In the beginning, there was magic.
It breathed beneath the mountains, sang within the rivers, and slept within the blood of every child born beneath Aethelgard's silver skies. The first mages learned to coax it forth—to shape it with will and word, to bend creation to their desire.
They built kingdoms from stone and spell.
They raised spires that touched the clouds and forged wonders that lesser minds called miracles.
And when they passed, they left behind four houses—four bloodlines blessed with magic so potent that their names became law.
VEYNE,KALISPEL,SOLMIRE,
And ESCARON—proudest of them all—whose magic bent the will of the world itself.
For centuries, these houses ruled. Their blood determined the throne. Their children were tested at birth, and those found worthy inherited the secrets of creation.
But blood, like all things, could falter.
And in the great house of Escaron, a shadow fell where light should have been.
---
The Grand Chamber of House Escaron was not a place for weakness.
Its walls rose thirty spans high, carved from black marble veined with silver that pulsed faintly in the darkness—captured starlight, some said, bound into stone by the first Escaron mages. Tapestries depicting centuries of triumph hung between towering columns, their threads enchanted to move, to breathe, to show the great moments of the family's history. Ancestors watched from gilded frames, their painted eyes following all who entered.
And at the chamber's heart, upon a throne of obsidian and iron, sat Duke Valdus Escaron.
Lord of the Noble House.
Keeper of the Family Secrets.
Grandfather.
His son Theron stood before him, head bowed, his wife Elena pressed close at his side. Between them, held in his mother's arms, a child of three years squirmed and fussed—too young to understand, too restless to remain still.
The boy's name was Darc.
And he had just destroyed his family's future.
---
"What," Valdus's voice echoed through the chamber like frost spreading across glass, "is this thing you have brought into my house?"
Theron flinched. He could not help it. Forty years of life, and still his father's voice made him feel seven years old and caught stealing sweets.
"Father, please—"
"I tested him myself." Valdus rose from his throne, descending the steps with slow, deliberate grace. His robes of midnight silk whispered against the marble. His staff—carved from the heartwood of the World Tree itself—tapped a rhythm that seemed to make the very stones hold their breath. "Three times. Four. A dozen spells, each designed to draw forth the smallest spark of magic from even the weakest child."
He stopped before his grandson.
The boy—Darc—stared up at him with eyes the color of storm clouds. He did not flinch. He did not look away.
Bold, Valdus thought. At least there is that.
Then he remembered what he had seen—or rather, what he had not seen—and the small warmth died.
"This child," Valdus said, his voice dropping to something worse than anger, "has nothing. No spark. No ember. No flicker of the creative force that flows through every soul in this kingdom. Even the lowest peasant child can conjure a flame to light their hearth. Even the simplest beggar can will a copper piece to their palm."
He leaned close to Darc's face.
The boy reached up and grabbed his nose.
Elena inhaled sharply. Theron moved to intervene, but Valdus simply straightened, expression unchanging, as if a fly had landed on him.
"He has no magic," Valdus said. "This is unacceptable."
"Father, he is three—"
"Do not speak to me of age!" Valdus's staff struck the floor. The marble cracked beneath it, a spiderweb of fractures spreading toward Theron's feet before stopping just short of his boots. "I manifested my first flame at eighteen months. You—" He pointed at Theron, and Theron felt the weight of his father's will press against his chest. "—pathetic as your abilities proved, still conjured light from darkness before your second birthday. Every child in this bloodline, for generations, has shown the gift by age two."
He turned away, robes swirling.
"But this one? This... thing you have given me? He is empty. A hollow vessel. A curse upon our name."
"Give him time." Theron stepped forward, desperation bleeding into his voice. "Please, Father. Some children develop late. I've read accounts—"
"You have read nothing." Valdus did not turn. "I have guarded the secrets of this house for forty years. I have studied magic when you were still mewling at your mother's breast. I know what can be taught—and what cannot. This boy will never wield creation magic. He will never sit upon this throne. He will never—"
Darc began to cry.
It was not a loud cry, not a tantrum. Just the weary, hungry wail of a small child who did not understand why the grown-ups would not stop shouting and feed him already.
Valdus looked at the boy.
The boy looked at Valdus.
