Upon her high throne, she sat, regal with an intimidating amount of mana. Despite being far above me, I didn’t feel like she was looking down on me. No, what I felt was a tender gaze filled with understanding. Despite her reputation, she had been kind to grant me an audience regardless of her busy schedule, and she told me what I most needed to hear.

“You won’t always be happy with your choices,” she told me while I kept my gaze on my shoes. “Still, you must live with the consequences, the regrets, and the challenges they bring. Step forward and show me who you have become.”

She’s right. It just took me a while to see it from her perspective. I mean, clawing your way up to be the Supreme Matriarch of a whole set of covens is no easy task. All those challenges from those around you who see you as inferior, the consequences of your actions, and worst of all, the regret of everything you sacrificed to get to the top.

I should start from the beginning. A lot of things won’t make sense if I start where I am; plus, remembering how I got here may help me understand a few things too.

My name is Alice Noctur, a young magic practitioner who one day hoped to join the small coven run by my parents. My family is a poor witch family who barely made their yearly payments to the empire. Yes, that’s right; to be established as a legal coven, you must make annual payments to the empire. The covens that don’t pay are practicing magic illegally since work from covens needs contracts, and you must pay tax on those.

Some witches bypass receiving work from a coven and instead go independent. Of course, they still must pay for a license to practice their specific type of magic. The advantage of being in a coven is the security of work and safety. Independent witches must create their own list of clients and then make sure they earn enough to make a decent living. The pro is they become their own bosses and run contracts on their terms.

Back on topic, it is my duty to help my family as the eldest and their only daughter. This is why I decided early on to enroll in the most exalted school in the empire: The Knoles Academy. Aptly named after the powerful Knoles Empire, it is the single most difficult school to get into! Its’ exam consists of a written, an oral, and a performance test where many students have either lost their minds or lost a limb. High stakes yield great rewards, and there's no bigger reward than graduating from this school! But before I could register for this humungous, ultra-terrifying, and difficult test, I had to learn how to utilize my limited magic to its fullest and greatest potential.

Magic is divided into a type, then a category or a name, and into a coven. The types are simple: air, earth, water, fire, light, and dark. Each of those has categories that are called names. Names are like the specialization of your magic, or how you would identify yourself to another magic user, a customer, a coven, and the empire on your taxes. The most common ones are alchemist, conjurer, crafter of magic tools, divination, enchanter, healer, and many more. As for the coven, it’s more precise to say that certain covens decide to specialize in one specific kind of magic, so they only recruit magic practitioners that use that particular magic. For example, the Huile Coven only recruits light magic practitioners; usually, they get a lot of earth magic and purifying alchemists.

My coven’s magic or I should say, my family, is a race of Dark Magic Practitioners, Dark Mages, or Dark Witches. All names are acceptable to my coven, but certain covens prefer to be called a certain way. We’re an old coven, so my parents have no problem calling themselves witches or wizards. I personally prefer saying I’m a witch.

We’re not the only dark practitioners in the empire, but I want to believe we’re one of the noble covens. Not in the sense that we are rich or have a nice home or things, but more like we’re not criminals. I don’t want to say dark practitioners have a bad reputation, but some are right. A dark practitioner created forbidden magic, which many know as black magic. Ah, no, I don’t want to get into that now. It’ll come up later, for now, I'll focus on the positive.

My parents, who form the coven, are not able to use a vast amount of magic. Our mana, the source of magic, which functions like stamina, is limited. Oh, I should explain how mana works.

The best way I understood how mana works is to think of a water bottle. Think of this as a vessel that houses mana. It’s a bit hard to process, but I promise it will make sense. I think... Anyway, mana is the water in the bottle. The water level inside the water bottle will determine how much mana can be used. Each time a spell is cast, a mage takes a drink from this water bottle. Once it completely runs out, the mage becomes a hollow shell! No more magic can be used and the exertion can kill a mage.

In simpler terms, it is like a flower wilting from not receiving enough water.

How this happens in a mage's body is a lot more complex. Mana is a lot like stamina. Once your body is exhausted enough, you will collapse. Mana kills you in the same way except, there is one crucial difference. There is such a thing as mana erosion. It's called erosion because it’s a mage's body weakening and attacking organs as it searches for more mana to use. It spreads and spreads, searching for mana throughout the body till it attacks the heart and squeezes the life force to make mana, and then death.

Scary, I know.

I think I went astray from my original point, but I should mention that mana needs time to replenish. Either you take a rest, a nap, or eat a lot. If you want to increase your mana, it is possible with a lot of training, which is what I had to do. It works sort of how age makes you grow tall. You train your body and mind to help your mana flow more efficiently.

Anyway, mana is a tricky topic to cover because it is amazingly and intriguingly unique. Even though I said you could increase it, there are cases in which training does nothing. Still, I had to try something, so my training focused on diligent practice to reduce the mana used on each spell and cheating.

Yes, cheating.

How you cheat is by using magical letters known as runes, magical symbols known as sigils, or magic artifacts otherwise known as magic tools! The easiest, and which most magic practitioners use, are artifacts, but those are expensive! Unless you make them yourself, which is also difficult and tedious. An example of a magic tool for witches, and the most common, is a wand. It’s the most essential and the most difficult to craft.

I had no choice but to learn how to use all three to make up for my low mana. Also, practice, practice, and more practice to utilize my mana as efficiently as possible with each spell. It wasn’t easy. I was tempted to quit many times, but when I saw those collectors coming to my house to extort the money my parents earned, my determination to succeed increased. I had no choice. I had to push myself to become better than the me from yesterday.

Time passed quickly since I filled each day with rigorous training till finally, I turned sixteen. Once sixteen, any race can fill out an application to attend the Knoles Academy. The application includes a written part which is a five-page essay about why you want to attend the academy. If approved, there's an oral interview through a crystal ball or a mirror. This part is not as important as the performance test—a good thing for me since I did not do well on this part. I was so nervous I stuttered through a lot of it! I should thank my stars the interviewer pitied me.

In the fall of my sixteenth birthday, after passing the written and oral, I finally received the highly coveted registration confirmation notice with the date and time for the performance test. This test is specifically designed by the academy for all prospective students to show their skills and their worth to the school. I don’t remember the exact number of how many applied that year, so to estimate, I was one amongst roughly five thousand applicants!