The first week in the Arcana Academy passed like a storm of parchment and incantations. From dawn until deep into the second moon, the days were filled with theory, practice, and an undercurrent of caution so taut it might as well have been spell-thread.
Magic, as Altharion quickly learned, was not revered. It was feared.
Their instructors — robed in colors denoting their mastery — were not warm mentors but scholars and custodians of order. They spoke not of glory or wonder, but of restraint.
“Magic is the breath of creation,” one lecturer intoned during their first Fundamentals of Channeling class. “But so too is it the whisper of annihilation.”
Altharion listened, enthralled, as they explained how magic was once unbound — wild, beautiful, and unregulated — until a series of cataclysmic events known as The Shatterings nearly tore Astravara apart. Kingdoms turned to dust. Lakes boiled. Stars fell. All from casters who overreached.
From then on, the Church of Elyonel declared magic a divine trust to be guarded — and controlled.
“Magic corrupts the unworthy,” the lecturer said. “A fractured mind brings fractured spells — and fractured spells bring fire, death, and worse.”
Every hall was warded. Every spell cast under supervision. And everywhere, the paladins walked like sentinels of stone. They patrolled class entrances, stood unmoving during lectures, and lingered near students who dared push the limits of their studies.
Altharion saw their eyes often — flat, judgmental, always calculating.
At first, their presence made his skin crawl. But over time, he began to grow numb to it. They became part of the Academy’s rhythm. The rhythm of control.
That is, until he noticed students being led away.
Sometimes after a spell misfired. Sometimes after whispers in the dining hall. Sometimes with no cause at all.
“Where are they taken?” Altharion asked Kaela once.
“Probably back to their dorms,” she said quickly. Too quickly.
He didn’t ask again.
Despite the shadow, Altharion thrived in the craft itself. His affinity for conjuration was sharp — his movements precise, his will steady. By the third week, he was already summoning flickers of arcane matter that most took months to grasp.
“Fascinating,” murmured Master Elvoren, watching Altharion bend a flame without heat. “You have a strange finesse, boy. As if the spell wants to obey you.”
He did not know whether to take it as a compliment.
And then came Meridan Thalnos.
Master Meridan was older than most, with long silvery hair tied back with simple cloth and a gait that favored one side, as if he’d once survived a spell gone wrong. But his eyes held a different light: curiosity, not suspicion. Kindness, not calculation.
Their first true meeting happened in a library alcove, where Altharion stayed late after class, struggling with a spellform inscribed on ancient vellum.
“That’s not ink,” said a voice behind him. “It’s shadow root. It responds better to thought than sight.”
Altharion turned to find Meridan watching him with a tired but warm smile.
“You’re the boy with the double flare,” Meridan added. “The indeterminate affinity.”
“Is that what they’re calling me now?” Altharion muttered.
“They’ll call you worse. But I’ll call you gifted.”
From that day forward, Meridan began to mentor him in small ways — suggesting books, challenging his theories, warning him gently when he overreached. Not once did he treat Altharion’s heritage as a flaw. Not once did he doubt his worth.
“Power is not what makes a magus,” he said one evening. “Wisdom is. And control. The flame that lights the world must never become the fire that burns it down.”
Altharion clung to those words. They were a balm in a place that often felt like it only tolerated him out of obligation.
Outside Meridan’s lectures and Kaela’s playful teasing, there were few reprieves. Torrin still provoked, though now his barbs were often laced with reluctant admiration. Nurelion, aloof as ever, shared cryptic warnings but little comfort.
Still, Altharion began to feel his place within the Academy taking shape — not as a friend to all, but as someone no longer invisible.
Yet even as his magic flourished, something darker stirred.
One evening, returning from the practice halls, Altharion saw a student sobbing in the shadows, clutching at burned fingertips, muttering about dreams and voices. Two paladins stood nearby, their faces emotionless as they dragged the student away.
The boy never returned.
Kaela said nothing when he asked. Nurelion only shook his head.
And so Altharion stayed silent.
The classroom of Arcane Channeling was a wide, circular hall encased in enchanted glass that shimmered like rippling water. In the center, twelve students stood around runes etched into the floor, each one glowing with the soft light of conjured sigils. Professor Jhael Morwyn, a stiff and exacting master of Evocation, moved among them with hands clasped behind his back, barking corrections.
“Focus. Anchor your will. Channel, don’t command. Magic is not a pet—it is a storm.”
Altharion stood with Kaela and Torrin nearby, already weaving the basic formation of a fire prism. For a moment, everything was calm—until the sharp scent of ozone hit his nose, and a cry shattered the air.
One of the younger students — a frail boy named Evan Torrel, barely sixteen — stood frozen. His arms trembled. Light poured from his fingertips, erratic and unstable, flaring in harsh pulses that stung the eyes.
“He’s lost control,” someone muttered.
Altharion’s senses ignited. He felt the magic. Not just saw it — felt it. It tugged at him like a heartbeat out of rhythm, like something buried deep inside him recognized the chaos in Evan’s spell.
The classroom erupted into panic. Students stumbled back. Professor Morwyn rushed forward, shouting incantations to stabilize the weave—but it was too late.
