The Academy’s marble mausoleum gleamed under the triple moonlight, throwing long shadows across the frozen garden, as if it were daytime. Frost-laden gargoyles perched along its eaves, their snarling faces dusted with snow that kept falling quietly around me. I breathed in the sharp winter air and suddenly pictured Bastien’s severed head rolling across the snow, just as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
From my cloak pocket, I pulled out the crystalline mana key, its sapphire glow pulsating against my fur as I neared the concealed entrance. The dormant spell inside stirred to life, and tendrils of arcane energy coiled around the mausoleum wall, revealing a door where none had been visible before. With a push of my hand, the massive double doors parted, their hinges protesting with a deep groan.
I proceeded inside, descending the ancient spiral staircase to my weekly special class with Professor Irleophiss. One thought kept bugging me on my way down. Who in the world were these giant steps carved for? Each weathered stone slab was nearly knee-high, yet this passage remained laughably inadequate for a full-grown dragon. In fact, representatives of every intelligent race I could think of would have to awkwardly hop-step like a child.
My thighs burned in protest despite years of combat training. This world’s architecture lacked the towering structures of my previous life, leaving my muscles woefully unprepared for this particular movement. My quadriceps and glutes ached, and they would hurt even more after the morning climb back. Come to think of it, I haven’t really explored any mountains in this life. If I get the chance, I really should.
I released a weary sigh as I finally stepped into the secret caverns beneath the Academy’s moonlit gardens. The earthy smell of moss and old limestone filled the air as I walked through the hidden archway, its runes glowing softly blue as I passed the threshold.
My gaze immediately shifted to something unexpected: a threadbare woolen blanket spread over the damp stone floor. Atop it lay a gaunt girl I recognized. It was impossible not to, with her ashen hair and skin so pale it seemed to glow in the dim, cavernous light. Her delicate features contorted as she twitched and whimpered, clearly caught in the grip of the same series of nightmares I once endured.
I set my cloak and leather satchel on the damp stone floor with a soft thud. “Huh, Professor Irleophiss, what is Darya doing here?”
The dragon’s massive, scaled head swiveled toward me, each obsidian scale catching the blue phosphorescent light. His amber eyes narrowed with amusement. “Well, what do you think?” He rumbled, his voice like far-off thunder in the cavern. “Clearly, she asked for the same thing you did. How much of her background did she reveal to you?”
“That she is originally from the Empire and her lost sister most likely was a victim of the occult magic that destroyed her soul,” I responded, watching the sleeping girl’s chest rise and fall with shallow breaths. Her fingers twitched against the rough wool blanket as if grasping for something just beyond reach.
“Sadly, yes.” He nodded, his scaled brows furrowing into deep ridges above amber eyes which shone like burning gold. A wisp of smoke rose from his nostrils as he sighed. “I concur with her assessment of past events. It is most likely the case. This is why I have allowed her to go through the same trial you did.”
“Out of curiosity, how many others have you taught soul magic? The first time I asked, you were quite defensive. I thought it was extremely rare for you to do so.”
“Fewer than the claws on one foreleg,” he rumbled, amber eyes growing distant. “But live long enough, and you will notice even the rarest stars eventually align.” His gaze refocused, pupils narrowing to slits. “Your otherworldly knowledge makes you unique. She possesses… different qualities. Her secrets remain hers, as are yours.”
“Fair enough,” I said, my whiskers twitching in satisfaction. “I’m just glad you make exceptions sometimes.”
“Come to think of it, it is an exceptional opportunity for you.” His tail swept across the stone floor, leaving shallow grooves. “Now that you’ve learned how to gaze into someone’s soul, have a look at hers.”
I followed his suggestion and focused on my silver band, a recent addition to my growing collection of magic devices, its surface engraved with tiny runes that pulsed with a faint cerulean glow as I whispered, “[Soul Perception.]” The metal warmed against my fur, sending tingling vibrations up my arm.
The veil between dimensions thinned around me. Souls, it turns out, existed beyond the material plane. They weren’t corporeal. They weren’t even energy. Rather, they were ethereal anchors from somewhere… else. Their pulsating echoes tethered to living bodies by intangible tendrils, maintaining their grip until death severed that connection.
