I slowly sat down on the floor and crossed my legs in what should have been a familiar meditative pose. It was a position I had performed countless times on Nemucury, as natural as breathing after centuries of practice. It should have been easy, second nature, muscle memory taking over without conscious thought.
But this body was unaccustomed to the intricate balance required. Every adjustment felt wrong.
I needed to consciously think about straightening my spine, forcing vertebrae into alignment that had grown used to slouching. Without constant attention, my posture would just collapse into the rounded shoulders and forward head position of someone who spent too much time hunched over computers and books.
My body was too soft, too out of shape to accomplish the precise positioning needed. The joints and muscles were unused to such demands, protesting with little aches and the constant threat of cramping. This vessel had been built for comfort and convenience, not for the rigorous disciplines of magical practice.
After multiple attempts that left me wobbling and frustrated, I resolved to settle for something more achievable. I let my spine bend slightly forward into a natural slouch, let my arms rest along my thighs with hands dangling loosely from my knees.
It wasn't the ideal configuration for channeling power, but it would have to do. At least I could maintain it without falling over or straining muscles that clearly hadn't seen real use in... well, ever.
I closed my eyes and began the process of shutting out distractions, focusing inward. This part, at least, came easily. The clarity and mental discipline I'd developed over centuries seemed to have transferred intact. My consciousness settled into the familiar pattern of turning attention away from the external world and toward the inner landscape of power and possibility.
Like I had done earlier when healing my broken hand, I concentrated on finding my mana pool. But unlike that desperate, pain-driven moment, this time I could approach the task methodically. I should have been able to drop into awareness of my power instantly, like flexing a muscle.
Instead, it was significantly harder than it should have been. I frowned as beads of sweat started forming on my forehead despite the cool morning air. It took intense focus and several minutes of searching before I could perceive even a faint wisp of mana, a thread so thin it was barely detectable.
This was wrong. All wrong. I should have been able to sense power flowing through me like a river, ready to be shaped and directed. Instead I was fishing for drops.
I latched onto the thread and followed it deeper, using every technique I'd learned for tracing magical currents. I inhaled and exhaled slowly, each breath a conscious act of centering and preparation. The familiar ritual helped, allowing me to channel the clarity that remained even if the power had mostly fled.
The thread led me through pathways that felt simultaneously familiar and foreign, like walking through a house you'd lived in as a child—the basic layout was there, but everything had been rearranged and diminished.
Finally, I found it. But as I'd feared, it was nothing like the deep reservoir I remembered. Instead of a raging torrent of power contained within metaphysical barriers, I discovered a shallow puddle of flickering energy. The mana moved sluggishly, barely maintaining coherence, like water trying to flow through sand.
There was a thread connecting this pathetic reservoir to something external, presumably drawing in ambient power to slowly restore what I used. But was it even functioning? The flow was so weak I couldn't be sure it was moving at all.
This led me to consider the surrounding mana density. On Nemucury, the primary source of ambient magical energy was plant life. Forests and jungles were thick with power, practically crackling with potential. Cities and towns, despite having lower natural mana levels due to reduced vegetation, still maintained workable concentrations because most of their inhabitants didn't actively drain the available energy.
That was one of the key differences between humans and most other intelligent races. Elves, Lumins, Dryads, and dozens of other species could manipulate ambient mana directly, imposing their will on the raw energy around them without needing internal reserves. It required greater mental focus and came with harsher backlash if they failed, but it gave them tremendous immediate power.
They considered this direct manipulation more sophisticated than humanity's approach. To them, our need for internal mana pools marked us as crude, limited, dependent on artificial constructs instead of natural ability. But we had advantages they lacked: versatility and safety. We could bend, shape, redirect, disperse, and absorb magical energy with far more subtlety and control than direct manipulation allowed. We could maintain complex spells for extended periods without the constant mental strain that direct casting required.
Most other races were indeed more resistant to magical effects, their bodies naturally adapted to high-mana environments. But this meant they also absorbed ambient power like sponges, draining the available energy around population centers.
So mana density was always noticeably lower in and around large settlements, especially when you moved from countryside to city. Anyone particularly sensitive to magical currents could feel the difference immediately—the air felt thinner, less alive, harder to work with.
I needed to stop the rambling and focus on the immediate problem. Given what I knew about mana distribution, it shouldn't surprise me that I was struggling to sense any ambient power. This was clearly a heavily populated area, and if Earth followed similar patterns to other worlds...
But after several more minutes of concentrated effort, I had to stop. I wasn't sensing any trace of external mana at all. Not even the faint background radiation that should exist anywhere life was present.
