I was twelve when I became certain.
Not hopeful.
Not suspicious.
Certain.
I was a mage.
The confirmation didn't come with fireworks or prophecy. It came quietly, late at night, with my mother watching closely as I traced my first real magic circle into the air.
My mana bypassed my pathways entirely.
It didn't flow through muscle or nerve.
It obeyed thought.
The circle stabilized instantly.
My mother inhaled sharply.
Then she smiled—relieved, proud, and afraid all at once.
"I see," she said softly. "So it did pass on."
From that night onward, she taught me.
Carefully. Quietly. Never more than the basics.
She emphasized control over power, restraint over expression. No flashy manifestations. No layered circles. No experimentation.
"Magic isn't about what you can do," she told me. "It's about what you shouldn't."
So I learned the basics.
And I mastered them.
Basic healing magic—closing small wounds, accelerating natural recovery, easing pain without leaving traces.
Basic fire magic—small flames, heat control, ignition without explosion.
Basic wind magic—gentle pressure, redirection, cushioning falls.
Basic lightning magic—static discharge, nerve stimulation, no arcs, no burns.
Basic water magic—condensation, purification, shaping without force.
To my mother, it looked impressive.
To me, it felt… incomplete.
Magic circles were systems.
And systems could be optimized.
That was where my past life came in.
Science.
Physics. Chemistry. Biology. Engineering.
Magic wasn't violating natural law—it was substituting variables.
Fire wasn't "fire."
It was rapid oxidation and heat transfer.
Lightning wasn't "lightning."
It was electrical potential seeking equilibrium.
Healing wasn't "miraculous."
It was accelerated cell division guided by mana as scaffolding.
So I rewrote everything.
Secretly.
I increased circle complexity—not to cast faster, but to cast cleaner. I layered sub-circles inside basic frameworks, hiding advanced structures within what looked like beginner magic.
A healing spell that corrected cellular errors instead of brute-forcing regeneration.
A fire spell that adjusted oxygen density and ignition thresholds, creating heat without visible flame.
Wind magic that manipulated pressure gradients with surgical precision.
Lightning spells that followed neural pathways instead of air.
Water magic that filtered impurities at a molecular level.
Each spell looked basic.
Each spell was anything but.
I never used them near my mother.
I never let her sense the depth of my mana manipulation.
I condensed my mana constantly, maintaining purity so high that even basic spells behaved too well. That alone would've been suspicious, so I deliberately made mistakes around her—misaligned circles, slower casting, visible strain.
She believed she was guiding me safely.
My next project was learning teleportation.
Teleportation didn't exist.
At least—not in any usable form.
I knew this because I had looked.
In the hidden texts my mother owned. In restricted theory essays smuggled through her contacts. In academic arguments printed under false names in my father's newspapers.
The conclusion was always the same.
Instant movement violated magical stability.
Space resisted manipulation. Distance wasn't an object—it was a condition. Attempts to bypass it resulted in catastrophic mana collapse, misalignment, or death.
There were stories.
Mages who vanished mid-cast.
Limbs fused into stone.
Bodies arriving without souls.
So the world decided it was impossible.
That was the mistake.
They tried to skip space.
I decided to bend it.
I started small.
Not movement—position correction.
When you cast magic, your mana exists in a defined coordinate relative to your body. Normally, it dissipates outward, anchored to your physical location.
But what if that anchor wasn't fixed?
What if position was negotiable?
I built the first circle in layers—each one absurdly simple on its own. No complexity that would raise suspicion if discovered.
The base circle stabilized mana density.
The second mapped spatial awareness—not distance, but relation.
The third acted as a temporary reference point.
No explosive output. No sudden release.
Just… recalibration.
I activated it.
The world lurched.
Not violently—subtly.
Like missing a stair you were sure was there.
I stumbled forward and nearly fell into my desk.
When I looked back—
I was no longer standing where I had been.
The distance was small. Less than a meter.
But it was real.
My heart hammered so hard I nearly dispersed the circle by accident.
It worked.
Not teleportation.
Displacement.
The spell didn't move me.
It moved the space I occupied.
That distinction mattered.
I refined it for months.
I learned the limits quickly. Displacement demanded absolute mental clarity. Any lapse resulted in nausea, spatial vertigo, or partial failure.
Mana purity mattered more than raw capacity. Impure mana caused distortion—objects vibrating, vision doubling, limbs feeling wrong.
Distance scaled exponentially. One step was trivial. Five meters required preparation. Ten was dangerous.
I imposed a rule on myself.
Never displace where you can't see.
Never displace through solid matter.
Never displace without grounding afterward.
Eventually, I managed something incredible.
Instant repositioning within line of sight.
No flash.
No sound.
No residue.
Just absence—followed by presence.
To anyone watching, it would look like I stepped out of reality and back in.
That night, I stood alone in my room, testing the spell one last time.
Step.
Gone.
Here.
If no one could predict where I was…
Then no one could ever control me.
And thus, the first displacement magic was born.
In secret.