Echoes Of Genesis

Birdsong drifted through the open window. Celis moved quietly around Minato's room, gathering and straightening, when he lurched upright with a sharp gasp.

She spun around, cloth still in hand, eyes wide. He stared at the ceiling, chest heaving, then slowly turned his head and found her watching him.

"Good morning, young master," she managed. "You've been asleep for quite a while."

Minato reached to push himself upright. The moment he moved his left arm, pain tore through it and he flinched with a hiss.

"Please be careful," Celis said quickly, stepping closer. "Your arm hasn't healed yet. The healers at the academy will see to it properly, but for now I wrapped it as best I could though I'll admit I'm not very skilled at these things. I apologise."

He looked down at the bandaging and exhaled. The memory surfaced without invitation: Darian's concentrated flames boring through muscle, and then his own choice to absorb the rifle's recoil with the same arm. He stared at the ceiling.

"Yeah," he muttered. "That one's on me too."

Celis began gathering her things. "Will you still be going to the academy today? You've missed the morning classes, but if you head in at lunch you'll make the second half."

"Hmm." He thought about it. "Yeah, I'll go in at lunch. Hopefully they can sort out my arm while I'm there."

She bowed and moved toward the door. "I'll leave you to it then. Call if you need anything at all."

"Thank you for watching over me, Celis. I mean it."

She smiled small and genuine and left, pulling the door shut behind her. The room settled into silence. Minato lay back and looked up at the ceiling.

So a couple of days, at least. I actually thought it was just one night.

The dreams came back to him then, slow and vivid in the way only remembered dreams can be.

He had appeared in his old school uniform the plain grey of his Japanese secondary school, entirely out of place against a wide-open sky. Below him, far below, a city had spread out that looked almost like the world he had come from: familiar rooftops, familiar noise softened by distance. Then Caelestis had appeared before him, draped in flowing silk, feathers resting over her eyes like a blindfold worn by choice.

Minato had straightened despite himself. "Ah Lady Caelestis. It's been a long time since we last spoke."

She had laughed at that, soft as wind through bells. "The sudden formality doesn't suit you. Relax, I only came for a chat." She had tilted her head. "So then, Minato. How are you finding this new world?"

He had considered it honestly before answering. "It's been really fun. There are bad apples, but I've made good friends, and I'm genuinely excited for what comes next with them." A pause. "Though there are things I don't understand, be honest with me, is something wrong with my Archana?"

"What makes you think that?"

He had manifested the codex, opening it to the first page where the Reverie symbol turned slowly. "Back in Evergreen they taught me the basics. Normal Reverie users don't need physical contact to keep their constructs stable. Mine do. And then there's this book. What is it?"

Caelestis had smiled and reached out to pat his head with easy warmth. "Where would the fun be in simply telling you? When you wake, go to your headmaster and ask him to scan your Archana. Ask him about the Age of Genesis too knowing him, the two of you will end up talking all day." She had settled her hands together. "Don't worry. What I gave you will keep growing as you grow. What seems like a limitation now may one day become as mighty as a dragon. Chin up."

Minato's expression had flattened. "Did you have to bring up dragons? One nearly ate me."

She had laughed, brighter this time. "You did go looking for trouble, my dear. But work hard and you'll earn their respect I know it." Her voice had softened at the edges. "Now, time to wake up. Keep moving forward, always. Don't let doubt take root, and don't force yourself into the shape the world expects of you. Forge your own path, and give way to the future you want."

The memory dissolved. Minato looked down at his hand in the quiet of his room.

Forge my own path.

He sat with it for a moment, then got to his feet.

While dressing, an idea struck him. He pressed shadows carefully around his injured arm, shaping them until they formed something close to a rigid cast the kind he remembered from his old world. It held the arm firm and took the worst of the pain with it. He flexed his fingers experimentally, gave a small nod, and left for the academy.

In the dining hall, Rowan and Tristan sat at a corner table. Tristan had barely touched his food. Rowan noticed after a while and set her fork down.

"What's wrong? Not hungry?"

"It's not that." He turned his cup slowly in his hands. "I've been thinking about the duel. I keep coming back to it. It was beyond anything I expected to see this early."

Rowan leaned back and let out a long breath. "Minato's been out cold the whole time. And Darian I heard he got expelled. Lost even after taking enhancement drugs, then lost his mind on top of it." She shook her head. "My pride wouldn't survive that."

Tristan nodded. "Say what phase do you think Minato is actually in right now?"

Rowan's expression shifted. She looked at him with the particular focused blankness of someone straining to remember something and coming up completely empty. "I'll be honest with you," she said, very seriously. "I fell asleep during that lesson. Could you remind me?"

Tristan stared at her for a moment. "Sure," he said finally.

He pulled out his notebook and drew quickly: a star at the centre of the page, a wide ring around it, and a set of small circles completing a full orbit.

"The star is your soul," he said. "The ring represents the mastery of your Archana. As we grow as mages, we move through phases twelve in total until we complete the full revolution." He tapped the page. "The first four make up the foundational stage. Phase one is Embers where everyone begins at awakening. Phase two is Currents, which is where most of us are now. Then Crest, and then Halo. Those four build the base. Questions so far?"

"Not yet. Keep going."

