Two Years Later – Victoria's Room
Victoria sat cross-legged on her bed in the lotus position, the silk sheets cool beneath her and the room unusually still, as if the air itself were holding its breath. Behind her closed eyes, reality blurred and bled into a kaleidoscope of swirling colors—red, blue, orange, yellow, silver, and black. The hues pulsed in time with the beat of her heart, each one tethered to the elemental forces she had spent the last two years mastering: fire, water, earth, air, light, and darkness. They danced through her awareness like celestial bodies in orbit, drifting closer, then farther away, always just beyond full control.
As the convergence of elements deepened, their patterns began to twist, merging and folding into complex mandalas of violet and dimensional magic. These rare and unstable forms whispered to her in frequencies not meant for mortal comprehension. She leaned into the pull, letting the rhythm of her breath guide her. The flow of energy surged, and from the chaos bloomed a radiant green—vibrant, wild, alive.
She inhaled. The energy beckoned.
She exhaled. It slipped away.
Frustration threatened her focus, but she fought to remain centered. She'd practiced this meditation every morning without fail, always hovering at the edge of a breakthrough. Today felt different. Today, something wanted to be unlocked.
The swirling ceased. Silence fell.
Then—light. A yellow mana core emerged in the quiet dark of her inner vision, flickering faintly like a candle behind frosted glass. She latched onto it with the entirety of her will, syncing her breath with the thrum of the ambient world. The mana began to stir around her, invisible currents streaming into her body. Slowly, reverently, it fed into the core nestled deep within her sternum.
Her own mana core, once pale green and uncertain, was now a rich, saturated green. As the ambient magic poured in, it began to shift, brightening in slow, pulsing gradients. She adjusted her breath—longer inhales, deeper focus. The green sharpened, shimmered, then cracked open, spilling pain like molten glass into her chest.
She winced, muscles tightening involuntarily. Her heartbeat stuttered.
Still, she endured.
The green morphed into cyan—first dull, then bright, then blazing. With each heartbeat, the pain escalated, cutting through her nerves like barbed wire. Her body trembled. Her breath caught. Every cell screamed with the violence of transformation.
Then came the final shift.
From blazing cyan to electric—a vivid, impossible hue that lit up her soul like lightning in a clear sky. For a split second, she felt infinite. Then the pain crested, and her body could bear it no longer.
Victoria's eyes snapped open. Her lungs seized.
She gasped for air—only to be overwhelmed by a noxious stench.
Her skin was slick with thick, black sludge, bubbling faintly as it clung to her like tar. The scent hit her like a punch: sulfur, rot, ozone. A physical manifestation of magical purge—the price of advancement. She gagged, stumbling from her bed, fingers twitching with instinct.
With a sharp exhale and a flick of her wrist, she summoned a pulse of darkness magic. A ripple of inky shadow spread across her body, incinerating the substance in a hiss of smoke and heat. When it cleared, the room fell silent once more—but her clothes were gone, reduced to ash.
"Ugh. Great," she muttered, wiping soot from her brow.
Dizzy and half-blind with aftershocks, she staggered to her wardrobe. Her legs felt like half-solid memory, as if her body hadn't quite caught up with itself yet. She braced a hand on the polished wood, blinking rapidly to steady her vision.
She pulled out a soft blue dress—simple, elegant, with flared sleeves and a high collar. Slipping it over her head, she relished the cool fabric against her flushed skin. It felt grounding, real.
Tying the waist sash, she noticed faint arcs of mana still sparking from her fingertips. She pressed her hands together, centering her thoughts. The sparks faded.
Deep breath. Stay composed.
A knock echoed through the room, soft but firm.
"Come in," she called, throat still raw from the intensity of the transformation.
The door creaked open, revealing Ellen, her family's ever-dutiful head steward. The older woman carried herself with her usual grace—shoulders back, posture immaculate—but her eyes flicked immediately to the faint traces of burnt magic in the air. She paused for only a heartbeat before bowing.
"Young lady, your parents have returned," Ellen said calmly. "Lunch is being served in the garden."
Victoria blinked, glancing out the window. The sun hung high above the trees, golden and warm. Had she really meditated straight through the morning?
"Thank you, Ellen," she said with a small, weary smile.
Ellen hesitated, her gaze lingering with barely disguised concern. The residual energy in the room hadn't dissipated—it clung to the walls like smoke. But she said nothing. Instead, she gave a respectful nod and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door with a soft click.
Victoria turned toward the mirror. Her reflection was pale, but her eyes—those clear violet eyes—shone with something new. Power. Control. The edge of something greater.
Still, a knot tightened in her stomach.
This transformation... it wasn't just an advancement. It was a message. A threshold crossed. A door opened that could never be closed again.
She squared her shoulders, brushed back a loose strand of hair, and stepped toward the door.
