Chapter 1: The Beginning

The candle had burned down to its last inch when Sera finally found the passage she had been searching for. She traced her finger along the cracked parchment, feeling the raised lines of ink pressed by some forgotten monk centuries before her birth.

Magic, as the elder always said, was not about power. It was about listening. The problem was that the world had grown so loud with the clatter of swords and the screaming of armies that most people had simply forgotten how to hear.

She closed her eyes and reached outward with her mind, the way she had practiced in secret since she was eight years old, standing barefoot in the river shallows while her sisters slept.

Something answered. Something old, patient, and terrifyingly large.

The candle guttered out. In the darkness, Sera smiled.