The beginning of my world

The cliff was quieter now.
Enma sat with his legs dangling over the edge, as he always did. The wind no longer sang; it merely passed by, indifferent. Where once he watched the view for comfort, now he stared as if trying to find a flaw in the horizon—something he could use, break, or understand.
Sora was gone.And the world hadn’t changed.But he had.
He stood up, turned, and walked home. But this time, he didn’t take the usual path.
He wandered into the heart of the village—not aimlessly, but slowly, like a ghost. Heads didn’t turn. No one greeted him. No one had ever cared to. He was the failed son of the Saikyou bloodline. The magic reject. The broken genius. The boy who couldn’t make fire without nearly fainting.
But what they didn’t notice, he did.
He watched the blacksmith’s son sell swords behind his father’s back, exchanging them with shady travelers who disappeared before the sun could rise.
He noticed how the grocer always underweighed his rice bags for poorer families, but not for the nobles.
He counted the number of steps between the guard patrols. Twelve seconds of emptiness behind the tavern every hour.
The village was full of cracks.
And Enma began to smile again—not with warmth, but calculation.
At home, his mother greeted him with tired eyes and a forced smile.
“You’re back early,” she said, placing a bowl of thin soup on the table.
“I missed you,” he lied gently, and she relaxed. It was easier that way. He didn’t hate her—he just didn’t want to burden her anymore.
He ate quietly. Then returned to his room, pulled out the grimoire, and began to write:
Day 1. Begin whispers.
That night, he tested something.
The next morning, a small rumor had already begun to spread:“The blacksmith’s son is selling blades to strangers.”
No one knew who started it. The boy denied it. His father beat him in public. But trust? Trust had been cracked.
Enma stood beneath the shade of a tree, watching it all.
He hadn’t said a word. He had merely written the truth—on a slip of parchment—and placed it where idle hands and curious eyes liked to dig: the well near the market. Nothing more.
Just a whisper.
Then came the grocer.
Enma didn’t expose him. He did something worse.
He left coins in a beggar’s hand—more than needed. Enough to demand a full bag of rice.
When the grocer hesitated, the beggar yelled. The crowd listened. Questions were asked.
Nothing big. No proof. Just suspicion.
That night, Enma returned to the cliff.
Not because he was tired. But because it was quiet. And because the stars didn’t judge.
“The world is a stage,” he wrote into the grimoire, “but only the quietest puppeteers remain unseen.”
This time, the page rippled. A faint shimmer. A word appeared:
“Continue.”
He no longer feared his weakness.He welcomed it.Because in weakness, no one saw the knife hiding behind your back.

Enma was no longer seen. He existed within the village like a shadow cast by nothing—moving, watching, never noticed. But everything he touched left a ripple. Not a wave. Not yet.
It had been three days since the grocer's incident. Now, even the children who once kicked dirt at his feet glanced his way with uncertain eyes. They didn’t know why. They didn’t remember why they hated him. Something in the air had changed.
He continued his routine. Wake up before dawn. Eat whatever his mother placed on the table. Leave. Observe. Return to the cliff. Think. Then write in the grimoire.
It was still blank. Still ruined.But whenever he wrote truths in it, it listened.
“Weakness is the greatest disguise.”“A village without trust is a corpse waiting to rot.”“Fire burns fast. Whispers burn forever.”
The grimoire never gave answers. Only reactions—inkless impressions that faded slowly, or a warmth that pulsed like breath from between the pages.
He stopped asking why.
Today, he stood outside the village's shrine. No one paid attention to the building anymore—not since the war with the southern kingdom had drained all faith from its people. The priests were gone. Dust clung to the walls. And inside, behind the main altar, Enma found what he needed: space.
He swept the floor. Not because he cared, but because he needed it to look just clean enough for someone to enter, should the idea strike them.
Then he left.Without a word.
His second plan involved two targets: a guard captain and a noble’s son.
The captain was known for his strictness, but also for his secret drinking habit. Every night, alone, he sat behind the barracks with a flask of bitter leaf wine.
The noble’s son? Spoiled. Brash. And deeply insecure—obsessed with proving himself a "hero" in front of the girls who pretended to admire him.
It only took a single message.
He wrote it on fine paper, tied it with a ribbon, and left it in the noble boy’s locker at the training yard.
“A spy meets with the guard captain every night behind the barracks. Bring a blade. Bring proof. Be the hero your father doubts.”
That was all.
No signature. No detail. Just enough poison.
The next night, a blade clashed against a wine bottle. A shouting match began. Other guards got involved. The captain, drunk and furious, struck the boy across the face in public. The boy drew his sword in response.
Neither won. But both lost something.
The noble family sent a formal complaint to the guardhouse. The captain was suspended. The noble boy, humiliated, stopped appearing in public.
Enma watched from a rooftop, fingers crossed beneath his sleeves.
He didn’t smile.Not yet.
That night, he returned to the shrine. Sat in the dust, legs crossed, grimoire open in his lap.
“I’m still weak,” he muttered. “Still not ready.”
He turned the page.
There were no words.But there was a diagram.
Faint. Faded. But real.
A single page showed a magic circle—one he had never seen before. The ink shimmered faintly, as if bleeding from the page itself.
He reached out, touched it, and—
Pain.A searing sting ran through his palm, as if the page itself had sliced him.
He yanked his hand back. Blood dripped from his fingertip, hitting the center of the circle.
The page absorbed it.
A second later, a small spark floated above the book—blue, dim, and barely alive. It hovered for three seconds before dying out.
He stared.
“That… wasn’t mine,” he whispered.
The spark hadn’t taken his magic.
It had taken his blood.
“Magic is nothing but truth and sacrifice.”The grimoire wrote that by itself.
A theory began forming in his mind.Slow. Terrifying.
His magic was weak because it drew from the world. But this? This drew from him. Not his mana. Not his energy. Something deeper.
That was why it worked.That was why it hurt.
He kept that knowledge to himself.
No one could know he had begun to awaken the book. No one could know his blood was the key.
The next week, he caused four more incidents.
A merchant discovered his ledgers replaced with ones that suggested embezzlement.
A noble family’s daughter stopped receiving letters from her secret lover—the letters never reached her. Enma made sure of that.
A group of traveling warriors had their food poisoned. Not fatally. Just enough to weaken them. The healer blamed the village’s water supply.
Every day, small things fell apart.
Every night, the shrine listened.
But it wasn’t victory. Not yet.
He was still weak. Still couldn’t cast fire without coughing blood. But now, the whispers had started returning to him.
Villagers began talking—wondering aloud who was behind the recent unrest. Some blamed the cursed woods. Others whispered about an ancient spirit.
No one thought of the quiet boy who stared too long and spoke too little.
Not yet.
One day, his mother asked, “You’ve been leaving so early these days. Where do you go, Enma?”
He looked at her.Her eyes were tired, but kind.
“I watch the sunrise,” he replied honestly. “It reminds me of what I lost.”
She didn’t press.
He turned and left again, cloak trailing behind him.
The wind was colder now.Not because of winter.But because he had stopped hoping.
Now he calculated.He learned.And he waited.
The first victim had been the village.But Enma knew this was only the beginning.
He wasn’t strong enough to destroy a kingdom.Not yet.
But he could weaken one.One lie at a time.

