After dealing with the matter of the Emperor, I did nothing dramatic.
I sat down.
For the next hour, I focused entirely on myself—on the subtle, unfamiliar sensations rippling through my body. My magic channels had changed. Expanded. Reinforced. What had once felt narrow and fragile now felt wide, deep, settled, like riverbeds carved by centuries of flow.
That didn't mean they were stable.
Power without control was just another form of disaster.
I breathed slowly, guiding mana through the newly formed pathways, letting it circulate again and again until the pressure eased. The pain dulled into a distant ache. By the time I opened my eyes, my heartbeat had steadied.
Only then did I think.
About what had happened.About what I had become.And about what came next.
To plan that, I had to look backward.
I sifted through my recent memories—those closest to the present.
After two years working at the academy as an assistant professor of Alternative Casting, I had finally accepted the obvious. I hadn't had a single student in my last year. Not one. Curiosity had brought a few to my door early on. Fear and disinterest had driven them away just as quickly.
So I took a sabbatical.
Officially, it was for research.
Unofficially, it was because I was tired of explaining why words mattered more than will.
Coincidentally—or perhaps inevitably—my father had also reached a turning point.
His work in magi-tech had finally borne fruit.
The Aurora had been completely refitted.
She was beautiful again.
No—more than that. She was reborn.
Her hull shimmered with layered enchantments reinforced by scientific harmonics. Her engines no longer roared—they purred, responding to both mana flow and mechanical precision. The old frequency emitter had been replaced with something far more refined.
This ship did not fear sea beasts.
Her speed had become almost absurd. A journey that had once taken us five years could now be completed in one.
And my father had a destination in mind.
The Central Continent.
Reports had been coming in for months. Subtle at first. Dismissed by many as sensor errors or natural fluctuations. But the pattern was undeniable—the mana storms surrounding the Central Continent were weakening.
Slowly.
Reluctantly.
As if something long dormant was stirring.
We spent half a year just reaching the storm boundary. The sea grew restless the closer we came. Currents twisted unpredictably. The sky darkened, even at midday. Mana interference distorted instruments and strained enchantments.
Then we hit the storm.
Not a wall.
A living thing.
The winds screamed like tearing metal. Waves rose without rhythm, slamming into the Aurora with enough force to make her shudder. The magic shield flared, held, then cracked under the sheer pressure of colliding mana currents.
The ship lurched violently.
I lost my footing.
The world spun. Deck became sky. Sky became sea.
And then—
I was airborne.
The last thing I saw was the Aurora's radiant hull vanishing behind curtains of lightning and mist—
before the ocean rushed up to meet me.
When I woke up, I was alone.
Sand pressed against my cheek, warm and coarse, the sound of waves crashing rhythmically behind me. For a long moment, I simply lay there, breathing, confirming that I was still alive.
Then I sat up.
The shoreline stretched endlessly in both directions—untouched, unmarked. No wreckage. No bodies. No sign of the Aurora, or of anyone else who had been aboard her.
The Central Continent.
The thought settled heavily.
I searched.
For days, then weeks, I scoured the coast and ventured inland, calling out, listening, hoping for any sign of life. I found none. No camps. No roads. No smoke on the horizon.
Nothing.
The land itself felt old—ancient beyond ruin. Forests had grown wild over broken stone. Paths had vanished beneath roots and soil. Whatever civilization had once thrived here had not merely fallen.
It had been erased.
I kept walking.
Deeper. Farther. Following nothing but instinct and the faint, constant pull I felt beneath my awareness—like gravity, but subtler. Like the land itself was guiding me.
A month passed.
I measured time by exhaustion, by hunger, by the slow wearing down of my boots and resolve. And then, at last, I saw it.
The Grand Library.
It rose from the land like a monument carved from time itself. Towers half-swallowed by vines. Walls etched with inscriptions that had not weathered, not faded. Even in silence, it felt alive.
Waiting.
Inside, the halls were vast and empty. Shelves stretched farther than sight, packed with books, scrolls, tablets—knowledge preserved with obsessive care. I reached for the nearest volume and opened it.
The words stopped me.
They were not written in the common tongue.
They were written in the Old Tongue.
Structured. Formal. Precise in a way that made the common tongue feel crude by comparison. This was the language refined for mortals—powerful, but controlled. The same foundation from which modern spellcasting had been derived.
I moved through the library, shelf after shelf, confirming it again and again.
All of it—Old Tongue.
The Sanskrit tomes were not in the library.
They had never been meant to be.
They were in his possession.
I moved through the library, shelf after shelf, realization growing heavier with each step. This was not a place meant for translation. This was the source itself—the unfiltered record of magic as it was meant to be spoken.
Drawn onward, I descended deeper into the structure, past halls untouched by time, past wards that no longer resisted me.
Until I reached the chamber.
The sealed room.
Even before I entered, I felt it—the lingering imprint of will, obsession, failure. This was where the Emperor had made his final stand. Where he had tried to reach beyond mortals.
The moment I crossed the threshold—
That was when he tried to possess me.
That was when his soul stirred.
And that—
That was when I awakened.