Chapter 2 – The Price of Power
The village was in ruins.
Smoke coiled into the twilight sky, thick and bitter. Screams were fading now — some swallowed by the fire, others by silence. Embers danced like dying stars, drifting across charred rooftops and broken fences.
I crouched low behind a collapsed wall, my breathing heavy, my pulse erratic. Not from fear.
From excitement.
That surge — that spark — it had been like touching the edge of a storm. Power unlike anything I'd wielded before. In my old life, I had reshaped reality through math and mind alone. Now… now I could feel the energy shaping the world around me. And more importantly:
I could shape it back.
"Lioren, your arm—!" my mother gasped, clutching me. Her hands were trembling.
I looked down. Blood ran in thin lines along my forearm — the cost of channeling mana untrained. The flesh had scorched slightly where the magic burst through. Not lethal, but painful.
I grimaced. "I'm fine," I said, the words foreign in my mouth. My voice — younger, lighter — belonged to a boy, not a man.
She didn't argue. She just wrapped torn cloth around my arm with frantic movements, biting her lip.
"Mother!" a voice cried out. A girl — maybe twelve — dashed toward us through the rubble. Wild hair, soot-streaked cheeks, eyes wide with panic. My sister.
Memories from this life flooded in like cold water: her name was Naia. We'd grown up here together in this quiet, unremarkable village on the edge of the Varynwood Forest, far from the reach of noble houses or military patrols.
Too far.
"Is it gone?" Naia asked, clutching our mother's arm.
I peered past the wall. The creature — the flarebeast — had landed near the village center. Its claws raked through stone and ash as it moved in a slow, deliberate circle. It wasn't mindless. It was searching.
Hunting.
"We need to run," I said.
"To where?" Mother whispered. "There's nothing but woods… and if we split from the others—"
"There are no others," I said coldly. "No one else is screaming."
The silence that followed told her I was right.
We crept through the alleyways of flame and ruin, keeping low. Every noise was a threat — the crack of timber, the roar of flames, the monstrous snarl of the flarebeast. Twice it passed over us, wings sending shockwaves down the street. Each time, I felt the mana in my body react — not as a weapon this time, but as a shield, insulating me instinctively from the wave of pressure.
It was strange.
In my past life, I had studied energy. Here, I was it.
We reached the forest's edge just as the sun dipped below the horizon. The shadows thickened. Smoke clung to the trees like ghosts.
"We'll head east," I said. "The capital's in that direction, if I remember right."
"You've never even been there," Naia muttered.
Not me, no. But the boy whose life I now lived — and the man I once was — had both studied maps extensively.
"I have a feeling," I lied.
Mother hesitated. "We should wait until morning…"
"No. The beast is still there. We move now, while it's distracted."
She looked at me — long and searching. And in that moment, I saw something flicker behind her eyes.
Not trust. Not yet.
But something close.
She nodded.
We traveled for hours through the dark, the forest closing in with oppressive silence. At some point, Naia fell asleep in Mother's arms, exhausted. I took the lead, senses alert, testing my mana every few steps.
It was sluggish. Raw. But present.
I could feel the elements around me — faint sparks of heat in the soil, wind pulsing through leaves, even tiny flickers of water buried in bark.
Elemental affinity. That was what this world called it. And I was beginning to sense which elements responded strongest to me.
Fire. Wind. Lightning.
A volatile trio.
Fitting.
In the distance, a faint shimmer of blue caught my eye — light reflecting off water. A stream. Good. We needed rest.
As I knelt by the stream's edge, cupping the cold water in my hand, a voice whispered behind me.
"You used magic."
I turned. Naia stood there, awake now, arms crossed.
"You saved Mom. You broke that beam midair. I saw it."
"I didn't mean to," I lied again.
"You've never used magic before," she said. "You shouldn't be able to."
I said nothing.
She walked closer, eyes narrowed. "Only nobles use mana like that. We're not even registered. You've never been tested. How—"
"I don't know," I interrupted sharply.
It was the truth — in a sense. This new body held mana. But it was my mind that wielded it.
And my mind was something no one in this world could measure.
Later that night, as they slept, I sat alone beneath a tree, eyes half-lidded, breathing slow.
I was meditating.
Back in my old world, I had designed entire energy cores for interstellar drives using thought experiments. Here, mana was alive. Not predictable. But patterns still existed — and I would find them.
I visualized the surge I had used earlier — the mana's path, the feedback, the burning. I mapped it like a blueprint in my mind.
And then I began to rewrite it.
Bit by bit, I pushed the mana through the same route — but this time controlled, refined, restrained.
The wind shifted.
Leaves trembled.
And the air around me sparked with invisible threads of energy.
A low hum echoed across the glade. My fingers glowed faintly.
"He's awake."
I froze.
A voice. Not in my head — from the trees.
Before I could move, a figure dropped from the branches behind me — tall, cloaked, holding a spear tipped with silver.
A hunter.
No — a scout.
"Kid," he said calmly, eyes scanning me. "Where's the rest of your group?"
I stood slowly. "Dead. Village burned."
He eyed the faint mana residue around me. "You're unregistered."
"I didn't have a choice."
"No," he said, voice low. "You didn't."
A second figure appeared behind him — a woman, blonde, with runes tattooed along her forearms. She stepped forward.
"You channeled raw mana during a flarebeast raid and lived," she said, not impressed — interested. "That makes you dangerous. Or valuable. Depending on who finds you first."
"And who are you?" I asked, keeping my stance ready.
"Scouts from Veltheim Academy," she said. "We were tracking the flarebeast's path. Saw the fire from miles off."
"An academy?" I echoed.
"Yes. The strongest on the continent. We train the next generation of mages. Nobles. Warriors. Strategists."
Strategists.
My pulse quickened.
"And?" I asked.
She raised an eyebrow. "You're coming with us."
They didn't give me a choice. Within minutes, we were moving again — deeper into the forest, toward a clearing where a floating disk of polished stone shimmered midair.
A teleport gate. Primitive by my old standards. Still impressive for this world.
Naia and Mother followed hesitantly as we stepped through. I felt my body twist, condense, stretch — and then we emerged onto stone tiles beneath a massive spire of crystal and light.
Veltheim.
The academy loomed ahead — towers spiraling into the sky, banners fluttering in mana-laced wind. Dozens of students moved through courtyards, their auras flickering with raw power. Elemental creatures drifted lazily in the air.
I felt a thrill rise in my chest.
A battlefield of knowledge. A forge of power.
A place where I could hide in plain sight… and grow.
The male scout stepped ahead. "We'll register you under special admission. Your mana signature will be logged. You'll begin as a Novitiate."
"And my family?"
"Provisionally housed. Monitored. For their safety — and yours."
Mother looked at me, uncertain.
I nodded. "It's fine."
The woman leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "You're different. We'll be watching."
I smiled.
"Good."