant growth, healed the sick, and seemingly paused the aging process of those who lived near the craters. Humanity rejoiced. They called it the Golden Age of Evolution. But the universe demands balance, and for every gift, there is a price.
Ten years after the impact, the "Mana Cores" of the meteors destabilized. They didn't explode outward; they imploded, tearing the fabric of reality. The sky shattered like glass, and the red cracks—the Rifts—opened.
Through them came the nightmares. The Corvi, winged humanoids with dark feathers and steel-rending talons; the Gallier, four-legged behemoths of scale and bone; and countless wild beasts that saw humans not as cattle. The Great Cataclysm had begun. Humanity was pushed to the brink of extinction, forced to retreat to the single fortified continent of Aethelgard. It was only when humans learned to harness the very energy that threatened to destroy them—Mana—that the tide stabilized. They learned to awaken their souls, to form bonds with beasts, and to cultivate their strength.
Three centuries later, that history felt less like a tragedy and more like a boring Tuesday morning lecture to James Carter.
"And thus, the Treaty of the Four Isles was signed," Mr. Brooks droned on, his voice dry as parchment. "Ensuring that the Archipelago remained under human jurisdiction. Now, who can tell me the primary difference between a Wild Beast and an Awakened Beast?"
James sat in the back row, his head tilted slightly toward the window. He couldn't see the sun, but he could feel its warmth on his skin, a sharp contrast to the perpetual chill of the classroom's air conditioning. A bandage of white gauze was wrapped securely around his eyes, hiding the shame that had defined his fourteen years of life.
"James," Mr. Brooks called out, his tone shifting from bored to expectant. "Since you seem to be meditating on the mysteries of the universe, perhaps you can enlighten us?"
A snicker rippled through the class. It was William Turner; James knew that laugh. It sounded like a hyena choking on a bone.
James stood up slowly, his movements deliberate. He didn't need eyes to map the room; the distinct scrape of chairs, the rustle of fabric, and the faint, rhythmic hum of the ventilation system built a 3D map in his mind. But more than that, he felt the flow.
"A Wild Beast operates purely on instinct," James said, his voice steady. "Its mana core is unformed, dispersed throughout its muscle fibers, granting it physical strength comparable to a Novice-rank human. An Awakened Beast, however, has condensed that mana into a solid core. This allows for rudimentary intelligence and the potential for elemental manipulation, making them roughly three times as dangerous as their wild counterparts."
The classroom went silent.
"Correct," Mr. Brooks grunted, sounding almost disappointed that he couldn't berate the boy. "Sit down, Carter."
"He probably just memorized the audiobook," William whispered loudly to his neighbor, Daniel Foster. "Useless cripple. Knows the theory but can't even squash a bug."
James sat, his face impassive. He was used to it. In a world where strength was king and military service was the highest honor, a blind orphan was worse than a burden; he was a waste of resources. His mana core was pathetic—a stifled, starved thing stuck at the 1st Novice Rank. While his peers were breaking into the Adept ranks, preparing for the high school entrance exams and their first Soulbonds, James was struggling to simply exist.
But they didn't know. None of them knew.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the day. The sound was a physical blow, followed by the chaotic scrape of chairs.
"Excuse me," a deep voice rumbled to James's left.
James pulled his cane close to his legs. "Go ahead, Thomas."
Thomas Bennett. The class prodigy. The scion of a wealthy merchant family, already rumored to be at the peak of the Novice ranks. Unlike William, Thomas never mocked James. He treated him with a terrifying indifference, like a lion ignoring a mouse.
James waited until the room cleared before tapping his cane against the floor, navigating the familiar obstacle course of the hallway. He didn't need the cane as much as people thought, but it was a useful prop. It made him look helpless, and helplessness was the best camouflage in the concrete jungle of Oakhaven.
The walk home was a sensory assault. The city of Oakhaven was a C-grade fortress city, a sprawling mix of high-tech mana spires and crumbling pre-war architecture. The scent of ozone from the trains mixed with the greasy aroma of fried meat from the street vendors.
James lived in District 9, the "Rust Belt." Here, the mana barriers were thin, and the shadows were long.
He climbed the four flights of stairs to his apartment, his legs burning. His body was weak, malnourished from years of buying cheap nutrient paste to save credits. He unlocked the door with a biometric scan and stepped into the stale air of his sanctuary.
It was a tiny box of a room, a bed, a cooling unit, and a small desk. It smelled of old dust and loneliness.
