The air hummed with a barely perceptible energy, a tingling sensation that ran through Elven Senator Milo's fingertips as he sat cross-legged on the grass. His right leg tapped rhythmically, an unconscious nervous habit. He wore a hooded robe woven with silver thread that shimmered faintly beneath the moonlight. At sixteen hundred and eighty-eight years old, Milo was middle-aged by elven reckoning, yet his heart hammered in his chest like a youngling's.
A golden pendant hung heavy at his breast, its sigil — an eagle in flight — marking him as heir to a royal bloodline. His House's fortune had been built on white gems from their family mines, their wealth buying them power, council seats, and the opportunity to stand here tonight. And if this summoning succeeded, if the MagalaN could truly be enslaved, his House's name would rise higher still. More mines, more trade routes, more power. His ambition burned as fiercely as the stars overhead.
Yet his gaze lingered not on the heavens but on the human wizard.
Grand Wizard Theodore Smith moved with deliberate precision, weaving threads of power invisible to most but radiant to Milo's elven sight. Human magic was a different beast than elven craft — not innate, but wrung from the world by sheer force of will. It fascinated him. Perhaps it was the brevity of human lives that drove them to such heights, the way they raced against time itself. Elves pondered; humans conquered.
"Time!" Theodore barked suddenly.
Milo jolted upright, legs trembling as he rose. He thought he had heard the Wizard mutter something strange, about the MagalaN casting through the drumbeats, but the words were lost in the roar of the ritual.
Across the clearing, Grand Sorcerer Silas stared skyward, his expression a mask of grim focus. "Any moment now!" he thundered. Then, with a voice like rolling storm, he commanded: "Theodore — prepare your Ancient spell! Wait for my mark!"
Milo's pulse spiked. An Ancient spell. He had seen only one in his long life — and it had ended in slaughter, the battlefield consumed in fire and ruin. To see one loosed here, not against an enemy but to bind a god-born being? The thought thrilled and terrified him in equal measure.
His breath caught. The star above them — the one Silas had foretold — was dimming. Its light flickered, then waned, pulled into some unseen maw. Milo felt it in his bones, the last breath of a dying star, a cosmic inhale that drew the elements toward it. The drumbeats throbbed like a heartbeat, and the forest itself seemed to shudder as if the world were holding still for this moment.
"Release!" Silas roared.
But Theodore did not release. Instead, the human wizard shrieked, his voice breaking in terror. "I can't — he's casting again! A battle spell!" His body convulsed, arcane fire crawling across his skin as he fell to his knees. His voice rose to a ragged howl: "Triad Battle Spell — impossible!"
Milo's blood ran cold. A triad? No one survived such madness. The Wizard was trying to contain an Ancient spell while the MagalaN wove a triad in defiance. The power would rip them all apart.
Hazel, his bodyguard, moved instantly, shield braced, planting herself between Milo and the storm. Milo's instincts snapped awake — he flung a protective ward over them both, the air trembling with the shimmer of his hastily woven spell. But in his heart, fear gnawed. He was a High Sorcerer, yes — but against the collapse of an Ancient spell, what was he but dust in the wind?
Then Silas roared, and the night itself shook.
Bathed in radiance, the Grand Sorcerer unleashed a cascade of Ancient spells, each layered with impossible precision. Milo caught only fragments: one to magnify strength, another for endurance, another that flared like a dome of light shielding them all. Three more lanced upward toward the dying star, striking against the chaos with divine fury.
Theodore's spell burst. A scream, a flash, fire and light beyond sight. The world vanished in brilliance.
When Milo's vision returned, it was night once more. He staggered, knees weak, breath shallow.
And then he saw him.
At the clearing's heart stood a man bound in thorns of light, writhing but unbroken. The eight High Sorcerers still chanted around him, their voices steady, their faces grim. The MagalaN — the being of prophecy, of dread, of promise — was captured.
Milo's throat tightened. He had witnessed power beyond comprehension, seen the very stars tremble at their command. He should have rejoiced, for his House's future gleamed brighter than ever. Yet as he looked upon the prisoner bound in thorns, a chill spread through him.
For in that moment, Milo understood: they had not secured the MagalaN. They had provoked him.
And the price of such defiance would be reckoned in generations of blood.