Kael sat on the bed, his eyes wide open. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath came in ragged bursts, as if he had just escaped the jaws of a beast. Thoughts scattered, collided, fell apart. A dream? An illusion? Or a nightmarish reality into which he had fallen once more?

  He clenched the bedsheet in his fingers, feeling the coarse fabric. It was too real. Too true.

  “This… can’t be…” he muttered hoarsely.

  Then came a sharp, booming knock at the door. The wooden hinges groaned, and the door flew open with a loud crash.

  Bang!

  A figure burst inside, light and swift. A girl of about twelve, with long snow-white hair cascading over her shoulders, and bright golden eyes flashing with anger.

  “Why are you yelling through the whole house?!” she shouted, lips pursed.

  Then her gaze slid to the books scattered near Kael’s bed.

  “You were reading all night again, weren’t you?!” she cried again, frowning. “You don’t even know anymore what’s real and what’s made up!”

  Kael froze. His face twisted, his eyes trembled. For a moment it seemed he might break into tears. His lips quivered, the words slipping out on their own:

  “Kris… you’re alive?”

  She giggled at such a ridiculous question. The next instant she darted at him and leapt, knees driving into his chest like a cannonball. She toppled Kael at once, pinning his arms against the bed.

  “Really gone mad?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Brother, you need to take better care of yourself and get proper sleep. Your health is already a mess…”

  At that moment, from beyond the open door, a clear woman’s voice rang out. Soft and pleasant, yet she forced her tone higher, trying to sound stern:

  “Children, keep it down! Guests will be arriving soon! And in any case, it’s time you two got ready!”

  Kael’s heart beat even harder, as if his chest were trying to break free of its chains. The sound of that voice pierced him, striking deep into his memory.

  “Mother?” his thoughts whirled. “Is this another dream? Or have I simply gone mad from despair? What is happening?! Are they… truly my family?”

  He swallowed hard, his breath catching, his hands shaking all the more. Every word from the woman resonated in him with both joy and pain. It had been so long since he’d heard her voice in person.

  Just then, Kris deftly let go of Kael’s wrists and with a sharp snap flicked her finger against his forehead.

  “Come on, get ready, bookworm!” she cried cheerfully, laughing.

  Releasing him, the girl leapt lightly from the bed and dashed into the corridor, slamming the door behind her.

  Kael remained sprawled in an awkward, nearly powerless pose. He stared at the ceiling, unblinking, until the trembling inside him began to subside. A few long seconds stretched into eternity.

  He drew a deep breath. Then another. Gathering himself, he slowly rose.

  His steps carried him to the window. The wooden shutters let in soft light. Outside, the street of the merchant quarter unfolded. Vendors were just beginning to set out their wares, shop shutters creaked, and the paving stones echoed with the first footsteps of passersby.

  Kael suddenly struck his own cheek with his palm. The sharp slap rang through the room. His face burned with pain.

  And with it—realization came. His weary amber eyes gleamed, filling with sparks that had been absent for centuries. His lips trembled, and he broke into a smile.

  He bit his fist to keep from crying out with the rush of feeling, and muttered hoarsely, yet with fire:

  “Could it be… Have I truly returned to the past?!”

  But immediately after, he forced himself to calm. The faint trembling in his hands hardened into steadiness, his gaze grew heavy once more.

  “I was definitely enslaved by the God of Knowledge and Madness…” the thought echoed. “And then I opened the Canon of Primordial Void… That cannot possibly be just a figment of my imagination.”

  He shook his head, teeth clenched.

  “The Divine Spirit of Time said we would forget everything…” Kael closed his eyes for a moment. “But I can clearly feel that the knowledge is still stored in my mind.”

  And then revelation struck him like a blow.

  “It’s the power of the Shard…” he whispered so faintly it was almost inaudible, and his lips twisted into a vicious grin. “My perfect, boundless memory preserved it all… even after time itself was erased! Everything that happened to me over seven hundred years!”

  Memories surged all at once, each more terrible than the last. Endless tortures, the God’s humiliations, the oaths of slavery.

  And—the worst of all.

  Images of his family. His mother, his father, his little sister. Their death. Their blood spilled by the Vengeful Thunder Family.

  Kael’s eyes darkened with a baleful glow. In his chest, a cold, viscous fire of rage began to burn.

  “Wait… Now isn’t the time to think of revenge,” Kael cut himself short with icy restraint. “First I need to confirm that I haven’t gone mad.”