The wind swept across the village, carrying the scent of distant pines and damp soil. It was morning, but the skies remained gray—clouds hanging like a veil over the sun, as if the world was hesitating to begin.
Enma walked slowly down the dirt path, his hood drawn low. The villagers bustled about, carting crates, trading vegetables, calling to one another with voices that felt too loud for how hollow they sounded.
But he noticed something they didn’t.
The laughter was forced.The eyes avoided each other more often.People locked their doors just a little earlier than usual.
Fear, confusion, and something darker—it was growing, like mold behind painted walls.
He walked past the baker’s stall.
The man gave a half-smile, unsure. “Boy… uh, do you want bread today? I—I’ve got leftovers from yesterday.”
Enma didn’t answer. He looked at the man for only a second, just enough to let the silence answer for him, before walking past.
Behind him, the baker exhaled in confusion. "Strange kid…"
Enma didn’t care. He had learned something very important:
People fear the unknown more than they hate it.
Later that day, he sat alone beneath a half-bloomed tree behind the abandoned shrine. Its petals were a pale purple, trembling with every breeze. It was a quiet place—too quiet.
He laid the grimoire across his lap.Still tattered. Still dull.
He opened to the bloodstained page. The circle was gone.
Only a faint echo remained—like ash after a fire.
He drew in a slow breath.
“...Still too weak.”
He meant it in every sense. His body couldn’t hold spells for long. His heart still twisted at the thought of her name. And most of all—his reach was limited.
The villagers were small fish. And even they took effort.
But it was all necessary. Everything was necessary.
He closed his eyes and thought of the cliff. The wind, the edge, the silence before he almost stepped off.
And then…Her.
That smile.That voice.The one thing that looked at him like he was still human.
“Enma, even the most broken glass can still reflect the stars. You just need to look up again.”
He opened his eyes.
That was a lie.
He wasn’t glass. He wasn’t broken.
He was becoming something else.
His next move would take time.
He returned home by sundown. The house was small, with wooden planks that creaked like old bones. His mother was humming softly in the kitchen. The only warmth left in his life.
“You’re late again,” she said without turning. “Dinner’s getting cold.”
“I don’t mind cold things,” Enma replied.
He sat down. She served soup. It tasted of root vegetables and faint herbs. Simple. Fitting.
She watched him for a while, then asked gently, “Are you… okay?”
He paused. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve changed lately.” Her voice trembled. “You don’t talk to anyone. You barely speak to me. You don’t smile.”
Enma stirred his soup.
“I don’t remember how to,” he replied.
She didn’t speak again.
And neither did he.
That night, he returned to the shrine. The moon was high and sharp, casting shadows across the floor like cracked glass. He knelt, opened the grimoire again, and whispered:
“I need influence.”
The book didn’t move.
He pressed his finger into his palm—hard—until it bled. Then smeared the blood across a fresh page.
Nothing happened.
He closed the book and just sat there in silence.
No whispers. No light.
Just the sound of wind through dead wood.
The next morning, something strange happened.
When he returned to the shrine…There was a flower placed on the doorstep.
It was blue.Soft.And wrapped in a thin ribbon of paper.
No name. No note.
He picked it up. Stared at it.
Was it… her?
No.No, Sora was gone. She said she was going to the other kingdom. She wouldn’t come back just to leave him with a flower.
So who?
A mistake? A prank?
Or… a message?
He placed the flower inside the grimoire.
A soft warmth pulsed through the spine of the book.
Then, for the first time since it bled, it whispered.
Not aloud.Not in words.But in a sensation.
“Blood is power. Memory is law.”
He stared at the page.
Then slowly… a new diagram began to form.
Not a spell.
A map.A mental one.
Paths. Threads. Names.Connections between villagers. Who talks to whom. Who trusts who. Who hates who.It was everything he needed.
But it only appeared because someone left that flower.
Enma closed the book slowly. He stared out the shrine door.
“...So I’m not the only one watching.”
He didn’t feel fear.
He felt opportunity.