The doors burst open, and four paladins surged into the chamber, shields raised, armor gleaming. Their presence was suffocating. One of them — a knight bearing the twin sigils of Elyonel’s Flame and the Church — raised his hand, and a glyph of blinding gold appeared mid-air.
“Circle of Atonement!” he barked.
The four formed a square around Evan, slamming their shields into the ground. A radiant dome blossomed from their position, a barrier of holy light that pulsed with divine pressure. Inside, Evan screamed.
Altharion stepped forward instinctively, drawn by the pulsing agony of the wild spell — something in him recognized it, wanted to reach it, to help.
Kaela grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You can’t save him.”
“He’s just a boy—!”
“So were many others.”
Inside the barrier, Evan’s form convulsed. Magic tore from his body in waves, cracking the marble floor beneath him. The divine field did not protect — it suffocated. Stabilized the spell, yes, but at the cost of the caster.
And then it was over.
The light inside the dome vanished, and Evan fell in silence. A still, broken thing.
The paladins moved with cold efficiency. One of them turned to the class.
“This lesson is concluded. Leave immediately.”
No mourning. No explanation.
Two others approached Professor Morwyn. One placed a gauntleted hand on the teacher’s shoulder.
“You will answer for this.”
Morwyn didn’t protest. He simply bowed his head and allowed himself to be escorted out.
The students filed out in stunned silence. Some wept. Others whispered to themselves in disbelief.
Altharion lingered near the doorway, his hands clenched, his eyes locked on the scorched mark where Evan had died. A place that minutes ago held promise… now stained with silence.
And then he felt it.
A gaze.
He turned.
One of the paladins — a tall man with a polished helm under his arm, silver hair cropped short, eyes pale as fog — was staring directly at him. Not with suspicion. With recognition.
It was not the look of someone watching a student.
It was the look of someone watching a problem begin to grow.
Altharion looked away and followed the others into the corridor, his mind reeling. The echo of Evan’s death still vibrated in his chest.
Magic is not a pet. It is a storm.
He now understood what that meant — and why the storm terrified them so much.
That night, the dormitories were quieter than usual.
Even the air seemed subdued, as if the very stones of the academy mourned what had happened. Altharion hadn’t spoken a word since the incident, and the memory of Evan’s scream still echoed in his ears like a curse.
Unable to sleep, he made his way to the upper chambers of the east tower — a place few dared to go after curfew. There, behind an enchanted oak door that always smelled faintly of burnt parchment, was Meridan Thalnos’ study.
The old mage sat alone, reading beneath a floating lantern. His long silver beard was tucked neatly into his belt, and his robes shimmered faintly with protective sigils. He looked up before Altharion even knocked.
“You felt it, didn’t you?”
Altharion entered, closing the door behind him.
“The spell… Evan’s magic. It wasn’t just wild. It was alive. It called to me.”
Meridan nodded slowly, folding the edge of his book.
“Sit, child.”
Altharion obeyed. The chair was hard, the room cold despite the magical lanterns. Meridan regarded him for a long time before speaking again.
“Most students witness a magical failure and feel fear. You felt connection. That’s dangerous.”
“I didn’t cause it,” Altharion protested, though softly.
“I know. But it doesn’t matter. Connection like that… means you hear the raw Weave. That’s the primordial essence of all magic. It’s not meant to be touched. Not like that.”
Altharion hesitated.
“Why? Why is it so dangerous? Isn’t magic meant to be part of us?”
Meridan sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair, eyes drifting toward the shelves filled with relics and forgotten tomes.
“Let me tell you what the Church fears — and why they are not entirely wrong.”
His voice took on a different tone — measured, quiet, as though he spoke not only to Altharion, but to the very stones around them.
“In ages past, magic was not divided into schools or disciplines. It was chaos. Beautiful, untamed, and deadly. Kingdoms rose and fell on the whim of a mage’s ambition. Entire cities were consumed in fire or frozen in time because someone reached too far. And when the gods turned their faces away from the mortal world, magic became a hunger with no leash.”
“The Church was founded not to suppress magic… but to save the world from it. Paladins were never meant to be jailers. They were guardians. But fear changes things. And now, the line between protecting the world and controlling it has blurred.”
“I dream of a different world, Altharion. One where magic isn’t something to fear, but something shared. A tool to heal the wounded, to feed the hungry, to rebuild what war and time have broken. I’ve spent my life trying to prove that magic can be safe. That it can be earned, not feared.”
He looked at Altharion then, tired eyes lit by a quiet flame.
“But when I see you… when I sense the Weave bending around you… I worry. Not because I think you’re evil. But because I see the temptation. The call. The same one that destroyed mages far more powerful than you.”
Altharion looked down at his hands, which still tingled faintly with the echo of Evan’s death. He remembered the feeling — not just the pull, but the familiarity. Like the Weave had seen him… and reached out.
“I don’t want to become a monster,” he said.
“Then don’t chase shadows alone,” Meridan warned. “Study. Train. And when the time comes to choose… choose the world.”
But as Altharion left the study and returned to the corridors of stone and silence, the sensation still lingered in his chest — not pain, not fear.
Curiosity.
The kind that could shape a savior.
Or unleash a storm.
Chronicles of Astravara 