  He clenched his fists, forcing his breath steady.

  “My Form of Soul—the Formless Void. In all the worlds, no method of development exists for it, and in Lasthold even less so. That’s why they called me talentless… Or perhaps… in these circumstances, it’s wrong to speak of it in the past tense?”

  He lowered himself to the floor and slowly sat cross-legged. His amber eyes gleamed with resolve, his body straightened, his shoulders squared.

  “If I haven’t gone insane, then the Canon of Primordial Void should work. Even though I don’t have the book itself… I memorized it all, down to the last line.”

  Kael closed his eyes and focused. His inner world of memory stirred, like a vast library waking in the dark. Before his mind’s eye flared images—pages, lines, scrolls, painted as if by imagination.

  He never absorbed everything at once. His gift worked differently: in his memory were born exact copies of books, scrolls, and images, which he could revisit, leaf through, and study again, from any depth, in any order.

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  Now the lines of the Canon of Primordial Void surfaced before him. But with them—unexpectedly, as if fate itself whispered—a different image arose: an old little book. Plain, worn, one he had once read in the Divine Library.

  Kael opened it in his inner sight and reread the familiar words:

  “Canon of Magic consists of three parts: a clear visual image, proper circulation of mana, and a supporting mantra.”

  “A clear visual image sets your soul in the right state. Circulating mana through the correct points of the body creates the appropriate sensations and emotions. And the mantra contains hidden wisdom suited to your Form of Soul; unlocking it strengthens your concentration.”

  After reading this, Kael gave a quiet, bitter laugh, and other memories surfaced. At the Academy of Spirit Mages they had told them, “Remember: your body is limited by talent. If you are not talented enough, even the strongest Canon of Magic will bring you no success.”

  Recalling this, he thought:

  “The knowledge of Lasthold is flawed. The problem is that after the fall of human civilization, only the codices of the most common types remained here. They cannot suit everyone… For the Form of Soul is not just an attribute…”

  He narrowed his eyes, fists tightening on his knees.

  “Those for whom these techniques are unsuited are branded failures. Foolish judges, who do not themselves understand the world’s depths, decide the fate of others…”

  With these thoughts Kael drew a deep breath and shut his eyes. His mind plunged into darkness. He began to imagine himself as a formless point in a bottomless black void. No pull, no repulsion. Only a cold, eternal nothingness that neither accepts nor gives.

  He simply observed, as though he were a distant spectator to whom nothing in this world held sway. One to whom nothing could stir interest.

  And at that instant, as the image formed in his mind, Kael felt it again.

  Mana.

  There was a hundred, a thousand times less mana than in the Divine Library, but he felt it! Thin, unseen currents, like mist, began flowing toward his body. They brushed against his skin, seeped inside, slid along his veins.

  Kael’s eyes flew open wide. In their amber depths flared a wild fire.

  “It was all true!” he gasped, his voice trembling with rapture. “I haven’t gone mad!”

  He nearly burst into laughter. His fingers trembled, his chest tightened, and unable to contain himself, he shouted through clenched teeth:

  “The Canon of Primordial Void works! Could it be—I can truly become a mage?!”

  But the joy flared too sharply—and in the next instant everything collapsed. His concentration broke, the image of the void unraveled, and the mana dispersed like morning mist.

  Kael exhaled and at once forced himself back into calm. He closed his eyes again and focused on the same image—a formless point in bottomless darkness, neither attracting nor repelling.

  And once more… mana drifted toward him. Slowly, but insistently. Thin streams of force poured into his body.

  This time Kael did not let elation distract him. He recalled in thought the steps described in the Canon, the strict order of mana’s circulation. Carefully, restrainedly, he began guiding the mana through his body, as if through veins, capillaries, and channels.

  At first everything was clumsy. The streams faltered, veered as if skidding at turns, the force spilling into the wrong node, leaving numbness in his limbs. But gradually he caught the rhythm.

  Mana began passing through specific points of the body, called mana transformation points. Each responded in its own way: with chill, with faint tingling, or with pressing weight, as though his body were being remade from within.

  Kael’s consciousness cleared. His thoughts grew sharper, keener, more orderly. His emotions smoothed, as if a thin veil of serenity had been laid upon his soul.

  “It’s true…” the thought flickered. “Mana, flowing through the proper points, changes body and mind. Exactly as any Canon of Magic describes…”

  But he did not stop there.

