The morning of the grimoire ceremony dawned grey and heavy, the sky hanging low over Hage like a held breath. I emerged from the jungle early, the mask already settled over my features before I crossed the treeline. Today was the day. The waiting, the pretending, the endless performance of humanity—all of it would finally pay dividends. By sunset, I would hold a grimoire in my hands, and the path forward would be irrevocably set.
The village was already stirring. I could see the nervous energy radiating from the clusters of fifteen-year-olds gathered near the ceremony tower, a modest stone spire that stood at the village's edge. It wasn't much—nothing like the grand towers in the capital—but it was functional. The tower master's caravan had arrived the previous evening, I'd watched their arrival from the shadows of the treeline, cataloguing the tower master's mana signature (Stage 4, unremarkable) and the security detail (two guards, both Stage 5, both lazy). No threats. No complications.
I walked into the village with a boar carcass slung over my shoulder—old habits, and the gift kept the villagers smiling. Father Orsi met me at the church door, his round face flushed with excitement.
"Ouga! Today's the day! Are you nervous?" He had to crane his neck to look up at me, a sight that still hadn't become any less comical after a month.
"A little," I lied, letting a touch of boyish uncertainty color my voice. "It's a big moment."
"You'll do wonderfully. The grimoire chooses the mage, not the other way around. Whatever you receive, it will be what the heavens intend for you." He patted my arm—and bustled off to round up the other youths.
I deposited the boar at the church kitchen, exchanged pleasantries with Sister Mary (who was already weeping with maternal pride over children she hadn't raised), and made my way toward the tower. The crowd was larger than I'd expected. Not just the ceremony participants—maybe a dozen fifteen-year-olds from Hage and the surrounding farmsteads—but their families, the villagers, the curious onlookers who came to every ceremony because it was the most exciting thing that happened in this forgotten corner of the kingdom. They parted for me as I approached, the sea of heads tilting up, up, up, their expressions a familiar mixture of awe and nervous deference. I'd been here a month, and they still weren't used to my size.
Asta spotted me first. Of course he did.
"OUGA!" His voice cut through the crowd noise like a foghorn. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet near the tower entrance, his green eyes blazing with barely contained energy. Beside him, Yuno stood in his customary silence, arms crossed, face unreadable. "Can you believe it? Today's the day! I'm finally getting my grimoire! I can feel it! It's going to be amazing! The most amazing grimoire anyone's ever seen! And then I'm one step closer to becoming the WIZARD KING!"
"You've mentioned that," Yuno said, his tone dry as dust.
"Because it's TRUE!"
I smiled at them—warm, patient, the smile of an older brother indulging his noisy sibling. "You've worked hard for this, Asta. Whatever grimoire you get, I'm sure it'll suit you."
Asta beamed. Yuno's amber eyes flicked toward me, and I caught the familiar flicker of something calculating in his gaze. He'd been watching me for a month now, never quite convinced by the mask, but never finding anything concrete enough to challenge it. Today, his suspicion seemed sharper. Maybe it was the ceremony's tension. Either way, I met his gaze and let my smile widen, just a fraction. Deflection through openness. It had worked so far.
"You're quiet this morning, Yuno," I said. "Nervous?"
"I don't get nervous," he replied.
"Of course not. You're the cool, mysterious rival. Getting nervous would ruin the image."
Asta cackled. Yuno's expression didn't change, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Not a smile—Yuno didn't smile—but something close. The mask was holding.
The tower bell rang, a deep bronze note that silenced the crowd. The tower master emerged from the arched doorway, a thin, grey-bearded man in formal robes trimmed with the Clover Kingdom's insignia. He carried a heavy tome in one hand and a staff in the other, and his expression was the tired resignation of a bureaucrat who had performed this ceremony ten thousand times and would perform it ten thousand more before retirement.
"Attention, attention," he called, his voice magically amplified to carry across the square. "The Grimoire Acceptance Ceremony is about to begin. All eligible fifteen-year-olds, please enter the tower in an orderly fashion. Families and spectators remain outside. No exceptions."
The crowd murmured. I filed toward the entrance with the other youths, Asta practically vibrating beside me, Yuno a silent shadow at my other flank. The other participants—village kids whose names I'd learned and forgotten in the same breath—gave me a wide berth. Whether from respect or fear, I didn't care.
The tower's interior was a circular chamber lined with shelves that stretched up into shadow. Thousands of grimoires filled those shelves—blank books of every size and color, their covers unmarked, their pages empty, waiting for a soul to claim them. The air was thick with dormant mana, a static pressure that made my skin prickle beneath the Mana Skin I kept perpetually active. The tower master positioned us in a loose semicircle around a raised dais at the chamber's center, where a lectern held his ceremonial tome.
