In the modern world, parents generally steer their children toward the "S-tier" professions.
Lawyers, surgeons, scholars—careers that carry the weight of prestige and the comfort of a steady paycheck. No parent wants their child to walk a path paved with thorns and uncertainty.
My family was the exception. Or rather, my mother was.
"Kaelen," she had said, her eyes dark and eerily knowing. "You must become a shaman. A bridge between the living and the lost."
"A what?" I had asked, genuinely concerned for her sanity.
I was a boy of cold logic and hard facts. While my mother spoke of spirits and ancestral grudges, I was busy mapping out a career in neurosurgery. I wanted a life governed by the laws of physics, not the whims of ghosts.
"You have the 'Eye,' my son," she insisted, her voice dropping to a jagged whisper. "The gods have crowded into your shadow. If you do not embrace them, they will devour you. You will face a calamity that no medicine can cure."
I had laughed it off. I spent my youth rebelling with textbooks and slide rules. I built a fortress of science around my mind to keep her superstitions out. For ten years, I lived as a man of reason.
And then, the "calamity" arrived in the form of a black sedan and the screech of skidding tires. As the darkness took me, my last thought wasn't of my unfulfilled career. It was of my mother's warning.
...She was right.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in a hospital. I was in a world where the things I once dismissed—magic, souls, and destiny—were as real as the air I breathed.
Now, years later, I find myself standing on a platform, clutching a ticket to the most powerful empire on the continent.
"Everyone, open your grimoires to page forty-two," I muttered to myself, practicing my new persona. "Today, we discuss the geometry of mana stabilization."
How did a skeptic like me end up as a professor at the world's most prestigious academy of magic? It started with a train ride.
The Gilded Rail
The Eldritch-Steam Locomotive hissed, venting a plume of thick white vapor that obscured the platform. It was a behemoth of brass and blackened iron, the heartbeat of the Aethelgard Empire's expansion.
I stood on the platform, drawing a sharp breath of the crisp, late-winter air. Somewhere beyond those jagged northern peaks lay the heart of the Empire—and my new life. I adjusted my leather gloves, surreptitiously feeling the edge of the skin-tight membrane beneath my jaw.
The illusion mask is holding, I thought.
It had to. In a world of mages, my true face was a death sentence.
"Ticket, please," the conductor droned.
I fished a slip of parchment from the pocket of my charcoal frock coat. He squinted at it, his eyes lingering on the expensive fabric of my sleeve.
"Ah, Mr. Aristhide. Room 403. A pleasant journey to you, sir."
I gave a curt, aristocratic nod and stepped into the narrow, mahogany-lined corridor. This was a First-Class transport; the rooms weren't just seats, but private sanctuaries for the elite.
I found Room 403. The scent of aged cedar and expensive wax hit me as I opened the door. It was plush, functional, and—most importantly—private. I settled into the velvet seat, watching the jagged giants of the North crawl past the window.
Finally, I thought, letting my shoulders drop. Away from the chaos. I can disappear in the capital.
I pulled a newspaper from the rack to pass the time. The headlines were grim:
[FALL OF THE KROHN DYNASTY: CIVIL WAR IN UTAH ENDS] [REBEL PRINCESS VICTORIOUS—MYSTERIOUS MERCENARY DISAPPEARS]
The grainy black-and-white photograph showed a battlefield charred by spellfire. I stared at it, a hollow feeling in my chest.
"A bloody business, isn't it?"
The voice startled me. I hadn't heard the door open.
A man stood there, perhaps in his mid-twenties, radiating an effortless, polished grace. He wore a brown traveling coat that hinted at 'old money,' even if it looked a bit weathered at the cuffs.
"I hope you don't mind the company," he said, offering a disarming smile. "The rest of the train is quite packed."
I lowered the paper just enough to peer over the top. "Not at all."
He sat opposite me, his movements fluid. "The Utah conflict... they say it ended months ahead of schedule. A miracle of strategy, or so the rumors claim."
"Every war looks like a miracle to the side that wins," I replied dryly.
The man chuckled. "True enough. I'm Julian Vane, by the way. A scholar of sorts, recently of the fallen House Vane."
"Aristhide," I said, omitting a surname. "A traveler."
"Ah, a commoner with the bearing of a count," Vane noted, his tone observational rather than mocking. "Heading to the capital for business?"
"Sightseeing," I lied. "I've heard the Empire's magi-tech is unparalleled."
"It is. But if you're looking for the heart of it, you'll find it at the first stop: Lumeria City." His eyes brightened. "That's where I'm headed. I've just been appointed as a Senior Lecturer at the Sorenth Academy."
I felt a jolt of genuine surprise. Sorenth. The pinnacle of arcane education. To be a professor there, one had to be a monster of talent or a genius of theory.
"You look young for such a prestigious chair, Mr. Vane."
"Luck and a few well-placed papers on mana-density," he waved it off modestly. "But speaking of monsters... have you heard the whispers from the Utah front? They say the Princess didn't win because of her knights."
I kept my face a mask of polite boredom. "Oh?"
"They say she hired a ghost. A mercenary known as Vesper." Vane leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "One man who dismantled an entire legion of battle-mages in a single night. A shadow who uses magic no one recognizes."
"Sounds like a campfire story," I said, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Perhaps," Julian smiled, looking out at the passing snow. "But stories usually start with a grain of truth. I'd love to meet a man like that. Wouldn't you?"
I didn't answer. I just looked back at the newspaper, my eyes lingering on the word Disappears.
Julian Vane didn't know that the "ghost" he was so eager to meet was currently sitting three feet away from him, wearing a stolen name and a fake face.
The "Vesper" he admired was dead. Only Aristhide remained.