Ready, she told herself. Or at least... willing to pretend.
As Victoria stepped out of her room and into the long marble corridor, warm sunlight streamed in from the stained-glass windows, splashing her path with hues of gold and crimson. The residual energy from her recent core transformation still tingled at her fingertips--itching to be shaped.
She took a breath, then raised one hand in front of her, fingers splayed.
A single glyph, pure and translucent, shimmered into being in the air before her--a rune of light. It hovered like a hologram, delicate and thin as mist, flickering at the edges.
She focused.
More runes followed, orbiting her like tiny suns--patterns of curved and angular light, pulsating softly with magical intent. They weren't just decorations or illusions. They were the foundation of structured magic: the ancient art of runesmithing, something even her father had barely spoken of.
Victoria had never been formally trained in it. Yet, as the runes multiplied, they started to sharpen. Their edges became clearer. The faint flickers steadied. The glyphs began to glow with purpose--hard light constructs, not mere images.
Her eyes gleamed with quiet focus. She extended both hands now, weaving the runes into new forms.
A flick of her fingers--and the runes reshaped into small creatures. First, a house cat made of glowing glyphs formed beside her, curling its tail and blinking softly. Then a little dog, tail wagging, its body made entirely of swirling light and floating scripts. They padded beside her like companions as she descended the grand stairs, her concentration unwavering.
The magic obeyed her.
Then, she pushed further.
The cat grew leaner, sleeker--its body shifting into the feline elegance of a magical panther, luminous and faintly translucent. The dog elongated, its form expanding into a low-slung wolf-beast with glowing runes etched across its shoulders.
And still she wove.
Now they were larger, more elaborate. A feathered serpent with radiant wings spiraled through the air above her, its body entirely composed of layered runes--Emperor-class beasts, the stuff of royal grimoires and forbidden tomes.
Her steps brought her to the tall garden doors. She paused only a moment, placed her palm against the wood, and the doors opened on their own--responding to the pulse of light magic around her.
The garden bathed in golden sun, lush with greenery and hanging crystals that caught and scattered the light, was empty but for two seated figures at a marble table beneath a blossoming white ash tree.
Her parents.
They had been mid-conversation, sipping from porcelain teacups, when Victoria stepped outside with the rune-beasts swirling around her.
But she wasn't finished.
As she stepped barefoot onto the grass, she flicked her wrists again. The beasts--once monochrome--began to shimmer with color.
A wash of red for fire--embers trailing behind the wings of the serpent. A splash of blue for water--rippling across the fur of the panther like waves. Green for earth, silver for wind, gold for light, and black for the veins of darkness running through the Emperor beasts' forms. Each color infused a new element, a new power, into the constructs.
The air vibrated. Magic thrummed through the garden like a living heartbeat.
The creatures grew, shifting again. Now, they weren't Emperor beasts.
They were Divine Beasts.
A lion of pure golden flame roared silently into the air, the runes that formed its body spinning in perfect synchrony. A giant avian with wings of storm-light hovered above the trees, its eyes twin orbs of violet rune fire. A draconic titan coiled itself beside her, its entire form layered in glowing magical sigils older than written language.
The table clattered as Orion stood up suddenly, his chair scraping against the flagstones.
His eyes were wide, unblinking.
He watched as Victoria, with a fluid motion, dissolved the beasts back into their base forms--millions of floating runes that collapsed into a glowing helix around her.
Then, with a graceful spin of her fingers, she shaped the floating glyphs into structured spell formations, hovering silently in the air.
Her parents stared--silent, stunned.
They weren't watching a trained mage executing practiced moves.
They were watching a Light Master being born--not through rigid instruction, but through sheer instinct, will, and soul-deep resonance.
Victoria turned to face them, the spinning runes forming a gentle halo around her head before dispersing into glimmers of magic.
Jirni, breathless, clutched her chest and whispered, "What are you doing, baby girl?"
Victoria looked down, as if a little embarrassed, and toed the grass with her foot. "I'm… learning how to cast spells without using hand signs or magical words like Dad."
Her voice was calm, thoughtful--but tinged with awe.
"It's harder than I thought," she admitted, raising her hand and summoning a single glyph of light that hovered inches above her palm. "Creating light spells with light is easy--natural, even. But sacrificing a rune made of light to conjure other elements? That's the hard part."
She waved her hand gently, and the glyph cracked apart--splitting into fragments that shifted color and reformed into a wisp of wind and a spark of flame.
"I'm still figuring it out," she said quietly. "But… it feels like the magic is teaching me. Like I'm remembering something I never learned."
Orion looked like he might collapse back into his seat. His jaw was clenched. His eyes brimmed with something between pride and absolute disbelief.
He had spent decades studying runesmithing. And his daughter had just--accidentally--stepped across a threshold that took most mages lifetimes to approach. When they are not taught by a Royal Forge Master.