Albert sat back in his chair, the hum of the air conditioner barely covering the faint tap of his keyboard. The monitor bathed his apartment in a pale glow. On the screen, a world map - one he'd saved from a decade ago - flickered beside a more recent one. The shapes were almost the same. Almost.
He resumed typing.
"It didn't happen all at once. Revolutions never do. But in the years that followed the First Manifestations, you could draw fault lines through the world - not by tectonics, but by panic."
Some countries simply couldn't cope. Not with the paranoia, the mass awakenings, the sudden collapse of everything that seemed permanent. Institutions didn't just crumble - they evaporated. Police forces turned on themselves, borders became suggestions, and currencies lost all meaning.
One day, Albert noted, the government of Belarus tried to outlaw all forms of spellcasting. By the end of the week, their own army had splintered, half of them demanding magical education for their children, the other half accusing their officers of hoarding magical power to themselves.
Brazil almost fractured under the weight of its own contradictions. São Paulo turned into a fortress of order and regulation, while parts of the interior became havens for mystics, healers, and grifters alike. Eventually, a truce of sorts emerged - fragile, and wholly unofficial. Even now, Albert wasn't sure if Brazil was one country or three.
And yet, humanity persisted.
"We didn't descend into barbarism," he typed. "We limped, bled, shouted - but we moved forward. And strangely, even when old maps burned, new cities rose in their ashes. We feared magic, but we also adapted to it. Slowly, unevenly, and sometimes tragically."
Albert listed a few examples. The founding of the Crescent States in North Africa - a federation built on shared magical academies and a common weather infrastructure. The Great Agreement in Finland, where casters were granted full citizen rights in exchange for strict schooling and lifelong transparency. The island of Taíno Nova, created not by tectonics but by hundreds of Green Mages working together to raise coral and stone - a new nation with no army, no prisons, and very firm laws on Blue and Black spells.
He paused at the thought of Taíno Nova. He'd always wanted to go.
"Some places were reborn," he added. "Others simply never stopped burning."
In the former United States, five new currencies had taken hold. The old federal system persisted, technically. But in practice, every state had its own rules on spell usage, its own magical militia, and its own interpretation of "safety."
Albert leaned forward, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
"We still don't know what magic is," he wrote. "We know what it can do, in part. We've cataloged thousands of effects, categorized schools, drafted laws, and trained casters. But its nature? Its origin? Its purpose, if it has one? Still a mystery."
That, more than anything, haunted him.
The world had changed - violently, beautifully, permanently. And at its heart, something unknowable pulsed quietly, waiting to be named.