Compiled and commented by Albert Weaver
"White Magic is not light. It is presence."
- Excerpt from The Third Breath, author unknown, Wild Years
During the Breeze Years, I found myself in the waiting room of a small mana clinic in northern Valparaíso. The building was a converted schoolhouse, warm with incense and clattering cups. A White Caster sat across from a boy with broken ribs. She said nothing. Just placed her palm over his chest and closed her eyes and a faint golden light shines. I watched the boy wince, then cry, then sleep. His pain was gone.
White Magic doesn't dazzle. It lingers. It listens. It binds bones, slows bleeding, restores breath to lungs that forgot how. The good ones, the real ones, don't bark orders or wave glowing staves - they ask, "Where does it hurt?" and mean it.
***
[Field Log – Mobile Clinic Report, Breeze Years]
Patient 44: Severe mana burns. 2nd–3rd degree. Caster E.N. applied gradual weave over 9 hours, adjusting for patient's native pulse rhythm. Pain reduced by 80%. Burn scarring reversed by 40%. Recovery expected.
Note: Caster still not fully recovered after the procedure. More resting and meditation is advised.
***
Healing is not free. Not because the magic harms the caster - it doesn't - but because White Casters face the same burden medics and nurses have for centuries: they can't save everyone. Some patients don't make it. Some wounds don't respond. And some days, despite doing everything right, someone still dies. White Casters don't burn out from mana - they burn out from grief, guilt, and the weight of knowing they were someone's last hope... and it wasn't enough.
***
[Excerpt – Interview, Archive of Ethical Casting]
"We're told White is the gentle magic. The clean one. But it's the most invasive. You step inside someone else's suffering and try to rearrange it without losing yourself. And if you fail... it's not just a broken bone. It's a broken trust."
***
I tried it once. Just a simple healing magic. Just a cut on my palm. The spell fizzled. The bleeding didn't stop. I laughed, then went to get a bandage.
Still, I keep those notes a healer once said in a notebook. You never know when you might need them.
In the end, White Magic isn't a light you shine on others. It's the quiet you offer them, so they can find their own.