Years 11–13
The training wheels came off. Or rather, they were incinerated.
Upon my return from the front, I stopped asking for permission. I stopped reading about theory and started demanding practice. My father, sensing the shift in my demeanor, finally granted me what I had been denied: a Sigil.
Usually, a Magnus is attuned to one. A heavy gauntlet of iron and arc-glass designed to channel a specific frequency of the Weave. But for a Triarch, standard issue was a death sentence; a standard blue sigil would shatter if I poured red fury through it.
So, the Royal Artificers forged me something new.
It was a monstrosity of engineering. Three interlocking rings of Star-metal, rotating independently around my right forearm, each set with a different focusing lens. It was heavy, ugly, and hissed when the Leylines were high. I loved it.
"It is a leash," Sandrakk told me one afternoon, watching me struggle to calibrate the lenses. "You are trying to funnel an ocean through a straw."
"I need focus," I grunted, firing a green Limpet that shattered a target dummy into splinters.
"You need control," he corrected, stepping closer. "The King wants a cannon. The Queen wants a shield. But what happens, Aelius, when you realize you are neither?"
He began to take me on "excursions." Not to the slums this time, but to the edges of the world—to the Wound-Scars where the Leylines were frayed and chaotic. He taught me not just how to cast, but how to feed.
"The Weave is not a tool," he whispered as we stood on a precipice overlooking the Pale Forest. "It is a living thing. And like all living things, it respects only one thing: Dominance."
At twelve, I accidentally collapsed a wing of the training hall. I was trying to merge a Blue Shield with a Red Blast—a defensive explosion. The resulting shockwave didn't just break the stone; it atomized it.
My father looked at the ruin and nodded. "Good. Now do it again."
My mother looked at the ruin and touched my arm. "Did it hurt you?"
I lied to her for the first time. "No."
But it did. My veins felt like they were filled with broken glass. The magic was getting stronger, louder. It was beginning to whisper to me in my sleep.
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Years 14–15
The court began to call me "The Prism Prince." A pretty name for a terrifying reality.
By fourteen, I had surpassed the instruction of the standard Magni. The Palace tutors could teach me history and mathematics, but in combat, they were frightened of me. I could sense their hesitation, the micro-second delay before they cast a shield, fearing that if they struck me too hard, the King would execute them—and if they didn't strike hard enough, I would accidentally maim them.
So, I stopped sparring with tutors. I started sparring with Immortals.
It was a closed session. Only the High Council, my parents, and the upper echelon of the Immortals were present. My opponent was Kaelen, a veteran Green Magnus known for his speed.
He didn't hold back. He moved like a viper, firing seeking missiles of emerald energy that tracked my heat signature. For the first few minutes, I was on the defensive, blinking through blue slip-space to avoid the impacts.
"Fight back!" my father roared from the balcony.
Something snapped.
I didn't cast a spell. I pulled.
I reached out with my left hand—my bare hand—and seized the green mana flowing toward me. I didn't block it; I hijacked it. I turned Kaelen's own magic against him, twisting the green vines in mid-air and slamming them back into the stone floor, trapping his feet.
Then, I transitioned.
I stepped forward, and the air around me turned red. Not the angry, chaotic red of a fireball, but a concentrated, humming beam of pure heat. I stopped it an inch from Kaelen's face. The heat singed his eyebrows.
Silence descended on the arena.
I had just performed a Spellbreak and a Shift in under two seconds.
Kaelen looked up at me, sweat dripping down his face. He didn't look at a prince. He looked at a predator.
"Yield," I said softly.
He nodded, breathless.
When I looked up to the balcony, my father was smiling—a wolfish, satisfied grin. But Sandrakk was watching me with narrow eyes, his expression unreadable.
Later that evening, Sandrakk found me in the archives.
"You enjoyed it," he said. It wasn't a question.
"I won," I replied, wiping soot from my armor.
"You dominated," he corrected. "There is a difference. Today you proved you can beat a man. Tomorrow, the world will ask if you can beat an army. And the day after that? They will ask if you can beat the Weave itself."
He placed a book on the table. It was old, bound in black leather that seemed to absorb the light. There was no title, only a symbol embossed on the cover—a symbol that looked like the Font, but inverted.
"The King teaches you how to win the war," Sandrakk whispered, leaning in close. "I can teach you how to end it."
He left before I could ask what he meant.
I opened the book. The pages were blank at first. But as my hand hovered over them, ink began to bleed into existence, reacting to the latent tri-magic in my blood.
The Ethics of Oblivion.
I shouldn't have read it. I knew the laws. I knew the dangers of studying forbidden lore.
I turned the page.
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Year 16
The year the sky cracked.
It was the Festival of the Light, a celebration of Lucium's endurance. The streets were filled with lanterns, and for a night, the smog of industry was replaced by the smell of roasting meat and sweet wine.
I stood on the balcony of the Palathon, the great fortress of the Immortals, looking out over the city. I was sixteen now. Tall, broad-shouldered, carrying the weight of three colors in my blood. I wore the ceremonial armor of the heir, gold and white, but beneath it, I wore the black sigil I had begun to tinker with in secret.
My mother joined me. She looked tired. Her skin was pale, and the light in her eyes seemed dimmer than I remembered. The war was taking its toll on her, draining her spirit as surely as it drained the land's mana.
"You look like a king," she said softly, fixing my collar.
"I look like a target," I replied, scanning the rooftops out of habit.
She sighed, resting her hands on the stone railing. "Do you remember the shoemaker? From Lucent Hollow?"
"I remember."
"He died three days ago," she said. "The plague. A byproduct of the mana-runoff from the weapon factories upstream."
I stiffened. "I didn't know."
"Your father kept it from the reports. He said it was 'acceptable collateral.'" She turned to me, her eyes wet. "Aelius, promise me something."
"Anything."
"Don't let the power eat the person. The Weave takes. It always takes. If you don't decide what you are willing to give, it will take everything."
Before I could answer, the alarm bells shattered the night.
Not the bells of celebration. The bells of breach.
The sky to the north turned a sickly, bruised purple. A tears in the fabric of the world. Rasharn hadn't just attacked the border; they had bypassed it. A drop-ship armada, cloaked in illusion magic, was descending on the capital.
"Go," my mother whispered, pushing me. "Go!"
I didn't run to the safe room. I ran to the edge of the balcony.
I saw the first enemy ship—a jagged skiff of black iron and red sails—scream over the palace walls. It fired a payload of concentrated magic into the courtyard below. I saw the crowd scream. I saw the fire.
And for the first time, I didn't feel fear. I didn't feel hesitation.
I felt clarity.
I vaulted over the railing, dropping three stories. The wind rushed past my ears.
Mid-air, I didn't reach for the Blue to catch me. I reached for the Red to propel me, and the Green to bind me. I became a comet.
I crashed onto the deck of the Rasharnian skiff, the impact buckling the metal plates. Soldiers turned, weapons raised, shouting commands in a harsh tongue.
I stood up, my eyes glowing with the light of three suns.
"Get off my city," I said.
And then, I let the storm out.