I had reached blue fire. And after that, I thought purple would come easily. That was my mistake.
No matter what I did, it didn't work. Every time I tried to raise the heat, the flames would scatter.
Mnex said I was spinning them too fast, pushing electrons away from the center. He was right. But that was all we had centrifugal force. And even that wasn't enough.
For the past few days, I'd done nothing but study blue flames at the molecular level. Maybe I could've shaped the fire by now, made dozens of new techniques.
But something inside told me this was the only way:
Strength first. Then shape.
"Alright, that's enough," Mnex said with a strained kind of calm.
"Maybe molecular pressure isn't the answer. Or maybe your brain just gave up. Hard to say."
I didn't reply. I couldn't.
My jaw was clenched. My breath was shallow.
It had only been three weeks since I first mastered blue, but purple?
Purple was laughing at me.
The next few days blurred together.
Each morning, I trained at least fifteen minutes. Same at noon. Then again in the evening until I couldn't lift my arms anymore.
The result never changed. Blue came easy now. It was loyal. Familiar.
But purple?
Purple was a myth I was trying to brute force into reality.
"You're not doing it wrong," Mnex finally muttered. "You're just not doing it... right enough."
Thanks, Mnex. Very helpful.
By the second week, my hands had gone numb. Not from the cold, at least not entirely, but from overuse.
The headaches blurred my vision.
I started dreaming in color coded fire. Red. Orange. Blue. But never purple.
Each time I woke, I went right back in.
A month passed.
Winter was in full bloom, if that phrase made any sense for something so cruel.
Snow blanketed the estate like it wanted to bury the world in silence.
I didn't mind.
Silence had become a friend.
One morning, I couldn't take it anymore. I needed air sharp, freezing air to burn my lungs awake.
"I give you three minutes," Mnex said.
"After that, your nose turns into a popsicle and you better not lick it."
I ignored him.
The snow crunched under my feet. At first, I'd only planned to take a few steps… but before I knew it, I had walked past the gates, all the way to the empty road between the mansion and the city.
"You've finally snapped out of it," Mnex said.
"What happened?"
"You were in a trance. I called your name three times. You didn't answer once."
I turned my head. A few steps behind, two guards stood silently, watching me like confused NPCs. They must've noticed me going out and followed me for safety.
The cold biting at my face had started to burn. I needed to go back.
"Told you. It's freezing," Mnex said.
"Freezing?" I asked, instinctively.
"In the literal sense."
And then something clicked.
Maybe my brain had finally found a crack after all the failures.
I closed my eyes. I thought. My house was warm because outside was cold.
When heat has nowhere to escape, it gets trapped inside. Like a snare.
"…Mnex?"
"Yes?"
"If I can't increase the heat, maybe I should stop it from escaping."
Silence.
"Another way to feed the flame… maybe it's by surrounding it with cold. A ring of ice. The heat gets trapped, pressure builds. And maybe, just maybe… we can force purple that way."
"…"
"The house stays warm because outside is cold. Maybe… the flame becomes strong because there is no outside."
"Welcome to the sacred laws of thermodynamics, Henry."
Then he mumbled, "Only took two months. Some people never get it."
I wanted to run straight back to my room. But then I thought why bother? A few minutes, five tops.
I sat on the snow.
"You sure this is a good idea?" Mnex asked, pretending he didn't already know.
"I'm not patient enough to go home."
"Fine. But if you get diarrhea, that's not on me."
I closed my eyes and sank into my mind world.
First, I had to form water magic.
"Yes," said Mnex. "This is a little different from fire. You've never pulled it off before, remember?"
"I wasn't this experienced back then," I said. "But now I understand it better. This time, it'll work..."
Two months.
It took two months in the mind world, but I finally pulled it off.
Looking back, it wasn't even that hard.
One hydrogen, two oxygen. Put them together right and you get water.
Just like with fire, once I found the right bond, a clear sphere of water floated a few steps in front of me. It hung in defiance of gravity. I shaped it. Then dismissed the spell. Summoned it again, this time, to manipulate.
"What do I do next?"
"According to the laws of thermodynamics," Mnex said in his teacher voice, "everything contains energy.
If you want to freeze water, first you have to extract that energy. Energy leaves, temperature drops. Temperature drops, water freezes."
