The smell of coal lingered on everything in Dimming Hollow—the laundry, the fog, the dreams. It clung to the brick walls like soot-slick moss, burrowed into fingernails and breath, and left a grimy shadow in the corners of the townsfolk's eyes. Ethan Cross often thought of it as the scent of permanence—of a town forgotten by progress and untouched by magic.
Dimming Hollow was the kind of place people left, not arrived at. Nestled in the grim vale between two sleep-hunched mountains, its streets were cobbled, its roofs sagging under the weight of years and wet leaves. The streetlamps, iron-wrought and coughing weak yellow light, buzzed like tired bees. Radios fizzed static more often than song, and every window bore the same thick, tired lace.
Ethan had just graduated from St. Brevin's Primary, the only school in a fifty-mile radius that still used chalkboards instead of enchanted slates. The graduation had been a quiet, obligatory affair. A dozen mismatched chairs in the school hall, a bent piano that groaned beneath the music teacher's fumbling hands, and a stale buffet consisting of lard sandwiches and off-brand lemonade. No spells sparkled in the air, no fireworks exploded in aetherial patterns. The only magic that day had been the awkward silence between Ethan and his family on the way home.
He'd come top of his class—though in a class of seventeen, and with half of them practically illiterate or more concerned with skipping lessons to smoke behind the tannery, it wasn't a high bar. Still, he should have been proud. Instead, Ethan trudged up the garden path of their soot-stained house, past the rusted mailbox and the weeds that had long conquered the stone garden gnome, with the strange weight of hollowness inside him.
It was a cruel sort of irony: in a world steeped in magic, where even the most mediocre baker could levitate loaves and the local barber enchanted razors to hum lullabies, Ethan Cross had no Magic Node System.
A defect. A nothing. A boy without a spark.
When he'd been ten, the town physician—a gaunt woman with star-shaped pupils—had diagnosed him after several fruitless attempts at basic spellwork. His body had no Nodes, no channels through which to draw atmospheric magic, no inner ley-lines to store power. Not even a flicker of latent glow when she pressed the sensor wand to his sternum. "There's always a chance it's dormant," she'd muttered kindly, as if whispering a softer truth might trick the cosmos. But it hadn't awakened. It never would.
The other children had nicknamed him "Dud." Or worse, "Deadspot." One boy, Gavin Truley, once lit Ethan's satchel on fire during lunch and claimed he was just trying to "ignite something inside him." Teachers laughed nervously. The headmaster shrugged. Magicless people still happened. But not in our generation, of course.
It drove Ethan into books—into the smell of dust and glue and cracked spines. He devoured texts on theory, history, and magical philosophy, though he could never do any of it. He memorised the Laws of Transmutation, the Ritual Rites of the Lunar Courts, even the lesser-known Curses of Salt and Silver. He could list the known Lesser Helllords in alphabetical order, and name all twenty-one phases of the Catastrophic Eclipse. But it was like studying the art of flight with broken wings. Knowledge without power. Sight without touch.
At home, his parents tried. They really did. His mother, Marla, ran a small apothecary—well, a quasi-apothecary—mostly ointments and charms she purchased wholesale and repackaged. She had once dreamed of studying Alchemy in the capital but gave it up after falling pregnant with Ethan's older sister, Delilah. His father, Hank Cross, was a train inspector with a limp and a deep fondness for tea. They weren't unkind people, just... weary. They didn't understand him. His sadness made them uncomfortable.
Delilah, his sister, was everything Ethan wasn't. Vibrant, loud, impulsive—a flame in a cracked oil lamp. She spent her nights sneaking into clubs in Smokefield City, returning at dawn smelling of gin, perfume, and low-tier glamour spells. Her Node System gleamed like a chandelier when scanned. She didn't study magic. She wore it like a coat. Effortless. Dazzling. Unfair.
"Come on, dud-bro," she'd tease, ruffling his hair and dodging his sulks. "Don't be so glum. Who needs magic when you've got cheekbones like that?"
He didn't laugh. He never laughed anymore.
He barely left his room. Barely spoke. His walls were plastered with maps of places he'd never see—runic diagrams and star charts, pages torn from discarded almanacs. His window overlooked the trainyard, where grey smoke coiled endlessly into a grey sky.