And for one moment—one single, crystalline moment—Valdus felt something stir in the air between them. A pressure, almost. A presence, like the stillness before lightning strikes.
Then it passed.
And Darc kept crying.
"Take him," Valdus said quietly. "Take your wife and your... son... and remove yourselves from my sight."
Theron's face went pale. "Father—"
"You heard me." Valdus climbed the steps to his throne, each movement heavy with finality. "You will be stripped of your title. Your name will be removed from the family registry. You will be exiled to Blackwood Village, where you may live out your days as commoners, far from the capital, far from decent society, far from anything that might remind me of this... failure."
"The family—"
"Will endure." Valdus sat. The obsidian seemed to swallow him, to make him one with the darkness. "I have already made arrangements. Your cousin and his wife are expecting. Their child, will be tested. If the blood proves strong, that child will inherit. Not yours."
Elena made a sound—small, wounded, quickly stifled.
Theron's hands clenched at his sides.
Darc kept crying.
"Guards." Valdus waved one hand. "Escort them to the edge of our lands. See that they take nothing but the clothes upon their backs and whatever meager possessions fit in a single cart."
"Father—"
"You are no son of mine."
The words hung in the air like frost.
Theron looked at his father—at the man who had taught him to ride, to read, to hold his wand with proper form. At the man who had smiled at his wedding, who had bounced Darc on his knee just months ago, cooing about the future.
That man was gone.
Perhaps he had never existed at all.
Theron took his wife's hand. He took his crying son from her arms, holding the boy close, feeling the small heartbeat against his chest.
"Come, Elena," he said quietly. "We are not welcome here."
They walked from the chamber.
Behind them, Valdus watched.
And above them, in their gilded frames, the ancestors watched too—their painted eyes following the exile of a child.
For now, there was only a cart, a winding road, and the long shadow of a kingdom that had no place for a boy without magic.
---
Thirteen years later.
The attic smelled of dust and old parchment and the particular mustiness that came from being the highest room in one of the houses in Blackwood Village.
Darc Escaron liked it.
The ceiling slanted just enough that he had to duck near the walls. The single round window looked out over the village's rooftops—tiled in weathered slate, crowned with chimneys that breathed woodsmoke into the perpetual twilight of the afternoon. Beyond the village, the Haunted Wood crouched like a sleeping beast, its trees twisted and dark, its depths forbidden to all but the foolish or the desperate.
Below him, the sounds of his family drifted up through the floorboards.
His mother's voice, humming as she worked. The clatter of kitchen implements moving at her command—knives that diced without hands, spoons that stirred without pause, ingredients that floated from cupboards to counter in an endless dance of domestic magic. Elena Escaron had been beautiful once, a lady of noble blood with suitors from three kingdoms. At forty-three, with grey threading her dark hair and laugh lines around her eyes, she was gorgeous—the kind of beauty that came from surviving, from enduring, from refusing to break.
Clang. A pot settled onto the stove.
Whoosh. The fire beneath it kindled to life at her murmured word.
Darc smiled.
His sister's voice next, younger and sharper, rising through the floor with mathematical precision.
"Aquamenti frigidus—no, wait, that's water, I need heat—calorem surgere—no, that's not right either—"
Lyra. Thirteen years old, already top of her class at the village school, already convinced that she would be the one to restore the family name. She sat in the room below his—formerly his room, before he'd claimed the attic—surrounded by textbooks and practice wands and the smoldering remains of several failed experiments. Currently she was attempting to boil water using only magic.
The water remained stubbornly room-temperature.
"Incalesco!" Lyra shouted.
Nothing.
"FERVE!"
The water quivered slightly. Then stopped.
Lyra screamed in frustration.
Darc's smile widened.
His brother's voice joined the chorus—younger still, higher-pitched, filled with the boundless enthusiasm of a ten-year-old who had not yet learned to doubt himself.
"Like this, Father? Ventus exuro!"
A whoosh of air. A crash. The sound of something fragile meeting an untimely end.
"Kermit." Their father's voice, patient as stone. "The wand is an extension of your will, not a replacement for it. Feel the wind before you command it. Become the wind."
"But I don't want to be wind! Wind is boring! I want to make storms!"
