Guan Ah Dan’s mana raged. He let it. He encouraged it. It was free to do as it needed to. The energy inside of himself knew where it wanted to go, and Dan allowed it to smash wherever it pleased. He was a grand reservoir, he imagined, and the whirlpool of chaotic power within was simply there to be contained.

The result was explosive. He had nearly breached the sensation before, in the presence of the Guan family elders, but this time it didn’t feel impossible to understand. There was his own mana, spread out around the twisted treeline, and there was everything else. Behind the majestic stone doors where the elders sat, Dan had sensed the absolute celestial bodies that they contained and seen nothing else.

Now, he saw.

Even with his eyes closed, Dan could see more clearly than he ever had. Dan was humbled by the feeling. He realised that he had grown a rotten lump of hubris over his own ability and while he still held pride in the fact that he had made the best of a bad hand, Dan couldn’t help but feel a sting. He still had much more to learn.

Instead of dwelling on himself, which it wasn’t the time for, Dan shoved away his old pride and marvelled at the world around him. Each tree, each blade of grass, each breath of wind and everything in between them had its own tiny star of energy. Hyun Soon glowed with a hot orange flame, glorious and loud. Dan had never caught a glimpse of Xiaomei’s soul badge, he realised as the tundra of icy energy popped into existence within Dan’s sphere of attention.

What Dan could see from the others, explosive blasts of excited energy, cycling in preparation for whatever action they might take, he saw a void in Guan Fa Lian. There was still energy there, with a stronger intensity than anything else Dan could see, but it was as though there were a curtain in the way. The light behind the curtain was dark, overpowering and destroying Guan Fa Lian. Dan could see it pressing against her core like a monstrous hand pressing on the other side of a tent.

“Dan,” Hyun Soon’s words seemed to just exist, no longer needing to be heard to be understood by Dan, “there’s trouble.” Dan’s own mana had been condensed again, the range of his awareness much lower, a sacrifice to the now increased clarity. He hadn’t noticed them.

Skeletons, moving with slow, murderous purpose. A small number of them were closing in on the group. Dan couldn’t let go of the feeling again, now that he had it. He had felt a similar feeling long ago in a room that was half dark and half light. If the mana doesn’t do what it wants, right now, something will break. “Can you stop them?” Dan had to ask.

“Of course we can.” His eyes still closed, Dan smiled at the steel in Guan Xiaomei’s voice. It seemed that while she lacked confidence in dealing with people, Xiaomei did have confidence in her own abilities. “How long do you need, though?” Confidence to a point, at least.

“I’m close.” Another word might break the spell that Dan’s mana had cast. Of course there was no actual spell, Dan wasn’t capable of such things, but the movement of it had a similar feeling to a ritual. Dan had seen Park Man-Shik perform ritual magic while forging, and now understood what the man had been doing. A churn of pride increased the speed of Dan’s mana once more as he realised he was doing something similar to his teacher. He wished Park Man-Shik were here.

It was just himself though. A blank spot in a world of beautiful lights and a blinding, angry void in his arms. If Park Man-Shik were here, would Dan be able to do something that he couldn’t? No. He knew that. He just wished someone could tell him what to do. Just save her, Simple. Actually, Dan thought, Park Man-Shik might not be much help.

Slow it all. Understand it. Move it your way.

Somehow, it was elder Yaya’s voice that moved Dan. He had been frozen for a moment, cost precious seconds, when the words popped into Dan’s head. He didn’t quite know why, but they were the words he needed to hear.

Alright Dan, he thought, shaking himself off internally, you’ve spent enough time watching. You watch and watch. It’s time to do something. Take your flimsy mana and make it do something for once. That’s all you need to do, Simple.

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So he did. Or he attempted to. It was an alien feeling, this condensed form of mana, and making it do what he wanted had a strange sensation to it. First there was a resistance, like a petulant child who wants to do anything else than behave. Then came overeagerness in the flow of the mana, which needed to be restrained, before that restraint would make it feel like it did to begin with. And so it cycled. Like pushing back the waves, Dan got used to the heavier mana, understood its momentum better and better with each passing second.

This was how Hyun Soon made his gauntlets. This was how Xiaomei strengthened her web-like ribbons. Except for them, and everyone else, their mana knew what it wanted to be. Hyun Soon’s mana wanted to be used to strengthen him. Xiaomei’s desired to strengthen her equipment. Dan’s mana held no such drive. It was empty.

