Kedo Bay was a city of mist and salt. The cries of gulls echoed over the harbor from dawn till dusk, and the air was thick with the scent of brine, tar, and fish oil. Sailors shouted across the piers, ships creaked under the weight of goods, and foreign traders filled the taverns with rough laughter.
In the midst of this chaos stood a tall marble building overlooking the sea — its walls faintly veined with blue quartz, bearing the silver insignia of the Mage Association. It was here that Jill worked, the appointed Branch Director of the Mage Association in the Port City of Kedo Bay.
He was a graduate of Kribi Mage Academy, one of the top ten students of his class — and when the headquarters offered a list of cities for assignment, he had chosen the farthest one: Kedo Bay, on the very edge of the western continent.
It had seemed, at first, like an act of humility. "To serve where others will not," he had said in his letter to headquarters. But the truth was simpler: distance meant freedom.
The farther from Kribi, the less the scrutiny.
And Jill had always preferred to be left alone.
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Kedo Bay was a city too far from the capital's reach. Headquarters rarely sent inspectors, and when they did, the journey took months across unstable trade routes. Most mages assigned there were young, ambitious, or simply desperate — outcasts in search of opportunity.
That suited Jill perfectly. Within a few short years, he had risen from a mere coordinator to Branch Director.
And once he sat in that chair — once the seal of the local Association lay beneath his hand — his ambitions began to twist, coil, and grow.
At first, his changes were small, almost harmless.
He promoted those loyal to him, ensuring that every letter from headquarters passed through his chosen intermediaries first. Then came the "amendments" — slight modifications to directives from Kribi, subtle enough that no one would notice unless they compared the originals.
Headquarters was too far. The channels of oversight too slow. Reports traveled by months at a time — and in that gap of distance and delay, Jill built his little empire.
Soon, his control became absolute. Orders from Kribi were "interpreted" to fit local needs. Reports were polished, rewritten, and forged. He even began to fabricate progress reports that made Kedo Bay look like a shining example of efficiency and productivity.
For years, no one questioned it.
In Kedo Bay, Jill was not just a director — he was a ruler. The word of Kribi meant nothing compared to his.
But isolation, he discovered, was a double-edged sword.
Kedo Bay's distance from Kribi was both blessing and curse. Headquarters sent fewer candidates each year, and the local pool of high-ranking mages was painfully thin.
To maintain his grip, Jill needed more people — loyal, capable mages who owed everything to him.
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He found them among the "unofficial graduates."
They were not frauds. The examinations of Kribi were too strict to be deceived. No — these were mages who had graduated legitimately, but were bound by contracts. Many had received generous stipends or training subsidies and, in return, were obligated to serve the Association — often by teaching or fulfilling government assignments for several years.
Most of them hated it.
The pay was low, the work dull, and the bureaucracy suffocating. So Jill offered them something else.
A sanctuary.
A way out.
"Come to Kedo Bay," he had whispered to them in correspondence sealed with his personal mark. "You can continue your research here. No one from Kribi will interfere. I will see to it."
One by one, they came.
Mages who had fled their contracts. Scholars who wanted quiet. Exiles who feared punishment.
Under Jill's protection, they disappeared from the Association's records. In exchange, they worked for him. Some taught at his academies, others crafted enchanted tools for the harbor's merchant guilds. All of them deferred their obligations indefinitely.
And so the Kedo Bay Branch grew — independent, self-sufficient, almost sovereign.
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
No one complained.
No one questioned.
Until now.
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Jill, who had not visited Kribi in over a decade, finally came to headquarters for an annual report — only to hear that the Education Department intended to forcibly summon all mages who had evaded their training contracts, returning them to headquarters to serve as instructors for three years.
"Nonsense!!"
"Utter nonsense!!"
Jill's voice echoed through the corridor, startling several clerks. His face flushed red, veins visible along his temple. The scroll trembled in his hand as his mana flared instinctively, faint sparks crackling in the air.
Half of Kedo Bay's mages were under those contracts. If the order stood, his branch would be gutted within a decade. All the influence, all the quiet empire he had built at the edge of the continent — gone.
He slammed the decree onto the nearest desk. "Do they even understand what this means? The regional branches will collapse! The association's research projects, the infrastructure—"
"Please, Director Jill," the clerk stammered, lowering his gaze. "We only deliver the directives. Protests can be filed formally through the—"
"Protests?!" Jill roared, cutting him off. "This is war!"
That night, he gathered several other branch directors in a rented lounge at the Grand Leyline Hotel. The air reeked of wine and frustration.
"Are we supposed to accept this humiliation quietly?" Jill barked, slamming his palm on the table. "They're stripping us of our people under the guise of education reform!"
A middle-aged director from the western provinces gritted his teeth. "You're right. They'll recall our best mages, tie them up in bureaucratic nonsense, and leave us to rot. It's a power grab."
"Then we confront them directly," Jill said. "Tomorrow morning, we go to the Education Department as a united front. They'll have no choice but to listen."
The next day, they stormed into the Education Department. Their robes fluttered as they walked through the atrium, drawing fearful glances from apprentices.
But when they reached the top floor — they met a wall of silence.
The Minister of Education, a young woman with purple hair and an expression as calm as still water, was sitting at the head of the chamber. Her desk was bare except for a single stack of documents. The light from the enchanted windows painted her profile in shades of lilac and gold.
Jill pointed an accusing finger. "You issued this decree! You're crippling the branches — forcing mages to abandon their work! Aren't you afraid of public condemnation?!"
The woman lifted her gaze slowly.
