The world had rules. Everyone knew them.
Some people were born ordinary, and some were born with magic waiting in their blood. The difference was not hidden or secret. It was spoken about openly, printed in books, and taught in schools. The magicians belonged to the Aurelian Order, and they lived in cities built higher, cleaner, and safer than the rest of the world.
They wore pendants called Astrae.
Fire. Water. Air. Earth. Mind.
Children who showed talent early were trained from a young age. They went to special academies, learned discipline, and grew into protectors of the land. People respected them. Some feared them. Many envied them.
And the rest of the world learned to live around them.
Elio Rowan was part of the rest.
He lived in a small countryside settlement where the land mattered more than titles. Fields decided whether families ate well or went hungry. Rain was discussed like gossip, and taxes were spoken about in lowered voices, as if saying the number too loudly might make it worse.
Magic existed, but it did not live here.
Or so Elio had always believed.
Elio's house stood near the edge of the fields, old but stubborn, like it refused to fall just to prove a point. The roof leaked when the rain was heavy. The walls held memories better than warmth.
His father spent most days by the window.
He could not walk. Elio had never known him any other way. The chair had become part of him, as familiar as his voice or his quiet habit of staring outside for long stretches of time. His father rarely complained. When he did speak, it was gentle, thoughtful, and often about things that worried him more than he let on.
The land. The animals. The future.
Elio's mother worked everywhere at once.
She sold milk and eggs, carried hay, bargained in the market, and still came home with tired hands and a smile meant to fool no one. Age had started to slow her down, though she pretended otherwise. Elio noticed. He always noticed.
She scolded him often. Sometimes deserved. Sometimes not.
They were not rich. They were not important. But they were together, and for a long time, that had felt like enough.
Elio, unfortunately, was not built for quiet lives.
He was seventeen, lean, a little too restless for his own good, with dark brown hair that never stayed in place and eyes that wandered when they should have focused. He was known around the settlement for being troublesome. Not cruel, not dangerous. Just always somewhere he was not supposed to be.
Climbing fences. Wandering into fields. Laughing too loud. Coming home late.
People shook their heads when his name came up.
"He's good for nothing," some said.
"He's wasting time," others added.
Elio pretended not to care.
What he did care about, though he rarely admitted it, was poetry.
He liked words. The way they fit together. The way they made sense of things that felt too heavy to say out loud. He wrote when no one was watching, scribbling lines on old paper, hiding them between books and loose boards.
It was the only place where he felt free.
But freedom did not pay debts. Poetry did not fix roofs. And Elio knew, deep down, that the world would eventually ask him for something more solid than words.
He just did not know what.
That evening, the house was quiet.
His mother was outside, finishing work before the light faded. Elio's father sat by the window, hands folded, eyes distant.
Elio was about to speak when it happened.
A thought brushed against his mind.
We're running out of time.
Elio froze.
The voice was not spoken. His father's lips had not moved. And yet, the words were clear, heavy with fear and exhaustion.
Elio's heart started to pound.
He stared at his father, confused, terrified, waiting for him to say something out loud. But his father only sighed softly, eyes still fixed on the fields.
Another thought followed.
If we lose the land, what will happen to him?
Elio felt the world tilt.
He had no answer.
And for the first time in his life, Elio Rowan realized something was terribly, impossibly wrong.