The sound of wheels grinding over gravel repeated monotonously, each jolt sending a real ache through Leon's spine. Sweat soaked the coarse linen shirt, clinging stickily to his skin, mixed with the scent of summer dust and horses—a coarse, real smell, belonging to the mortal world.
He opened his eyes.
What met his gaze was the faded linen canopy of the hired carriage. Sunlight sliced through the gaps, carving out a few columns of light floating with dust. Across from him sat a dozing farm woman clutching a basket full of dried cheese. Everything was so familiar it was heart-stopping.
No, it was so unfamiliar it was terrifying.
Just moments before—or rather, on another dimensional scale of time as perceived by the soul—Leon's consciousness had been submerged in a boundless torrent of magical chaos. Ancient language runes had exploded in his mental vision, like billions of stars snuffing out simultaneously. The thirteen-layered magic circle of the "Root Reconstruction" ritual had begun to collapse from its very core. That pain had transcended the flesh; it was the despair of existence itself being torn apart. He had been devoured by the very magical essence he had tried to master.
Leon of the Northern Realms, Sage of the North, an existence who had touched the threshold of a God of Magic, should have turned to nothingness in eternity.
But now…
Leon slowly raised his hand. It was the hand of a youth, the knuckles distinct but not yet fully grown, the palm bearing only the thin calluses left by years of holding a pen, not the magical imprints and energy channels carved by decades of manipulating elements and inscribing runes. The skin was pale from long hours indoors, lacking sun.
He closed his eyes, trying to sense.
Nothingness.
The ocean-like, vast magical power that could once alter the world with a thought was now reduced to the tiniest trickle deep within his body, as feeble as dying embers. The mental field that once spanned hundreds of miles with him at its core, resonating with the earth's ley lines, had shrunk to barely perceiving the boundaries of his own flesh. As for that existence, tempered countless times, inscribed with all his magical understanding, called the "Magical Core"... only a shattered, dim shadow remained, like crystal cracked and hastily glued back together.
"An illusion?" His first thought was of a high-level illusion targeting the mind, or a prophetic dream crafted by those lunatics of the divination school. But he immediately dismissed the possibility.
He had once stood at the pinnacle of this world's magical arts. He had seen the ruins of the ancient elven empire, deciphered forbidden tablets inscribed in Draconic, even briefly conversed with projections from the Astral Plane. No illusion could be so… mundane, yet so perfectly simulate every sensory detail—the prickle of the rough wooden seat beneath him, the mingled smells of sweat, hay, and distant cooking smoke in the carriage, the creak of the wooden axle as the wheels turned, and, most importantly, the meager fatigue and weakness accumulated over sixteen years of this body's life.
The undeniable pull of gravity tugged at this young frame, so heavy, and yet so… it made one want to weep.
"I truly… have returned." Leon—no, for now, he was just Leon, son of a down-and-out knight and a noblewoman who had fled her family—whispered soundlessly in his heart.
A flood of memories began to breach the dam.
His previous life.
In the summer of his sixteenth year, he had ridden in this hired carriage to Graystone City, the provincial capital, to take the preliminary entrance exam for the affiliated magic academy of the "Starlight Spire" three months later. His parents had sold nearly everything they could to scrape together the travel expenses and registration fee for him to try just once.
He had succeeded. As a commoner, he had surpassed countless noble youths to become the top scorer in the theoretical test at the Graystone City examination site that year. His talent caught the attention of the legendary archmage, the "Azure Star," who happened to be traveling and took him directly from the province to the magical heartland of the empire.
That was the beginning of glory, and also the source of regret.
He had never returned. Not until his parents passed away one after another in hardship and illness, and he received the brief, belated letter delivered three months late by a magic courier across thousands of miles. He had been deciphering dangerous runes in an ancient ruin at the time, unable to leave. The funeral had been arranged by neighbors, so simple it was unworthy of the "knight" status his father had once proudly claimed, and unworthy of the "noble" blood of the Tulip family that flowed in his mother's veins.
Later, he had met people from the Varona family. At a noble banquet in the imperial capital, he attended as a disciple of the Azure Star. Dressed in mage robes, he was given a glance by his mother's cousin, now Marquis Roderick, a look reserved for something unclean, a faint nod before the man turned to converse with real nobles. Leon overheard him murmur to a companion, "Isabella's stubborn obsession back then… See? This is the result. A dabbler in tricks, somewhat respectable?"
"Tricks." By then, Leon could summon meteor-fire, briefly freeze time, perceive the essence of elements. But to those great nobles who had inherited titles for centuries, whose eyes saw only bloodline and land, magic—unless it reached the legendary realm, enough to influence the fate of nations—was still "clever artifice," a path for commoners and second sons to seek advancement, not true power.
Then there was Cyril von Aldin. That golden-haired, blue-eyed, perpetually appropriately smiling young genius from the powerful Aldin Count family. At the magic academy, Cyril was Leon's only rival in theory, a strong competitor in practical lessons. But the competition was never fair. Cyril had the best private tutors, inexhaustible magical materials for practice, robes and staves inscribed with protective and amplifying runes provided by his family.
And Leon? He had only the Azure Star's occasional guidance and a meager stipend that had to be carefully budgeted to afford basic materials.
The conflict began with an ancient magical script interpretation contest. Leon won, with more exquisite grammatical analysis and more logical deduction. Cyril congratulated him with a smile, but his eyes were cold. Not long after, a paper Leon submitted on improving the stability of low-level fire runes was accused of "improper citation, suspicion of plagiarism." The investigation dragged on for half a year. Though never proven, it cost him the chance to apply for a special research grant that year, and the opportunity to meet a certain rune master—which that paper could have earned him—went to Cyril instead.