Perceiving a soul felt less like ‘looking’ and more like ‘feeling,’ because souls had more in common with a magnetic field than an object. Based on the output I was getting from my spell, I could picture a soul’s shape and size in my mind. The more I practiced, the clearer the picture became.
Darya’s soul appeared to me as about the size of a large apple, whereas mine was no larger than a plum. Both, however, felt infinitesimal compared to that of Professor Irleophiss, which nearly matched his physical form in vastness. With time, I might learn to decode these wavelengths and pulses and discern other features of a soul, but for now, it was beyond me to tell anything more than that.
“Her soul is bigger than mine. I want to say, it pulses with more… intensity?” I frowned, frustrated by my limited perception. “That’s all I can discern with my current skill level.”
Professor’s gigantic eyes glinted with approval. “Accurate. Come morning, you will notice a slight expansion. In layman’s terms, her soul’s mass will remain constant, but its volume will stretch outward, creating a hollow space inside.” His claws traced invisible patterns in the air, conjuring a faint shimmer that momentarily took the shape of a sphere with a cavity. “That void will function as an invisible, intangible mana gem. Dragons and other primordial beings do this to contain mana and cast spells without relying on trinkets. You’ll have just enough space for the soul protection magic you seek, while she…” he gestured toward Darya, “…might even have room for one more spell, a trump card for a rainy day.”
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I ran my fingers over my silver band. It felt cool to the touch once more. “Speaking of mana, Professor, something I wanted to pass by you, a theory I’ve been developing.”
“Go on.”
"I have been thinking about this for a while now. See those clusters in that corner and another floating near the ceiling? Most assume that they are completely separate. But if that was the case, how did wild mana learn to follow basic commands to begin with, and why does it follow those same commands no matter where in the world we are? I suspect all wild mana is connected by threads too fine for our mana sense to detect.”
Irleophiss’s amber eyes narrowed, his scaled face as still as ancient stone, but his tail tip twitched almost imperceptibly against the cavern floor.
“And if this ‘wild mana network’, as I call it, is in fact linked, my hypothesis is that it is so large, it resists our runes and verbal commands. But once we contain that same mana,” I tapped my silver band, “we sever it from the greater network, creating a more controllable, ‘private network’.”
He sighed, a turquoise of smoke looped from his nostrils, dissipating against the cavern ceiling like tempest clouds breaking apart. “You are not far off in your thinking from reality, but I would urge you not to share those theories with anyone else. It is bordering on certain forbidden knowledge, just like soul magic.”
“Got it,” I said, my tail flicking nervously against the damp stone floor. “I can think of several reasons as to why. It’s just, in the world I come from, some of our… ‘scholars’, for lack of a better word, ran countless simulations of neural networks, akin to the pathways in our brains. I found similarities with wild mana undeniable.” I lowered my voice to a whisper that echoed softly in the cavern. “You don’t have to say anything. Just nod, so I’ll know not to speak about it again.”
His enormous head lowered in a solemn nod, but I caught something unexpected in those ancient amber eyes, not caution, but curiosity, as if silently commanding me to follow this dangerous thread of thought to its conclusion.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry as parchment. “So if I had to wager why this knowledge is forbidden… It’s because my theory would mean the ‘wild mana network’ can, in fact, be retrained, just like contained mana. Say, if it received powerful enough input, perhaps from tens of thousands of mages across the world repeating the same commands at the same time.”
The temperature in the cavern noticeably dropped several degrees. My whiskers stiffened with frost as the dragon’s massive form glided toward me with predatory grace. “Had you not already demonstrated your character through trials like the one she now faces,” he intoned, his voice so deep it made the stone floor tremble beneath my paws, “your existence would have ended here, with nothing remaining but scattered dust and my lingering regret.” His enormous tail contracted around his body like a closing vise. “The process you’ve just described is exactly what unleashed miasma upon our world.”
