Ethan didn't flinch. He didn't scream. He didn't ask if this was a hallucination. In his mind, the probability of a hallucination being this detailed down to the smell of ozone and the heat radiating from the burning timber was near zero. Therefore, this was reality. And in reality, panic was a variable that led to failure.
He gently, but firmly, pulled his hand from her grip.
He took a step back, his eyes scanning the girl not with empathy, but with the precision of a surgeon. Pupils dilated. Pulse visible in the carotid artery. Hands trembling adrenal fatigue. The blood on the ground is oxidising, meaning the ritual took hours to prepare. She's alone. She's desperate. She's a weapon looking for a trigger.
He looked past her, at the destroyed town. Scorch marks on stone high heat, instantaneous. Structural damage suggests brute force combined with directional energy. No bodies. Either they fled, or they were vaporized.
He turned his gaze back to the girl. The air around him seemed to settle. Even the wind stopped, as if waiting for him to speak. He didn't look like a confused teenager in pajamas anymore, he stood with the posture of a king surveying a new conquest.
"Stand up," Ethan said. His voice was calm, cutting through the crackling fire like a blade. "Crying is inefficient. It wastes water and energy."
The girl blinked, startled by the shift in his demeanor. The fear she expected to see in him was absent. Instead, she felt like she was the one being summoned. She wiped her eyes and stood, straightening her back.
"Who are you?" she murmured.
"Ethan. But names are irrelevant right now," he said, walking past her to inspect the fading magic circle. He ran a finger over the glowing groove. It hummed. "You summoned me to be a weapon. I accept the contract. But a weapon needs data to function."
He turned to face her, the firelight catching the sharp angles of his face. "Brief me. The physics of this world. The energy source. The enemy. You have two minutes."
The girl who introduced herself as Lysandra stared at him. She had expected to spend hours convincing him, begging him. Instead, he was commanding her.
"The energy is called Mana," Lysandra explained, speaking quickly. "It is the lifeblood of Aethelgard. It flows through the earth and the air. We mages harness it by visualizing constructs>shapes and intent>to alter reality."
"Visualization and intent," Ethan repeated. Programmable matter. Determine the variable, apply the formula, execute the code. "Go on."
"The Void Creatures... they are the antithesis of Mana," Lysandra's voice trembled with hatred. "They don't belong to this dimension. They hunger for Mana. This town, Eldoria, sat upon a Mana Leyline , a natural spring of energy. They came to feed. They... they consume everything. Living beings, stone, air. They turn existence into nothingness."
"Why did they leave?" Ethan asked, looking at the empty ruins.
"They ate their fill," she whispered. "And the Leyline ran dry. They moved west, toward the Capital."
Ethan closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
Back on Earth, he was limited. He was limited by gravity, by friction, by the slow pace of human evolution. But here?
He focused. Lysandra said Mana flows through the air.
He didn't just try to feel it; he analyzed it. He visualized the air around him not as empty space, but as a grid of particles. He reached out with his mind, searching for the anomaly.
There.
A hum. A static charge that wasn't electricity. It felt like a dormant muscle he had never used.
"Basic magic," Ethan said, opening his eyes. They seemed sharper now, almost glowing in the dark. "Show me the simplest spell you know."
Lysandra hesitated, then raised a hand. "Ignis." A small, flickering flame the size of a candle appeared above her palm.
Ethan watched her mana flow. He saw the way the energy gathered, condensed, and combusted. It wasn't magic to him; it was thermodynamics bypassed by sheer will.
Input: Mana.
Process: Compression and friction.
Output: Fire.
Ethan raised his right hand. He didn't say a word. He didn't need the chant; the chant was just a crutch to help the mind focus. He didn't need crutches. He needed results.
He snapped his fingers.
WHOOSH.
A sphere of fire, perfectly spherical and roaring with the intensity of a blowtorch, materialized instantly above his hand. It was ten times the size of Lysandra's, spinning rapidly, sucking the oxygen out of the immediate area.
Lysandra gasped, stumbling back. "But... you just arrived... you have no affinity..."
Ethan closed his hand, and the fire vanished instantly, leaving no smoke. Total control.
He looked at his hand, a small, confident smirk playing on his lips. The boredom that had plagued him in Seattle was gone.
"The Void Creatures moved west," Ethan said, turning his back to the ruins of the town. He looked toward the dark horizon. "Then that is where we go."
He glanced back at Lysandra, his presence dominating the ruined square.
"Stop trembling, Lysandra. You wanted revenge? I'll give you a massacre."