I looked away from the mirror at the sound of my mum’s footsteps. She rushed through the doorway of the bathroom and swept me into a hug.

Gold, the puffer, flew off me with a chirp.

“My handsome little baby.” She spoke. “Already going to school. You know, these will be some of the best days of your life. Don’t grow up too fast now.”

We laughed. We both knew that wasn’t going to happen. I looked five or six years old only a year ago, and now I was far older even though I’d used the Mark less.

The month I spent comatose accounted for some of the growth, but the rest came from constant use of my Mark. There were two facts I knew now. First, the pain was getting worse.

Second, the Mark was aging me at a faster rate.

It had gotten so bad that I was reluctant to use the Mark even when I had met all the conditions. I didn’t want to age further than I already had. If I accidentally took it too far, then I wouldn’t need to wait until twenty-five to die, I would already be suffering from old age.

A smaller concern was that I would grow out of my uniform too fast. It was fancy compared to what I usually wore. A white blazer, a buttoned blue shirt, and white pants.

The school had sent me five different pairs. It came with a personal note from Gerial saying it was a congratulatory gift for being accepted.

I hope I can keep it clean.

My mum gave me a final unnecessary pat down to remove any fluff she saw. We walked into the main room, and I saw my dad working with the inscriber cube.

“What have you got there?” I asked. “Is this… A book?”

There was a tiny shape revolving inside the inscriber cube. The cube glowed with yellow light and lines were carving symbols into the object.

My dad pressed one of the symbols on the cube and the object was ejected from it. It grew to normal size, and I confirmed it was a book.

“A surprise I prepared for your first day of school.” He passed it to me. “Every child should have one of these.”

I held the book and realised it was heavier than it looked. The pages weren’t paper, they were made of a tougher material. Something that would actually hold symbols.

I scrolled through the papers and saw they were all blank. I looked up expectantly at my dad and he smiled.

“We call this a texting book. You see, you can transcribe text into it and then…” He pulled out a book of his own. “Anything you text will be sent straight to me.”

A phone. He’d given me a phone. Sort of. I knew there were regents for communicating voices, but I didn’t know if they could be used long distance in this world.

I looked at the book with renewed interest.

“I love it.” I said. “But I’ll be back here every day. You guys know that, right?”

My dad chuckled and then tore a page out of his book. He gestured for me to pass him my book, and his page flew in as they drew close. The symbols on the cover swirled and changed. There was a new symbol there, and I didn’t recognise it.

“I know I want to be able to talk to you at all times, but sometimes other people want to talk to you as well.” My dad passed my book back to me. “Touch the symbol.”

I did as he asked, injecting a little bit of mana into it. It was still a mystery to me how Dad’s bloodline allowed him to use symbols while manaless.

It lit up.

The pages glowed faintly, and I opened the book to find the pages still empty. My dad took out a pen from the nearby book I’d prepared for school. I accepted it and wrote a single word.

‘Hi’

A light caught my eye. My dad’s book was glowing. I walked over to it and opened the front page. It had a single word on it.

“Hi.” I read it out loud. “Wow.”

I could text.

I looked down at the symbol that had been added to the book by my dad.

“Can I add other people’s books here?“

My dad nodded. “At Koshima academy most people would have a regent like this. Maybe even fancier ones.”

I gave him a hug. “This one is fancy. Thanks dad.”

He hugged me back. “Remember to always text me if you’re staying with friends. Or if you visit grandmother. Or if anyone bullies you. Or if you bully anyone.”

Huh. They used the slang ‘text’ in this world. I smiled. my dad was still listing the times I should send him a text.

“- and keep private notes in your system library, not your regent. If you do, make sure to text me.”

“I’ll send you a message if I do anything at all.” I promised him.

His smile turned sheepish, then devilish. “How does it work?”

I groaned. My dad had spent months hammering symbol knowledge into me. He never stopped.

I looked at the symbols on the regent. The symbols themselves weren’t important, that wasn’t what my dad was asking me about. Instead, I examined the lines between them.

Symbols could be layered in many ways, but the most common was to place them on top of each other. Each added layer would act as a combining effect.

For example, sun and earth might combine to create a heated rock that could be used for a sauna. If you layered it incorrectly, then you would have a normal rock, or a melted rock.

Each layer also required the use of connector symbols. The wavy lines that acted as conjunctions for the symbol language.

In other words, a layered symbol was a sentence.

The symbol my dad had added with his page was different. It was a standalone symbol, and it didn’t seem to mean anything. It was just there.

Either that, or it was a symbol I had never seen before.

“No, it’s not a new symbol.” My dad chuckled. “You can think of it as an identifying tag. Like the one academy sent you. Each regent that is capable of this kind of communication will have a different tag. Your regent also has one. Sometimes they overlap, but that’s rare. Activate the tag of the person you want to talk with, and you’ll be able to send messages to them.”

My eyes shone. It was a phone number. Or rather, a fax number.

“This is so cool.” I held the book in the air. “Do I add normal paper to it when I’ve run out?”

My dad nodded.