James tossed his cane onto the bed and locked the door, sliding the heavy deadbolt home. He moved to the center of the room and sat cross-legged on the floor.
"Mother," he whispered into the dark. "I think today is the day."
Emily Wright had been a woman of secrets. She had worked as a servant for the prestigious Hayes family, a job that paid well enough to keep them fed, until the "accident." A dispute between nobles, a stray spell, and she was gone. The Hayes family had paid "blood money"—a settlement that kept a roof over James's head—but they couldn't buy back his mother.
Before she died, she had told him the truth about his eyes. They weren't broken. They were hungry.
"There are marbles in your head, Jamie," she had told him when he was four, guiding his small hands to his temples. "They are empty and sad. You have to feed them the light."
She had taught him a breathing technique, a way to pull the ambient mana from the air not into his abdomen, where a normal core resided, but into his optic nerves.
For ten years, James had done nothing else. While other children played, he meditated. While his classmates practiced martial arts, he guided the trickle of energy into his skull. It was why his body was so weak; he starved his muscles to feed his eyes.
He took a deep breath, centering himself.
The ambient mana in District 9 was thin, dirty stuff, polluted by the exhaust of the city's generators. But to James, it felt like a lifeline. He visualized the blue particles floating in the air, pulling them in with his breath. He guided the energy up his spine, past the blockade of his neck, and into the dark void behind his eyelids.
For years, it had felt like pouring water into a bottomless pit. But last night, the pit had filled.
Today, there was pressure.
James gritted his teeth. He pushed the mana harder.
Crack.
A sound echoed inside his skull, loud as a gunshot.
Pain, white-hot and blinding, exploded behind his eyes. It felt as if someone had shoved two red-hot pokers into his sockets. James gasped, his hands flying up to claw at his face, but he stopped himself just in time. He couldn't break the concentration.
"Accept it," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Consume it."
The pressure built. The "marbles" his mother spoke of were vibrating, humming with a frequency that made his teeth ache. The mana he had stored for a decade was reacting, condensing, transforming.
Tears of blood leaked from beneath his bandages, tracing hot lines down his cheeks. His body convulsed, sweat soaking his school uniform instantly. The pain was absolute, a universe of agony that threatened to shatter his mind.
Screee...
The sound was faint, barely audible over the rushing of blood in his ears. A scratching noise. Metal on metal.
James froze.
His apartment was on the fourth floor. The window was locked. The only other entrance was the ventilation grate near the ceiling.
Screee-thump.
Something had landed in his room.
The pain in his eyes was blinding, disorienting him, but the adrenaline spiked through his veins, sharpening his other senses. He smelled it instantly—a musk like rotting garbage and wet fur.
A Gutter Maw
They were low-level Wild Beasts, usually confined to the sewers or the wild zones outside the city walls. They were the size of a large dog, with incisors that could shear through copper piping. In the Rust Belt, they were a plague.
James was sitting on the floor, defenseless. He was a 1st Rank Novice in the middle of a cultivation breakthrough. If he moved, the backlash could fry his brain. If he stayed, the maw would tear his throat out.
He heard the beast chitter, a wet, clicking sound. He could hear its claws clicking on the cheap carpet as it crept closer. It could smell the blood leaking from his eyes. To a beast, that scent was a dinner bell.
Move, James commanded his body. Move!
But he was paralyzed by the energy surging through his skull. The transformation in his eyes was reaching its critical mass.
The Maw hissed, close now. Maybe three feet away. It was coiling its muscles to spring.
James felt the displacement of air as the beast lunged.
Instinct took over. He threw himself backward, his head slamming against the frame of his bed.
SNAP.
The maw's jaws snapped shut on the empty air where his throat had been a millisecond before. The beast landed with a heavy thud, scrabbling for traction.
James kicked out blindly, his heel connecting with something soft and furry. The maw squealed, a high-pitched sound of rage.
It scrambled back, hissing. James scrambled onto his bed, pressing his back against the wall. His head was splitting open. The pain was escalating, shifting from a burn to a tear.
"Feed them the light," his mother's voice echoed in his memory.
The maw wasn't waiting. It lunged again.
James didn't have a weapon. He didn't have strength. He had nothing but the agonizing pressure in his skull.
In a moment of desperation, he stopped fighting the pain. Instead of trying to contain the energy, he pushed it. He mentally shoved the wall of mana he had built for ten years, forcing it to breach the final barrier of his optic nerves.
BREAK.
It felt like a dam bursting.
