I failed today. I, Lysander Veil, failed. The thought circles my mind like a vulture over carrion, refusing to depart, refusing to grant me peace. Is it not ironic? Twenty-three years of perfection shattered in a moment. Twenty-three years of calculating every variable, predicting every outcome, all rendered meaningless by a technical malfunction.
No. Not a malfunction. A sabotage.
The mana device embedded in my chest flickers weakly as I trudge through the eastern gates of Azurite Tower. Rain pelts my face, mingling with what might be tears if I were capable of such weakness. The guards do not meet my eyes. Word travels quickly in the Towers; news of failure faster still. I am now an outcast, unwelcome in the only home I've ever known.
The device pulses again, sending a shock of mana through my altered blood. Pain radiates from my chest to my fingertips. Not a natural pain, but the betrayal of mathematics. Six years ago, when they first cut open my chest and placed the device against my spleen, they spoke of harmony. "Your body will adapt," they said. "The mana will become part of you." They never mentioned rejection. They never mentioned failure.
What mockery. The greatest analytical mind of my generation, they called me. The prodigy who could predict the outcome of complex spell matrices before they were even completed. Yet here I stand, exiled for a failure that was never mine.
I laugh, the sound harsh and foreign to my ears. A woman pulling a hood against the rain glances at me nervously, quickening her pace. Do I appear mad? Perhaps I am. Perhaps madness is the only rational response to irrationality.
"You knew it would happen," a voice calls from an alley to my right. "You calculated it."
I turn, muscles tensing. The voice belongs to Master Thorne, my former instructor in theoretical applications. He leans against the moldering wall of a closed apothecary, his ceremonial robes replaced by common clothes. Is this a coincidence? No. I've calculated the probability. This meeting was arranged.
"What do you want?" I ask, though I've already mapped seven possible responses, four of which end in violence.
Thorne steps forward, rain dripping from his silver beard. "What you've always wanted, Lysander. The truth."
Truth. What a subjective concept. My fingers ghost over the mana device beneath my shirt. The pain has subsided, leaving only a dull ache. "Your truth or mine?"
"Neither." He looks around furtively. "Come. This street has too many eyes."
Against better judgment, I follow. Not from trust but curiosity. Curiosity has always been my fatal flaw, though I prefer to think of it as my greatest strength. Knowledge is power, after all. And power is what I need now.
We enter a tavern called The Broken Equation, a name that would be amusing under different circumstances. Inside, the air reeks of cheap mana-infused liquor and unwashed bodies. Patrons glance up briefly before returning to their drinks. Failed mages are common enough in this part of the city. We are beneath notice.
Thorne leads me to a back table, away from windows and listeners. He orders two mugs of something that smells vaguely poisonous, then leans forward.
"Your device was sabotaged," he whispers.
I take a sip of the drink and immediately regret it. "I'm aware."
"Do you know why?"
I consider lying but decide against it. "Eight possibilities, ranging from academic jealousy to political maneuvering. Insufficient data to determine the most probable."
Thorne's eyes narrow. "Your mind truly works differently, doesn't it? Always calculating, always one step ahead. That's why they feared you."
"They?"
"The Council of Nine. The true rulers of the Towers."
I resist the urge to scoff. "That's a children's tale. The Towers are governed by the Mageocracy, elected by consensus from the senior faculty."
"A convenient fiction." Thorne reaches into his pocket and places a small object on the table. A mana stone, no larger than my thumbnail, but pulsing with a light that defies the natural spectrum. "Do you know what this is?"
Of course I do. A natural mana stone, formed without device intervention. Heresy, according to Tower doctrine. All mages receive implants; all mana flows through regulated channels. The alternative is chaos, or so we're taught.
"Where did you get that?" I ask, leaning back from the illegal artifact.
"From a street mage who never received an implant." Thorne pushes it toward me. "He formed it naturally, in his blood. Just as our ancestors did before the Towers existed."
My world shifts. The foundations of everything I believed crack like thin ice underfoot. Before the Towers existed? But the Towers have always existed. They channel mana from the earth's core, distribute it according to mathematical principles, maintain the balance that prevents catastrophe.
"Impossible," I whisper, though my mind is already calculating the probability that Thorne speaks truth. The number is higher than I'd like.
"You've been lied to, Lysander. We all have. The Towers don't generate mana. They harvest it. And not from the earth." His voice drops lower. "From elsewhere."
I try to speak but am interrupted by a commotion at the tavern entrance. Three Tower Enforcers in midnight blue uniforms scan the crowd. Their eyes fall on our table.
"They've found us," Thorne hisses, shoving the mana stone into my hand. "Take it. Find the truth. Find the Crimson Sect in the western district. They'll—"
The first enforcer reaches our table, his mana device glowing visibly through his uniform. "Master Thorne. Lysander Veil. By order of the Council, you're under arrest for possession of unregulated mana artifacts."
Thorne stands, his expression resigned. "Run, boy," he says, and lunges at the enforcers.
I don't wait to see the outcome. Clutching the forbidden stone, I bolt for the kitchen. Calculations flash through my mind: three enforcers, two engaged with Thorne, one pursuing me. The kitchen has a back exit with 78% probability.
Behind me, I hear Thorne cry out in pain. I don't look back. Can't look back. The stone burns in my palm like a miniature sun.
