Everyone’s got magic. That’s just the way it is. Some shine brighter than others, some have more talent or skill, but one thing holds true: red is low, purple is high. So you see, whenever someone uses their abilities, the energy shines. The color of that light is an accurate gauge for power.

So now you know what it means when I say that my magic is so weak, you can’t even see my light. It‘s invisible. I barely have enough power to slide a copper across a table, let alone call down thunder from the heavens, or even set something on fire.

Another thing, what you’re born with is what you get. You will never improve, you can’t. Oh, sure, your mana pool might get bigger, and your control could improve, but the energy in your magic won’t increase. You can’t break that bottleneck for power. Even if I had the largest mana pool in the world, an orange or even a red would demolish me, just because I can’t output much power.

It's like a bucket with a pinhole poked in the bottom, my magic. Even if the bucket was massive, not much is gonna come out, not even enough to cast a low level spell or a cantrip. I’m limited to the most basic and weakest of magic, based on willpower and imagination. You can’t throw fireballs with your imagination, it just doesn’t work like that.

So in light of all this, you must be wondering. If I’m so weak that even a random passerby on the street could kill me in an instant, how am I still alive? Well, the answer is that I’m not, I’m dead.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that people are dicks. That was a lesson I learned time and time again throughout my life. I was walking out of a shop, I’d just bought some paper. I bumped into a random yellow, and he spilled his drink. Apparently, that cost him 2 coppers, and of course, either I pay or I die. So obviously I whip two coppers out of my wallet, because I’m not a suicidal maniac.

He snatches my wallet out of my hand, turns around, and leaves me with the two coppers. I had 23 coppers in there, enough to feed me for a week. “Hey!” I yell, “that’s my wallet!” and he turns around and blasts my head off with a fireball. My corpse is ash, and my magic, as weak as it is, condenses into a ghostly form.

And that’s how I died. Not an honorable death by combat, to say the least. Of course, now that I’m dead, I’m a ghost, floating around on the remnants of my magic and willpower, and waiting for my soul to slip into the afterlife. I probably have enough time to swing by my parent’s house and apologize for wasting their food all these years.

I phase through the door of the house I grew up in. Everything is in its place. The table, the couch, the swear jar above the mantle, it's all as it was twenty minutes ago when I left to go buy paper. I move down the hall and phase through the door to my parents room.

Luckily, they aren’t doing anything, just sleeping. If they were, I wouldn’t have any time to apologize before my soul disintegrates. I tap on my dad's shoulder, and he stirs from his sleep. “Heya, dad. I died.”

“Finally, sheesh. What a worthless sack of grease you were. Did you at least get the paper home?”

“No, died on the way back.”

“And the money we sent you with?”

“Gone.”

“Well, be off then, I’ve no desire to listen to you whine anymore, got it?”

“Alright, sleep well, then.”

And then I leave. Two hours later, I’m sitting on top of my house, and waiting for the real end. It's cold, being a ghost. Well, not exactly cold, but there’s no heat or feeling. Maybe if my magic was a little stronger I would feel something, but nope. I hope it's over soon.

It's been a long time. Two days, to be exact, and there's an issue. My ghost isn’t collapsing, and my soul isn’t vanishing to the afterlife. Usually this process is supposed to not take long, before the magic that makes up your form leaves your control and falls apart. From there, the little container made of magic that holds your soul no longer exists, and so it drifts away into the void.

I’m dead, so why am I not gone? Reds are supposed to last about twelve hours after death, and I’m lower than a red! I should have disappeared while talking to my dad, or right after, but here I am. Even purples only last about a day. I don’t get it.

I feel a call. It's been a week. I can’t feel anything but the call. No heat, no sunlight, no wind, nothing, but the voice that pleads I follow it. I want to, more than anything. It beckons me, and so I go. As soon as I give into it a little bit, the call only gets stronger. I know the direction in which I’m now flying is the right way, I’m getting closer, so why is it hurting more?

I fly faster and faster, beginning to burn my magic -- my form -- just for more speed, and the further I get the more the need burns at my heart and mind. Suddenly the call stops. I’m here. Emerging from my blindness I look around and see the ritual, meant to call a ghost and bind it to a host.

In the middle of a tiny run down shack, Inside a magic circle, surrounded by people and ghosts, is a skeleton. I see a ghost enter the skeleton, and the eye sockets blaze with green light. “Hmm, a green. Alright, good enough. Put it with the rest.” The raspiest voice I have ever heard calls out. I can barely make out what he’s saying. The skeleton is led out.

The man’s helpers place another skeleton into the circle. Where are they getting all these skeletons, I wonder? Are we near a graveyard? I turn to fly out of the shack before the call grasps hold of me, and forces me into the skeleton.

Pain, burning, fear, panic, shock. These feelings very quickly run through my mind, and then I open my eyes. I can feel again, and I revel in the bliss of sensation. “What color is it,” the man asks in his raspy voice.

Oh my how good it feels to feel.

“I think it failed,” says a helper.

Oh how I missed warmth and, oddly enough, pain.

“Hm,” says the man, “throw it in the pit. We can’t have such things cluttering up the area.”

Oh I wish I could feel this forev- wait. Pit? What pit? Immediately I try to struggle, but I can’t move. The magic that controls the body I inhabit is far too powerful for me to break. The helper grabs me and drags me over to what I can only assume is the pit. And what a pit it is, several hundred meters deep, with a smattering of bones at the bottom, presumably from other ‘failures’.

I’m falling. When the blow that knocked me into the chasm came, I don’t know, but it doesn’t particularly matter. What does matter is that I can’t brace myself, and I’m about to die again. What’s worse is that, even though it's not much, my magic is bracing the skeletal body, and there’s a chance I won’t even die, just be severely injured and in horrible pain until my magic leaks from the cracked bones and I cease to be. For real this time.

The pit is very big. I’m still falling, which is fine by me really. As my math teacher in elementary school always said, it's not the fall that kills you but that sudden stop at the end. He was weird.

Then with a horribly sickening crunch, one that only comes when your bones break, and you know it’s your bones breaking, I hit the ground.

“Ow”