The tiny light on top of an old, almost burnt to its base, candle was dancing as wind crawled through the cracks in the walls as old as time itself. It’s peculiar how some creatures tend to grasp onto the things they know, thinking otherwise they would lose themselves. It’s even more peculiar that a simple dancing light of a candle can bring your mind back home, filling the emptiness of your heart with familiar senses. 

Seea wondered if that’s why the tiny guard’s room at the basement entrance smelled like sand after a heavy rain to her, swearing she could feel the tingle in her nose. It was her night as a library lookout, to make sure no night crawling young enthusiast came looking on more dangerous bookshelves. Thankfully, most nights were quiet.

Traditionally, younger Intricate Arts Academy students were less interested in books and much more interested in hearing legends about the academy building from their older guardians. Seea was not appointed as one yet, but she knew there were a few new arrivals that might become her next assignment. Until then she’d been the library lookout, the poison gander nanny as well as an assistant on some of the classes. Gods, it’s been almost five cycles she’s here, one of the oldest students that stayed behind.

The scent of wet sand became much heavier as Seea almost dozed off in her comfy chair, looking at the candle flame twirling, ready to fade as there was barely any candle left for it to burn. 

Her mind brought back memories of the sands. Seea was raised in the Crimson Sands, not too far from the academy - a couple days by camel, not much more. Their town always smelled like wet sand, layed out next to one of the few lakes - a blessing of their goddess savior Phou. Sin’lyan towns and villages were all children of Phou, so, as the rest, Seea’s town was built around a fire shrine, also having smaller shrines at the entrance of every building. All a mix of rust-reddish stone and faded white patterns, this town always felt like home and the people of it treated Seea as one of their own.

Mother Oura, the woman who adopted Seea, believed the child was brought by Phou herself. Maybe to test Oura and the town’s people, maybe just as a sign of blessing - as they would treat any fire-crawlers of a pure white color. That being said, yes, Seea was pale as clay sin’lyans used to draw white patterns on their homes. Even though the town made her feel at home, she stood out - sin’lyans wear their rust-colored skin with pride, saying it’s the color of fire, which burns within their kelium.

That’s probably why Seea longed for candle light even though Intricate Arts Academy never went fully dark - all corridors had kelium patterns glowing with soft yellow light, so no one ever gets lost in the darkness. 

However, something was off. Seea suddenly opened her eyes and looked around. Academy was shaking, shivering and screeching all over. Child of the sands could hear footsteps all around the old building on top of her, people were running, stumbling, someone must have thrown down a glass or a vase as you could clearly hear it hitting the stone floor and breaking. Someone cried in the far away corridors. When was the last time the academy woke up in the middle of the night in such horror? Seea couldn’t remember.

Heavy wooden doors of the library opened slightly and a young girl with short curly silver hair looked around, checking for people. She must have been sent to check the less populated rooms for anyone left behind.

Main Hall was the epicenter of Intricate Arts Academy - placed strategically within layers of walls of the building, being able to withstand any possible threat from outside. Neither gods nor mortal men took it to their liking that there’s a place gathering talented kelium wielders, so the Headmistress in charge would always expect anything and everything from the world outside. That was also one of the reasons the academy lay between Crimson Sands and Bone Cliffs, which cut into the black ocean waters with no mercy and no way to enter the building from down.

Headmistress Afagonia was standing at the entrance of the Main Hall, speaking with Ms Blish and Meruna, who was just a couple cycles younger than Seea and frequently placed on the Tower as night lookout. Meruna seemed scared, while Afagonia herself didn’t seem to show any concern. Coming from a distant relation with birdborn, headmistress Afagonia was taller than anyone Seea has ever met, slender, with a face of someone who’s seen Death itself and walked away. Everyone in the academy knew that the current headmistress was blessed by Mother Goddess Ameera, born with a kelium stone embedded between her eyebrows. Her destiny was set then and there, as no country would be allowed by gods to harness such a powerful connection to the core energy.

- Headmistress, Ms Blish, - Seea slightly nodded, approaching the elders, - What’s going on?

- Seea, dear child… - in Ms Blish’s eyes the girl could spot fear.

- Please come in with the others, - Afagonia smiled with reassurance, - everything will be alright.

Main hall was filled with students, mostly half-asleep and not knowing what’s going on. Some younger kids were scared. A girl who arrived last week, probably the youngest academy ever took in, was silently crying in a corner, clenching her guardian’s nightgown. Seea was trying to find any familiar faces, but in such a crowd it was seemingly a really hard task, when someone grabbed her hand. Meruna was right behind her, looking around, her amber-colored eyes dark and pale, her face showing genuine fear she was trying to hide with very little success.

- Seea, you’re from sin’lyans, right?

- Raised by them, yes, - she could never accept to be called sin’lyan, her kelium did not hold fire, it held light.

Long ago this made it impossible to track where she’d come from. Because no known cultures across L’arcian lands were prominent with light wielding. Light was a primary force, not gifted to the gods either, however Seea’s looks did give Mother Oura some ideas that she might be Raw-fei’s, moon god’s, bastard child. As no mother would have left her on a doorstep in the middle of nowhere, if a god would agree to acknowledge the child. Unfortunately, gods rarely did, as they’d be obliged to bless these children and no god would willfully go and share their powers. 