The kitchen is empty save for a startled cook who drops a pot as I sprint past. I spot the back door and shoulder through it into a narrow alley slick with rain and refuse. Footsteps pound behind me. The enforcer is gaining.
I turn left at the alley's end, then right into a crowded marketplace. Stalls of mana-infused trinkets and questionable food create a maze that even I struggle to navigate efficiently. Panicked thoughts race through my mind. What will they do if they catch me? Imprisonment? Execution? Reprogramming?
The enforcer's voice cuts through the crowd noise. "Stop him! Unregulated mana user!"
People turn, eyes searching. I duck behind a stall selling cured meats, gasping for breath. The stone pulses in rhythm with my heartbeat. I feel a strange connection to it, as if it's calling to me. Madness. Pure madness.
But the enforcer is closing in. His mana signature reads like a beacon to my trained senses. Soon, others will join him. I need to hide the stone, but where?
A terrible idea forms in my mind. Not a calculation but an instinct. Something I would normally suppress as irrational, dangerous. But these are not normal circumstances.
I raise the stone to my lips.
Would a rational man swallow a mana stone? No. But right now, I am not rational. I am desperate, cornered, and out of logical options.
The stone slides down my throat like a burning coal. I gag, eyes watering, as it settles in my stomach. Almost immediately, I feel... different. Equations dance behind my eyes, patterns I've never seen before, connections between disparate mathematical concepts.
The enforcer rounds the corner, eyes locking on mine. "Where is it?" he demands. "Where's the stone?"
I lean against the stall, feigning exhaustion while my insides burn. "I don't know what you're talking about."
He snorts, raising a hand that crackles with mana energy. "Don't lie to me, failure. Your implant rejection doesn't make you immune to pain."
Pain. What does he know of pain? My organs are being rewritten by forbidden magic, my blood carrying mana particles to my brain without the filter of a device. I can feel reality shifting around me, probabilities becoming visible like transparent overlays.
In this moment, I see seventeen different ways this confrontation could end. In twelve of them, I die. In four, I'm captured. In only one do I escape.
I choose that path.
"You're right," I say, standing straighter. "Pain and I are old friends."
Then I lunge forward, not at the enforcer but at the stall beside him. My fingers find the support beam I calculated would be there. One sharp pull and the entire structure collapses, burying the enforcer under a avalanche of wooden frames and merchandise.
The stall owner screams curses as I dive through the gap and into the crowd. My vision blurs, and I'm suddenly able to see every possibility... simultaneously. Each person I pass appears surrounded by ghostly afterimages, which I imagine represent a possible action they might take. The ghost of a young man behind me trips on his laces. Surely enough, a few seconds later, the young man trips.
I've never experienced anything like this. The mana device was meant to filter, to control. Without it, raw mana floods my system, enhancing my natural predictive abilities to impossible levels. I can literally see what people will do before they do it.
My stomach churns, the stone burning like a coal within me. Fever grips my body, but I push forward, swerving through the crowd with unnatural precision. No one touches me. No one can touch me. No one will touch me.
The marketplace gives way to narrow streets, then wider boulevards. I am moving away from the Towers, toward the city's edge. The slums await, a maze of desperation and unchecked criminality. For an upper-tier mage, it would be suicide to enter such a place.
But I am no longer an upper-tier mage. I am something else. Something new.
Night falls as I reach the boundary between regulated and unregulated districts. The barrier is purely psychological; no wall separates the areas, only a gradual deterioration in architecture and infrastructure. The further one gets from the Towers, the less mana flows through public channels.
I pause, leaning against a wall as a wave of nausea overtakes me. The stone in my stomach pulses violently. My skin feels too tight, as if something is trying to push its way out from within. When I look at my arms, I see faint lines appearing on the surface, tracing patterns like equations.
Madness. Hallucinations brought on by mana poisoning. I need shelter, water. Time to think.
A child watches me from a doorway, eyes wide and curious. "You're sick," she says. Not a question but a statement of fact.
I nod, too exhausted to deny it.
"Like the others. The ones with the symbols."
My attention sharpens through the fog of pain. "Others? What others?"
She points deeper into the slums. "The red people. The ones who drink fire."
Crimson Sect. Thorne's words echo in my mind. Find the Crimson Sect in the western district.
"Where?" I ask, pushing away from the wall. "Where are these red people?"
The child shrugs, already losing interest. "Underground. Where the towers can't see."
Another wave of pain hits me, stronger this time. I stagger, nearly falling. The equations on my skin glow faintly in the gathering darkness. Not hallucinations after all.
What have I done to myself?
I force myself forward, deeper into the slums, following nothing but a child's vague directions and the desperate hope that somewhere in this maze of poverty and neglect, answers await me. The stone continues to burn inside me, rewriting me one cell at a time.
Behind me, the Towers of Azurite rise like sentinels against the night sky, their peaks glowing with harvested mana. Have they always been prisons rather than centers of learning? Has everything I believed been a lie?
One thing is certain: failure was the best thing that could have happened to me. Failure set me free.
And freedom, I'm discovering, is a kind of pain all its own.
As night deepens, the equations on my skin grow brighter. I hide my arms beneath my cloak, but there's no hiding from myself. Whatever I'm becoming, there's no turning back. The stone is in my blood now, carrying forbidden knowledge to every corner of my being.
I laugh again, a sound halfway between despair and exhilaration. Let them hunt me. Let them try to predict my movements, calculate my destination.
They'll always be one step behind.