In the Mage Academy, the test was simple: make a light.
All around James, students reached out with their minds. They could see the shimmering Threads of Power in the air—glowing strands of energy that made up the world. They carefully gathered the Threads of 'Light' and 'Warmth', weaving them together into a glowing ball that hovered over their hands.
But James's hands remained empty and dark.
He was Thread-Blind. Where others saw a beautiful sea of magic, he saw nothing but empty air. He was a blank spot in a world full of color.
"James, your result?" the instructor called out, his voice sharp.
James lowered his hands. "Nothing, sir."
A few students laughed. "He's a dud," one of them whispered. "Useless."
The instructor sighed. "Magic is the very fabric of our world, boy. If you cannot see it, you have no place in it. You are dismissed."
James walked home, ignoring the magical wonders of Luminar. The floating gardens and bridges of pure light only reminded him of his failure.
He found his sister, Sophia, sitting by the window. Her left hand was a chilling shade of grey, hard and cold like a statue's. The stone curse was spreading.
"How was the test?" she asked, her voice weak but full of hope.
"It was great," James lied, forcing a smile. "I'm getting better."
She smiled back, and it broke his heart. The healers had told them her life-threads were tangled and turning to stone. It was a curse they couldn't fix.
That night, as Sophia slept, James drew a strange circle on the floor with chalk. He'd read about a forbidden magic—a way to force a spell without weaving. It was dangerous, the book said. It was for the desperate.
He was desperate.
He knelt in the circle and focused, not on weaving, but on a single, powerful wish: Sophia must be healed. He poured all of his anger, fear, and love into that one thought, trying to force the world to obey him.
Reality seemed to groan in protest. The air grew cold, and the chalk lines glowed with a sickly black light. A painful pressure built in James's head, as if the world was fighting back.
Then, something inside him snapped.
The energy backlash threw him against the wall. For a single, dizzying moment, his vision changed. He didn't just see the room; he saw the giant, shimmering tapestry of magic that lay beneath it. He saw all the Threads he could never see before.
But he also saw something new. Tucked away in the corner of the room was a single, tiny, frayed Thread. A mistake in the Pattern.
And James felt a sudden, irresistible urge… to pull it.