Prologue
In a world where magic was everything, there was one child who could not use it.
Levian.
While everyone else called on magic to play, to eat, to wash their clothes—even to wipe themselves clean—he let the hours drift past in a blank stare, scooped his food up with his hands, and cleaned himself with newspaper.
"Ugh! Filthy!"
It was the age when a child hungers to be acknowledged, and every feeling Levian met was the wrong one. Children his own age shunned him. So did the adults who were supposed to look after him.
At first they told themselves he was merely slow, that time would set him right. That hope did not last long either.
"It's time for the Basic magic test. Shall we each try the spell we're most confident in?"
At the teacher's words the others brought out the magic they loved, the magic they had practiced until it lived in their hands. Levian strained and strained, and under contempt and open laughter he failed to show a single spell before the school day ended.
Fool. Idiot. Wretch. Half-wit.
Even those insults were not enough for a child like him.
And the fire was not at Levian's feet alone.
"Is there something wrong with the orphanage's curriculum? Abuse, perhaps? If so, we can no longer support you with public funds."
"Th-that could hardly be."
"Then see to it! Don't let the higher-ups trouble themselves over this nonsense. He isn't even some dim-witted beastfolk—a child who cannot use magic? Even you must see how absurd this is, Director."
In the end the orphanage, unable to endure it any longer, withdrew Levian and put him under private tutors.
If I just have the time, I can do it too.
Even then, he had not given up. It was a chance to learn one-on-one, and he meant to learn magic with everything he had.
The first month or two was hard, and still he was glad. The tutors came already knowing he was a "lacking child," and so they showed him patience. For the first time, beneath a teacher's undivided attention, Levian could devour every theory set before him.
"Haa... You learn the theory so well. Why on earth can't you cast?"
That patience was brief. One month, two, three, four.... A hired tutor who produced no proper result had nothing to show for the pay.
"If you're taking that much money, you ought to show some progress! How many months has it been?"
"...I'm sorry."
There was no more leisurely waiting.
"Haa... I never should have taken this stupid little brat. How can you not cast the Basic magic even kindergarteners use? Hm? Are you doing this on purpose to screw me? Trying to wreck my career?"
The tutor's vicious torment began—cruelty close to torture, meant to stir the instinct to survive and force an awakening.
It was not once or twice. Five days out of every week the man came, and each day the torment was different, until Levian's mind swam. A bath filled with cold water, and Levian shoved under. Clothes crawling with insects, forced onto him. Days left in a room without a single point of light.
"Ngh... Teacher, I was wrong.... N-next time I'll do better, so... please open this door! Teacher, please...!"
The torment went on until even the nail marks gouged into the door had nowhere left to fit. Little by little, the light in Levian's eyes went dull. Under a pain that wore the mind away, he bit his nails until his hands were slick with blood.
Pain stacked upon pain, and the reason that vain hope had dimmed began, gradually, to return.
What... am I even doing?
Levian was a half-wit. Worse than a child of three, worse than an old man of eighty—unable to cast even one simple spell.
"Hah... still holding out, even like this?"
Hope. He let go of that meaningless feeling. What he could not do, he could not do. Having accepted reality, Levian began, little by little, to turn his eyes another way.
"If you want out that badly, use magic and come out! Am I asking too much? Hm? Just cast!"
Again and again, on the days they threw him into the cold tub until exhaustion dropped him into a faint, he judged the matter coldly.
This isn't efficient.
Fitting for someone who could not cast, he had come to analyze other people's magic and pick out its flaws. Theory was the only study open to him.
That day, unable to endure the tutor's wasteful cruelty any longer, Levian rebelled for the first time in his life and raised his voice.
"Isn't it inefficient to keep both Water Supply and Cooling running while you fill the tub? Wouldn't it be better to form a sphere of water and trap only the face?"
"...Crazy little bastard."
It was, by any measure, insane. Who finds fault with the method of his own torment and offers a more efficient one? And because the boy was not even wrong, the tutor drew back a step without meaning to and stared at him as if he were a monster.
After that the torment followed Levian's "efficient" advice, and the pain deepened with it. But every time the method changed, he turned that peculiar cold gaze on it and, in a level voice, pointed out the flaws in the magic.
Once could be waved aside. When the coincidence kept repeating, it could no longer be ignored. The tutor came to understand that this half-wit brat commanded a higher theoretical knowledge than he did.
