Thale was a city built on ashes.
From the balcony of Mira's outpost quarters, Amine could see most of it. The remnants of ancient stone buildings. Smoke-stained banners. Watchtowers patched together with dragon bones and metal. The ground was black with soot, and few dared walk the streets after sunset. Even the wind here smelled like something had died long ago and refused to leave.
Amine watched the townspeople shuffle by—silent, gaunt, hollow-eyed. Mages in long cloaks stood at the corners, staff-bearing sentinels who rarely spoke. One of them had half her face burned off and wore no mask to hide it.
This was survival.
Not life.
Mira led him through Thale's training quarter later that day. Her tone was clinical, as if guiding a new recruit rather than a lost soul from another world.
"You'll need to register with the Flamebound Enclave. They monitor mages. Make sure you don't explode or summon a god accidentally."
"Is that... possible?"
"It's happened."
They entered a low building with circular glyphs glowing faintly across its walls. Inside were dozens of other young people, some sparring in rings, others meditating in pools of glowing water.
Amine felt their eyes on him. Whispers followed.
"That's him."
"The Riftwalker."
"His Eidolon broke a spell barrier…"
He tried to shrink into himself, but Mira kept him walking.
At the far end of the hall, an old woman sat behind a stone desk, her left eye replaced by a polished opal. She didn't smile when she saw them.
"This is the one?" she rasped.
"Amine Toku," Mira confirmed. "Summoner Arcana. Untrained. Spontaneous manifestation. Eidolon classification unknown."
"Name it," the woman said.
"What?" Amine blinked.
"Your Eidolon. Give it a name. It helps you bond."
He paused.
The wolf's eyes returned to him in memory—burning, empty, ancient. It hadn't felt like an extension of his power. It had felt like... pain personified.
"…Thanor," he said quietly. "His name is Thanor."
The old woman wrote it down.
"Welcome to Gaia, Thanor-born."
Training began the next morning.
Amine was assigned to a small group of initiates, all his age or younger. Only one spoke to him.
"I'm Kael," the boy said. "Blood Mage. Don't worry, I only drink my own."
Kael was lean and sharp-eyed, with crimson tattoos along his collarbone and a glint of sarcasm in everything he did. The others avoided him the way they avoided Amine.
"You get the same treatment?" Amine asked.
Kael smirked. "We're not heroes. We're freaks with expiration dates."
Their first trial was focus training. Other initiates could conjure flames, lift stones, heal wounds.
Amine couldn't even feel the spark of magic in his fingertips.
"Summoner Arcana is emotional," Mira told him later, watching him try and fail. "It isn't about will. It's about memory. You need to relive what gave birth to Thanor. That's the door."
He didn't want to.
He didn't want to remember the rooftop. The laughter. The click of the lock on the bathroom door. The blood in the sink.
But Thanor was made from it.
And without facing it, he couldn't move forward.
That night, sleep didn't come easy.
Amine lay in the corner of his assigned quarters, listening to the distant cries of dragons beyond Thale's perimeter. The walls felt too close. The shadows too loud.
Then, something stirred inside him.
A heat in his chest.
A whisper—not a voice, but a pressure.
The ground beneath him blackened.
Smoke curled upward.
His breath caught in his throat as the floor cracked and shadow bled from his body.
From it, Thanor emerged.
Bigger now. His eyes burned like twin suns, and his form pulsed with unstable flame.
But he didn't attack.
He just stared at Amine.
And sat.
As if waiting.
Amine reached a hand forward. His fingers trembled.
"...Why do you look so sad?"
Thanor didn't answer.
But for the first time, Amine noticed something—chained to Thanor's back was a shape.
A mirror.
Cracked, dark, and faintly reflecting Amine's old face—the one from Earth.