458 A.C.

Andha Ild’s POV

I remember Joseph’s face as he shouted, how it twisted from fear to hate.

Curse your damned demonic eye!

A shout, with words that echo through my mind. Then it was blue, a pure blue, that consumed me. That brilliant light...That was the last thing I could remember.

Why? What happened for Joseph to become so afraid of me? I was just asking him to return to his post. I knew that there was something he was hiding. We have known each other for years now. The last time he acted like that was four years ago, when he tried to attend his post without any armor. Yet, what happened… What happened for him to hate me so much?

"Wake up!" A voice called out from the aether, beckoning me, but where was it guiding me to? "Wake up!" Something grabbed and shook my shoulder, as I struggled to open my eyes.

Pain, I am freezing, my face, it burns! It is freezing! It burns! Pain!

My face felt as if it was frozen before being set out into the sun and then melting into a puddle of goo.

My eyes felt like they were being pulled out from my skull. "!" I cautiously guide, my fingers to my face. I wanted to know if what I was feeling was all an illusion. Slowly, I touched my forehead. I felt no pain, nothing.

Was my pain nothing but an illusion?

I tried opening my eyes once more. Yet, I couldn’t open my right eye. Once more, I moved my, now trembling, hand and gently touched my right eyelid. I felt nothing, truly nothing.

What!?

My eye was missing. Panic consumed my thoughts, until it was gradually replaced with a sense of loss.

I had lost both my eye and a friend. I felt as if I was stranded on the ocean, while on a raft, and storm clouds were obscuring the sun. "You are awake, right?" A voice shouted, clearing my mind.

Where am I? I thought, as I looked around me.

I was in a small room made of tan stone bricks. Each brick had a strange small magic formation carved into them. They were strange, because they didn’t concur with the modern orthodox for creating a formation.

In the orthodoxy, you start by drawing the rune for the element you wish to use, then you write a runic code for the spell you wish to make inside the rune, then you connect the code to itself using magic lines, and then you connect the code to the elemental rune.

Here, though, the formations start with the elemental rune, then they use one or two runes for their code, and then they fill the elemental rune with strange patterns made from magic lines.

Due to the peculiarities of the formations, as I scanned the bricks, I only recognized three of these formations. One being a dust removing formation, the other being a water repealing formation, and the last being a silencing formation. Between the bricks seemed to be a particular blue-green color, akin to rusted copper.

There was someone standing to my left. They had short hair and wore a peculiar robe that looked as if it were made from copper. Their eyes and hair were brown in color. With their eyes being darker than their hair, as I was looking around, they began to speak.

"You are now in the last of the arcanist towers, or at least the last I know of. I am Daska Teleftai. I am the only living arcanist on this plane. Perhaps the last in the Void Sea…"

They sighed, as I was shocked and scared.

”You mean the arcanists who started the calamity?! Weren’t you destroyed when you tried to protect the plane from those demons you invited?!" I said as I was trying to find an exit.

I should have known when I was looking at these formations. Yet, now that I am looking at them, aren’t they different from what historians described? It was recorded that the arcanists relied almost solely on magic runes in their formations. But there was almost none here.

I looked back to Daska only to see that they were not there. Quickly, I scanned the room, only to find no one. I tried to stand up, only to be hit with a wave of dizziness once I succeeded. I fell to the ground. While trying to get back to my feet, I heard footsteps approaching my side. I looked over, only to see that Daska had returned, with a big tome.

"Our Lime Copper tower never used the demonic runes. We use magic circuits." They said, as they placed the tome on a desk in the corner of the room. They continued to speak while flipping pages in the tome.

"300 B.C. was when we arcanists discovered interplaner communication. Each tower communicated with different planes. Through this, our civilization has learned about many things. One of those being the danger of the runes."

While talking, they grabbed my arm, and helped me back into bed. After doing so, they brought me the tome.

"Runes are made from the soul seals of supremely powerful beings. All beings with a soul have one. The seal allows your soul to brand energies. For example, when you eat, your body will assimilate some of the food you take in. When this happens, your soul will seal this matter. When you cultivate, your soul seals the energies you capture. The soul seal can change as you grow stronger. When one forms a core, they carve a formation onto it. When they do so, they change their soul seal. The old one assimilates the carved formation. When a soul becomes strong enough, this seal can also be used by others to manipulate energies."

I was baffled, so I asked, "How do we know this?" "I was getting to that," they responded, "Souls formed on planes are branded with the plane's seal. This seal protects the soul of those on the plane from the plane's spiritual suppression. For example, our plane’s soul seal is a magic hand. When you use it in a spell, you can use it to create life."

"It’s impossible to create life with magic!" I exclaimed. "Why? To create a living being, the being needs a soul and a body. So all you need to do is capture a few incomplete souls, mark them with the seal, and then feed them until they become a complete soul. Then you add it to a body." They responded, with a look of contempt on their face.

"Now then, stop interrupting me. Where was I? Oh yeah, our Lime Copper tower learned that some powerful beings can sense when their soul seals are used in spells. So, we issued a warning to all the towers... unfortunately, they did not listen. When we discovered how to travel between planes, a powerful being sensed our plane. It sent many of its subordinates to capture us. We resisted for twenty-six years, before we were defeated. Then they started to attack the towers. All the towers asked for help from the planes. One by one, towers were destroyed until reinforcements arrived."

"The cultivators?" I asked. "Yes," they responded, "the cultivators arrived and asked for payment, so we told them of our magic. They were happy with our payment, and killed or sealed the invaders. After that, they found the culprit behind the raids on our plane. They fought and sealed them on this world's moon. Now, what will you do to pay for this information?" They asked. "You didn’t expect this to be free. Not only did I save your life, but I also told you the tower's history. Before the calamity, that was enough to pay for five years' worth of formations. So will you pay now, or start working for me?"

"What?! That was more than four hundred years ago, and I doubt your information was worth that much. You only clarified some obscure history, in less than five minutes!" I exclaimed as I grew angry.

"Do you even know what happened to you? Do you know how much it costs to save you? Your soul was almost destroyed, when you were hit by that soul beam. Not only that, but your core exploded, damaging your body while your bloodline was rejecting your soul. How do you think I healed you?" They questioned. "It took a salve made from five soul berries processed with the roots of a five hundred year old tree, aged for 100 years. To heal your soul. To heal your body, I had to use a 50-year-old health potion, and don’t even get me started on your bloodline." They said this in a hushed but angry tone. "What do you think you should pay!" They said, as I was at a loss, I came from a small noble family, but they could not afford the health potion, let alone the other medicines. "I don’t have enough money to pay for the treatment, what should I do?" I asked, as a slight smirk appeared on their face. "Easy," they responded, "become my apprentice and pass on our legacy to the future generations."