  When the flow of mana grew more obedient, when it no longer strayed from its path, the final component of the technique seemed to arise in his mind on its own—the Mantra of Primordial Void.

  The words, preserved in memory, flared and began to weave into rhythm, as if dictated by space itself:

  “I am the silence that precedes sound.

  I am the void that holds all things.

  I do not cling to form, for form is illusion.

  I do not cling to thought, for thought is chains.

  Let all pass through me, and let nothing leave a trace.

  In this stillness, power is born.

  In this void—there is infinity.”

  He repeated them inwardly, again and again, and with each repetition the rhythm deepened. No longer words, but truth engraved into the soul itself.

  And then the mana around him began to respond far more strongly. The streams, once sluggish and meager, swirled into a vortex, as if the void itself were drawing in the world. Mana poured into his body with new force, washing his muscles, seeping into his bones, saturating his nerves, and filling his mind with cold clarity.

  For the first time in his life, Kael felt his very being change. His strength, once no different from a mortal’s, began to climb. Slowly, cautiously—but it was rising!

  But then another blow sounded—sharp, booming, as though someone had kicked his door.

  Bam!

  His concentration snapped, and Kael’s eyes flew open.

  Into the room, without hesitation, burst Kris once again. She looked at her brother with suspicion and at once declared:

  “Are you wasting time on nonsense again, brother?” Her voice rang with mockery. “You know you have no talent for magic. Better leave that to me! You’d be far more useful if you became a scholar at the palace of Lasthold’s Chief!”

  Kael sat on the floor, and inside his chest raged something words could not explain. He had truly just absorbed mana. For the first time. For real.

  He smiled, the corners of his mouth twitching as if the smile wrestled with disbelief. He was beginning to realize that everything around him was indeed real. And his sister—no illusion.

  “What is it, Kris?” he asked softly, his voice carrying a touch of tenderness. “You were just here a minute ago.”

  His sister snorted, lifting her chin.

  “You must be raving…” she drawled, narrowing her eyes. “We’ve been waiting half an hour for you at the table. Father shouted, but you didn’t answer. So they sent a messenger!”

  She laughed, puffed out her chest with pride, and added:

  “And that messenger turned out to be me!”

  In that moment, lines surfaced in Kael’s memory, as if pulled on their own from books he had once read:

  “During development, a mage’s perception of time changes. Minutes may stretch into hours, and hours compress into moments. This happens because mana affects both soul and body, drawing the mage into a trance.”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly and muttered in thought:

  “So this is how it feels… I thought I had only meditated for a minute…”

  Kael rose to his feet and, unable to hold back a smile, said aloud:

  “Sorry, I must not have slept well. Let’s go eat!”

  Those words made Kris lift her brow in surprise.

  “You’re always a weirdo…” she muttered, staring at her brother intently. “But today you’re especially strange.”

  Kael, stepping toward her, smirked:

  “And why’s that?”

  His sister narrowed her eyes suspiciously and added:

  “Usually you’re gloomier than a stormcloud, and you won’t say two words. But today you’re babbling away…”

  Suddenly he threw an arm over her shoulder, pulling her slightly into a half-embrace.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Kael said, stifling an inner laugh, and added: “Maybe I’ve just gone mad. Ha-ha.”

  At the unexpected gesture, Kris shrank back awkwardly, quickly brushed his arm off, and stepped away.

  “You never did that before…” she muttered, wary. “Did you finally accept the fate of a failure and learn to love life?”

  Kael only strode past her and waved a hand.

  “You could put it that way. Come on already, we’re only waiting on you.”

  For a moment Kael’s eyes gleamed with a sharp, predatory light—too fleeting for Kris to notice. The smile on his face stayed soft, but within, something entirely different raged.

  “I don’t know how this is possible…” he thought. “But thank you, Divine Spirit of Time. This time I will do everything differently…”

  His footsteps echoed on the floor, his sister trailing just behind, chattering about the academy, though Kael barely heard her. In his chest, beneath the cloak of calm, a new fire was kindling.

  “I will make sure the God of Knowledge and Madness pays for what he did to me. Seven hundred years of slavery are not nothing. In that time I learned much. Even about him…”

  The smile on his face widened—a smile full of bloodlust and hatred. A smile he could never have worn in his “former life.”

  “I’ll turn that knowledge against him! Just give me a little time!”