Chapter 2: The World of Magic
The morning sky shimmered with a cold, unforgiving light as Kael stood in the shadow of the Academy of Elemental Ascendance, its spires slicing through the clouds like ivory daggers. Suspended in the air by ancient arcane forces, the academy hovered above the city of Emberhollow like a god staring down at its creation. Runes etched into its floating foundation pulsed with a lazy glow, feeding off ley-lines woven deep beneath the earth. Magic sustained it. Magic revered it. Magic defined everything.
Everything Kael was not.
The platform beneath his feet vibrated as the sky-carriage docked. Students poured out, clothed in finely woven robes embroidered with the insignia of their elemental bloodlines—crimson phoenixes for fire, silver serpents for water, storm-wolves for air, and obsidian shields for earth. Their eyes glowed faintly, touched by the power that coiled in their veins like serpents ready to strike. Their laughter echoed like broken glass, beautiful and cruel.
Kael walked among them in silence, his blade slung across his back in a weathered sheath. He wore no sigil, no family crest. His robes were plain, patched where they'd frayed. His boots were scuffed. Dirt clung to his cuffs. He was the static in their symphony, the ash in their fire.
"Oi, Sword-Freak."
A voice behind him, thin and sharp. Kael turned slowly.
A boy stepped forward—Loric Virell, heir to the Glacial Lineage, his pale hair falling in perfect waves over a smug, sculpted face. Frost clung to his shoulders like a second skin, his every breath a curl of winter wind.
"Did you polish that butter knife again this morning?" Loric smirked, his friends snickering behind him. "You know, if you beg hard enough, the cooks might let you carve the roast with it."
Kael said nothing. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, his fingers curling around the leather-wrapped grip like instinct.
Loric's smile widened. "Careful, you might cut someone's feelings."
Kael's heart thudded in his chest. He didn't flinch. Didn't look away.
"You think you're better than us?" Loric spat. "We command the elements. We shape the world with our will. And you? You play with relics from fairy tales. Do you even know how pathetic you look?"
"I don't need your magic," Kael said quietly. "It's a crutch."
A hush fell. The air cooled. Even the shadows recoiled.
Loric's eyes darkened, frost creeping across the ground beneath his feet.
"You dare insult the Gift?"
Kael didn't move. "Magic's borrowed power. A sword is earned."
Loric raised his hand, veins glowing icy blue. Kael's grip tightened on the hilt—but the ground trembled, and a voice like thunder cracked across the platform.
"Enough."
Instructor Vaen stood at the top of the marble steps, his robes black and gold, his presence iron. His eyes swept over the students like a blade, cold and precise.
"Save your duels for the arena. Or I'll make you both wish you hadn't woken up today."
Loric lowered his hand, the ice withdrawing. He shot Kael a venomous look before turning away, his entourage trailing behind him like scavengers.
Kael exhaled slowly, releasing the sword. It hadn't left its sheath. He hadn't drawn it. Not yet.
But he would.
The academy itself was a thing of marvel and cruelty. Sprawling towers housed lecture halls where magic bled into philosophy. Sparring rings floated mid-air, enclosed in shimmering force-fields. Glass gardens thrived with flora shaped by spells long lost to the outside world. Students meditated on wind platforms, hung suspended over miles of open sky. Magic was everywhere—in the walls, the air, the blood.
The Sword Arts wing was a ruin in comparison.
Hidden in the lowest tier of the floating citadel, Kael's chosen hall was barely more than a cellar—dusty, disused, and dimly lit. Once, long ago, before the Great Elemental Reformation, swords had mattered. Sword-saints, the old texts called them. Wielders of intent sharper than steel, able to cut through illusions, bend the air with the purity of a single swing.
Now, the academy barely tolerated the tradition. Swordsmanship had been relegated to 'physical conditioning'. A footnote. A fossil.
Kael was its only student.
He trained in silence. Struck wooden dummies until his knuckles split. Practised forms until his arms trembled with fatigue. Balanced atop thin poles for hours, blindfolded, forcing his mind to synchronise with the blade, to hear it, feel it, become it.
Pain was his curriculum. Loneliness, his classmate.
The others whispered when he passed. Sword-boy. Blade-bastard. The Magicless.
Even the instructors dismissed him, speaking to him like he was a child pretending to be a soldier.
But Kael didn't care. Not anymore.
Because the sword never lied to him. The sword didn't laugh, didn't sneer, didn't abandon. When he swung, it answered. When he bled, it remembered.
In the stillness after one long training session, Kael stood before the cracked mirror mounted in the corner of the chamber. Sweat poured down his back. His muscles screamed.
He raised his blade.
Not as a weapon. As a promise.
"I will be more," he whispered to his reflection. "I will be feared. Not because of what I was born with. But because of what I made myself into."
The mirror didn't respond.
But the sword pulsed faintly in his grip—like a heartbeat.
Outside, in the towers above, students summoned tempests and conjured flames. They fought with explosions, wielding inherited glory like it was their right.
But down here, buried beneath their world of power, Kael forged something deeper.
Something dangerous.
Something old.
He dreamed not of spells, but of a sword so perfect it could cleave through destiny itself.
And in that dream, the world bled.