The first banners appeared at the edge of the burn zone before the smoke had fully cleared.
They were careful about it—no armies, no declarations, no proud marches meant to be seen from miles away. Just small detachments, each convinced they were the first to arrive quietly.
They weren't.
Spies arrived before soldiers ever could.
Men and women trained to vanish into forests that no longer existed crept through the ashen perimeter, cloaks dusted gray within minutes. They moved cautiously, alert for traps, monsters, or worse—each other.
They found each other anyway.
Not openly. Not immediately. But a footprint too clean. A campfire buried too well. A signal spell answered a little too fast. Veterans of the unseen war recognized the signs.
And just like that, every spy returned home with the same report, delivered in hushed voices to worried kings and queens:
"The area is compromised. Other kingdoms are already there."
Which was technically true.
Guards followed next.
Heavily armored, disciplined, officially present to "secure borders" and "prevent civilian interference." They established perimeters around nothing, watched empty horizons, and glared suspiciously at banners flying just far enough away to be deniable.
No one crossed lines.
No one wanted to be the one who provoked whatever had done this.
The mages arrived last.
And unlike the others, they didn't care who else was present.
They cared about the air.
They stood at the edge of the scorched earth, staffs planted, eyes unfocused as instruments hummed and glowed around them. Crystals spun. Rings etched with runes vibrated. Scrying lenses adjusted themselves in visible confusion.
Mana here was wrong.
Not corrupted.
Not chaotic.
Dense.
One archmage frowned, running a hand through his beard as readings scrolled across a floating array.
"This feels like… multiple signatures," he muttered.
Another shook her head. "No. That's not right. They're overlapping. Perfectly."
They recalibrated. Cross-checked. Used methods that hadn't been taught publicly in centuries.
The answer didn't change.
The mana residue behaved as though the spell had been cast by many individuals—hundreds, thousands—yet every deeper analysis collapsed those readings back into a single origin point.
One will.
One intent.
One spell.
Scaled to absurdity.
Silence followed the realization.
Eventually, someone said what everyone else was thinking.
"So there's an individual," a court mage said slowly, "who can amplify magic beyond known limits… without artifacts, rituals, or visible support."
No one argued.
Reports went out that night, sealed with sigils and paranoia.
Every kingdom received some variation of the same conclusion.
There exists an unknown individual capable of magnifying magic to catastrophic levels.Their location is unknown.Their allegiance is unknown.Their intent is unknown.
And worse—
Other kingdoms know this too.
That was when fear turned strategic.
No one moved openly against the anomaly. That would be suicide.
Instead, plans were drafted.
If the individual could be found, they would be:
Recruited, if possible
Contained, if necessary
Eliminated, if unavoidable
Quietly.
Discreetly.
Before anyone else could act first.
Thus began a war no one announced.
A war of whispers, research grants, covert funding, and deniable missions.
A Cold War fought over a single question:
Who controls the being that can turn forests into suns?
And somewhere far away from the blast zone, hidden and breathing carefully in a body that no longer felt numb, the individual in question had no idea the game had already started.