"...Crazy bastard. Fine. I quit."
In the end, the one who threw up his hands first was the teacher.
Why do people act like that?
Raging alone, hoping, falling into disappointment—then, unable to master their own feelings, breaking themselves and fleeing at the last. Conduct that reason struggled to explain. And it was not only the teachers.
"That fire spell would hit harder if you added a catalyst."
"What'd you say, idiot? What do you know! Figures—you've never cast a spell in your life! Drag in an academy professor and they still couldn't alter a finished magic circuit! Stop getting in the way and get lost!"
The other children at the orphanage were no different.
Not one of them so much as pretended to listen.
Levian had only found a method. He could not cast, so he analyzed the magic of others. The advice he offered was something he was sure would work, something he had worried over because he wanted to be of help. Why refuse it without even trying? Did they mean to improve at all? Their inability to admit it was ugly enough to watch.
Then came a certain day, when a disappointment Levian himself had not noticed was wearing him down by degrees. A headache struck as if someone were pounding his skull in a mortar, and he began to dream a strange dream.
"Is this the place meant for our descendants?"
"Hm. A little barren, but the mana runs rich. It will serve well for teaching the children."
He did not know who the old men were, but their magic stood at a tremendous height.
I... could never reach even the tips of their feet. Not ever.
They raised both hands and swept them like conductors, and over the barren plain ink-black bricks took shape and stacked themselves into a castle. At another elder's gesture, green growth surged, a river cut its course, and flowers opened.
It was magic Levian's common sense could not hold—magic he could not even begin to analyze. He was staring, mouth slack, at the fortress growing ever more splendid when a low woman's voice reached him, from someone he could not see.
"Does it gall you?"
"That others will not acknowledge your talent."
Unlike the old men's voices, which had boomed as if spoken underwater, this one struck his ear with perfect clarity. It was only a dream. As if something had hold of him, Levian answered, flat.
"...It does not."
Whether she meant to mock him or to comfort him, her words would not move his heart. He knew how hard he had tried all this time, how badly he had wanted to be of help to others. Bone-grinding effort, spent until he could have coughed blood, still left him nothing but a half-wit who could not use magic.
"You have talent."
Talent?
He had no need of anything so worthless. A ruined mana circuit, and for that alone he had been treated as something lower than a beast. Levian only acknowledged what was real. So there was no way it galled him....
"No. It will."
...There was no way it galled him.
"How could I fail to know? For thousands of years I have watched my descendants from a place no one can reach. I know all too well how helplessness settles in the bone."
But whatever Levian felt, the unknown woman went on, gentle and coaxing.
"Child, you are the only descendant left. I will show you the way—the way to loose your shackles and take a new chance. Do not forget. Remember it."
After that, the nameless dream returned again and again.
A worthless dream. He had thought himself numb to being cast out, and yet here was proof of how frail a heart could be, spinning comfort for itself out of nothing. Even so, he could not let go of that handful of hope. Dreams a mage dreamed were commonly taken for foresight, or for an awakening; this one might not be empty after all.
His curiosity only sharpened, until he was bolting upright in the night to go over the dream again. A majestic, antique castle of ink-black stone. The great tree standing at its heart. The vast river and forest wrapped around it. And, seated somewhere within that castle, a magic circle he could not name.
It was an obsession he could not put into words even to himself. He slipped the orphanage teachers' eyes and climbed the hill out back, searching for a place that resembled the dream. He prowled the back alleys of the slums, hunting books marked as forbidden, determined to read them.
There were dangerous moments. He met a wild beast and tumbled down the mountain. He ran into vagrants and nearly got himself caught. Without magic, there was a limit to what he could do.
Then... I just train my body, the way the beastfolk do.
His efforts to dig out the question buried in the dream never stopped. Years passed with him left as the orphanage's resident headache, and then—
Name: Levian
Affiliation: Alkanium Magic Academy
Age: 20
The day was drawing near when he would enter the academy that every adult of the Western Union was required to pass through.
Academy or not, the fact remained that Levian could not use magic. He could already see how they would react, and it stirred no particular interest.
But—
This is the castle from the dream.
Dragged there in the orphanage teachers' grip, the academy was already a familiar sight.
...Found it.
He had found the clue from the dream, the thing he had searched for so long. A majestic castle of ink-black brick. The place where the woman in the dream had said a new chance waited.
All that remained was to find the vast magic circle hidden somewhere inside that building.