Magic had been created as something elemental—capable of shifting energy, twisting the environment… even bending the laws of the world itself.
A magisteer cast.
And suddenly, the stones reacted.
Cobblestones tore themselves loose, the earth beneath us rose like it was alive, and the ground tried to bury me where I stood.
"What stupidity are you saying, Griffin…" an old magisteer muttered with an exhausted sigh, irritation heavy in his voice. His expression looked done with everything. Around him, glowing runes formed like drifting notes—soft and rhythmic, like a lullaby mixed with the sound of waves. His spell activated, steady and controlled.
Meanwhile, the old sword master just laughed.
He swung through the air as fast as his body could move, slicing with such force that the shock cracked the ground itself. The earth split under the pressure like it couldn't keep up with him.
Then Adam reached out.
He touched the cobblestones that had closed in around me and Robert.
And they didn't just break.
They disintegrated.
The stones collapsed into dust so cleanly it didn't even feel real, like the world had decided they were never meant to exist in the first place.
It startled everyone.
Why was it doing that?
Before anyone could react, the dark knight lunged.
He leapt forward like a predator, aiming to slam me into the ground with sheer weight and brute force.
But I caught his hand.
And the moment I did, it felt wrong.
Not just strong—wrong.
Like his weight didn't matter. Like gravity didn't apply. Like the force behind him was nothing more than a suggestion.
His eyes narrowed.
For a second, he hesitated—not out of fear, but because his mind was racing.
He hadn't come here by choice.
He was here because of an order.
His father's order.
Even now, he could feel it hanging over him like chains, the kind you don't see but still obey.
A magisteer had called for this meeting. Not out of pride, not to show power… but because he was irritated. Not at me. Not at the knight.
At the world.
At what magisteers had done to it.
Engineering. Botany. Chemistry—whatever the scholars wanted to name it now. Entire fields reshaped and rewritten by magic until the old rules meant nothing. The world didn't progress naturally anymore. It got edited.
And only a handful of people could even use it.
Magic wasn't like aura—something born from the core of a person, something anyone could awaken with training or will.
Magic was different.
Magic was talent, rare and unfair, like the world choosing favorites.
And the dark knight… didn't have it.
No matter what he did, no matter what he trained, he was untalented in the one thing that mattered most now.
A royal magisteer had delivered an order, backed by prophecy.
They claimed the land of expansion would become a path to power.
And my father believed it immediately.
Not because it was true.
Because it gave him what he wanted: permission.
A reason to conquer new land without calling it greed.
And I hated that I understood him.
I was afraid too.
The rumors were getting worse. Whispers spreading through borders and camps like disease—prowlers, they called them. Humans with red eyes, something wrong in their bodies, something that spread through the distant lands like an infection.
It wasn't just monsters anymore.
It was people becoming something else.
And still… the world listened to magisteers like they were gods.
I was tired of how much trust was handed to so few.
They were skilled, yes. But skill didn't mean they should hold the right to decide what everyone else had to become.
Adam let out a slow breath, almost like he was disappointed in me.
"You're contradicting yourself, Alexander."
I could only stare at him.
There was something off about him.
Not in the way people say someone is strange.
In the way reality itself didn't sit right around him.
He felt unnatural. Like he wasn't from here. Like the world had accepted him reluctantly.
Who was this man?
Then memory hit me.
The image of him standing over it.
That abominable beast—slain without hesitation. Without struggle.
The monster.
The devil.
And he had killed it like it was nothing.