I closed my eyes.
Focused on the water sphere.
Tried to see the heat inside.
Easier said than done. But once you've seen the molecular level, there's no going back.
The heat was there. Steady.
Slowly… very slowly… I started to move the molecules. Pulled the energy out of them.
It wasn't an explosion. Not a siphon.
Bit by bit…
I watched the water lose energy.
And then…
The sphere cracked. Patterns spread outward from the center, like snowflakes, six pointed, perfect symmetry.
Every molecule moved like it had a script.
Not random, orderly.
"Dendritic ice crystals," Mnex whispered. "The most elegant way the universe cools down."
And there it was.
Ice.
I caught it just like I did with water, gave it shape.
Now my mind world had three elements:
Fire. Water. Ice.
Time to use them together.
"The best method…" Mnex said, like he'd been waiting for this moment,
"Threesome time," Mnex said like it was obvious.
"Threesome?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Yup. Fire in the center, water around that. Ice on the outside.
Then we push all the heat inward, starting from the ice.
Energy flows into the water, then to the flame.
Then we cancel the water and ice…
And what's left is a much hungrier, much stronger flame."
A short pause.
"…That's a pretty messed up analogy," I said.
"Thank you."
I knelt in my mind world. The silence was deep enough to hear my thoughts echo.
The air was both matter and nothingness, and in the middle, me.
I opened my palms. Blue fire bloomed between my fingers, calm, familiar, the first element I ever commanded. Everything inside me had started with this flame.
But now it was time for the next step.
I wrapped the flame in a trembling sphere of water, like a drop of ocean caging the heart of a sun. It shivered, fighting the heat.
"Water's set," I muttered. "Cue winter."
Ice began to knit itself around the water, layer by layer, forming a frozen shell that closed in on the blue core. Not inside-out, but outside-in a smothering cold.
"Slow," Mnex warned. "Clamp it too fast and the heat escapes. We're trapping, not chasing."
I drew a breath.
The ice crept inward millimeter by millimeter, the water quaked, and I simply watched. Heat flowed naturally toward the centre, but I hurried it along, tightening the ice, collapsing the water, pulling every scrap of energy toward the heart like a magnet.
Mnex cleared his throat. "First law, Henry, energy can't be created or destroyed, only redirected. Which you're doing beautifully."
I smiled. The blue fire flickered… then swelled, super charged by the inflow of heat. A star bracing for implosion.
Once the water froze solid, I released both water and ice. What remained was raw, formless light.
I spun it, centrifugal, merciless. Everything tried to flee, I forced it back in. Compressing, condensing, transforming.
Darkness flashed then a violet burst.
Purple flame awakened, whisper bright, and my mind world was nothing but light.
"Congratulations," Mnex said, utterly casual. "You've officially reached peak overkill. Purple flame. Mace Windu would be proud."
It had taken two months to master water, three weeks to freeze it, and the rest eighteen unreal months to coax that cursed violet burn into existence.
I opened my eyes. Two guards stood in front of me.
"Not long passed," Mnex said. "Two minutes… but you spent almost two years in there."
My stomach lurched. Before Mnex could finish a warning, I doubled over and vomited. Pain hammered my skull, my body shook.
"Henry!" Mnex's voice snapped. "Neurogenic shock. Weak pulse. I'm propping your nervous system, but if you black out, I can't hold you."
Numbness crawled through my limbs. I was freezing to the marrow.
"Young lord, are you all right?" one guard asked.
I lifted a trembling hand as if to say stay back. I couldn't speak. I just knew I couldn't faint.
An idea sparked, fire, heat.
I yanked mana from my core, flame erupted across my skin, controlled, yet savage.
"Yes!" Mnex cheered. "Perfect reflex!"
Warmth flooded back, breathing steadied. I dropped to my knees. Every flake of snow within two metres vaporised. Even the soil steamed dry.
"Manage the flow," Mnex warned. "Escaping one shock only to trigger mana shock? Bad trade."
But I barely heard him.
My entire body blazed violet, silent, hungry, mesmerizing.
The guards stared, half in awe, half in fear.
And for the first time, I wasn't terrified of the colour purple.
I was the colour purple.
Beautiful. Terrifying.
Mine.