Pushing open the heavy oak door, Clei was immediately greeted by the familiar, comforting scent of aged pine, dried herbs, and old parchment. The interior of the cabin was exactly as he had left it.
Beside the door, a pair of Silas's worn leather boots sat neatly on a low wooden rack, the toes scuffed from years of traversing the forest. Above them hung his father's thick, woolen hunting coat, still carrying the faint, lingering smell of woodsmoke and pipe tobacco. Leaning casually against the wall was a longsword in a scabbard, its hilt wrapped in frayed black leather—a silent testament to the martial prowess Silas had drilled into him alongside magic.
Clei stopped and stared at the scene for a long moment, the silence of the house pressing against his ears, before he moved deeper into the hallway.
In the center of the main room sat a sturdy oak table with two chairs. A few ceramic plates and wooden cups rested on one side, while on the cleaner half lay a single, folded piece of parchment. He walked over and sat down, his fingers tracing the familiar creases before unfolding it. He didn't need to read it—he had memorized every stroke of his father's sharp handwriting—but his eyes traced the words anyway, seeking comfort in the ink.
Dear Clei,
My child, if you are reading this, then I have already gone. I want you to know that I am proud of you. You have grown into a wise, resilient young man, and watching you find your strength has been the greatest privilege of my life.
As much as I wish to stay—to sit across from you at this very table and watch the years shape you—there are forces in this world that will not wait. I have responsibilities I can no longer defer. I do not know when we will see each other again. If I am honest with you, and I have always tried to be, I do not know if we will.
I know you have a thousand questions. Why did I take you in? Why did I train you? Why must I leave? As things stand, I cannot answer them. The truth is a heavy thing, and you are not yet ready to carry it. Perhaps one day, you will be.
You are stronger than you believe. I leave you this house and everything within it. When you feel you are ready—and only when you are ready—leave the forest. Go to Lydia, or to Anatolia in the east. Step into the world. The Great Forest has been our home, but a fire that never meets the wind will never know how brightly it can burn.
Live, Clei. Live fully, and do not let the shadows of the past decide the shape of your future.
Your Proud Father,
Silas
"Father… I still don't know what to do," he whispered.
He dropped his forehead against the cool wood of the table and closed his eyes. The turmoil in his chest was a physical ache, compounded by the exhaustion of the day's hunt and the hour-long run through the forest. His mana reserve, still only half-recovered from casting Firestorm, pulled him downward like a heavy tide.
Within minutes, the silence of the empty house swallowed him into sleep.
…
He awoke to the silver light of the moon filtering through the window panes. Blinking away the stiffness in his neck, Clei realized he had slept through the evening. His stomach gave a hollow rumble. Moving to the stone pantry, he retrieved a few crisp, late-autumn apples and returned to the table, the loud crunches echoing in the quiet house.
As he ate, his mind drifted back to the letter.
Go to a major city. Proceed with your life.
In the four years since Silas had vanished, Clei's only human contact had been violence. A group of bandits had ambushed him near the eastern trail six months ago—six men with rusted blades and hungry eyes.
They had tried to kill him for his boots and his satchel. Clei had fought back with ruthless efficiency, his fire scorching flesh and melting steel. He had left them alive, barely, their bodies broken and blistered in the dirt. He could have killed them. A single burst of flame to the face would have ended it. But something inside him—a stubborn, fragile thread of the boy the priests had once raised—had stayed his hand.
He still wasn't sure if that was mercy or weakness.
His thoughts drifted further, tracing the long road of his training. When Silas first found him, Clei had been a hollow, starving child with no understanding of mana. But Silas had seen something in him—a latent affinity for fire that burned hotter than any student he had ever taught. Within a year of grueling meditation and breathwork, Clei had ignited his first spark, ascending to the rank of F-rank Novice Fire Mage.
In the world of Falstne, the hierarchy of power was absolute. It started with the F-rank Novice, who needed chants to cast. The E-rank Adept could shape elements into weapons. The D-rank Expert, like Clei, achieved Internalization, weaving mana through thought alone. Above them sat the C-rank Master, who formed a Mana Core, and the B-rank Grandmaster, who could manifest elemental avatars. Beyond that, the A-rank Heirs and S-rank Monarchs were nothing but myths—beings of such terrifying power that they were revered as kings, saints, or living natural disasters.
