They tell me, in school, that I was born cursed.

            My Basic Incantations professor pulls me aside after class, trailed by giggling school children, and asks about my family background. I’m reluctant to answer, already embarrassed by the spectacle in the classroom, and my professor would later say it was like pulling teeth. But he presses, and eventually I answer.

            No, I don’t know my parents’ background in magic. Yes, they’re agricultural mages. No, I don’t remember any suspicious people coming and going from the house. No, this is not the first time I’ve tried casting a spell. Back and forth I’m grilled, until eventually I’m told to go home early with a note from the dean.

            When I show my parents the note, they read it over. Then they read it again. My mother takes it from my little hands and makes sure the words are what they are, and then she nearly bursts into tears. I crawl into her lap to see the note for myself, even though I’ve seen it time and time again.

            I was born cursed, they tell me, because I can’t cast a spell. When examined by the local physician, she says that I’m inert. There is no connection to the ley lines within me, and likely, there will never be a connection in my lifetime. For all intents and purposes, magic simply has no will to be around me.

            It comes in handy sometimes, though.

            When word gets out that I can’t cast spells, the other kids try to prank me with theirs. Imagine their surprise, then, when their spells don’t land. When they can’t seem to grasp me with their magic. The attempts stop quickly, and eventually, I’m left alone. The only problem after that fact is that I’m lonelier than I ever have been before.

            But when I got a scrape over my knee, or broke my finger falling from a tree, the local healers had to be creative. Even their healing magic could not affect me, and that meant I could not be healed by magical means. Everything had to be done physically, practically, slowly.

            It became known as the Nihil Curse. A curse that appears suddenly, draining any capability of magical affinity. Nobody could figure out its origins, even when interviewing me. I didn’t know. It was just something that happened to me, just as the nature of it said—without warning.

            I’m eighteen now. The Nihil Curse has not waned even slightly. I worry sometimes that it’s gotten stronger, that maybe it will spread. The existence of this curse has made me feel more alone than the solitude of my work. As the son of two farmers, I don’t think I was ever meant for much more than working in the fields. My parents haven’t even been able to help much—they rely so much on magic for farming that it became difficult for me to keep up, and I’m supposed to take it over when they pass.

            That isn’t to say, of course, that I’m completely hopeless. I’m not. Before magic became such a commodity in the world, there had to have been a way for people to survive. I could make this exciting, say that it’s simply lost to time, but that’s not necessarily the case either. No, there’s one place that stores all of our knowledge of pre-mana history: The Library.

            I’ve been going to the library since I was fifteen, and first realized that Nihil wasn’t going to leave me anytime soon. The books there are normally used to teach about history, rather than practical applications. After all, it’s unprecedented that anyone be born with no magical gift whatsoever, let alone having the opposite of magic within their veins.

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            Genuinely, it’s extensive what pre-mana humanity knew how to do. In wars, medics would treat with bandages and splints, rather than spells and mantras. Farmers would spend countless hours, from dawn until dusk, working their fields to prepare everything for the following harvest.

            There was even magic pre-mana, although it was more like trickery. Sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors, training the eye to see one thing while what actually happened was something else altogether. Anyone could learn this type of illusionary work, from upscale performers to lower-level con men. And as actual mana began to seep into the world, it was lost to time. Just as the rest of these skills had.

            Finding information on how these worked exactly is difficult. As said before, the books were meant to teach history, rather than practical applications. Furthermore, some of these aren’t practical to simply test. So I have to find knowledge elsewhere.

            The healers show me how to make a basic splint, how a tourniquet was done in ages before. Many of these skills were passed down through generations of healers, and they’re more than happy to teach me, given the fact I can never learn spells like they do.

When it comes to herbology and botany, I talk to people like my parents. Farmers, druids, those who work with plants and herbs and the like for a living. They tell me which ones are good for medicine, which ones are for poison. It comes to me as a surprise, at first, to find out that too much of the medicinal herbs may also work as a poison. They show me when to know the berries are ripe for picking, and which ones to avoid altogether.

The only thing I have to learn by myself is the one thing that is likely to come in handy the most, when I finally decide to travel…

Street magic.

The magic-without-mana.

            “Alec!” my sister calls, “Alec Barrett!”

            She sounds angry. Even though Elena is two years my junior, she has a fiery temper like that of my parents. I rush to greet her at the market stall, running a hand through my hair as she looks me up and down. It’s then that I notice it’s not anger in her eyes, but fear.

            Despite being my younger sibling, Elena Barrett has elected to take care of me since she knew that was an option. If she’s worried about something, it’s usually something I need to worry about, too. She’s always had an eye for these things.

            “Come with me,” she says quietly. Mother allows us to head into private, and as I pass by her, I can see the worry in her eyes as well. As headstrong as she normally is, whatever she caught wind of has spooked her just as well.

            We head into the alley behind the stall, out of earshot of the crowd. Elena crosses her arms and purses her lips off to one side, and I worry that I might be in trouble for something. But after a few seconds of silence, her face softens, and she lets out a sigh. Suddenly, I see an exhaustion that seems to age her about five years.

            “Elena,” I prompt, “What’s got you all in a fuss now?”

            “The ministers have been talking,” she says, rushing it out as though keeping it in was causing her physical pain, “About you.”

            Oh. That’s never good. The ministers normally keep their noses to themselves around me, but I worry that whatever’s got them whispering about me is something that I’m not going to like even more.

            “Have you heard of any… prophecies?” she asks me.

            “Prophecies?” I prompt again.

            “The ministers say that the Oracle delivered one recently. About two people: One is a magical powerhouse, practically the embodiment of the mana we use. He’s called Mana Anima.”

            Tension enters my voice. “And the other one?”

            “An Anti-Mage, capable of negating just about every kind of magic there is. According to prophecy, he’s supposed to rid the world of magic altogether.”

            My heart pounds. My voice is barely above a whisper. “Don’t say it.”

            “Alec,” she says, looking me in the eyes, “He’s called the Mana Nihil.”