I transmigrated. There was no white light, no grand warning, no epic feeling that the universe had chosen me for something special. I simply... woke up. A child again. Another name, another body, another language in my mouth. At first, I thought it was a dream that was too long, but the years passed, and dreams don't last that long.
Not sixteen years old.
Nathan Salt, that name fit me over time, like a new outfit that first feels tight, then warms up, then becomes part of your body. I grew up with it. I grew up with a white mother with an easy smile and overly attentive eyes, with a black father with a firm voice and long silences, I grew up with friends, with routines, with little pains and joys that didn't belong to the life I remembered as "before."
And at some point, I stopped comparing. I thought that was my second life, a new beginning. No systems, no powers, no destiny, just another world, another chance to exist.
Well... that was before.
The car moved slowly, as if it too were hesitating. The afternoon sun filtered through the tall trees, casting long shadows on the asphalt. I watched my reflection in the glass: dark skin, well-defined features, dreadlocks tied haphazardly, a face I knew, that I accepted, a body that was mine, but that I had found strange for a long time.
"So..." I said, my voice echoing through the car as the landscape slowly changed before my eyes. "Are we going to talk about it, or are you still going to choose not to tell me anything?"
My stomach slowly contracted, as if a memory was trying to rise to the surface without asking permission. My body, which had been heavy, weak, and useless the whole time, suddenly became light, strong, healthy, and above all, bright.
I was shining brighter than the strongest light bulb I had ever seen. It was the only moment I thought, "Okay, so this isn't a normal second life."
I had never suspected anything. There had never been any signs. No strange glow, no unusual strength, no golden touch. My life up to that point had been too normal to be a narrative trap.
"Don't worry so much, you'll find out everything when we get there." My father, Marcus, replied, staring at the road, as if that answered all my questions.
My mother gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. The gesture was small, almost imperceptible, but I knew that sign. It was the same as when she was about to give me bad news disguised as normality.
"In a minute," she repeated, with a smile too short to be sincere. "Always asking before it's time, Nate."
I sighed through my nose and looked back outside. The trees were denser now. Too tall. Too close to the road. Wherever we were going, it didn't look like a city; it looked like an open space granted by the forest, not conquered by humans.
"You said that when I woke up glowing," I muttered. "You said it was just fatigue, that I had been sick. But I know that's a lie, because I've always been sick, except at that moment."
The silence that followed was heavy. Not awkward, calculated.
The silence returned, as if they didn't want to answer me, and then in the monotonous landscape, a sign appeared.
BEACON HILLS.
I swallowed hard. The no hit my head like a delayed echo, and I shut down my affection almost instantly.
"Mom, if you're not going to explain anything to me, just tell me one thing," I said, my voice almost failing. "Why are we coming here?"
She didn't answer right away. Her fingers tightened slightly on the purse in her lap, as if the mere name of the city required preparation. My dad slowed down, the sound of the engine becoming deeper, more present, as if he were listening too.
"Nate..." she began, finally turning to me. Her gaze was soft, but her voice was worried. "We needed to come."
"Needed?" I raised my eyebrow. "Why?"
My father let out a short, almost resigned sigh.
"Because you woke up," he said, the word falling into the space between us like a solid object.
I remained silent, waiting for him to say something, which lasted a few seconds.
"Are you going to explain, or do I have to guess what it means?" I asked, confused.
"Remember when you said you were sick?" My mother reached out and held my hand, her grip too firm to be just comforting. "You said that no matter what you did or took, you never stopped feeling that way."
"I remember that, you said it was a chronic illness, what was the name...-"
"It wasn't." My father interrupted. "It was your innate property, your body compensating for something missing."
I stare at him, my mind racing a mile a minute.
"Lack of what?" I asked, and the longer he took to answer, the more fearful I became.
"Mana."
The word hung in the air for too long. Mana.
It didn't sound like something new. It sounded... fitting. Like an answer that had always been there, waiting for the right question.
"Mana? Like magic? Magic?" I asked the first thing that came to mind. "Or is that like, a metaphor for something?"
My mother shook her head slowly. "No, it's literal."
The car crossed the sign and entered the city. Beacon Hills didn't announce its arrival with anything grand. No arch, no tall buildings, no "welcome" sign. Just ordinary streets, spaced-out houses, old lampposts. Still, my chest tightened.
"Our family isn't normal, we're... special, in a way," Marcus continued. "For people like us, staying in places without mana is like being sick most of the time, weakness, headache, nausea, and everything bad included."
He paused, giving me time to think about it.
"What happened to you that day was your mana body awakening for the first time, but we didn't expect it, I didn't expect it, Nathan." He turned the steering wheel, turning the car into a sharp curve. "The longer it takes for a body to awaken, the stronger it gets. In our family, the record is ten years old. After that, no one has ever awakened so late. I thought you would never awaken, so I never taught you or prepared you for it."
I ran my hand over my face, trying to organize my thoughts. It was going too fast and too slow at the same time.
At least I wasn't a werewolf or anything like that, at least I was hoping for that.
"So you're saying we're what? Witches?" I ask, still somewhat skeptical about everything.
"Wizards is the right word, dear." My mother stepped in. She opened her bag and took a book out of it.
A medium-sized book with a plain black cover, symbolized by a half moon with an eye in the background. She threw the book into my lap, as if she couldn't bear to hold it any longer.
"This is your Tome." She smiled, watching me lift the book with relative ease.