Laughter—Theron's warm rumble, Kermit delighted giggle.
Darc leaned against the window frame and watched the smoke rise from the village chimneys.
They're happy, he thought. After everything, they're happy.
It should have felt like enough.
It didn't.
---
He turned back to his room.
Small. Cluttered. His space, his alone. A bed pushed against one wall, sheets rumpled and half-on-the-floor where he'd kicked them in his sleep. A desk buried under books—spellbooks borrowed from the village library, theoretical texts on magical theory, a dog-eared copy of The Reluctant Apprentice that he'd read seventeen times. Candles in iron holders, their flames burning low, their wax pooling on the windowsill where he always forgot to move them.
And on the desk, a bowl of water.
Just water. Clear, ordinary, boring water.
Darc picked up his wand.
It was a simple thing—unadorned wood, slightly crooked, purchased from a traveling merchant for three copper pieces. Nothing like the elegant wands his siblings used, the ones their father had carved by hand from the heartwood of the Haunted Wood.
Darc had owned it for six years.
In six years, it had never done a single thing he asked.
He pointed it at the water.
"Al'esto windaf."
Nothing.
He checked the book open on his desk—a beginner's guide to elemental magic, the same one his sister had used when she was eight. According to the diagram, he was holding the wand correctly. According to the pronunciation guide, he was saying the words correctly. According to everything, this spell should work.
"Setura parasio."
The water sat there.
Mocking him.
Darc lowered the wand. He looked at the water. The water looked back—well, it didn't look, it was water, but if it could look, Darc was fairly certain it would be smirking.
"I knew it," he said aloud.
His voice echoed off the slanted ceiling.
"I knew it. I can't do anything with magic."
And then he laughed.
Because really, what else was there to do? He was sixteen years old, the son of a disgraced noble house, living in an attic in a blackwood village at the edge of a kingdom that had rejected him before he could walk. He had no magic. He had no future. He had—
He threw the wand.
It clattered against the wall and fell to the floor, rolling to rest against a pile of dirty laundry.
Darc raised his hand.
Not his wand hand. Just his hand. His finger.
And the water rose.
It lifted from the bowl in a perfect sphere, hovering six inches above the desk, rotating slowly as if examining its new surroundings. Darc wiggled his finger. The sphere drifted right. He wiggled again. It drifted left. He made a circle. The sphere spun.
Well, he thought, watching the water dance, that's interesting.
He had no idea how it worked. He had no idea why it worked. All he knew was that sometimes, when he really wanted something—when he focused his will and refused to accept anything less—things just... happened.
It wasn't magic.
It couldn't be magic.
Magic was wands and words and the creative force that flowed through every soul in Aethelgard. Magic was his mother's dancing knives and his sister's frustrated chanting and his brother's accidental storms.
This was something else.
This was him.
"What should I call you?" he asked the floating water.
The water, naturally, did not respond.
"I'll call you... Parectoo."
Parectoo. A stupid name for a stupid trick that a stupid magicless boy had taught himself because the universe had forgotten to give him anything else.
He grinned.
Then he flicked his finger and sent the water splashing back into the bowl.
---
Footsteps on the stairs.
"Darc?" His father's voice, warm as always, carrying the faint accent of the northern provinces where he'd been born. "Are you decent?"
"I'm always decent," Darc called back. "It's everyone else who's the problem."
Theron Escaron appeared in the doorway, ducking slightly to clear the frame. At fifty-three, he looked older than his years—the exile had weathered him, carved lines into his face and grey into his hair. But his eyes were kind, and his smile was quick, and when he looked at his eldest son, there was no disappointment there.
Only love.
How, Darc wondered for the thousandth time, does he do that?
"Your mother's cooking dinner," Theron said. "And I wanted to check on you. Tomorrow's the big day."
Darc groaned. "Please don't call it that."
"First day at the Academy. Senior Magic Year One. The beginning of your formal magical education." Theron's smile widened. "Big day."
"I hate you."
"You love me. I'm your father. It's the law."
Darc flopped backward onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. "I don't even know why I'm going. It's not like I can actually do anything."
Theron was quiet for a moment. Then he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, his weight making the old frame creak.
"You're going," he said quietly, "because you deserve the chance to try. Just like everyone else."