A deeper thorn was about Aelly.
The girl with pale gold hair, eyes like a forest spring, his childhood playmate before leaving home. She had blushed as she pressed a hand-woven amulet, smelling of fresh grass, into his hand. "May the winds of magic guide you, Leon," she had said. They promised to write.
The first letters were warm, sharing the novelties of the magic academy and the trivialities of Graystone. But at some point, Aelly's letters grew shorter, the intervals longer, until only formulaic holiday greetings remained. Later, he heard that Aelly's family—a down-at-heel minor noble family with faint elven blood trying to regain status—had developed ties with the Aldin family. Later still, he glimpsed Aelly once in the imperial capital from afar. She was sitting in the luxurious carriage of the Aldin family, her profile calm, wearing an exquisite gown befitting a guest of a Count's family. She hadn't seen him.
His heart felt as though it were being slowly ground to pieces by shards of cold glass. It wasn't merely the withering of a youthful affection—it was a symbol. Something precious and beautiful from his ordinary past had been taken, so easily and so matter-of-factly, by the nobles, as if plucking a flower from the roadside simply because it pleased their eye.
He suppressed it all, transforming it into an almost masochistic drive for cultivation. No longer content with the conventional path, he began searching for any ancient secret method, any forbidden knowledge that could rapidly increase magical power. The Azure Star had warned him about the importance of foundation, but he wouldn't listen. The flames of vengeance, the thirst for proof, the pain of loss, burned him.
He succeeded, crossing one magical rank after another in a time unimaginable to most, becoming the "Sage of the North," famous throughout the empire. He gained power enough to make Marquis Roderick bow his head, enough to make Cyril von Aldin maintain silence in public.
But some things, once lost, could never be recovered. His parents' faces grew blurry in memory, the family courtyard long since changed hands. And Aelly… he later learned she had become one of Cyril's lovers, not his wife, and then, during a magic experiment among nobles, suffered "accidental" permanent mental damage and was quietly sent to a remote estate to live out her days. By the time he had the power to intervene, it was all long settled.
And he himself, his seemingly glorious path of magic, was built on quicksand. Those ancient secret methods forcibly merged, those subtle flaws in foundational theory overlooked, that magic power hastily absorbed and never fully digested—countless cracks and hidden injuries had been buried deep within his Magical Core. When he touched the threshold of a God of Magic and attempted the "Root Reconstruction" ritual to completely integrate, repair, and sublimate everything, these latent dangers, like pre-set collapse points, triggered a chain reaction of devastating backlash.
Five hundred years of pursuit, glory, regret, pain, and unwillingness, all turned to nothingness in a blinding flare of magical light.
The carriage jolted violently, hitting a deep rut. The farm woman's cheese nearly tumbled from her basket. She muttered a coarse curse, shifting her position.
Leon's body swayed with the motion, finally pulling him free from the mire of memories.
The sun was still blazing, the dust still swirling.
But something settled deep within his eyes. A cold, hard quality born of experiencing destruction and rebirth, the wisdom and resolve sedimented over five centuries.
"A second chance…"
He breathed soundlessly, feeling his young lungs fill with the slightly parched air. His heart beat strongly in his chest, blood coursing through his veins, bringing a vibrant, somewhat unfamiliar vitality.
"Magic power, spirit, core—almost zero. But knowledge, experience, memories… all remain."
In his previous life, he had been like a tree madly absorbing nutrients to reach the sky, yet ignored the depth and stability of its roots, ultimately breaking in the storm.
In this life, he would be a mountain. Starting from the most solid foundation, building layer by layer, every step firm, every rune thoroughly understood, every wisp of magic power pure and condensed. He would lay a perfect, flawless foundation that would amaze even the ancient Gods of Magic.
The arrogance of the Tulip family? Cyril von Aldin's schemes? The machinations of the noble world?
"I will return." Leon's gaze seemed to pierce the swaying canopy, looking north, towards the heart of the empire. "But not as the son of exiled seekers of recognition or angry vengeance."
"Mother, Father… In this life, no one will look down on you again, no one will let you suffer disgrace because of me. The recognition the Varona family owes you, I will make them repay a hundredfold."
"Aelly…" The name brought a complex tang of bitterness to his tongue, but it was quickly overridden by firmer resolve. "In this life, your fate is yours to choose. And I will sever all hands that try to manipulate it."
"As for Cyril, the Aldin family… and all the injustices hidden beneath rules and smiling faces…"
He slowly clenched his fist, knuckles whitening with force. The youth's delicate profile, in the dappled light and shadow, took on an almost divine detachment and authority. It was the gaze of the "Sage of the North," piercing through time, seeing through the habitual tracks of fate.
"I will use the rules you revere most to climb step by step to heights you cannot reach. Then, with power you cannot comprehend, I will settle all accounts."
The driver up front shouted, cracking his whip. The familiar outline of Graystone City's massive, grey-white stone walls appeared at the end of the road. Under the sun, the clamorous aura of the city faintly reached them.
Last time, he had entered this city with trepidation and longing, walking towards a path of magic filled with both opportunity and thorns.
This time, he returned carrying five centuries of wisdom, memory, and embers that would never be extinguished.
"Foundation. Power. Then… comes the reckoning."
Leon relaxed his fist, straightened the sweat-dampened collar of his shirt. His expression reverted to that of a slightly tired, somewhat introverted ordinary youth. Only deep within those profound eyes, a point of cold flame had been quietly ignited, burning silently.
The carriage rattled on, heading towards the city gates, towards the place where everything would begin anew.