Straightening his shabby leather jacket, Alex waited for the gate to rattle off to the side, revealing an old, time-worn asphalt road.

“Get out of here, Doom,” boomed a voice from behind him.

Alex turned to the steel tower and the fat guard behind the reinforced glass. He couldn’t remember the tubby man’s name, though that didn’t keep him from flashing a middle finger tattooed with the word DOOM.

The guard shouted something back, but Alex was already too far away to hear what it was.

Flipping his jacket collar up, he left the grounds of the Special Correctional Institution for Uniquely Gifted Humans. It was a prison for wizards, in other words, and it was where Alex had spent the past few years. The past four years, to be precise.

His hands shivered from the cold as he fished a crumpled pack of unfiltered cigarettes out of his pocket. Catching a glimpse of it, he smiled, tossed a cancer stick out, and caught it deftly out of the air with his lips.

Odd as it may be, he’d actually hadn’t learned that trick outside prison. It had been back in those barracks buried several miles underground, the ones where everyone wore magic-inhibiting collars.

Alex rubbed his neck. He could still feel the weight of the adamantius, the accursed metal used by the government to inhibit wizards when they broke the law. Of course, that wasn’t all they used. There were also the bullying guards who were only too happy to overstep what they were allowed to do, not to mention plenty of other unpleasantries.

“Damn it,” Alex muttered. By force of habit, he’d brought a thumb to the cigarette only for it to not light up.

Glancing at the heavy manacle around his left ankle, Alex cursed again. He was going to be without his magic for a while longer.

And he didn’t have a lighter. How were you supposed to get one onto an island forgotten by gods, humans, spirits, demons, fairies, and all the other beings and connected to Myers City by just a single bridge?

Leading to the bridge was a broken road traversed once a day by a bus. Given that the sun was already sinking toward the ocean in the west, Alex had been released shortly after the solitary steel lifeboat had left.

Alex picked up the gray bag he’d had with him when he was arrested by the Department of Law and Order, walked to the bus stop, and sat down on the wooden bench.

There was a piercing northern wind blowing. Myers City had a short summer, and the weather had already gone downhill with August still up on the calendar. Alex wrapped his thin jacket tighter around himself, anxious for some warmth. Chewing on his cigarette, his mind wandered to what was left of his life. He didn’t have many choices, not fresh out of prison with a serious, black-magic conviction on his record.

And, to be honest, magic was all he was good at.

“Life is such a blast,” he drawled, peering out over the endless stone ridge battered by the cold sea waves. The prison was rumored to be a replica of once-famous Alcatraz. It was the first prison for wizards modeled after a regular one.

His reflection on that particular historical irony was interrupted by the squeal of brakes as a long, imposing limo came to a sudden stop next to the rusty bus station. The plentiful chrome accents accentuated its black, all-business look. The classic gas exhaust spoke volumes about the car owner—in an age of magic modules, few people could afford the ownership tax on a classic gas car, let alone buy one.

A man got out of the driver’s seat. Tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing an insanely expensive suit and dazzling shoes, his face was crisscrossed by scars.

Alex shuddered. He’d see people like that before, just not as drivers. They’d been the best fighters the High Garden gangs had to offer.

Analyze, Alex commanded the neurochip in his lens.

A reddish message flashed in front of his eyes.

[Name: ??? Race: Human. Mana level:4561]

Alex almost choked on his cigarette. Four and a half thousand conventional mana points made for an awfully strong Adept.

What kind of monster could afford to hire a full-fledged Adept as his driver? Alex didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know either. But he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to have a much of a choice.

The introduction was going to be made.

The driver pushed his cap over steel eyes that could have belonged to a soldier or a hitman before opening the passenger door.

“Thanks, Duncan,” a sleek, melodious voice said. “Get in, Mr. Dumsky. We have some things to discuss.”

Alex glanced up at the gray, overhanging sky. Shrouded in dark clouds, it weighed on his shoulders like a granite coffin lid.

Any normal person in his shoes would have refused, only to get tucked into the limo anyway, just less presentably.

When a clearly official car stops in front of you, declining an invitation isn’t stupid. It’s suicide.