Her expression was indifferent, far too calm for her age. Her eyes held the detached stillness of someone who had lived fifty or sixty years longer than her face suggested.
"Why should I be afraid?"
"Afraid of offending you?"
The moment she spoke, a chill surged up Jill's spine — from his feet to his skull.
He instinctively lowered his head, unable to meet her gaze.
Even the urge to speak — to protest — vanished from his throat.
That feeling — that crushing, suffocating pressure — Jill had only ever felt once before, in the presence of a great demon on the battlefield:
a helpless awareness that death loomed inches away, and that his life meant nothing to the one before him.
Like an insect before a rolling wheel — the wheel doesn't even notice what it crushes.
By the time Jill regained awareness, he found himself being politely escorted out of the Education Department by security personnel.
"Jill, what happened to you? You were the one who led us here to protest! Why did you suddenly go silent?"
"I didn't surrender…" Jill murmured, staring at his trembling hands. "I… I don't know why…"
It was strange — terribly strange.
That girl hadn't even released a trace of mana, and yet… the fear had been overwhelming.
Was it an illusion?
"What do we do now? We won't get another chance to confront the Education Department. The headquarters will soon issue strict orders forbidding any further protests. It's one thing to argue with a department — but we can't defy headquarters itself."
"There's still a chance," Jill said, exhaling slowly. He lowered his gaze to hide the tremor in his fingers. "If we can't act in the open, then we act in the shadows. Every one of us has research and spells that headquarters doesn't know about. We have connections in Kribi. If something happens, we can bury it."
"You mean… to attack members of headquarters? Are you insane?! Losing a few mages is one thing, but if we're caught assaulting headquarters officials, we'll be—"
"Then don't get caught!" Jill snapped. "Do you really think this order is just about a few contract-breakers? Use your heads! Don't you find it strange how quickly headquarters approved the Education Department's proposal?"
He swept his gaze across the room.
The other branch directors met his eyes — the meaning dawning on them.
Jill continued:
"The Education Department's decree is only the beginning. It's a pretext — to call back all stationed mages and reassign them. Once the personnel start moving, headquarters regains control over every region."
His brows furrowed.
Headquarters suddenly revisiting the decade-old training program, appointing some unknown young girl as Education Minister — the intention was obvious:
"The reason the president allowed this absurd order is because she wants to weaken the power of the branch directors. Today it's the mid-level mages. Tomorrow, it'll be us."
Putting that Education Minister on the stage was merely bait — a lightning rod to draw their anger.
Meanwhile, headquarters would quietly reclaim authority layer by layer, like a frog slowly boiling in warm water.
By the time they realized it, it would be too late.
The era of regional autonomy — of unchecked power — would be over.
The branch directors gathered in Kribi turned pale at Jill's words.
If things truly reached that stage, they could only pray that headquarters wouldn't dig up their past misconduct.
"What should we do? We're powerless! All the First Class Mages and Great Mages answer directly to headquarters. Even if we wanted to resist, we lack the strength. Are we really supposed to watch helplessly as our power is stripped away?"
"Of course not."
Many directors panicked, but a few — Jill among them — exchanged knowing looks and remained composed.
"There's still a way?"
"Yes. Headquarters may control the strongest mages, but we still have the numbers. We can't openly oppose them, but we can show our discontent from the shadows. Headquarters won't risk turning every mage beneath them into an enemy."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we can't touch the President or the Vice-President… but we can touch the one who proposed all this."
"The Education Minister?"
"Exactly. Find out who she really is. We can't squeeze the powerful, but we can squeeze the soft."
The branch directors exchanged glances — then burst into laughter. They had found their scapegoat.
That very night, Jill organized a secret intelligence network in Kribi.
Using their combined connections, the directors began investigating the mysterious Education Minister's identity.
Despite being hastily formed, the network was astonishingly efficient.
By the next morning, a dossier on Aura lay on Jill's desk.
He flipped through it — most pages were blank, others marked only with question marks.
"What do you mean, 'no information'?"
The informant replied, "Everyone we contacted in Kribi said the same thing — they've never seen her before. She simply appeared out of nowhere."
"What about the Association's archives? She must have a personnel file! With the clearance we have, we can access royal records from every kingdom — how could her file be missing? No one in this world exists without social ties!"
"We did find it, but… we can't open it."
"Can't open it?"
"It's a top-class confidential file — sealed personally by Mistress Serie."
"…What?"
Jill's pupils constricted. A chill spread through him.
That elf — long absent from public affairs — had not interfered in the association for decades. But everyone who knew the truth understood: she was the foundation of the Mage Association.
Or rather, the foundation of human magic itself.
"We don't know who that girl is," the informant continued, "but there are rumors. Someone claimed to have seen President Zanze hosting her for dinner. Vice-President Flamme herself sent a lavish hat as a gift — like she was bribing her…"
"Stop investigating."
"Uh… Director Jill, even if we can't access her file, we could secretly have her followed—"
"I said stop investigating!"
"Why? You're usually the most persistent one among us!"
"This time is different." Jill forced a bitter smile. "Even if we find out, what would it matter? If she can command the respect of both the President and Vice-President — and even Misstress Serie — then whatever she intends to do, no one will be able to stop her."
Who was this woman? Some hidden protégé? Serie's illegitimate daughter, perhaps?
Jill collapsed into his chair, exhausted.
If the top leaders of headquarters had still been divided, the branches might have had room to maneuver.
But now, a single, enigmatic figure had united them all.
And with their strength combined — the Mage Association's reform would become unstoppable.