The early morning mist still hung over the village, softening the outlines of homes and trees like a painter's final brushstroke. Ji-hyeon sat quietly on the rooftop of their humble cottage, the cold tiles beneath him doing little to distract from the thoughts racing in his mind. He adjusted his glasses, their lenses reflecting the golden light of the rising sun.
Below, the village stirred—children chasing chickens, a blacksmith hammering steel, old merchants arranging trinkets in worn-out stalls. Yet Ji-hyeon's eyes weren't on them. They were set far beyond the hills, past the smoke of chimney fires, toward the distant city walls of the capital—where the Academy of Arcane Arts awaited.
But the academy was not his goal. Not yet.
"Ji-hyeon," his mother called softly from inside. "It's time."
He climbed down, boots tapping against the wood as he entered the house. His father was waiting with a weathered satchel. Inside it were the bare essentials—dried bread, a flask of water, a notebook filled with Ji-hyeon's tiny, obsessive scribbles, and a strange stone that pulsed ever so faintly when he touched it.
His mother straightened his collar, trying to hide the sadness in her eyes.
"You're not leaving yet," she whispered, "but... we know what's coming."
Ji-hyeon nodded.
He wasn't going to the academy just yet. Not until he understood more about the magic pulsing within him—magic that shouldn't exist in someone of his birth. Magic that trembled when he got angry. Magic that whispered things only he could hear.
Instead, today he would journey to the nearby ruins—a forbidden place whispered about in the village for generations. It wasn't part of the official map, but Ji-hyeon had seen the hidden entrance in one of the oldest books at the village temple.
If what he suspected was true, those ruins might hold the answers to who—or what—he truly was before this life.
As he stepped outside, wind curling around him like invisible threads, he paused only once. His glasses flashed briefly with unnatural light.