Which, Dan hoped, might make this work.

The bundle of dense energy within Dan continued to roil, his awareness continued to condense. His normal radius continued to slip, and he lost sight of Hyun Soon, uppercutting a small fox skeleton in mid-air. Xiaomei’s ribbons, hardened to incredible sharpness, disappeared from sight. Dan crunched, mashed and packed his mana together more and more. This is what it feels like! He thought again with excitement.

As it reached critical mass, Dan’s own small star was nearly impossible to move. He still didn’t know what it would do, only that this was necessary now. Shoving with all of his energy, Dan pressed his mana - an invisible ball - onto Guan Fa Lian’s core. He was trying to reduce the pressure of the girl’s mana, trying to smother the furious cataclysm within her and help her calm it.

That isn’t what happened.

The pitiful weight Dan had managed to create and hamfistedly shove towards the unknown mass of power within Guan Fa Lian was grabbed. Not by a pair of hands, but a multitude of grasping, coiling tendrils of mana. This was the darkness inside of Guan Fa Lian and it was trying to steal him into it. Dan screamed out loud, the psychic battle occurring far too much for him. Dan heaved with everything he had, even trying to move physically, to run away from the terrifying dark energy that had a hold of him, but his legs were locked still. Even the muscles of his arms and back were frozen, he couldn’t turn or crawl. He was in stasis, staring down at Guan Fa Lian and still trying to haul his mana back to himself.

Dan felt as though he were staring into a mighty abyss. Within that abyss he saw two eyes. They were small, but as the eyes moved Dan could see how far away they were and the scale intensified. They were planets, and he was a mouse being watched by them. Dan knew he needed to cut the connection, every second this being saw him was like a second on the surface of the sun.

The struggle couldn’t have lasted long, the battle with the skeletons was still raging when Dan resurfaced from the pitch-black mana like someone gasping for air. As before, Dan’s mana had been slow to start but once he had it moving, he was able to fling it from the grasp of the unknown monstrosity within Guan Fa Lian’s magic. Something was different about the mana as it recoiled from the girl. Dan looked at her, aghast, and saw that she was looking at him with a mixture of revulsion and hate.

She shoved him away, Dan wasn’t even able to feel glad that she was seemingly okay. He was shaken by what he had just experienced. So stunned was he, that it took multiple shouts from Hyun Soon’s bellowed, panicked voice to shake him from his stupor. Dan looked around and the world came back into focus.

He realised what was happening. His mana was all inside of his core, something which Dan’s subconscious self had prevented for years. He wasn’t hearing like he normally did, or seeing like he normally did, because he was only using his physical body. Dan shook his head, as though trying to remove the brain fog by force, and tried to gather his mana.

“Xiaomei, jump.” The battle still raged, and Hyun Soon wasted no time waiting for Xiaomei to hear him. He threw himself in a tackle right through where Xiaomei was standing. Dan yelled as he was sure that the girl was about to get in between the much larger boy and the three skeletons he was looking to crash through. Like she was made of smoke, he passed straight through her. Dan couldn’t understand what he was seeing until he remembered he had no mana to show him the scene properly. Xiaomei simply moved faster than Dan could naturally perceive.

Dan’s mana felt sluggish, it should already be covering the battlefield entirely. It didn’t move how it normally did. It still felt heavy. Which distracted Dan so much, he didn’t see an attack from his blindspot. The world exploded.

When Dan stopped flinching, he saw a shimmering hand being pulled away and the attacking skeleton, the bones of a monkey, turning to dust. “What are you doing, Empty? Move.” Dan had been called that name before, but today it stung. Today he hadn’t felt empty for a while. Clearly he still was. Guan Fa Lian joined the combat and it ended quickly with the additional firepower. Dan had scrambled around, basically bait for the others at that point. It was as though his mana had…

Hyun Soon was breathing heavily, Xiaomei had fallen to a sitting position. Strangely it was only Guan Fa Lian who looked fresh. Very fresh actually. Better than she had when they arrived. She did not seem particularly thankful for that fact, or even aware that it had occurred. She simply stalked the treeline, making sure there were no more skeletons on the way.

“Are you okay, Dan?” Hyun Soon had caught his breath and was the first to notice the shell shocked look on Dan’s face. When he looked into Hyun Soon’s eyes, the tall boy could see nothing but pain. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s gone. I… I’m blind… deaf.” Dan was becoming panicked and frantic. “I’m empty.”