"And if I fail?"
"Then you fail." Theron shrugged. "And then you try something else. That's what we Escarons do. We keep trying."
Darc turned his head to look at his father. "Even after Grandfather—"
"Especially after your grandfather." Theron's voice hardened slightly, the only sign that the wound still existed, still ached. "He gave up on us. On you. That was his choice. It doesn't have to be ours."
Silence.
Then Darc sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "Fine. I'll go. I'll pretend to be a proper wizard. I'll wave my wand and say the words and fail spectacularly in front of everyone."
"That's the spirit."
"But I'm not sitting in the front row."
Theron laughed. "Wouldn't expect you to."
---
The Academy Gates
The Blackwood Academy of Magical Arts rose from the morning mist like a fever dream carved into stone.
Gothic spires stabbed at the sky, their peaks lost in low-hanging clouds. Flying buttresses arched between towers like the ribs of some vast, sleeping creature. Stained glass windows caught the first light of dawn and threw it back in fragments of color—ruby and sapphire and emerald, painting the cobblestone courtyard with shifting patterns of light.
The gates stood open.
They were wrought iron, black as jet, their bars twisted into the shapes of mythical beasts—griffins and wyverns and creatures that had no name in any language. As the first students approached, the gates swung inward on their own, their hinges silent despite their weight, their movement smooth as breath.
Carriages rolled through, their wheels hovering an inch above the ground, their horses breathing steam magic. Students leaned from windows, calling to friends, comparing uniforms, adjusting their wands in nervous fingers.
Darc walked.
His siblings flanked him—Lyra on one side, already scanning the crowd with the predatory focus of someone hunting social advantage, Kermit on the other, bouncing with excitement and pointing at every floating lantern and moving statue.
"The gates moved by themselves!"Kermit shouted. "Did you see? By themselves!"
"Everything here moves by itself," Lyra said primly. "It's an Academy, Kermit. Try to act like you belong."
"I do belong! I'm going to be the best wizard ever!"
"You can't even make wind without breaking things."
"That's called experimentation, Lyra. Look it up."
Darc tuned them out, focusing on the school ahead.
It was... a lot.
More than he'd expected. More than he'd prepared for. The Academy dwarfed everything in Blackwood Village, made their humble home feel like a dollhouse in comparison. Students streamed past him in their dark uniforms—tailcoats and waistcoats for the boys, fitted jackets and flowing skirts for the girls, all of them embroidered with the Academy crest: a phoenix rising from flames, its wings spread, its eyes burning gold.
Wands in every hand.
Spells on every lip.
Magic in every heartbeat.
And Darc, with his useless wand and his useless tricks and his useless everything, walking among them like a ghost at a feast.
They reached the gates.
Lyra stopped.
Darc nearly walked into her. "What—"
She turned. Her wand was already in her hand—a proper wand, beautiful and balanced, the wood dark with age and use. She pointed it at him.
Wood erupted from the ground.
Thin branches, flexible but strong, twisting around his ankles, his knees, binding him in place before he could react. He stumbled, caught himself, looked down at the growing cage with an expression of mild annoyance.
"Lyra."
"Hey." She met his eyes. "Stop."
"I'm literally trapped—"
"Don't walk into the Academy with me."
Darc blinked. "What?"
Lyra's jaw tightened. Behind her, Kael shifted uncertainly, looking between his siblings with growing alarm.
"I don't want to be known as the sister of the magicless boy," Lyra said. Her voice was flat. Controlled. The voice she used when she was trying very hard not to feel something. "From here on? Don't act like my brother. Don't talk to me at school. Don't even look at me."
The branches released him, crumbling to dust.
Lyra grabbed Kermuts hand and walked through the gates.
Kermit glanced back once—confused, apologetic, too young to understand—and then they were gone, swallowed by the crowd, lost in the sea of students flowing into the Academy.
Darc stood alone before the gates.
Students passed him on either side, their conversations washing over him like water over stone. He could feel their glances, their whispers. They knew. Everyone knew. The story of the Escaron exiles was village legend—the noble family cast out for producing a magicless child, forced to live as commoners in the shadow of the Haunted Wood.
And here he was.
The magicless child himself.
"Walking into a school of magic"