✨ Welcome to the World of Magic ✨
In a world where lungs do not breathe air as much as they inhale "Mana," the ether flowed between the folds of existence like threads of emerald light, seen only by those with insight.
Here, the heart is not just a muscle pumping blood; it is a "Magical Core" burning with life. If this ancient fuel is extinguished, the veins stiffen, and the body turns into ashes scattered by the wind before drawing its last breath.
In the Great Hall, whose walls were built from light-absorbing "Obsidian" crystals, a group of the elite gathered.
The atmosphere was charged with invisible pressure, as if the air itself had become heavy under the weight of latent powers.
At the front of the hall stood the nobles, those in whose veins the blood of pure Mana has run since eternity.
One of them, a Duke from the "Arkan" lineage, wore a velvet robe embroidered with enchanted gold threads that blinked with every beat of his heart.
He did not need to move his hand to show his strength; it was enough for him to narrow his eyes for the space around him to ripple, and the marble floor beneath his feet to crack by the effect of a dense purple aura that began to rise from him like the smoke of a raging volcano.
His presence was terrifying, a mighty force forcing those present to bow their heads—not out of respect, but because their weak bodies could not withstand the high frequencies of his raw magic.
Beside him stood a noblewoman from the House of "Frost." Cold emanated from the folds of her dress as if she carried an eternal winter in her hands.
The air around her was condensing into fine icy shards floating in the void, while her eyes glowed with a faint blue light reflecting the depth of a sea of Mana.
Between these giants, the rest stood in dead silence, clinging to the remnants of their energy to ensure their survival in this ocean of magical tyranny.
The looks exchanged between them spoke a language understood only by those who realize that in this world, Magic is Existence, and Mana is the Soul, and whoever possesses the surplus of both, possesses Fate itself.
In the Grand Square of "Aetheria," where chandeliers of raw magical crystals hung to illuminate the place with a pale blue light, the class disparity manifested in its ugliest and most beautiful forms.
The air was heavy, saturated with Mana particles that made the skin prickle and breaths quicken; in this world, nothingness means death, and Mana is the last gasp of life.
In the upper balconies, the nobles lined up in their cloaks studded with glittering stones, their magical auras disciplined and calm, reflecting the arrogance of those who inherited power and did not tire of refining it.
Below them, in the heart of the square, the middle-class residents of the Kingdom of Aetheria crowded; those who form the backbone of life, the Mana moving in their bodies with the smoothness of small tributaries, stable and sufficient to keep them in prosperity, exchanging whispers that came from their mouths.
But, in a dark corner of the square, stood the villagers arriving from far lands.
Their features were as harsh as the land they plowed, and their magic—which the nobles had described as base for years—began today to appear in its terrifying reality. Among them was an old man from the
"Forgotten Borders"
villages; Mana overflowed from his body with illogical abundance, as if it were a roaring waterfall about to drown the place.
His raw energy, in its vastness, exceeded the total of what the Council of Nobles possessed combined, making the air around him break and emit a buzz that stirred terror in souls.
Suddenly, a dead silence prevailed, and the crowds retreated automatically as if an invisible force was pushing them.
From the great magical gates, those who do not bow to a crown or a lineage emerged:
"The Reapers."
They were the rare few who did not settle for possessing Mana; rather, the spirits of nature chose them to be their vessels.
Light phantoms resembling fire butterflies and small lightning wolves hovered around their shoulders, whispering in their ears.
The Reaper leading them walked with majestic dignity, his eyes shining with an emerald green light representing the pulse of life itself. He was not called a "Reaper" in vain; when he is angry, he absorbs the ether from every living being around him to turn it into nothingness, making nature reclaim what it bestowed.
In their presence, the differences between nobles and villagers melted away, and everyone became merely small bodies before the greatness of the power that the earth granted to its chosen elite.
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On the outskirts of the kingdom, where forgotten memories dwell, lies the
"Ashen Suburbs"; that place enveloped by the dust of falling ash from the sky of Aetheria like an eternal shroud.
Amidst these dilapidated alleys, she was walking with steady and calm steps, wrapped in a worn cloak torn by time that had lost its original color, yet it could not hide her eerie calmness.
Mocking whispers followed her like ominous shadows. Two women stood on the corner of the road, exchanging looks of contempt; the first said, narrowing her eyes in disgust:
"Look at her... I feel repulsed just by seeing her."
To which the other replied with a boisterous laugh that pierced the silence of the street:
"How has she lived all this time without dying? Isn't Mana life? How can this hollow body remain standing!"
Their provocative laughter rose, but the girl showed no reaction; not an eyelid flickered, and her pulse did not quicken.
Instead, she continued walking with a strange coldness, as if she lived in a parallel world unreachable by human voices.
