Rising With My Mystic Power

Mordaine Carrowell had always lived in the shadows of other people’s brilliance.The city of Halewick buzzed like a living organism streets webbed with neon light, skytrains roaring overhead, and towering glass buildings that seemed to scrape the heavens. To ordinary eyes, Halewick was simply a modern metropolis, thriving with commerce, art, and technology. But Mordaine had grown up knowing the whispers: this city was built on the fracture of the Veil, where the world of man brushed against something far older, stranger, and infinitely more dangerous.

Still, for most of his seventeen years, none of that strangeness had touched him.

He was average. Painfully average. Not particularly strong, nor particularly clever, and certainly not gifted in any of the disciplines that mattered—martial arts, elemental magic, or healing. At Halewick Academy, where the gifted trained to master their abilities, Mordaine was known as “Carrowell the Hollow.” An empty shell. A boy with no spark.

He hated that name more than anything.

This evening, after another humiliating sparring match—where he failed even to light a single spark of flame from the practice crystals—he retreated to his family’s old townhouse at the edge of the city. Dust coated most of the rooms, and the shadows stretched long and heavy. His parents had vanished years ago, leaving him in the care of an aunt who rarely visited. The house felt more like a mausoleum than a home.

Yet tonight, the silence called to him.

He wandered through the halls until his feet led him to the old locked door beneath the staircase. He had rattled its handle a hundred times before, always finding it sealed tight. But tonight, as though guided by instinct, he pressed his palm against the wood. A faint heat pulsed beneath his skin, and the lock clicked open with a sound that felt almost alive.

The door swung inward, releasing a breath of air that smelled of stone and forgotten secrets.

Mordaine hesitated, heart hammering. He swallowed hard and stepped down the creaking stairs into the basement.

It wasn’t just a basement.

The space stretched wider than the foundation should have allowed, the walls inscribed with faint runes that glimmered like starlight. At the center stood a pedestal of black stone, and upon it rested a box—small, silver, etched with intricate symbols that seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking directly at them.

His fingers trembled as he reached out.

The moment his skin brushed the box, pain shot through him, sharp as lightning. He gasped, collapsing to his knees as images flooded his mind—flames, endless skies, a sea of shadow creatures shrieking in the dark. His chest burned, and he realized, with horror and awe, that fire was spilling from his hands. Not ordinary fire, but a strange blue-white flame that flickered like a living star.

The air trembled.

The runes on the walls blazed to life, bathing the chamber in brilliance. The box dissolved into sparks, sinking into his skin, and the fire in his palms roared higher, wrapping his arms like chains of living light.

And then, as suddenly as it began, silence crashed back into the room.

Mordaine knelt on the floor, breathing hard, staring at his hands. The flame still danced there, steady and alive.

For the first time in his life, he felt it—power. Real power.

But even as exhilaration surged through him, dread slithered in. Because deep in the silence of the basement, he heard a whisper. Faint, cold, and hungry.

“The Aetherflame awakens… and the Wraiths will come for you.”

Mordaine staggered back, his heart pounding. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but one thing was clear.

His life had just changed forever.

And the world would soon follow.

            Chapter One – The Forgotten Basement (Part B)

The flame did not fade.

It licked across Mordaine’s palms, bright and alien, burning without consuming, alive in a way fire should never be. Its glow painted the basement walls in eerie blue, sending shadows skittering like frightened animals. His chest heaved, each breath a tremor as he tried to steady himself.

“This… this can’t be real,” he whispered.

But it was.

The flames obeyed his thoughts, curling higher when his fear spiked, dimming when he forced himself calm. He had spent years mocked as powerless, unable to conjure so much as a spark. And now? Now fire itself answered him.

A laugh, shaky and disbelieving, broke from his throat. “I did it. I finally—”

The sound froze in his chest.

Because the whisper returned. Louder. Hungrier.

“The Aetherflame is mine…”

The basement shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling. The glowing runes across the walls flickered, some warping into jagged shapes. Mordaine stumbled back as the pedestal split down the center, black stone cracking like brittle ice.

From within the fracture, darkness bled out.

It wasn’t mere shadow. It moved, writhing, stretching thin fingers across the floor as though tasting the air. Two pinpricks of red opened within the mass—eyes, watching him.

Mordaine’s blood ran cold. He’d seen drawings in old Academy texts. Creatures of nightmare. Parasites that slipped through cracks in the Veil.

A Wraith.

“No, no, no—” He backed toward the stairs. The flame around his hands flared, as if reacting to the creature’s presence.

The Wraith hissed, a sound that scraped along bone. “Bearer… give it back…”

The shadows lunged.

Instinct overrode terror. Mordaine thrust his burning hands forward. The Aetherflame leapt free in a surge of blue-white fire, striking the Wraith square in its core.

The scream nearly split his skull.

The creature convulsed, its form unraveling into smoke and ash, shrieking as the flames devoured it. Within seconds, the basement was silent again, the only sound his ragged breathing.

Mordaine collapsed against the stairs, trembling. His heart thundered. He’d killed it. He had actually destroyed a Wraith.

But the victory felt hollow, because the whisper lingered.

Not in the room. Not outside. Inside him.

“You cannot run from what you are, boy.”

The fire on his hands guttered out. Darkness pressed close, heavier than before. Mordaine forced himself to his feet, stumbling up the staircase. He slammed the basement door shut, chest heaving, and leaned against it as though that flimsy wood could keep the world at bay.

The air of the townhouse felt different now—colder, sharper, as though every shadow might move.

He stared down at his trembling hands. They looked the same as before. Empty. Ordinary.

But he knew better.

Whatever had awakened in him, it was no ordinary gift.

And if the Wraith’s words were true, then more of those things would come.

     Mordaine didn’t sleep that night. He lay in bed staring at the cracked ceiling, every creak of the old house setting his nerves alight. The memory of the Wraith’s scream replayed in his head, and with it, the terrifying truth:

Power had finally chosen him.

But it came with a price.

And he had no idea how to pay it.

    The next morning, the world above ground carried on as if nothing had changed. The city buzzed, merchants shouted, skytrains hummed overhead. At Halewick Academy, students sparred in the courtyards, their flames, lightning, and blades flashing in the morning sun.

Mordaine walked through the gates with his hood drawn low, the weight of the secret dragging at his chest. He could feel it—the ember of the Aetherflame pulsing beneath his skin, restless, alive.

If anyone discovered what had happened last night… what would they do to him? Would they fear him? Hunt him?

He didn’t have answers. Only the memory of that whisper.

And the certainty that his life of obscurity was over for better.