The asphalt sidewalk felt like an endless road beneath her trembling feet.
Aerys Luneth staggered forward, her shoulder brushing against hurried strangers, yet none of them turned to look.
In this city, the poor were like a contagious disease everyone avoided. Her once-bright floral dress was now nothing more than a tattered piece of cloth, with brownish stains dried along the hem.
There was a purple bruise on her wrist—the mark of a rough grip she had received that morning—and a throbbing pain in her ribs that made every breath feel like needles piercing her lungs.
Her steps carried her past rows of meat vendors in the noisy outskirts of the market. She needed leftover bread or nearly discarded potatoes—anything to survive one more night.
Ting!
Ting!
Ting!
Aerys stopped when she heard a clear chime ring in her ears. She turned toward a narrow alley almost swallowed by the shadows of towering buildings.
There, squeezed between a noisy electronics store and a modern coffee shop, stood an old wooden building that looked worn down by age.
A bookstore?
Without realizing it, Aerys stepped closer. The heavy wooden door creaked open, and the ancient bell above it chimed again.
Ting!
Ting!
Behind a tall wooden counter, an old man whose skin looked like an ancient statue sat motionless. His thin white hair framed his head, and round glasses rested at the tip of his sharp nose.
The old man did not look up.
"What do you want? If you're here to steal, get out of my shop."
"I… I was just drawn here. Do you have complete collections here? Do you have books about herbal medicine?"
The old man finally lifted his head. His dim eyes stared straight at Aerys.
"Are you underestimating my shop?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm just… looking for something that can cure illnesses."
"Look over there!"
His trembling finger pointed toward the darkest corner of the shelves, prompting Aerys to walk in that direction.
"That old man has a terrible attitude, and he doesn't even have any new books. Everything here is old," Aerys muttered.
A musty smell and floating dust filled the air, piercing her senses. She walked along the tall wooden shelves that nearly touched the ceiling, her trembling fingers brushing over the rough spines of the books.
Ancient Pharmacology, Northern Forest Plants, Roots and Spells…
Suddenly, a soft thudding sound broke the silence.
Thud!
Aerys flinched. It wasn't a book that had fallen, but a small jet-black wooden box that somehow slipped from a narrow gap between two thick encyclopedias. The box landed right in front of the tip of Aerys's dirty shoes.
"What is this?"
She knelt slowly, suppressing a groan as the injury in her ribs protested the movement. Her hand reached for the box.
There was no lock, only a faded carving shaped like a clan emblem: a rose entwined with a silver chain.
Inside lay a fairly thick book with a leather cover peeling at the corners.
It wasn't a herbal book.
It was a comic.
The artwork didn't resemble the sharp, colorful prints of modern comics; the illustrations were drawn with thick black ink, as if the artist had created them with overflowing rage.
Aerys picked it up. On the front cover, the title was written in sharp calligraphic letters:
The Ranking of the Arcane Elite.
She flipped directly to the final page.
Strange. Comics usually told stories about heroes. Yet the man depicted here had eyes so cold—so filled with pain—that Aerys felt as though he were staring back at her from behind the prison bars drawn with terrifying detail.
"Lucian Vaelcrest…" Aerys spelled out the name written beneath the illustration.
For some reason, Aerys's injured fingers brushed over the surface of the image. When her bruised skin touched the black ink, a warm sensation crept up her arm.
The pain in her body seemed to ease for a moment, replaced by a pressing curiosity. Aerys found a seat in the corner and sat down on an old wooden chair.
Among the panels depicting battles and brutal rivalries at the magical academy Morveth Lycaelum, Aerys found something strange.
The character Lucian, who was portrayed as the antagonist, stood out more in Aerys's eyes.
"I think I can understand why Lucian became like that. The world really is cruel, isn't it? Anyone can betray you. No one knows when fate will snatch everything from your grasp."
At the very bottom corner of the page, there was a line of small sentences written by hand, tucked between the characters' dialogue.
"Velastra Noctir… Arcanum Fracta. Scriptum Solaris… Porta Aperium."
Aerys stared at the small line of words for quite a while.
The handwriting was different from the other text in the comic—sharper, as if written in a hurry yet with intense pressure.
"Velastra Noctir… Arcanum Fracta. Scriptum Solaris… Porta Aperium."
She frowned. "What is this? A spell?"
Aerys almost read it aloud, but footsteps outside the shop suddenly made her realize the time.
The sky outside the window had turned a dim orange. Her chest tightened immediately.
"No… I have to go home."