She finally reached the ancient church, that stone building smelling of incense and sanctity, which had been the only place to shelter her since the monks found her as an infant not over her first week, thrown on the doorstep without name or lineage.
The heavy wooden doors opened to be greeted by "Mother" with a cheerful face and a voice filled with tenderness:
"Welcome back, my little one... Did you bring the supplies we requested?"
Then, the girl raised her delicate hand and pushed the cloak cover off her head, letting her long, wavy red hair flow like a waterfall of dark lava over her shoulders.
She stared at Mother and nodded with a slight smile, revealing a captivating beauty that broke the monotony of the ash around her.
Her red eyes shone with a mysterious luster, adorned by a sprinkle of gentle freckles on the bridge of her nose, giving her face rare features unencountered by anyone in all of Aetheria.
But behind this legendary beauty lurked the truth that made the world fear or shun her: This body, with all its breathtaking details, was completely devoid of any atom of Mana.
There was no magic in her veins, nor ether in her heart; she was a silent void in a world loud with energy, a mystery walking on two feet, the only one who overcame the laws of nature to stay alive without breathing the earth's magic.
She hung her worn cloak on an old wooden nail behind the door, as if setting aside the world's weight and mockery, then headed to wash her face and hands with cold water, feeling its touch on her skin away from the noise of the "Ashen Suburbs."
She moved with lightness and calmness throughout the church, which was not just a shelter, but her only home. She entered the modest kitchen to find "Mother Joanna" busy, so she began helping her immediately.
She was not alone in this place; the church housed a group of orphaned children, but she was a special case among them.
While others were found with papers bearing names written by their parents before abandoning them, she was found silent, unknown, without a trace or a name, until Joanna chose for her the name: "Arya."
That name echoed through the place with a melody fitting her mysterious beauty and the rarity of her existence.
Arya busied herself with work; her delicate hands chopped onions with skill, while her red eyes shone under the dim lamp light.
From time to time, her hand reached out to stir the soup over the fire, watching the rising steam brush her face, careful not to let their only sustenance burn.
At other times, she moved to wash the dishes, completing her tasks in a strange silence.
Mother Joanna watched her with a kind smile full of affection as she prepared the cracked wooden dinner table. When the soup was cooked, Arya began pouring it into clay bowls, a simple fragrance rising from it that tempted the hungry.
She distributed the plates on the table and placed pieces of dry bread beside each; their living conditions were harsh, barely providing them with what keeps them alive in a world that does not pity the weak or those who do not possess magic.
The voices of the little ones rose as they ran toward the table after Joanna called them, while Arya stood for a moment, watching this simple family scene, with her red hair appearing like a flame in the kitchen's darkness, and her body which lacks Mana but overflows with life and serenity amidst the noise.
Arya stood for a while contemplating that warm scene, watching the children as they huddled around the dilapidated wooden table, their small eyes shining with eagerness and the reflection of the weak candlelight dancing on their faces.
They were waiting impatiently, like hungry birds watching for the first bite.
Arya stepped forward quietly and sat in her usual place. Silence prevailed for a moment as everyone raised their small hands toward the sky in a silent prayer to bless the little they possessed.
As soon as the prayer ended, the gentle battle began; the children pounced on their plates with enthusiasm, their small mouths filling with warm soup, their cheeks and hands stained with dry bread crumbs and soup broth, as if they were in a race against time.
Arya could not help herself before this spontaneity, and a soft laughter broke out from her. She looked at them with her red eyes that overflowed with tenderness and said in her calm, deep voice:
"Take your time... don't rush like that so you don't choke..."
Then she added, seeing their anxious looks over the disappearing food:
"Don't worry, the pot is still full, the soup hasn't ended yet."
But her advice went with the wind; the children settled for raising their heads and smiling at her, their mouths completely full until their cheeks looked swollen, then they continued eating with the same greed and joy, unconcerned by anything but this warmth filling their bellies.
That moment, despite the misery of the Ashen Suburbs and the poverty of the situation, seemed to Arya more precious than all the Mana of the world and the magic of the nobles; here where real souls live behind the walls of the old church.
Arya did not miss Mother Joanna's looks, which were piercing through the soup steam, looks weighted with an anxiety that the wrinkles around her eyes failed to hide.
Arya fixed her gaze on her, and in her red eyes was a silent question:
"What is the matter?"
Joanna sighed lightly, as if removing a mountain of worries from her chest, and said in a faltering voice that tried to suppress fear:
"You know that the date of the Imperial Test has approached, don't you, Arya?"
Arya stopped chewing, swallowed what was in her mouth slowly, then placed her wooden spoon on the edge of the plate with a dignified movement.