From there, the climb was relentless. Silas's library, stacked floor to ceiling with grimoires and elemental tomes, became Clei's second home. He learned to shape mana, to coax the ambient heat of the world into his palms, until he could hurl a Fireblast with pinpoint precision—an E-rank Adept milestone he reached at the age of twelve.
But it was the final leap that had nearly broken him. The transition to a D-rank Expert required Internalization. For months, Clei sat beneath waterfalls, meditated in the heart of forest fires Silas had conjured, and pushed his Mental Energy to the point of collapse.
Just before his fifteenth birthday, something inside him clicked. The fire stopped being a tool he wielded and became an extension of his will. He could now passively absorb mana simply by breathing, his body acting as a living conduit.
And then, a month later, Silas was gone.
After Silas vanished, that structured life shattered. Clei became a recluse. His only companions were the ancient pines and the wary deer that grazed near his wards. To cope with the silence, he trained obsessively.
Every morning, he practiced his flame manipulation until his mana reserves were entirely depleted. He would compress his fire into spheres no larger than a marble, increasing their density and temperature until they melted the bedrock beneath them, then expand them into wide, sweeping Firestorms to practice area control.
He read his father's books until the pages grew soft, dreaming of the vast, sprawling continent of Falstne described within them.
The past year had been peaceful, but a suffocating kind of peaceful. He had read accounts of eccentric mages who spent decades as hermits, hidden away in mountains and valleys, and part of him wondered if he was destined for the same isolated fate.
Yet, a deeper, more stubborn part of his heart yearned for more.
He had already mapped every safe zone in the Great Forest of Althea. The Rank 1 and Rank 2 Aetherborn that roamed these outer woods were no longer a challenge; he could incinerate them with a thought. Staying here meant stagnation. The only unexplored territories were the Deep Woods, places Silas had strictly forbidden him from entering until he became a Master Fire Mage, a true C-rank powerhouse.
Clei knew what lurked in those depths. Rank 3 Veteran Aetherborn. Rank 4 Alphas. Beings that could tear a D-rank Expert apart if he made a single mistake. To venture there without purpose would be suicide. And death, to Clei, was not a fear—it was a door that, once opened, would make reuniting with Silas impossible.
So he sat at the table, caught between the suffocating safety of solitude and the terrifying vastness of the world.
"I want more," he thought, the realization settling over him like a slow-burning ember. "I want to see what lies beyond these trees. I want to know if there are people in this world who won't look at me and see a monster."
He clenched his fists. "Right now isn't the time," he muttered to the empty room. "I need to focus on breaking through to C-rank."
He closed his eyes, preparing to enter a meditative trance—
But before he could circulate his mana, a sound shattered the night.
ROOOAAARRR!
It was a majestic, earth-shaking roar that vibrated through the floorboards and rattled the ceramic cups on the table. Clei's eyes snapped open, his amber irises flashing with alarm.
His cabin was enclosed within a high-tier concealment and sound-dampening barrier erected by Silas. Normal beast cries or thunderstorms couldn't penetrate it. For a sound to breach the ward, the source had to be either terrifyingly close, or possessing a mana density so overwhelming that it disrupted the barrier's frequency.
Suddenly, the ambient mana in the air grew heavy, pressing against his skin like a physical weight. The hairs on his arms stood on end.
Something incredibly powerful was just outside his sanctuary. The mana was wild and primal, but purely natural—it wasn't the chaotic, rotting stench of a corrupted beast. It was a high-ranking Aetherborn.
Clei stood up, his hand instinctively drifting toward the black mask on the table. He knew the safest thing to do was to stay hidden. But the sheer, suffocating pressure of the mana outside was intoxicating, and in truth, he was curious.
Just what kind of being was outside his house?
And more importantly... what kind of idiots would be stupid enough to enrage an Aetherborn that powerful?