Her uncle never tolerated lateness.
Aerys hurriedly closed the comic and returned it to the black wooden box. She stood up too quickly, causing her vision to spin.
As she was about to close the box, something suddenly rolled out from its corner.
Tick!
A small object bounced against the wooden base before stopping right in Aerys's palm.
A stone?
But not an ordinary one.
Its surface was clear like crystal, reflecting the shop's light into a pale blue glow that almost resembled a tiny star trapped inside it.
"This…"
Aerys swallowed hard.
A diamond?
Or some kind of precious gem?
Her heart began beating faster.
She glanced toward the front counter. The old shopkeeper was still sitting motionless, his face half hidden in the yellow lamplight. The old man didn't move at all, as if he didn't care about anything happening in his shop.
Aerys looked down again at the small stone resting in her dirty palm.
"I shouldn't take this…" she murmured softly.
She wasn't a thief.
But the thought of her empty stomach for days, and the wounds that were becoming harder to treat, made her mind waver.
This one small stone might be enough to exchange for money to buy food for a week.
Maybe more.
Her fingers slowly closed.
"Just this once won't matter, right? I really need the money."
Holding her breath, Aerys slipped the small stone into the pocket of her worn dress. She closed the wooden box as if nothing had happened, then walked quickly toward the door.
The old bell chimed as she pushed it open.
Ting!
Ting!
Aerys almost ran down the narrow alley. She didn't dare look back.
Streetlights began turning on one by one as Aerys walked through narrow alleys toward the slum district where she lived. Her hand reached into the pocket of her dress and took the small stone out again.
Under the streetlight, its glow became even clearer.
"If this is really a diamond… I could become rich. I could even escape from my uncle," she whispered.
She didn't even dare imagine how much it was worth. At the very least, it should be enough to buy medicine or food.
Or even… leave her uncle's house.
Her steps suddenly stopped.
Several shadows appeared at the end of the alley ahead of her.
Three men.
Their clothes were shabby, and their faces were filled with smiles that made the hairs on Aerys's neck stand on end.
"Look what we found here," one of them said while spitting on the ground. "Isn't that a nice stone? Which rich person did you steal it from, huh?"
Aerys stepped back. Her hand immediately clenched the small stone tightly.
"I-I don't have anything. This is just a normal stone I found at the market!"
The tallest man grinned.
"Oh really? Then why are you hiding it?"
They began walking closer.
Aerys's heart pounded loudly in her ears. Without thinking, she turned around and ran.
Her steps were unstable because of the pain in her ribs, but fear gave her the strength she had left.
"Hey! Stop!"
The sound of footsteps chasing her echoed through the narrow alley. Aerys looked at the small stone in her hand in panic.
If they saw this, they would definitely take it.
Without thinking any further, she shoved the stone into her mouth.
The stone was small enough—she only needed to hide it for a moment.
Her steps grew faster as she turned into another alley.
Her breathing became ragged, her chest burning.
Suddenly her foot tripped over a stone sticking out of the sidewalk.
Her body lurched forward.
"Uh—!"
As she gasped, trying to regain her balance, her body reflexively swallowed.
And with that swallow—
The small stone slid straight down her throat.
Aerys froze.
Her eyes widened.
"Oh damn—!"
She stopped and grabbed her throat.
The stone had been swallowed!
---
Inside the old bookstore, silence swallowed everything once again. The door had long been closed after Aerys disappeared along with the noise of the city outside the narrow alley.
Ting!
Ting!
The old bell above the door still swayed gently, as if a breeze had just passed through.
In the darkest corner of the shop, the black wooden box still lay on the floor where Aerys had left it.
The comic with the worn leather cover was slightly open.
No hands touched it.
Yet its pages slowly began to move on their own.
Krrrsshh…
The sound of paper scraping against paper broke the silence.
Page after page turned slowly, as if something inside was searching for a way out.
On one of the final pages, there was an image of a man standing behind the bars of a magical prison. His gaze was empty, filled with darkness.
But now, the black ink in the drawing began to move.
Thin cracks appeared across the surface of the panel.
Creek…
The cracks spread slowly like glass about to shatter. The small letters in the corner of the page—the spell Aerys had read earlier—suddenly faded before glowing faintly.
The prison bars drawn on the page suddenly shattered like glass. Black ink burst out from the surface of the paper like thick smoke.
And within the shadow of that ink—
A pair of eyes opened.
Sharp gray eyes, filled with anger that had rotted for far too long.
Lucian Vaelcrest.