She stared at Joanna and nodded in agreement, for the old woman to continue her words with a more disturbed tone:
"Last year you evaded it, and luckily the eyes were not on you so they didn't discover the matter... but now..."
Arya interrupted her with a sympathetic smile, a cold but reassuring smile, as if absorbing the fear from Joanna's heart.
She realized perfectly that the punishment for evading the mandatory Mana test is exile or death, and that rumors about
"The girl who does not pulse with magic"
had begun to leak outside the Ashen Suburbs like wildfire.
Arya said in a calm voice saturated with confidence:
"I know this well... don't worry, I will pass their damn test even without magic."
Then she leaned slightly forward, and her gaze sharpened with a force that shook the stillness:
"You know, Mother, my body is as solid as steel, and magic does not affect me no matter how powerful it is. Even those they call Reapers will not be able to scratch me with a single touch of their ether. My body is an insulator for everything they sanctify... just trust me."
As she spoke, a flame of determination emerged in her eyes, capable of breaking everyone who stands in her way.
Despite her veins being empty of Mana, her physical nature was a terrifying miracle; with one strike of her small palm, she was capable of splitting an ancient tree into scattered shards.
Her body rejected magic, crushed it upon contact, as if she were created to be the antithesis of this magical world.
Despite those reassuring words and Arya's invincible strength, Joanna's gaze remained stuck in the void, gnawed by an anxiety of an unknown that Arya did not see, something that exceeds a mere test of strength, lying in the secret of the existence of this girl who defies the laws of nature with her boisterous red beauty and her body forbidden to magic.
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With the first light of a new morning in the Ashen Suburbs, faint sunbeams slipped in to wipe the night dust from the walls of the ancient church.
Mother Joanna had already started her day, standing with her back slightly bent while hanging the laundry, where the worn clothes danced with the cold breeze.
In front of the church's stone courtyard, the children's clamor filled the ether with life; in this world, even the little ones find in Mana a way to prove themselves.
The elder ones were showing off their beginner magical skills with childish pride; one ignites a small fire spark between his fingers, another moves a rock a few centimeters off the ground, leading to funny brawls and innocent challenges, where each tries to look noble in the eye of the one younger than him.
As for the dark side behind the church, away from the noise of boasting, Arya was living a completely different reality.
She held a heavy axe, but she didn't really need it; with complete ease and facility, she would place the massive wood logs before her, and with a swift movement of her hand, the wood would split and shatter as if it were mere paper, without a single drop of sweat falling from her forehead or her calm breathing becoming disturbed.
After finishing splitting the pile, she ignited the fire in it with purely manual skill, watching the tongues of flame as they devoured the wood until it turned into shiny black charcoal.
She began filling it into a huge cloth bag, a load that three strong men might struggle to carry, but Arya lifted it and placed it on her back with a fluid movement, as if she carried nothing.
She tightened her cloak's tie over her head to hide her glowing red hair, then set off with confident steps toward the village market.
She walked with the heavy load over her shoulder, her mind thinking only of helping Mother Joanna and securing the price of food, throwing against the wall the laws of the world that measure value by the amount of Mana; for to Arya, true strength lay in the resilience of her steel body and her unyielding will amidst the poverty of the ash.
When Arya's feet stepped onto the ground of the village market, she felt as if the air had been poisoned by their looks; eyes followed her like poisoned arrows, some overflowing with disgust at her poverty, others dripping with fake pity for her hollow state.
The corners were not free from the laughter of girls who considered themselves beauties thanks to magic powders that add a fake luster to their faces, whispering mockingly about that girl who carries bags of charcoal like slaves.
Arya composed her nerves, and made her coldness a shield that could not be pierced. She headed to her neglected corner in a corner of the market, spread a worn piece of cloth, displayed the black pieces of charcoal over it, and sat waiting.
The hours passed slowly, and the sun began to gather its threads from the horizon, and most merchants packed their belongings and left, but she remained there... not a single piece had left her bag.
She sighed with heavy despair, and while she was preparing to gather her disappointment and return to the church, suddenly... a dead silence prevailed in the place.
The nearby vendors fled with pale faces, as if a monster had bared its teeth. The reason was a man advancing with confident steps, a dominant "Mana" emanating from his body to the point that it was distorting the air around him and making it tremble.
But Arya, with her body that represents an absolute void of magic, did not feel that terrifying shake that terrified everyone; she does not sense Mana, and therefore she is not intimidated by it.
She knew from his robe made of Seraphim silk studded with jewels that he was from the highest classes of nobility, but the question that screamed in her mind was:
"What brings a mountain of power like him to an ash pit like this?"
She did not raise her head, but kept staring at his legs covered in luxurious leather boots with an eerie coldness, as if she saw before her nothing but an ordinary customer.