I frowned, considering the possibilities. Either Earth genuinely had no magical energy, or it existed in such minute quantities that my current sensitivity couldn't detect it, or perhaps it manifested in a completely different form than I was familiar with.
The fact that something had been able to transport me between worlds suggested Earth possessed at least some form of power. You can't just pluck a soul from one reality and insert it into another while keeping both realms stable and intact. That required sophisticated manipulation of fundamental forces, the kind of working that demanded enormous amounts of precisely controlled energy.
With that thought driving me, I dismissed all distractions and pushed my awareness outward as far as it would reach. I strained my enhanced senses until sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down my face, extending my perception beyond the normal limits, searching for any trace of the supernatural in this apparently mundane world.
Finally, when I was on the verge of exhaustion, I felt something. A small, barely perceptible thread of energy reaching toward me. The distance and direction suggested it wasn't coming from outside the apartment, but from somewhere very close by.
With my eyes still closed, I got up carefully and followed the sensation. Moving slowly to avoid losing the faint trace, I shuffled forward until I bumped against the table. I reached out and felt around until my fingers closed on something small and metallic.
I opened my eyes and looked down at what I'd found.
A small golden bracelet lay in the palm of my hand, and now that I was holding it, I could see the faint magical signature it was emanating. Not visible light, exactly, but a subtle glow that registered in whatever part of my brain processed supernatural phenomena.
This... this tugged at memories I'd nearly forgotten.
The bracelet brought back a conversation from years ago, before magic and monsters had become my reality. Mom had given this to me during one of our video calls, mailing it across the country with a story I'd barely paid attention to at the time.
"Alex, this is a gift from my grandmother," she'd said, holding up the bracelet to her laptop's camera. "She said it was supposedly a lucky charm. A family heirloom passed down from mother to daughter for generations."
At the time, I hadn't really paid attention to her words. I'd accepted the gift with the kind of polite but skeptical curiosity that teenagers show for their parents' sentimental stories. I'd even worn it occasionally, thinking it looked kind of cool in an vintage way, but I'd never considered that it might be anything more than jewelry.
Now, though, I could see this bracelet was far from ordinary. Compared to the grand artifacts I'd encountered on Nemucury—weapons that could cleave through dimensions, armor that could withstand the heat of dying stars, amulets that granted their wearers power over fundamental forces—this was quite unremarkable. But this was the first genuinely magical item I'd found in what appeared to be an entirely mundane world.
So Earth did have magic after all. Or at least it had possessed it at some point in the past, if this was indeed a family heirloom passed down through generations.
I examined the bracelet more closely, turning it over in my hands and studying every detail. It was made of what appeared to be actual gold, though not the bright, pure metal of modern jewelry. This had the slightly darker, more complex hue of older alloys, gold mixed with other metals for durability and workability.
The design was intricate—two cords of metal intertwined in a pattern that seemed almost random at first glance. But the more I studied it, the more I realized the interweaving wasn't decorative. It formed something quite similar to runic patterns, the symbolic representations used to focus and direct magical energy.
I didn't recognize the specific design or its intended purpose, but it was undeniably a rune of some kind. A minor one, simple compared to the grand workings I'd learned to inscribe, but functional nonetheless. The way the metal flowed and curved, the precise angles where the cords intersected, the overall symmetry of the piece—all of it spoke to deliberate construction by someone who understood the principles of magical focus.
On Nemucury, runic engraving was primarily the domain of Dwarves. They were the unquestioned masters of forging and enchantment, capable of binding tremendous power into seemingly ordinary objects. Their work was legendary, sought after by heroes and kings across multiple realms.
But here on Earth, who could have shaped this? The craftsmanship was clearly deliberate, not accidental. Someone had known enough about magical theory to create a functional focus, even if it was relatively simple. Did that mean Earth had once possessed a tradition of magical practice? Had there been practitioners here who understood these principles?
The implications were staggering. If magic had once been known on Earth, what had happened to it? Where had the knowledge gone? Why did this world now seem so thoroughly mundane, so devoid of the supernatural?
I set the bracelet down carefully on the table, treating it with the respect due any magical artifact, regardless of its apparent simplicity. For now, I would keep it safe until I could determine exactly what it did and how it had come to be in my possession.
But its existence proved something crucial: I wasn't completely cut off from power here. There were sources of magical energy on Earth, even if they were rare and hidden. And if there were sources of power, there might be ways to access them, to rebuild my connection to the forces I'd once commanded.
The bracelet was a beginning. A single thread in what might be a much larger tapestry of hidden knowledge and concealed power.
I just had to figure out how to find the rest of it.