A shift in the mana around me drew my attention. Swirls of purple were starting to glide through the air around me and I heard the sound of a chime. The mana waved at me, and I picked up my bag, put the regent inside and rushed out of the house.

My parents followed behind me, and we stood outside in anticipation.

“My baby, all alone in the wild.” My mum spoke.

“I won’t be completely alone. I have friends, you know?” I poked my tongue out at them. “And Gold.”

They’d worried a lot about me this past year. It had drawn us closer, but now that we were going to separate, they were feeling some anxiety. I was too.

I held my arm out. “Gold. Time for school.”

A shadow crossed over my body as the puffer flew down and landed on my arm. There was a glint of intelligence in his eyes, and his head looked at the purple mana curiously.

He tried to peck at it, but it slipped through his beak.

He squawked.

I scratched the back of his neck and he calmed down.

“There’s going to be a lot of that soon.” I reminded him. “Remember to stay inside the boat.”

The puffer chirped and nodded its head. The mana waved through the air, multiplying, and I said my goodbyes to my parents. There were butterflies in my stomach.

A real magic school.

Who hadn’t thought about having an owl appear in their room with a letter in its mouth?

The portal began to form, and I frowned. This wasn’t a boat. I could see something transparent within the mana. It slowly materialised and if I squinted it looked like wood. Then it fully appeared, and I realised I was right.

It was a wooden door.

Waves of purple mana glowed in the air, enticing me towards the door. I took a step forward, certain in my actions.

The door itself looked ordinary. It had a doorknob in the middle, and as I drew closer it creaked open on its own.

Something glowed in my pocket. I reached in and pulled it out. It was a piece of metal with my name and other details on it. My school ID card.

The school had sent it to me when I’d been accepted.

It was reacting with my body, and then the glow flowed into the door, providing me access. I sent a final wave goodbye to my parents, and then the puffer and I entered through the door.

Woah.

The door opened into a corridor that was awash with purple water. I waded through it, not impacted by the illusion of wetness. It wasn’t real water, it was mana.

I was in the purple world, but I had never been inside a building while here. The walls were solid marble, but they moved rhythmically around me, alive and breathing.

Was I in the nexus?

I admired the view and made my way through the corridor. It only led one way. I traced my hands against its wall, and the puffer tapped the marble with its beak.

My footsteps were drowned out by the water, and as I passed through the end of the corridor, I found myself facing a hallway. And stairs. Lots of stairs.

The liquid disappeared, left back in the corridor. The world was slowly changing into solid materials. There were still wisps of mana in the air, but as I climbed the stairs it disappeared.

Step-by-step I approached the exit in the distance. The walls grew smaller, and the puffer moved to my shoulder to avoid being squashed.

Then I saw a light.

It called to me like a gentle hand. I followed it, and as we drew closer, I saw that it was the light of the sun. The echoes of footsteps disappeared, and I saw that there was vibrant grass underneath my feet.

I looked behind me and with a wave of purple mana the hallway disappeared. My eyes were drawn to a city that had been covered by the portal. It was huge. Glowing lights of all colours littered the sky and shimmered in tandem with the sun’s rays. Towers as big as skyscrapers grew into the air and surrounding them were compounds and buildings as far as my eyes could see.

This was Koshima.

I had been a tadpole that thought his city was the ocean, when it was actually a pond. The air vibrated with mana. This was a true city. It was comparable to the ones back on earth, and I could see a sea of people swarming the streets.

A tug in my chest distracted me. I turned around as my Mark reacted to something nearby. I spotted a boy waving at me, a grassy slope resting between himself and me.

Gerial.

He rushed down to meet me. I stared at him as he drew closer to me. He wasn’t invisible. In fact, he had transformed. His body was larger, his face more developed.

I thought he hated using his Mark?

He stopped in front of me and looked curiously at the puffer. These two hadn’t met before.

“Gold, meet Gerial. Gerial, meet Gold.”

The puffer chirped at Gerial in greeting.

“I get it. Gold and Silver.” Gerial gave Gold a light bow. “Very nice to meet you. I’m sure you’ll fit right in with the others.”

Others?

I was swept up in a quick hug before my thought was finished. We stepped back from each other, and I looked at him.

“Holy smokes you’ve grown.” I scanned him from head to toe.

He was wearing the same uniform I was. A white jacket and a blue shirt, with white pants.

“I was about to say the same thing.” Gerial’s eyes were wide. “I thought I was going to surprise you, but you really are a mad one.”

We laughed and started walking up the slope.

“You’ll have to show me the ropes around here.” I teased. “I’m fresh meat to these sharks.”

Gerial took my word seriously. “I’ll be showing you more than that. This place is my home.”

As we walked over the hill a building came into sight, and I stopped. It hadn’t been visible until we walked closer. Three towers loomed over me, shimmering with magic. The left swam in red, the right glowed blue. The middle was surrounded by green mana. Other colours dipped and dove between the windows and bricks.

It was more a castle than a school. The air shimmered with a tinge of orange in the shape of a bubble across the sky.

Crowds of students walked towards the academy, and it dwarfed them.

Gerial turned to me with a grin.

“Welcome to Koshima academy.”