The silence lasted for a while, before it was broken by his deep and resonant voice, which carried a tone of amazement mixed with resentment:
"Who the hell are you?"
Arya realized at that moment that her disguise had failed; for this noble, with his sharp senses, did not find in the place she stood any magical frequencies.
To him, he was looking at a black hole in the fabric of existence, a living being that breathes but is not present in the Mana records.
His tone suggested that he was not asking for her name, but asking about the nature of this thing that dares to be nothingness in a world of magic.
A funereal silence prevailed in the market, as if time had stopped at the edge of disaster.
Passers-by watched the scene from afar with bated breath, certainty filling their hearts that this girl had written her death certificate with her own hand.
And with an icy voice, stemming from the depths of her profound coldness, Arya answered without blinking:
"That is none of your business."
Arya saw from under her headcover the noble's hand as it clenched with terrifying force, to the point that the cracking of his finger bones echoed in the place as a final warning.
Her ignoring him, and not raising her head to look into his face, represented an insult that no one in the history of noble lineages had dared to commit; she despised him with her silence, and trampled his pride with her coldness.
The noble could not curb the raging beast of anger in his chest. He retreated a number of steps back, signs of madness beginning to draw on his face, then directed his hand toward her with a hateful smile, growling:
"Then die, you scum!"
In the blink of an eye, a giant electrical wave launched from his palm, a roaring purple lightning that split the air violently, to the point that the ground around them ignited and everything in the path of the strike was charred.
The onlookers gasped and some closed their eyes, waiting to see her as a grilled corpse over her charcoal that hadn't sold.
But Arya, with a swift movement, raised her hands before her face in an (X) shape.
And the moment the lightning touched her body, what could not be comprehended by the mind occurred; the magic vanished completely, as if that thunderbolt was mere illusion.
Her skin absorbed all that energy and turned it into nothingness without even touching her worn clothes.
Arya stood up with majestic slowness, and looked under her feet to see her merchandise and her effort had turned into ashes scattered by the wind by the effect of his fit of rage.
Her coldness went out and fires more lethal ignited inside her.
She raised her head for the first time, to let her shining red eyes collide directly with his eyes with a promising sharpness.
As for the noble, the blood froze in his veins. His smile retreated and was replaced by a shock that paralyzed his pillars; his eyes widened in terrifying amazement as he stared at that "scum" who stood steadfast, without a single scratch, after crushing his mighty magic with her bare hands.
Arya was no longer just a villager; she appeared as a predatory being that had just woken from a deep sleep.
The noble retreated several steps back, possessed by a hysterical panic; he began launching a barrage of his lightning bolts one after another, turning the market square into a hell of light and buzzing.
But Arya was advancing toward him with the steadiness of an unstoppable nightmare, waving her hand in the air with angry and sharp movements, erasing his magic and vanishing it upon contact, as if she were brushing away weak spider threads from her path.
The noble began to pant violently, having consumed most of his Mana reservoir in those desperate attacks, while no sign of fatigue appeared on Arya.
He swallowed his saliva with difficulty as fear crept into the marrow of his soul; he no longer saw her now as "scum," but as an invincible savage monster, an entity outside the laws of nature that would kill him at any moment.
Suddenly, with the help of her strong leg muscles, Arya lunged with swift speed, reinforcing her momentum with pure physical force that made her look like a red bolt.
Before the noble realized what happened, her hand had tightened its grip on his neck, lifting him upward with one hand as if he were a straw doll.
Their eyes met; her red eyes promised him destruction, while he was struggling in the air desperately, trying to pull off her steel grip in vain, until his features began to fester and his face turned to a dark blue as a result of his suffocating breaths and his trapped body Mana.
She brought him close to her face for seconds, staring into his bulging eyes filled with death pleas, before throwing him to the ground with savage violence.
The noble fell writhing, exhaling his breaths forcefully and coughing violently, his eyes not leaving Arya, whom he now saw as a demon embodied in human form.
He tried to stand and flee, but she lowered herself to his level with terrifying coldness, and said in a low voice like poison:
"Don't forget to pay for that charcoal you turned to ash."
With trembling hands, the noble quickly took out a large bag of gold from his pocket and offered it to her while shivering, praying in his heart that she would accept the ransom and leave him alive.
As soon as she tightened her grip on the money bag, she turned and left the place with eerie calmness, as if nothing had happened.
The noble rushed to flee in the opposite direction, dragging the tails of defeat and disappointment, while the villagers remained frozen in their places, following Arya with eyes drowned in terror.
For on that day, everyone realized that the
"Ashen Suburbs" is not inhabited by a hollow girl, but by a strange being who sowed the seeds of fear in the hearts of humans and nobles alike.