A contradictory feeling rippled through my chest, the satisfaction of intellectual vindication colliding with ice-cold dread of the implications. That must be how Oppenheimer felt when the notion of an atomic bomb struck him. My ears flattened against my skull involuntarily. “Please don’t, and thank you,” I said with a nervous chuckle, which resonated in the suddenly too-quiet cavern. I swallowed again, with some difficulty. “I will take this knowledge to my grave.”
“You do that.” His voice was soft as falling snow, but carried the weight of an avalanche.
I licked my dry lips, my tail still twitching uncontrollably. “Is there a chance… this might happen again?”
“Hmm... last time this happened, it was eons ago. Back then, two-thirds of the world was ruled by one nation under the same banner, a particulary blood-soaked one. The Archmage-Emperor of that era, drunk on power and ambition, crafted forbidden runes upon the very bedrock of his citadels and sacrificed tens of thousands of his followers, including their souls.” His claws scraped against stone, leaving deep furrows. “The backlash turned his whole empire to ash.”
The dragon’s nostrils flared, releasing a curl of frost-tinged smoke that formed ghostly shapes before dissipating. “Now we have this new empire in the east with their clicking metal contraptions and billowing smoke towers, so who knows? On the bright side, from what my far-flying kin describe, they abandoned the arcane arts generations ago, choosing instead to bend mundane materials to their will through clever mechanisms rather than spellcraft.”
A blood-curdling “Aaaaaargh!” shattered the cavern’s silence, making my sensitive ears flatten against my skull. Darya thrashed awake from her nightmare, her Academy uniform clinging to her trembling frame, dark patches of sweat blooming across the once-crisp fabric. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths, which resounded against the stone walls. I fumbled with the clasp of my leather satchel and retrieved a flask.
“Here,” I said, extending my paw toward her. “Some water should help.”
Her violet eyes, still clouded with terror, gradually focused on me through strands of ashen hair plastered to her forehead. She accepted the flask with quivering fingers, the metallic clink ringing softly as her nails struck the engraved surface. “Thank you. I take it you have been through this nightmare too?”
“That I have,” I replied, my whiskers twitching with sympathy. “And the night is still young.”
Her thin eyebrows, like delicate brushstrokes of ink, shot up to her hairline. “Oh please, Professor Irleophiss,” she pleaded toward the massive scaled form coiled in the shadows, “don’t tell me there’s more?”
The dragon’s massive, scaled head lowered toward her, his amber eyes radiating like twin harvest moons in the dim light. “I am afraid there is, child. It is a series of tests.”
She grumbled something unintelligible and slumped back to the blanket, her limbs splaying out like a discarded marionette. I was instantly hit by a strong sense of deja vu, my own memories of that night flashing behind my eyes like phantom lanterns.
“[Deep slumber]” Professor Irleophiss cast a spell to put her back to sleep. The dragon hovered over her, amber eyes narrowed in concentration, the air around his massive head radiating with invisible magic. I now knew from Libby that primordial beings were capable of silent casting, but I couldn’t even begin to theorize how it worked. Then he turned back to me. “Now, shall we continue with protective wards for the soul?”
We then spent the rest of the night practicing a technique that felt unlike any magic I’d attempted before. While conventional arcane shields manifested as something tangible, stone barriers erupting from the ground, ice walls that refracted torchlight into prismatic patterns, or roaring curtains of flame - all of them aimed at protecting your body from natural elements, even those produced by magic, or from simple kinetic force of a weapon.
What I was attempting now was to create an invisible field all around me, an ethereal mesh of counter-flowing mana currents that would repel foreign particles like oil refusing to mix with water. This was the first step to protect my soul from any disruption, as mana was the only force capable of having any effect on souls. At least as far as dragons knew.
The professor’s amber gaze tracked my progress, his scaled head nodding almost imperceptibly when I finally managed to create a barrier, repelling mana for the first time that normally passed through everything like radiation. Unfortunately, my barrier had holes, and it would take more practice to become solid enough.
Next step, though, would be even more difficult. Learning how to store spells inside my soul. A technique that would put me in the same tier, if not on the same level as primordial beings. It was exciting, but before that could happen, I had more studying and training ahead.
