Marfen, Caerinth 20th, AE 1919
Oxpost, Kingdom of Wester
No one in Wester spoke of magic unless they meant to curse it. The word itself was a stain, a thing spat through cracked lips by drunks and dying men, or else whispered with a shudder as mothers bundled their children close at night.
Once, the stories went, magic had been as common as rain or world, drifting through the world in slow, unseen currents, touching everything with the possibility of change. But then came the Ashlight Event— an occurrence long ago when the sky split in half and the rivers boiled, when entire cities vanished into ash and dust and the sun disappeared for days. Old women said you could still see the scars on the moon if you looked closely enough, a reminder of the treachery of magic.
Afterwards, the people of the world drifted apart, into two kinds of places: those that clutched at the tattered remnants of miracles and rebuilt with them, and those that spat on the word and salted the ground where any trace of magic survived.
As the years passed, less and less of the world remained afraid of the magic that once left the world at the brink of destruction. Wester was the last place that held onto this fear. The kingdom's rulers, the self-proclaimed "God-Kings", had burned every grimoire and chased every hedge-witch that was unlucky enough to find themselves in their lands. Statues in the capital showed hooded men trampling serpentine shadows beneath their sandaled feet, their fists raised in exultant, wrathful truimph.
To be born with an ounce of magic in Wester was to be born with a death sentence. And yet, even after two millennia of ash and fire, strange children still came wriggling out of their mothers, eyes bright with silent, forbidden knowledge lurking just beneath the surface. Most did not live long. The lucky ones lost whatever spark there was before anyone could discover it. But there were always stories, in the villages and mountain towns, of what happened to those who slipped through the net.
In the rest of the world, magic had become the norm, even commercial; there were schools open to anyone with a few coins and a knack for bending light and matter to their will.
It was into this world, into this kingdom, trembling on the fulcrum between fear and hope, that Alden was born five years earlier. He lived alone with his mother and spent most days tending to chores and tasks around their small farm, taking whatever time he could to run and play with his two dearest friends, Elowen and Elyra.
The sisters were daughters of the local lord and frequently traveled to Oxpost to learn about their father's domain and about the world around them, to prepare themselves to take the reigns in the future. Although they were serious about their duties, they enjoyed slacking off to enjoy their time with their farmer friend. Whenever they visited Oxpost, the three of them were inseparable. Playing warlocks and witch-hunters, poor Alden was usually forced to be the warlock so the girls could then relentlessly hunt him through the edges of the forest near his farm.
It was a simple life and one that the young child came to enjoy. Then, one night, it all changed.
It happened on the third Marfen night of the new year, when the air tasted of smoke and the starless dark pressed close to the eaves. The girls had left earlier that day, borne off in a rattling cart with the lord's driver and a pair of sullen guards. Alden had watched them go, waving until Elowen's blue kerchief shrank to nothing against the road's horizon. He'd returned to his chores in a sullen daze, chopping wood and feeding the chickens, and when his mother called him in for supper, she found him standing in the half-light, staring at the sky as if he could will the girls back.
Unbeknownst to him, something had awoken deep within him. Something that has survived, when any other magical energy near these mountains would have been snuffed out. It was powerful and it was chaotic.
He barely tasted the stew his mother ladled into his bowl, nor the heel of bread she pressed into his hand. She tried to rouse him with gentle questions— about what game they'd played, about whether Elowen or Elyra had bestedhim again in argument— but, unlike his typical self, Alden could only nod, mute, as a pressure tunneled through his chest and gnawed at his stomach. He went to bed early, only to toss for hours, listening to the wind snap the shutters, to his mother's slippered feet shuffling by candlelight in the next room.
Sometime after midnight, he woke up with a gasp. The room was pulsing with a dull orange glow. Heat prickled his cheeks; sweat pooled in the hollow of his collarbone. He sat up, thinking at first that a neighbor's barn had caught fire, but the light was coming from within— from him, it seemed, from the air itself. The pressure inside him swelled, doubling and redoubling until his body felt stretched to the breaking. Alden clawed at his throat, trying to scream, but his voice was gone.
Fear had gripped him, and the innate magic that had just awakened within took that fear as a sign of danger. The world blurred white, then black, then exploded into impossible color as the magic attacked. He heard wood groaning, windows shattering, a single wordless cry as the walls of the house peeled away like the skin of a fruit.
He remembered the sensation of flying, then falling, trumbling through cinders and splinters and the reek of hot iron. Alden landed hard, half-buried in the dust at the edge of the clearing. It took minutes— maybe hours— before he was able to move4, he couldn't tell. At first, he uncurled his fingers from the fist pressed against his ribs. When he finally staggered upright, the house was gone. Only a crater remained, rimmed with blackened timbers and ash. He called for his mother, his voice hoarse and strange, but there was no answer. Nothing but scorched earth and the distant rattle of the manor's night watch bell, already tolling the alarm.
Looking at his chest and staring at the glow, he understood, before his mind even caught up, what this meant. He was Ember-touched. He had magic.
There would be torchbearers, trackers, men in the God-King's colors riding for blood. He felt the hollow place inside him where his mother's voice used to live, and in that emptiness grew the cold certainty that he wouldn't survive if he stayed here mourning. He staggered to the woodshed and took up his father's old axe, then ran, not daring to look back at the ruin behind him. The world narrowed to the thud of his feet, the sting of branches on his skin, the taste of iron in his mouth.
He ran until the bell faded; he ran until the first hint of dawn smeared the sky with grey. He found a hollow in the roots of an old, storm-shattered oak and collapsed into it, teeth chattering, body slick with sweat and grime. he didn't sleep. He only lay there, clutching the axe to his chest, listening to the hush that comes after calamity, the silence between one life and the next.
At sunrise he made for the river, stumbling through thorns, nothing to guide him but the awful, gnawing need to keep moving, to not be caught.
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