Cold gusts ripped across Veyra Peak's icy spines, where the lonely hamlet of Aldren clung to the heights like an ember resisting a ceaseless frost. In a realm shaped by celestial forces and arcane power, the people whispered of the 3-Star Mages who stood between them and the wilderness with equal parts awe and dread. Never had any among them been more formidable.
At the core of this forsaken highland dwelt Nova Loid, a 2-Star Sealer hardly deemed worth mention. Flickers of torchlight danced across Nova's golden hair as he straightened the strips of sealing talismans bound around his waist. They held only the humblest spells—one to mend wounds, another to conjure a meager fireball, and no further. Yet his ambition soared beyond Veyra Peak: he yearned to claim the title of the greatest mage the world had ever known.
This aspiration was not solely Nova's. It belonged first to his grandfather, a figure who had teetered on the brink of legend before slipping into obscurity. When the old man died, Nova inherited just two legacies: a hidden library of arcane knowledge and a promise left undone.
Striding toward the library that evening, Nova's path was pierced by scornful laughter that sliced through the frigid air. "Look at weakling Nova off to fondle his scraps of paper," jeered a lanky youth whose palm bore the faint glow of a 3-Star Earth Mage's mark. His companions closed in, their eyes gleaming with the vicious delight of the privileged. "You'll never rise above two stars, you know. Maybe you'll seal our boots for us next time." A shove sent Nova sprawling, his sealing talismans scattering across the frozen earth like dying leaves.
Nova remained still, silent, and unmoving. He refused to meet their gaze. His hands shook—not from bruises or cuts, but from a searing tension lodged somewhere deep inside him, an anger he could not yet name.
Nearby, his friend Walter observed in grim silence. Walter, a 3-Star Space Weapon Mage, was famed for calling forth blades of collapsed reality, ripping rifts in the void, and striking with unerring accuracy. But as he watched Nova prostrate in the dirt, an unfamiliar disquiet stirred within him. After what felt like hours, Nova raised his head, and their gazes locked. In that split second, Walter's chest tightened. He did not witness despair in Nova's eyes; instead he found an abyssal void—boundless, ravenous, utterly alien to any human spirit. Walter blinked, and the intensity faded. Nova murmured no words. He knelt, retrieved his scattered seals, then rose and resumed his trek to the aged library perched at the mountain's fringe.
The library had become a mausoleum of abandoned hopes. Thick dust coated each shelf, while dim aureate runes flickered on the walls, the last echoes of his grandfather's craft. Night after night, Nova poured over its tomes, combing through crumbling scrolls and brittle pages in search of a formula for a novel seal—one potent enough to alter the course of his destiny.
Yet this evening diverged from all the others. As he snatched a loose scroll from the floor, his fingers encountered an icy surface hidden beneath the detritus of decaying manuscripts. He pulled free a tome of unparalleled horror: its cover—and he recoiled at the thought—was crafted from human skin, its spine a length of bone, and its title was scrawled in throbbing, blood-red ink that glowed with latent mana. One word rose from the page: NOX.
The instant Nova's palm made contact, every candle guttered into darkness, and a heavy hush descended. Then a voice slithered through the gloom—ancient, ravenous, resonating within his bones: "Do you crave power, little sealer?" The book's pages rustled on their own, unfurling to summon a shadowy flame that did not scorch, but devoured every speck of illumination.
Nova was transfixed, utterly powerless to tear his gaze away. His sealing talismans quivered, each mark igniting in a crimson glow and contorting into forms he had never learned. The voice curled around him once more: "Then trade me your flame… and I will bestow upon you mine." Nova's eyes traced the opening line, inked in fresh blood, and as the words sank in, his existence shifted irrevocably.