The agony vanished in a microsecond, replaced by a sensation of cold, fluid clarity.
The bandages around his eyes unraveled as the sheer pressure of escaping mana disintegrated the fabric.
James opened his eyes.
The world was not dark.
It was not light, either. The room was pitch black to the naked eye, the sun having set hours ago. But James didn't see darkness.
He saw everything.
The room was outlined in a wireframe of glowing blue lines. The walls were shimmering curtains of static energy. He could see the residual heat fading from the floorboards where he had been sitting. He could see the flow of mana in the air, swirling like dust motes in a sunbeam.
And he saw the rat.
It was a grotesque masterpiece of biology and magic. James could see the chaotic, muddy red swirl of its unformed mana core beating in its chest like a second heart. He could see the tension in its hind leg muscles, glowing brighter as they prepared to fire.
He didn't just see the beast; he saw its intent.
The mana in the maw's legs flared crimson.
It's jumping left, James realized. The thought was instant faster than conscious logic.
James threw his body to the right before the maw even left the ground.
The beast sailed past him, its claws shredding the pillow he had been resting on. It landed on the bed, confused. It couldn't understand how the blind prey had dodged.
James reached out. He could see the weapon he needed—his cane, lying on the floor. It was glowing with a faint white aura, the residual mana from his own touch.
He rolled off the bed, his hand closing around the handle of the cane.
The maw turned, snarling. It prepared for a third strike. Its mana gathered in its jaw, strengthening the bite force.
James saw the weakness. There was a gap in the mana flow protecting the maw's skull, right between the eyes, where the bone plate hadn't fully fused. A tiny vortex of vulnerability.
He didn't think. He didn't hesitate.
As the maw leaped, James thrust the cane forward like a spear.
He didn't aim with his hands; he aimed with his perception. The cane tip whistled through the air, guided by the golden lines of trajectory that seemed to overlay his vision.
Thwack.
A wet crunch echoed in the small room.
The maw's momentum carried it forward, sliding down the shaft of the cane, but it was already dead. The metal tip had pierced the exact center of the weak spot, severing the brain stem.
The beast went limp, its heavy body sagging onto James's arm.
James shoved the carcass away, breathing heavily. He collapsed against the wall, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
The room was silent again, save for his breathing.
Slowly, tremblingly, James raised a hand to his face. He touched his eyelids. They were wet with blood, but beneath the lids, the eyes themselves felt cool. They didn't hurt. They felt... powerful.
He looked down at his hands.
He could see the bones beneath the skin, glowing with faint white light. He could see the veins pulsing with blue mana. He looked at the dead rat. He could see the dissipating red mist of its life force leaving the body.
He looked at the mirror on the opposite wall.
The glass was cracked, but the reflection was clear in the mana-sight.
A young man with messy black hair and a pale, malnourished face stared back. But it was the eyes that held him captive.
They weren't brown, or blue, or green.
The irises were a solid, luminescent gold. They swirled around, like the gears of a clock. They didn't just reflect light; they devoured it.
James Carter smiled, his blood-stained lips cracking.
"Hello, world," he whispered.
He stood up, his legs shaking, and walked to the window. He unlocked it and pushed it open.
The city of Oakhaven lay before him.
To anyone else, it was a nightscape of daek blue lights and shadows. To James, it was an ocean.
Massive rivers of mana flowed through the streets, powering the trains. The skyscrapers were pillars of light. Far in the distance, he could see the towering defensive dome of the city, a kaleidoscope of hexagonal energy shields.
And he could see the people below. Thousands of tiny flames walking through the streets. Some were dim, like dying candles—the unawakened. Others burned brighter—the Adepts.
He looked toward the city center, where the elites lived. There, the lights were blinding, towering infernos of power.
James gripped the windowsill, his golden eyes narrowing.
For fourteen years, he had been a ghost. A cripple. A mistake.
He looked at the dead maw in the corner of his room. He had killed a beast with a single strike. A Novice Rank 1, blind boy had killed a predator that would have terrified a grown man.
He wasn't weak. He had just been asleep.
James wiped the blood from his cheek. Tomorrow was the final written exam. The day after was the practical.
William Turner. Daniel Foster. Even Thomas Bennett.
They thought they knew the hierarchy of the world. They thought they knew where James Carter belonged.
James watched the golden mana swirl in his reflection.
"Let's show them," he said to the silence. "Let's show them what real power looks like."
He closed the window, turned back to the room, and began to clean up the mess. The darkness was gone forever.