"When your name is called," he intoned, "step forward and extend your hand. The grimoire that resonates with your soul will come to you. Do not try to force a connection. Do not attempt to take a grimoire that has not chosen you. The consequences of such arrogance are... severe."
His gaze swept over us, lingering for a moment on me—the six-foot-two anomaly who towered over everyone in the room—before moving on. I kept my expression serene.
The ceremony began.
The first name called was a farm girl with straw-colored hair. She stepped forward, trembling, and a small brown grimoire with a standard three-leaf clover floated down from a high shelf. She clutched it to her chest like a newborn and stumbled back to her place, tears streaming down her face.
The second was a boy I'd seen helping his father in the fields. Another three-leaf clover. Ordinary. Unremarkable.
The third, a girl from a neighboring hamlet. Three leaves. The fourth, three leaves. The fifth, three leaves.
This was Hage, after all. A village of commoners in the Forsaken Realm. Four-leaf grimoires were the stuff of legends here. Five-leaf grimoires were the stuff of nightmares. No one expected anything extraordinary.
Then the tower master called Yuno's name.
He stepped forward without hesitation, his dark hair falling over his amber eyes, his expression as composed as ever. He extended his hand. For a moment, nothing happened. The chamber was silent, the air still.
And then the tower shook.
A grimoire descended from the highest shelf, wreathed in an emerald aura that pulsed with ancient, verdant power. It floated down like a sacred relic, and as it settled into Yuno's outstretched hand, the aura coalesced into the symbol on its cover: a four-leaf clover, radiant and unmistakable.
The silence shattered.
"FOUR LEAVES?!" The farm boy who'd received his grimoire moments before dropped his own book in shock. "That's impossible! No one from Hage has ever—"
"A four-leaf clover!" a girl shrieked, her voice bouncing off the stone walls. "Like the first Wizard King! He has the same grimoire as the first Wizard King!"
"Who is that guy? I've never even noticed him before!"
"He's one of the church orphans, I think. The quiet one."
"The quiet one gets a four-leaf clover? What about the loud one? The short one? The one who's always shouting about becoming Wizard King?"
Laughter rippled through the chamber. I watched Asta's face fall, just for an instant, before he plastered on his usual defiant grin.
"That's amazing, Yuno!" Asta shouted, genuinely delighted even through what must have been a stab of bitter disappointment. "I knew you'd get something incredible! But don't get comfortable, because MY grimoire is going to be even MORE amazing!"
Yuno looked at his grimoire, then at Asta. For the first time since I'd met him, something almost like a smile crossed his features. "We'll see."
The tower master cleared his throat, clearly flustered by the appearance of a four-leaf clover in a backwater ceremony. "Yes, well. A remarkable blessing. Truly. Moving on. Next: Asta."
Asta practically launched himself toward the dais. He thrust his hand out with enough force to punch through a wall, his face contorted with determination. "Come on! Come to me! I'm right here! I'M GOING TO BE THE WIZARD KING!"
The chamber was silent.
Seconds passed. Then more seconds. Asta's arm began to tremble, but he didn't lower it. The grimoires on the shelves remained still, their covers dull and indifferent.
"Um," the tower master said. "That's... unusual. Perhaps try—"
"COME ON!" Asta shouted louder. "I KNOW I DON'T HAVE MANA! I KNOW I CAN'T USE MAGIC! BUT I'VE WORKED HARDER THAN ANYONE! I'VE TRAINED EVERY SINGLE DAY! I'VE DONE THOUSANDS OF PUSH-UPS! I'VE—"
"No grimoire," a boy in the back snickered, loud enough to carry. "Big surprise. The magicless freak can't even get a grimoire."
"Guess the Wizard King dream is dead."
"Should've stayed at the church where he belongs. What a joke."
The laughter that followed was crueler than before, sharp-edged with the casual malice of teenagers who'd found an acceptable target. Asta's arm finally dropped to his side. His head hung low. Even from across the chamber, I could see his shoulders shaking—not with tears, but with the effort of holding back the scream I knew was building in his chest.
Yuno stepped forward, his four-leaf grimoire glowing faintly. "Asta isn't a joke. He's—"
"Next participant," the tower master interrupted, clearly eager to move past the uncomfortable moment. His eyes scanned his list, and his brow furrowed. "Hasegawa Ouga. Step forward, please."
The laughter died.
Every eye in the chamber turned toward me. I felt the weight of their gazes—curious, wary, expectant. The masked orphan who'd appeared from the jungle with muscles like a grown warrior and a smile that never quite reached his eyes. The one who'd brought them meat and fixed their fences and carried their children on his shoulders. They wanted to see what I would receive. They wanted to know if the gentle giant was blessed or cursed.