"After the foundation comes the self-awakening stage: phase five is Reflection, phase six is Resonance. Then the third stage is the integration of self and Archana." He drew a bracket around the next cluster. "Phases seven through ten: Merge, Revelation, Embodiment, and Ascendancy. Most of the noble house leaders are somewhere in this range. Reaching it is what qualifies you to lead your house."

Rowan tilted her head. "What would happen if one of us fought someone at that stage?"

Tristan gave her a quiet, defeated smile. "You'd get your ass handed to you on a silver platter."

"Oh." A pause. "Is there anything beyond that?"

"The transcendence stage. Two phases: the eleventh is Horizon, the twelfth is Perihelion, the stage of the true cycle. No one has ever reached Perihelion. As for the eleventh, only two mages in recorded history are known to be there: the king and the headmaster."

Rowan went still for a moment. The dining hall carried on around them trays, voices, the scrape of chairs entirely unaware of the scale of what the two of them had just quietly mapped out.

Across campus, at the same time, Minato knocked once and stepped into the headmaster's office.

The old man looked up from his desk and offered a warm smile. "Minato. I'm glad to see you on your feet. Has anyone looked at that arm yet?"

Minato crossed the room and settled into the chair across from him, raising his shadow-bound arm slightly. "Not yet. I had something important to discuss with you first."

"Then proceed. I'll offer what guidance I can."

"I'd like you to scan my Archana and tell me what it actually is." Minato held his gaze steadily. "And I want to know about the Age of Genesis."

The warmth in the headmaster's expression shifted into something sharper. He was quiet for a beat, then rose and pressed his hand to the air. A barrier settled over the room, sealing sound in and out.

"No one will hear us now," he said, returning to his seat. He folded his hands on the desk. "The Age of Genesis. I didn't expect to hear that name from someone of your generation. I thought the last mages who longed for that era were little Eirene's." He paused. "But since you've asked, listen carefully."

"The Age of Genesis was the golden age of magic. It was during that time that the Archana first manifested in people. No one knows how or why, but most believe it was a gift from the god who watches over this world. In those days, monsters ravaged the land without check. Humans were little more than livestock, clinging to dragons or giants for protection. Then war broke out between the giants and the dragons, and humans were caught in the middle with nothing to fall back on."

He paused.

"They prayed for power. Something like the dragon's tongue, or the giants' mana manipulation. And eventually, the first Archana users came. At first the abilities were modest, useful for daily tasks. But children began manifesting them younger, and the power of each Archana grew from one generation to the next. Abilities built for combat. Abilities built for construction. Archana flourished, and the limits seemed almost non-existent." He let the silence settle. "And now look at what we have. The same types manifest every generation. Rigid. Predictable. Where the Archana once grew and evolved alongside its user, now the properties barely shift at all."

Minato thought of the mages he had met since arriving, the same elemental branches repeated across face after face, no real originality past the surface. He looked at the floor.

"I understand what you mean. It's genuinely sad, when you consider what that means for the soul. If the Archana is supposed to grow with a person, then forcing it into a rigid shape is almost like chaining yourself to a narrow path." He exhaled slowly. "Changing that kind of thinking isn't easy. Other people's words alone can wear you down fast. But someday, hopefully, we get somewhere close to that again. I think it would be something extraordinary to see everyone's magic be truly their own."

The headmaster's eyes crinkled. A full, warm laugh broke from him. "It would be extraordinary indeed. I hope with all my heart we see a new age like that." He rose from his chair and gestured. "Now then. Come let me take a look at this Archana of yours."

Minato stood before him. The headmaster's eyes began to glow, a faint and steady light, and arcs of mana traced the air between them as his gaze turned inward, reading the flow beneath Minato's skin. His expression moved through careful attention, through recognition, and then went very still.

He saw the soul first. It read simultaneously as untouched and experienced like a page that was somehow both blank and full and he could not explain it. Then he saw the book resting at the core of it, and the title left his lips before he could stop it.

"Codex of a Thousand Worlds."

Minato blinked. "Did you see something?"

The headmaster lowered himself back into his chair, slower than usual. He looked like a man quietly reassembling his thoughts. "Your soul is paradoxical. It carries the purity of an infant and yet resembles a young adult simultaneously. I cannot account for it." He looked at Minato directly. "But that is not the most remarkable thing. Minato, your Archana is not the Reverie."

The words landed like a stone into still water. Minato's hand came down on the desk before he could catch himself. He pulled it back immediately. "I'm sorry. I apologise for that, headmaster."

"Don't worry about it." The old man waved a hand, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. "What you have is called the World Archana. There is no record of it in history, no precedent, no name ever written down. As for why it presents as the Reverie: there is a book within you, the Codex of a Thousand Worlds. On its first page rests the Reverie Archana as it existed during the Age of Genesis. Your Archana mirrors that original form. That is what you have been using all along."

Minato leaned back in his chair and stared at a point somewhere above the desk. "So what does that actually mean for me?"

The headmaster laughed, warm and full, and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "It means you carry something without precedent. A gift unlike any other." He gave his shoulder a single firm squeeze, then let go. "Cherish it. Grow into it in your own way, and don't try to understand all of it at once." His eyes held a quiet, certain warmth. "I only look forward to what you end up doing with it."

Minato sat with that. Outside the sealed office, the academy carried on footsteps in corridors, distant voices, the faint ring of a bell marking the hour.

He looked down at his shadow-cast arm, and then back up at the old man across the desk.

There was a great deal he still did not understand. But sitting here now, somehow, that felt less like a warning than it did a beginning.