Then, on the third morning after graduation, the letter arrived.
Ethan didn't notice it at first. He almost threw it out with the rest of the mail—mostly bills and an ad for enchanted tooth powder. But something made him stop. A smell. Like a thunderstorm cracking open inside his nostrils. Ozone and something older. The envelope was thick parchment, the edges scorched slightly as if plucked from a fire. No return address. Only his name in inky black calligraphy.
Ethan Cross
4 Gutterspur Lane
Dimming Hollow
The wax seal was black, pressed with an unfamiliar sigil—a spindly tree with roots that curled into a spiral, and branches like grasping claws. His fingers trembled as he broke it open.
Inside, a single sheet of heavy paper, inscribed in the same impossibly fine hand:
To Ethan Cross,
You are hereby invited to enroll at Nocturna Arcanum, Academy of the Tenfold Path, located at coordinates hidden from the unworthy, in the Vale of Thorns.
Despite your current... impediment, you have been Selected. The reasons are not yours to know.
Should you accept this offer, you are to arrive at the Old Rail beneath Mount Vesper no later than the the First Day of the Falling Moon
Do not be late. The door opens but once.
Headmaster Thorne,
Nocturna Arcanum
He read it twice. Then again. Then a fourth time, as if his disbelief would rub the ink away. Nocturna Arcanum. The name was half legend, half threat—whispered in the margins of magical texts, mentioned in the same breath as forgotten cults and the wars of shadow. An academy hidden in the mountains, said to train not just mages, but warlocks, shadowcasters, and the kind of spellwrights who made kingdoms nervous.
It wasn't real. It couldn't be real.
But he could still smell it. That scent of ozone. Of change.
And for the first time in years, something inside Ethan Cross stirred.
Not magic. Not power.
But a possibility.
Ethan woke before dawn, long before the first pale streak of light would slit the horizon. The envelope lay on his bedside table, its corners curled like a mocking smile. In the pre-dawn hush, he found himself tracing the black-wax seal again, as though he could coax new meaning from its spiral roots.
He dressed in silence, slipping into his worn trousers and a threadbare wool sweater—nothing grand, but serviceable for a journey he scarcely believed he'd ever take. His heart thudded against his ribs with an odd mixture of dread and anticipation. Downstairs, the house was still: the apothecary shelves dusted with slumbering charms, the kettle cold and waiting.
He paused in the doorway to his parents' room. Through the thin walls he heard the faint rasp of his father's breath. Hank Cross had never been one for tenderness, but something in the gravity of the letter made Ethan's palms sweat. He placed a hand on the doorframe.
"Dad," he said softly. There was no answer. He pushed the door open a crack. His father lay on his side, one arm draped across his pillow as if cradling an invisible burden. Ethan wondered how many nights Hank Cross had lain awake, haunted by schedules of steam engines and the weight of family bills. He withdrew without waking him.
In the kitchen, he found his mother already upright, smoothing flour from the countertop. A single lamp glowed above her, casting long shadows across empty jars.
"Mom," Ethan whispered. He set the letter before her. She straightened, eyes narrowing as she broke the seal.
She read it twice, each line making her knuckles go white. When she looked up, her eyes glistened with fear he'd never seen before. "Ethan…" she began, voice small. "This is… Nocturna Arcanum. It's—" She swallowed hard. "It's not for ordinary people."
He nodded, words catching in his throat. "I know. But they want me. I don't know why." He swallowed. "I can't stay here. Every day I feel myself… shrinking."
She reached across the table, fingertips warm. "If you go, you'll be leaving everything you know. This town, the shop…" Her voice cracked, but she managed a smile. "I— I want you to be happy. If this is what you need… I will support you."
Ethan's chest tightened. He realized then that it wasn't just magic he lacked in Dimming Hollow—it was possibility. Here, he was "the boy who couldn't"; at Nocturna Arcanum, he might become someone else entirely.
He found Delilah in her favorite chair by the parlor window, the one upholstered in faded burgundy velvet. She was awake, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, her Node System's faint glow flickering beneath her collar. She offered him a cigarette—her late-night vice—and he refused.
