“How could you?! You know it’s wrong just as much as I!” Leo shouted at Aleida, the woman glaring right back at him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s part of us. Part of you! Denying it is just like… like… pretending you don’t have an arm, and refusing to use it. It’s foolish!” She shot back.

“You’re the fool if you think giving in to the mana will do anything but bring you pain.”

“Leo, we have to learn, or we could end up hurting each other or the people around us. You know what happened to your sister…”

“Don’t you dare throw that back in my face!” Leo spat, clenching his fist and stepping towards her. Aleida flinched but didn’t back down, staring at him defiantly. The anger burned hot within him, but Leo clamped down on it before it could spiral out of control.

He may know she was being foolish, but he’d rather die than hurt her.

Breathing deeply to calm his temper, Leo unclenched his fists and stepped back once more. “Take my sister as proof that magic is evil. Using it will only bring misery to everyone. Please, Aleida, stop, before it’s too late.”

“You know I can’t do that. You may want to reject the affinity that’s part of you, but I won’t. I can help people, don’t you see that? I can heal people!”

“You don’t understand what you’re doing, you’re just going to…”

Leo trailed off as he looked into Aleida’s eyes, running his hands through his hair in frustration. This conversation was going nowhere, and he knew it. Nothing he’d said seemed to do anything to convince her of the truth that only he seemed to be able to see. It was maddening, being able to see the cliff his family was blindly charging towards but entirely unable to stop them.

He needed space.

Turning, he stormed out of the house, slamming the door open on his way.

“Leo, wai-”

The door closed behind Leo, cutting off Aleida’s voice mid-exclamation, replacing it with the dull buzz of the city. Immediately, he felt better, if just a little. There was such positive energy here, a world filled with people wandering around in all directions, chatting to one another, buying and selling wares, building things. All focused on their own individual tasks, oblivious to his turmoil. His sixth sense registered thousands of people, a thriving cornucopia of life, the sensation soothing away the struggles he was grappling with on a daily basis.

It was glorious.

For so many years he’d been trapped in that little room in the Seeker enclave, his world limited to the space enclosed by those grey walls. He’d only seen the sky on the rare moments when the Seekers had ushered them into another grey room and back again, he’d never been allowed to wander free. In fact, freedom was reserved, in his mind, to the distant past, before his affinity had manifested and ruined everything.

He’d almost forgotten what it had felt like.

Now, here, he could go where he wanted, do what he wanted. Be who he wanted, without any restrictions or expectations. And he was surrounded by people, and none of them paid him even the slightest bit of attention. It was what he’d dreamed of for years.

For a moment, he was happy.

And then he felt the mana.

It saturated the air here, calling out to him, urging him to use it to cast magic. Trying to corrupt him, to turn him just as twisted as all the other mages, no matter how hard he fought against it. It was that urge that made him long for the closed confines of the enclave, no matter how miserable his life was there.

No matter how restrictive it had been, there he was free of the mana’s siren song.

Shaking his head to free himself of the desire worming through his brain, Leo walked off, his feet carrying him through the crowds with a desperate urgency, his life sense letting him slip around the people with ease. There was only one place he wanted to go, the only place he’d felt safe since he’d settled in this city.

Buildings rushed by, and before long he was passing out the eastern gate, ignoring the watch standing on the wall, and walking into the ruins beyond. Here it was quiet, devoid of the people that milled all throughout the city proper. Only the rare few hunters delved through the ruins, stalking around with their bows and hungry eyes, looking for any hint of a wandering deer or boar.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Oh, and the undead, of course.

The loathsome creatures marched in gangs, their bones clacking loudly against the stones of the ground. Meeting a group was rare, most of their focus being in the treeline to the southern edge of the city, but it wasn’t unheard of to hear their distinctive march even out here in the ruins. Leo could feel them from a long way away, an awful unnatural void to his senses, the polar opposite of the vibrant life that filled the living.

Leo always gave them a wide berth.

His feet carried him down a familiar path, to a broken building and the crumbled floor beneath it. Something about it had called to him, when he’d been walking through the ruins feeling lost and sorry for himself. It was a true miracle he’d found it at all, given how hidden from sight it was. He’d had to clear out the collapsed stones burying it, but that effort had been rewarded with a glorious passage to what lay below.

Leo stepped into the building, stopping a moment to uncover the lantern and tinderbox he’d stashed in a nook formed from the half-collapsed wall. A quick few strikes of the fire-striker, and the lantern burst into light. Almost shaking with excitement, Leo lifted it and clambered down into the gloom.

Immediately, the mana in the air weakened, and he felt better. It was slight, but to Leo it made the world of difference. That little bit less temptation, that little bit less of the constant whispers in the back of his mind that constantly chipped away at the edges of his sanity.

He’d do anything to quell them forever.

Leo walked on into the dark, the tunnel sloping ever so slightly downwards. It seemed the deeper he walked, the weaker the mana became, so in his forays into the depths that’s all he’d done. Just wandered around, searching for the path to the deepest place he could go, and this time was no different.

He couldn’t really tell how long he walked, snaking ever downwards through the featureless tunnels, but it didn’t matter. All that he cared about was seeking out the thing he knew to be down here somewhere, the place that filled his dreams.

The place without mana.

Eventually, the tunnels ended in a large room, a dry fountain standing in the centre of it and a shattered door leading into natural caverns beyond. Symbols were carved into the wall above where the door would have once stood, symbols similar to the ones he’d seen in his time in the Seeker enclave, but their meaning eluded him.

He’d never learned to read, after all.

Leo stepped over the threshold into the caves beyond, shuddering with excitement as the mana dropped even further. He was on the right track here, he knew it. Just a little further, then he’d find the place he’d always hoped for.

His pace quickening, Leo rushed on into the caverns, once again snaking down further and further. It was cold here, the air filled with a damp that slowly moistened his back, adding to the chill’s sapping effect. All the tunnels and caves seemed to lead to the same spot, and he hurried on towards it, squeezing around stalagmites to enter the point where everything converged.

And then he froze, eyes wide as he took in what filled the room beyond. Where was once bare stone, instead there were bones.

A lot of bones.

They covered the walls, the floor, they lay in heaps and piles, some that towered as high as the ceiling. A solid wall of yellowed-white blocking off whatever it was that lay beyond, a horrifying vision of uncounted numbers of the dead. The sight stole his breath away, sending his heart racing, his chest clenching. Before he could flee, however, a single fact wormed its way into his mind.

There was no mana here.

None whatsoever.

All his horror vanished before that one fantastic realization. Leo flung himself forward, collapsing to his knees in the bone sea, tears hot on his cheeks. For the first time since he’d left the enclave, the call of mana was completely absent. So what if he was knee-deep in more death than even his most horrifying of nightmares had contained? It was a small price to pay for peace.

And then he sensed something.

There was more than just the bones in this room. Presences, resonances, like those of the pale demon’s undead, filled it. They were still, slumbering, held inanimate by some oppressive and constrictive force beyond Leo’s comprehension. But even in that suspended state, he could feel how wrong they were. Fractured, maddened, half consumed and burning with an unspeakable rage.

And there were thousands of them.

Tens of thousands.

Scrabbling backwards, bones skittering out from beneath his feet, Leo rushed back out of the room. Mana beat back into his mind once more, but he didn’t care, all he wanted to do was to flee that awful mass of monstrous presences before they awoke and sensed him. He knew if that happened he’d die, as quickly and as easily as if Vistol herself had soared down and snatched his soul from his body.

Because that thing was unbelievably, ravenously, hungry. And it would not stop until it had consumed everything in the world.