I picked up the book carefully. The moment my fingers touched the cover, a shiver ran up my arms, as if I had found a part of myself that was missing.
I opened the book with some anxiety, on any page.
"Huh..." I flipped through it one by one. "It's empty."
"Open the first page," Marcus ordered, and I did so. "And tell me what's there."
I turned the page until I reached the first one, right at the beginning of it, a symbol covering a third of the page was drawn, and underneath it was written 'Magical Vision'.
"Magical vision...? What's that?" I asked, confused.
"It's proof that you are my son," Marcus replied.
The car went around another curve, and for a moment I had the distinct feeling that something was adjusting around me. Not the car. Not my parents. The city.
"Proof...?" I repeated slowly, my fingers still pressing against the page. The symbol seemed to pulsate slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if reacting to the simple fact that I was looking at it. "Is this genetic now?"
Marcus let out a low, short laugh. "Yes. But not only that."
My mother closed her purse and rested her hands on her lap, finally allowing herself to turn slightly toward me.
"Some families use mana through their ears. They hear mana as music, a noise, a phrase. You may have seen it in those comics you read. That's why they need to sing something. Others, through smell, can sense changes, invisible traces; these are more proficient in alchemy magic." She makes a vague gesture with her hand. "Ours, see."
"See what?" I asked.
"The structure." My father replied, as if it all made sense. "The symbol you see in your Tome, and the structure of our original magic."
He stepped on the brakes and slowed down slowly. "Close your eyes, Nate."
I stared at him and his gesture, then looked at my mother, who just nodded, still somewhat reluctant, and did as I was told.
"Put your hand on the symbol and imagine it in your head," he said, and I did. "I don't know how it will be for you because you're the first to awaken at 16, but you'll see the world from a different perspective."
Closing my eyes wasn't difficult. What was difficult was ignoring the immediate feeling that I wasn't just closing something, I was crossing over.
My hand rested on the symbol on the paper, my fingers slightly open, and for a moment everything remained the same: the smell of the car, the engine idling, the weight of my body on the seat. Then the symbol responded.
As soon as I opened my eyes, it was as if someone had adjusted a focus that I never knew existed. The darkness behind my eyelids was not empty, it had depth.
A flash began to blur my vision, my eyes began to burn, so I closed them quickly, and when I opened them again, it was as if a filter had filtered the light.
Staring at her, I could see where it was coming from, from my father. It was as if he had a blue aura protecting him, as if it sensed that I was looking and then attacked, making my eyes burn.
"Looking at you with that is very difficult." I rubbed my eyes and turned to my mother, and curiously, she had nothing. I raised my eyebrow in surprise. "Mom... why aren't you glowing too?"
I felt her smile falter, and in my vision, a blue aura began to appear, this one faint, darker, and very small.
"I'm not like you, son." She put her hand on my face, as if trying to comfort herself. "I'm just a normal person. That part of your life, you got from your father."
I looked back at my father, who took her hand in an attempt to comfort her.
But that didn't make sense. I was seeing her aura, and she had mana inside her, just not very much.
"That doesn't make sense, Mom." I put my hands on her shoulders. "It's small, but I can see the mana inside you. Can't you see it, Dad?"
My father didn't answer right away.
The silence that fell in the car was different from the others. It wasn't heavy. It was... careful. As if any wrong word could break something that had been sustained for years.
Marcus squeezed my mother's hand tighter before speaking.
"I know she does," he said, finally. "I've always known."
I turned my face toward him in surprise.
"Then why are you talking as if she doesn't?" My voice came out louder than I intended. "I can see it. It's not as strong as yours, Dad, but it's there. It's alive."
My mother closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the smile hadn't returned.
"Because it's not enough to have mana, Nate," she said softly. "You have to touch it."
"What do you mean?" I frowned.
"Some people are born with mana, but without the body to manipulate it," Marcus explained, his voice firm but not harsh. "It circulates, sustains, protects... but it doesn't respond to commands. It's like having muscles without nerves."
I looked at my mother again, now more closely. The bluish aura around her was faint, unstable, almost... silent. It didn't pulse. It didn't react to my gaze. It just existed.
"So you..." I began slowly, "have always lived close to all this. Without being able to use it."
She nodded.
"I see you get stronger. I see the effects. But I've never heard, never felt, never seen as you see." Her hand was still on my face. "And that's okay. I accepted that a long time ago."
I felt the mood change the moment I noticed my mother's sad smile. It was the first time I had seen her wear that expression, and it was something about it that tightened my chest.
The car started moving forward again, now at a steady pace. The street seemed narrower than before, the trees leaning over each other, forming almost a green tunnel above us. My vision was still... different. Not active all the time like before, but accessible. I just had to focus.
I looked out the window, and the world seemed subtly altered, as if an invisible layer had been removed.
"Our brains adapt mana in the way the mind finds most comfortable to understand," I heard my father say, his eyes fixed on the road. "You should understand everything in a short time, depending on how your mind has adjusted to it."
I looked away from the landscape and stared at him.
Ah.
So that was it.
There had been something in my vision all along, floating on the periphery of my gaze, something I had never taken seriously enough to question. It had always been there.
A bluish tab.
Too familiar to be a coincidence. How could it not be? How many stories had I read with that? How many times, since I woke up in this world, had I waited for it?
I turned my focus back to the invisible "screen" and stared at the letters suspended in the air.
[You are using
[MP: 1974 / 2000]