I looked down at my jacket and the newly branded golden insignia glowing brightly on it. I smiled, it looked very fitting and it represented something that made me feel good, a sense of belonging. Although everyone seemed afraid of me now, maybe someday they would accept me as one of their own. The insignia radiating warmth as I pressed my hand to it, it was a comforting feeling.

"Alright, well now that we're all done here you want to head back outside?" Viktor said motioning to the door.

I nodded "Sure thing." I began walking towards the door.

When we exited I took note of the sun, it was slowly setting under the horizon, it had been quite the long day. The sun's golden light was fading and the sky was becoming a brighter orange color. It cast long shadows across everything from the enormous trees surrounding the camp. I could see torches all around the camp slowly beginning to ignite, bathing the camp in a soft orange light.

As I looked across the camp I finally got a good look at the massive training grounds in between the two halves of the camp. The area was mostly covered in grass unlike the dirt and gravel bedding of the rest of the camp. Scattered throughout the camp were several large trees, each had a ladder leading up to a spiral of wooden planks to stand on.

In the main area of the grounds were several dozen apprentices of all different ages and races. I even noticed some people who had ears or other animal-like features similar to my ears. The whole time I had been here I had been hoping and finding it very possible that there were others like me, but actually seeing them and knowing they really existed was something completely different.

I turned to Viktor and asked "What exactly do you call people like me?"

He seemed taken back by the question and gave me an odd look, responding "What exactly do you mean by that?"

I responded by simply pointing to my ears, eliciting a slight chuckle from him "Oh you mean, your race? Well, you are what is known as a Ninx, they are a race of people with cat-like traits. There are four different races, they all fall under the category of Iluine. Lilith is part of that group as well, but she's a Drac."

I nodded, the concept made sense, I figured that Dracs were people with dragon-like traits. I continued to watch as the group continued on with their fighting and training. It was an amazing and beautiful sight, all the brilliantly colored and ornate seals appearing and disappearing in seconds, clashes of magic and strength. This just brought up another question though "Not everyone is using the same kinds of magic, and they all have very different seals, why is that?"

Viktor looked at me, a bit confused, then it dawned on him "Sorry... I keep forgetting you're completely new to all this stuff. And we haven't really given you much explanation either. Basically, there are six basic types of essence: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Darkness. Us apprentices are able to harness that essence and seals that we use to perform magic."

This also made sense "But then how do people get these different kinds of essence to use?"

Viktor raised his finger up to answer "Well, that's up to which master of magic their descended from. I'm descended from Gigrias and that means I have earth essence, you're the son of Strataros so you have wind essence, and a lot of it."

I nodded, frowning a bit, I had all this essence stuff for my whole life and I didn't even know about it. The Viktor chimed in, asking "Wait, when you had your eye active, you saw colors coming off of everything, right?"

"Yeah"

Viktor smirked "Well did you also notice that we apprentices have two colors coming off of us?"

I thought back to when I had seen the three auras from the other side of the building; Red and White, Brown and Grey, Golden and White "Yeah, when I first saw Julian, Caroline, and Lilith, they each had one color and then either grey or white."

"That's because we don't just have one type of essence, we are born with our natural essence type because of our magical ancestor, but we are also born with an affinity for either creation or destruction essence. We can't actually use them, but we can change our basic type of essence to create a secondary type of essence."

I looked at Vitkor with an expression that could only be describe as complete bewilderment, my head was spinning from all this new information. All I could manage was a simple nod to show that I had at least heard what he said. I returned my attention back to the training grounds, the sun had almost completely set, leaving the only light coming from the lanterns.

"You should be glad you came today, it's coliseum day, which means you're gonna get to see some real cool stuff take place after dinner!" Viktor's expression was wild and very excited.

I just gave him a thumbs up, not wanting to really talk right now and trying to process all the new information I had been presented with. I continued to watch as the apprentices in front of me continued whizzing around and performing incredible feats of magic. I smiled, knowing that I was going to learn how to do things just like this and that someday I might be looked upon the way I was looking at the people in front of me.

"Oh, hey, we should get you to your cabin!" Viktor said, pulling me out of my daze.

"My cabin?"