"Why?" he asked her quietly. "Why do you think they picked me?"
She exhaled smoke against the glass. "Maybe they saw something I don't see. Cleverness, grit… or maybe just stubbornness." She shrugged and nudged the envelope toward him. "You always outsmarted me in trivia, nerd. If they want that, go show them what you've got."
He managed a wry grin. "You'll miss me, you know."
"Miss you? I'll visit." She tossed her hair, blue shadows beneath her eyes. "Besides, I'll need someone to bail me out when I get kicked out of another club."
He laughed, the sound strange and half-hopeful in the silent room.
By the time the first rays of sunlight bled into the sky, Ethan stood at the edge of Dimming Hollow, knapsack slung over one shoulder, heart pounding like reluctant wings. He thought of the Ten Schools—Alchemy, Incantations, Charms, Rituals, Potions, Necromancy, Demonology, Divination, Blood Magic, Shadow Weaving—each whispered in rumor to be its own gauntlet of peril and promise. Some said the professors were monsters both in form and spirit; others claimed the curriculum bent the mind until it shattered.
Still, he felt it: a stirring, like embers waking in a hearth that had long gone cold. The world stretched before him, vast and uncharted, threaded with the very magic he'd never known. And for once, the absence of Nodes in his body felt less like a curse and more like an invitation—a blank slate upon which even the darkest of spells might be written.
He drew in a breath of the crisp mountain air—half fear, half hope—and stepped forward into the long road that would lead him to Nocturna Arcanum, where every secret waited to be uncovered, and every spark of possibility dared him to believe.
Mrs. Cross pressed her palms to the windowpane long after Ethan's figure had vanished into the pale dawn. The glass was cool beneath her fingers, and she could still see him—lean, determined, knapsack slung low—his shoulders squared against a fate she could neither fathom nor forestall. In the soft glow of early morning, her heart ached with two conflicting truths: pride in the son she'd struggled to understand, and terror for the boy stepping into legends and nightmares alike. She closed her eyes and traced the ribbon of road he'd taken, as though mapping his safety, then whispered a prayer to any benign spirit listening beyond the veil of clouds.
Mr. Cross sat at the kitchen table long after the empty kettle had gone cold. The letter lay unopened before him now, its black seal smeared with the fingerprints he could not scrub away. He fingered the edge of the table—deep gouges from years of mechanical frustrations—and traced memories of his own youth: the steady rhythm of steam engines, the comforting clank of metal, the known quantities of schedules and blueprints. Magic had never been part of his world. Yet here was his son, gone off to school of shadows and sorcery. He felt unmoored, a captain without a ship, unsure whether to curse the unknown or embrace it. His trembling fingers finally lifted the envelope: "Nocturna Arcanum." He repeated it aloud, tasting the name like bitter ash. Then, with a steadier hand, he opened it—because a father must know the shape of the journey even if he cannot follow.
Delilah Cross slipped into the hallway just as her brother's steps faded into the distance. The faint glow of her Node System pulsed against her skin, warm and familiar—a glow her brother could never claim. She closed the door softly behind her, leaned against the wood, and exhaled a cloud of regret-swirl smoke. He'd always been the quiet one, watching the world with too-bright eyes; she'd been the fire, burning so fiercely she nearly consumed herself. Now, for the first time, she felt the cold absence of both flame and shadow. She fingered the brim of his cap he'd left behind, his sweat-worn seal pressed into the fabric like a promise. She vowed, then and there, to chart every rumor and ruin at Nocturna Arcanum—so that if he stumbled on its dark staircases, she could find him. And if he soared, she would be there to cheer him on, smoke trailing behind like a comet's tail.
Each in their own room, three lives had shifted in the quiet hour before sunrise. The mother prayed for light to guide her son's steps. The father poured over the parchment's every curve and flourish, seeking certainty in inky script. The sister swore she would follow him wherever the shadows led. And in the empty space they shared—where laughter once echoed and sibling squabbles flared—they felt the first stirrings of change. Ethan Cross had walked into legend; his family, left behind, would learn to reckon with the shape of loss, the ache of hope, and the promise of the unknown.