Shouldering his bag, Alex walked over to the limo and smiled insolently at the driver. “Hi Dunk,” he said with a wave before ducking into the car without waiting for a response.

He had to admit, even in his good days, his buttocks had never felt such comfort. Far from a regular car seat, it was an actual armchair. The upholstery was beige leather, and it had wooden armrests, a footrest, ventilation, massage rollers, and presumably a whole litany of other absurdly expensive and incredibly expensive features.

Sitting in an identical armchair facing his was a middle-aged man. In the outside world, one of racist and sexist mortals, he wouldn’t have escaped being labelled as Asian. But here, in the land of magic, he was just a state official with yellowish skin and narrow eyes.

His well-groomed hands, shiny with fresh body lotion and nail polish, held a plain file folder. That’s right—not a tablet or even a smartphone. It was a hard copy. Alex didn’t think anyone used them anymore, at least outside the mafia.

Analyze.

[Name: ??? Race: ??? Mana level: ???]

Just as Alex suspected, the suit worked for some government agency. No one but high-ranked officials were permitted by Myers City law to hide their race and mana level.

Shit.

Alex didn’t even feel the limo start moving. His only clue was the scenery outside starting to coast by.

“Alex Dumsky. Raised at the St. Frederick orphanage. Escaped at age seven. First brought to the police station at eight. For stealing…” The suit stopped turning the pages lazily and raised his eyebrows. “A cat?”

“Troubled childhood,” Alex replied, specifying that he’d been robbing an apartment when the cat had swallowed its owner’s earring. Crazy animal.

“Joined the Tkils gang at ten, according to the police. The youngest gang member ever?”

“I have a gift,” Alex said with a smile.

“No argument here.” The suit nodded. “Two hundred mana points at age twelve points to incredibly rare potential. By twelve, you’d already hit five hundred mana points and the Practitioner level. If you’d been studying at a public school, they’d have labeled you a genius.”

“No, they wouldn’t have.”

“You’re right,” the suit agreed. “Most likely, they’d have done mental body surgery right away to keep you from practicing dark magic.”

“…which is not prohibited.” An evil note crept into Alex’s voice as the suit’s words stirred up an old grudge. “But you use it as a reason to maim children.”

“We spare them a hard and unnecessary fate. But that’s not what we’re here to discuss. So, a young boy of twelve with Practitioner power…no, a Practitioner dark wizard decides that the Tkils gang isn’t quite right for him.” The suit turned a page, and Alex spotted a few pictures. What he saw there was even less to his liking than the dreary view out the window.

“When he saw that, Duncan noted that you deserved a bunk in a mental hospital, not a prison.”

“And the gangsters thought I deserved a bunk in the next world.” Alex kept looking out the window. “I disagreed.”

“I see,” the suit said, nodding again. “So, for a long time, our un-attested Practitioner dark wizard fall off the radar. And two years later, the city’s black market was booming.”

Alex couldn’t help chuckling smugly. He’d had so much fun working with the old dwarf back in those days.

“Dozens of top-level spells, all the way up to Mystic, and a gang war triggered in the High Garden district.” The suit turned another page. “Then you made a mistake, Mr. Dumsky: you underestimated law enforcement. However skilled you were at averting eyes, buying a sport car with a magic drive at fourteen is ridiculous. That’s more than I can afford with my government salary.”

Alex coughed. If his guess about the suit’s position was true, the suit could afford a dozen of them.

“And that was how they got you,” the man posing as a simple civil servant went on.

“You don’t happen to have a lighter on you, do you?”

“No smoking in here,” the suit snapped. “Two years spent chasing down a mouse like you, and the whole time you were living a street over from the High Garden police department. The nerve.”

Alex had a different opinion. As the two-bit scammers said in the streets that were his alma mater, the best hiding places are in plain sight.

“Then two attempts at detention. A sixteen-year-old at the Mystic level, twelve hundred mana points strong. I’ll admit, I’ve never seen anyone like that before.” There were more pictures, and that set filled Alex with pride. “You sent three operatives, all seasoned Practitioners, into intensive care. Four more spent months at the hospital recovering from a variety of injuries.”