I stepped forward, my bare feet making no sound on the stone floor. The tower master flinched as I approached—I was nearly two inch taller than him, and my shadow swallowed him whole. I extended my hand with the same calm, measured precision I brought to everything. Inside, the void was silent. The locks held. Whatever came next, I was ready.
The grimoires on the shelves began to tremble.
It started as a faint vibration, a rustle of pages that might have been a draft. Then it grew. The shelves shook. The stone floor vibrated beneath our feet. The dormant mana in the air surged, swirling around me in a vortex that made the other participants stumble backward with cries of alarm.
"What's happening?!" the farm girl shrieked.
"It's never done this before!"
"Look! The grimoires! They're all—"
The grimoires on the shelves weren't just trembling. They were bowing. Every single one of them, from the lowest shelf to the highest, tilted forward as if in deference, their covers angling toward me like subjects kneeling before a king. The tower master's staff clattered to the ground. His face had gone the color of old parchment.
Then a single grimoire detached itself from the highest shelf—higher even than where Yuno's had come from—and descended.
It was white. Pure, radiant white, like fresh snow under moonlight, like bleached bone, like the absence of all color and the sum of all light. It floated down through the vortex of mana with the slow, and as it settled into my waiting hand, the light around it coalesced into the symbol on its cover.
There was no clover.
In place of the familiar three-leaf, four-leaf, or five-leaf design, the grimoire's cover bore a wheel. A perfect circle with eight spokes radiating outward, each spoke tipped with a small, spherical protrusion—the eight long sticks with balls on them that I would later recognize as a dharma wheel, a symbol of endless turning, of cycles within cycles, of adaptation without end.
The chamber went deathly silent.
Then the murmurs began.
"What... what is that?" the tower master whispered, his professional composure completely shattered. He stumbled forward, squinting at my grimoire as if hoping his eyes were deceiving him. "That's not... that's not a clover. Grimoires are supposed to have clovers. The clover is the sacred symbol of the kingdom. Every grimoire in recorded history has borne the clover emblem. This is..."
"Unprecedented," one of the older youths breathed, a boy with spectacles who'd been silent until now. "A completely unknown grimoire symbol. This is historically unprecedented."
"Is it cursed?" the girl with straw-colored hair asked, clutching her three-leaf grimoire protectively. "It looks cursed."
"It's beautiful," someone else murmured.
"It's wrong," another voice countered. "Grimoires don't look like that. It's not natural."
Asta had forgotten his own disappointment entirely. His jaw was hanging open, his green eyes wide as dinner plates. "What the heck is that?! Yuno, are you seeing this? Is that a WHEEL? Why does he have a wheel? Do wheels mean something? Is it better than a four-leaf? It's got eight leaves! Eight-leaf wheel! That's twice as many as Yuno!"
"Shut up, Asta," Yuno said, but his voice lacked its usual coolness. His amber eyes were fixed on my grimoire with an intensity I hadn't seen before—not suspicion this time, but something closer to recognition. As if the symbol on my grimoire had confirmed something he'd been sensing all along.
The tower master cleared his throat, visibly struggling to regain his authority. "I... I will need to report this to the capital. A grimoire without a clover symbol... this is beyond my expertise. The ceremony, however, is concluded. All participants have received their grimoires—or not," he added with a dismissive glance at Asta, "—and this matter will be referred to the Magic Knights administration for further investigation. You are all dismissed."
The crowd of youths began to file toward the exit, their whispers rising into a cacophony of speculation and gossip. I remained where I was, the white grimoire cool and heavy in my hand, and let the mask of pleasant confusion settle over my features. Inside, I was already analyzing. The wheel symbol was clearly connected to my Talent—Adaptation to Any and All Phenomenon—manifesting in the grimoire's design. The eight spokes might represent the eight directions of adaptation, or the eight-fold path of evolution, or simply the aesthetic of the shikigami whose power I'd inherited. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the grimoire was mine, and it was unique, and uniqueness was a weapon in itself.
I turned to leave. Yuno was suddenly in front of me, blocking my path. He'd moved silently, as he always did.
"Ouga," he said, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "That grimoire. What is that?"
I let my smile soften, let a touch of genuine curiosity—feigned, of course—color my response. "I am Just an orphan, Yuno. Same as you. Same as Asta. The grimoire chose me. I don't know why or what is it, any more than you do."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
For a long moment, we stood there, the towering giant and the dark-haired prodigy, locked in a silent standoff. Then Yuno stepped aside, his expression unreadable once more. I walked past him and out of the tower.
I didn't stop walking until the jungle had swallowed me whole.
to be continued....