There’s a difference in creating a nation out of fire and clay, molding kelium into living beings, and actually reproducing with the incurable. That’s how gods referred to mortals, as they had an end, whyle gods did not. However, reproducing with one and then acknowledging the child as your own would mean the god, in the face of all universe, agrees to share his or her power with this child. Who’d want to do that? So Seea stayed as an orphan in Mother Oura’s care.

- It’s a Blood storm, what do you know of those? - Meruna looked really scared, which she should not be blamed for.

- Are you sure?

- Of course I’m sure, there’s nothing else that looks like one!

They were whispering at the edge of the crowd, as it was obvious that no one else should hear this piece of news. Seea was not sure if anyone here even knew what a Blood storm was, as the last recorded one on this edge of the sands happened when she was found by Mother Oura, that’s over seventeen cycles ago and majority of the students are barely sixteen. Meruna could only tell what it was as she studied all possible occurrences to be placed for Lookout, but even she did not anticipate to see one ever.

Blood storms only occur in the Crimson sands, nowhere else across L’arc. The sands lay across the continent, spreading for months of travel, and are home to sin’lyans, fire-crawlers and a few lakes. However, besides being a long journey, crimson sands are also deadly, as under the surface the moors crawl. The only way to tell a crawling moor is a distinctive smell of mossy, muddy wet sand, and there’s little to no way to survive a moor if you stepped close enough. They feast on anything and everything that breathes.

Sin’lyans called the mating of two crawling moors a Blood Storm. These creatures do not mate often, maybe once every twenty or thirty cycles, but they create a traveling storm of sand, gas, mud and anything that’s left of their recent dinners, blood being the primary liquid in the equation. Seea never saw one with her eyes, but Mother Oura told stories of how the whole town got covered in sticky reddish mud and the stench stayed for weeks on end. There was no fighting or preventing the storm - you could only hide within walls and hope they would not take apart the stones and devour you in the process.

Well, Mistress Afagonia said everything will be alright… Right?

Seea found herself tucked away in the far corner of the main hall, almost blending into the walls, trying to understand if the storm began yet. She saw a couple sin’lyan boys pass by not long ago, but they seemed calm, maybe too young to even hear stories about the storms, maybe never experiencing a crawling moor. One passed by Seea’s town once, they all smelled it and then saw a few of the cattle just drown in the sand under them, screaming, trying to fight it with all their instincts. But you can’t fight a moor. It’s pure sand, it blends into it. Thankfully it rarely approaches towns or villages to feed, as it tends to consume everything above it and clay, stones and wood are not exactly gourmet meals, even if they come with a few sin’lyans in them. Hence sin’lyan kids are never allowed to exit village borders alone.

First hours seemed like eternity - the headmistress sealed the doors and all windows of the main hall with kelium locks. They were locked in, as the walls started vibrating. 

The storm was here.

It’s hard to tell how long passed before it stopped. Vibrations went from light ones to such intensity that the tiny crystals on the chandeliers started shaking, hitting and creating an eerie rhythm for the storm above. And then suddenly everything went silent, as if time itself stopped, as if no one was even breathing in the whole hall. 

A teacher Seea did not know accompanied headmistress Afagonia to the main entrance and they performed a wielding together, an interesting mix of energies surrounded them, as some older students could tell - allowing the women to oversee what is happening outside and if it is safe to exit. Not often academy teachers performed combined wielding in front of the students - it’s a skill they did not teach even the oldest of students, as very few across L’arc could perform fusions with success. Seea took a wild guess that Afagonia was one of the very few and the teacher accompanying her was just a plus one in this situation.

- The storm has passed! - announced headmistress after the energies around her have calmed.

Everyone was instructed to exit into the side-corridors and not to look around too much, especially the younger students. Thank gods it was still night time, as the moment the doors were unsealed, Seea, among all the rest, felt the sweetened stench of rot and mud. Academy was built in layers, having garden space in-between buildings, so a lot was probably left over the trees and grass surrounding the main hall and the inner complexes. 

As she stepped out of the main hall, Seea heard something cracking under her foot, realizing she probably crushed a small bone. Shivering when she felt anything on the ground, the girl rushed back to her post in the library, thankfully it was right across from the main hall so there weren’t too many steps to be made.

The Library was silent. They must have fortified the whole academy, as none of the windows had any cracks, just dark stains Seea could see in the dim kelium light as she looked around. Nothing changed here in the last few hours - heavy wooden tables still standing across the huge reading area, some couches, infinite shelves with all kinds of books on history, kelium wielding, theoretical and practical, as well as natural studies and, of course, the dangerous corrupted section, closed off by a sealed pathway… That’s when Seea saw that the door leading to the dark arts section of the library was wide open and rushed back outside to call for Afagonia.

- The Feral Origina is missing! - Afagonia came back from the dark arts section looking like she’d seen the end of days.