Alex hadn’t been looking for a fight that day. But they smashed his car! And even though he could have easily afforded a new one back then, it was a matter of principle. He’d invested so much energy in the fraudulent scheme it had taken to buy the thing that the memories were really what he cared about.

Or maybe he was just the sick bastard the media portrayed him as. He tried to remember if he’d kept that article.

“For a whole month, no one hears a peep from you until you pop up in a meaningless bar brawl. Ridiculous.”

Alex winced. That memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

“You were in custody a week later.” The suit glanced over another page from the file and whistled. “Detained by an Adept forty Mystic-level operatives. They really came at you.”

Alex would have escaped that time as well if it hadn’t been for that bloody Adept. The trained Mystics had been stupid and clumsy. If it hadn’t been for that bloody Adept.

“Then the court hearings. Your case had seventeen volumes, almost as many as you were old, no? And what did they throw at you? Fifteen counts of theft. A hundred and ninety-nine counts of illegal dark spell crafting with intent to sell. Five counts of aggravated assault. Thirty-six counts of assault on an officer of the law. Seven counts of murder by dark magic.” The suit coughed and pressed a button. Wooden cabinet doors opened, revealing the gilded interior and a china set that a complex mechanism instantly filled with water. It even dropped some ice in. “None of the seven counts held up. Otherwise, I’ll be frank, we wouldn’t be having this talk.”

It didn’t escape Alex that the suit stole a glance at his ankle cuff. Damn. Damn!

The whole thing was heading somewhere very bad.

“And the cherry on top: demonology and demonic magic. Both of those are prohibited by law.”

Alex chewed the cigarette silently, oblivious to the fact that he’d already eaten just about the entire thing.

“Given the fact that you weren’t a first-time offender, you were sentenced to…three hundred and fourteen years in prison.”

“That’s nothing,” Alex replied with a nervous snort. He had a sudden urge to throw open the door and hurl himself onto the sharp rocks. He liked that ending better than what was coming.

“Released on parole four year later, on the condition that you keep that cuff on for the rest of your life.” He glanced back at the ankle adorned by the artifact blocking Alex’s magic.

The suit slammed the file shut and leaned back in his armchair. With his little finger waving in the air, he took a noisy gulp of water from a faceted glass. “So, what do we have here? One incredibly talented, even brilliant, self-taught wizard choosing dark magic and reaching levels of power most can only dream of at the age of sixteen.”

If it hadn’t been for that bloody prison and the four years I lost, Alex thought, I’d have your Duncan on his knees.

“The state can’t—well, can’t and shouldn’t—waste a gift like yours. So—”

“Let me interrupt,” Alex said, raising a hand like a student at one of the schools he never attended. “Why did you get me out of prison?”

“You’re quick. We wanted to make it a surp—”

“Why?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

“As you’ve no doubt guessed, we’d like to offer collaboration that, if you prove your worth, will let you forget your past and find a place in the upper echelons of society.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Okay, I’ll put it simply.” The suit intertwined his fingers and flashed a predatory gaze, his good-natured mask gone. “On either side of you are sharp rocks and limo doors badly in need of repair. Behind you is a prison where, as far as I can tell, you don’t have many fans. And in front of you is me, promising you a job and the chance to get that cuff off your ankle.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“A better offer than what most get.” The suit held up his hands. “So, what will it be?”

Alex glanced into the suit’s eyes. They were made out of cold steel. Shit. Which department is he from exactly?

“Four years getting myself off in my bed,” Alex sighed. “I never thought I’d be screwed by government officials the minute I walked out the door.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I don’t think I have much choice,” Doom replied with a nod and a sad smile. He’d long since gotten used to the nickname, almost forgetting his actual last name. “What’s the job?”

“In a nutshell, you’ll be entering First Magic University,” the suit replied, smiling disarmingly. “You’re going to be its Professor of Dark Magic.”

Pausing, Alex waited for the suit to say that he was joking. He didn’t.

“Wha-a…”

Alex’s stunned cry dissolved into coughing as he swallowed the remains of his cigarette.