It was a pain that words could not describe. It was not a physical fire burning Caster’s skin. It was a structural fire burning the very center of who he was.Every single Tower mage has a magical structure inside them. It is the framework that allows them to touch mana, cast spells, and feel the energy of the world. It is a part of their body, just like a heart or a lung.Caster felt that magical structure catch on fire."Ahhhhh!" Caster screamed.It was the loudest, most painful scream he had ever made. He dropped his hands. He fell to his knees on the cracked blue stone of the Observatory floor.He grabbed his chest, tearing at his dirty gray robes.He could feel the black diamond core inside him—the core he had forged from the Ash Plane—shattering into a million pieces of hot dust. The pale, inverted white fire that had surrounded his body suddenly went out.His skin turned from pitch-black back to its normal, pale, wrinkled human color.The pain was absolute. It was the feeling o

The Sage Tower was dead. Just one day ago, it was a beautiful white spire that reached into the clouds. It was the proud symbol of the High Council. Now, the white marble shell had fallen off. Only the ugly, twisted black iron skeleton remained. It looked like a broken, burned tree standing in the middle of a ruined city.The sun was shining. The dark ash had stopped falling. But the capital city was not happy. The streets were full of broken stone, crushed carts, and the empty clothes of the people who had been eaten by the dark magic.Archmage Vane survived the fall.He did not survive because he was brave. He survived because he hid in a deep, reinforced stone room under the Golden Room when the Tower started to split.Now, Vane sat at a long wooden table. The table was not floating. It was an ordinary table inside a large, dirty military tent set up in the First Ring.Vane looked terrible. His perfect white robes were torn and covered in brown dirt. His silver hair was wild. His

The Herald smiled a cold, satisfied smile. Vane’s plan was working perfectly."He is no longer a man!" the Herald shouted over the angry crowd. "He is stripped of his name! He is designated as the Rogue Vector! He carries the infection of the dark ash in his blood!"The Twin Moons soldiers hit the bottom of their heavy spears against the stone street. CLANG. CLANG. CLANG."A Holy Crusade is declared!" the Herald announced. "The Twin Moons Consortium will hunt the Rogue Vector to the ends of the earth! Anyone who hides him, anyone who helps him, and anyone who speaks his old name will be executed for treason!"Toma pulled Finn and Elara back into his bakery. He shut the wooden door and locked it tight. He looked out the small window.The crowd was cheering for the soldiers. The people who had been saved by Caster were now cheering for his death."Why are they doing this?" Finn cried, wiping his tears. "He gave up his magic for us. I saw his face turn black. He took the pain so we could

Outside in the dark, Caster closed his eyes. He felt a hot tear slide down his dirty cheek.The words hurt worse than a knife. They hurt worse than the burning pain of losing his magic.He had given up his magical core for that little boy. He had traded his own soul to stop the city from exploding. He had pulled the toxic magic into himself so that father and son could live to see another morning.And they hated him. They thought he was the devil.The city he had loved, the city he had protected with his own life, was hunting him like a sick animal.Every act of survival, every time he hid in the shadows, felt like a terrible confirmation of the lie. The Council told the people he was a monster hiding in the dark. And here he was, hiding in the dark, scared and dirty. He felt like he was becoming the exact thing they said he was.Lysane saw the tears on his face. She heard the father’s words through the broken window.She reached out and put her hand gently on Caster’s arm."Do not li

The Twin Moons Consortium did not play games. They did not come to arrest. They did not carry iron handcuffs, and they did not read prisoners their rights.They came to kill.The capital city was a ruined, broken mess. The Sage Tower was just an ugly black skeleton reaching up into the dark sky. The beautiful white marble streets were cracked and covered in a thick layer of ordinary gray dust. The people of the city were hiding in their cellars, shivering in the cold, praying to the Light for safety.But the soldiers of the Twin Moons Consortium were not hiding. They were hunting.Commander Thorne marched down the center of the broken street. He was a tall, cruel man. He wore heavy armor made of dark gray steel. On his chest plate, the symbol of two crossed silver moons caught the faint light of the rising sun.Thorne did not use bright blue Tower magic. The Twin Moons war mages believed that pure magic was weak. They believed in mixing magic with heavy metal, sharp weapons, and br