The bell chimes as the door opens to an alchemy laboratory. Rows of flasks and vials line the shelves, and a girl observes through her test samples.

"Ah, Professor Lysander. It's great to see you," said the alchemist, glancing up with a slight smile.

"Myra, is the boy here?"

She nodded, her expression tightening. “This way, sir,” she murmured, her voice trembling with unspoken dread.

She opens a door to another room. A sharp vibration jolted through Lysander, the air heavy with an overwhelming surge of mana.

The air was thick, distorting with pressure—high-concentration magic at work. Just how dangerous was this boy to warrant such confinement? Lysander asks himself.

They entered the room, once pristine white, now marred with ink stains, faint burns, and dents. In there, the sound of a quill shard rasping on the floor echoed through the room.

The boy sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, hands trembling and raw as he scratched the phrase into the floor with a shard of quill, ink smearing beneath his fingers. His voice was hoarse, a whispery echo of what it must have been days ago, but the words spilled out anyway, unbidden and unstoppable.

"Summation... of the products... of mana... and harmonic resonance..." The voice cracked, and they paused to gulp in air, their hand still moving, spilling some ink on the floor. "...divided by the product... of flux and tether... equals... zero."

Lysander listened, his eyes widening in shock. This was nothing an ordinary boy should know about, or even speak of. That chant was an equation of something terrible; something that may destroy the world. The boy mutters again, and again, his mind seemingly focused—or rather, it's the only thing he knows, his only reason to live. And Lysander was upset by it. He can't even imagine what they did to him. 

The quill shard snapped after days of use, and his small fingers, too weak to move, smeared the ink over the floor. He continues writing using his fingers, even though it's too weak to continue moving.. "Summation... mana and... resonance... flux... tether..." The sentence blurred together in the child’s mind, but they couldn’t stop. Not even when their hands ached, and their throat felt like fire.

Tears, mingled with soot and grime, streaked down his face, leaving marks on the quartz floor. However, his lips moved faster, as though the words could offer him some kind of escape.

"Equals... zero."

The boy wrote it again, and again. It wasn't just a written formula, it was already his way of life, a fraction of his existence dedicated just for this—an equation burned into his very soul.

"He won’t eat, won’t drink... all he does is write and recite the Anti-Magic Equation..." Myra says, her eyes filled with pity over the child

"He’s just a child… why is this happening?” Lysander muttered, his voice filled with dread and helpless pity, as he watched the boy—mechanical, relentless—continue to write and chant, like a machine designed for a single purpose.

"W... What is his name?" Lysander added.

“There are no records left… only this.” Myra muttered, handing him a bracelet marked S-001.

“Project Quantum, Subject One...” she paused, as if the name itself carried a heavy burden.

"Reverie."

"Where did you find him?" Lysander asked.

"Out in the cold." Myra answered.

---------------------------------

The cold was relentless...

Reverie had no memory of when they had left him in the snow. The blinding white of the tundra stretched in all directions, endless and merciless. His breath was shallow, visible puffs in the frozen air, and his limbs ached with each movement.

He would've died by now. He should've.

Yet, some force—unnatural, divine, or twisted—refused to let him go. The same force that had carved equations into his soul now sustained him in this desolate place. He did not shiver, nor did his body succumb to the creeping frostbite that would have taken any other child. His existence defied the laws of nature, just as the equation that formed him defied the laws of magic.

The wind howled, whipping through the torn remnants of the tunic he had been left with. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, but food and starvation was an unknown concept, something that had never existed to him as he lived in the lab, sustained by the fluids and solutions inside his tank. His world had narrowed to survival, to movement. Keep walking. Keep thinking.

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“Summation… mana and resonance…”

Reverie felt the equation ever so slightly improving his situation, like a shelter protecting him from the dangers of his environment. A slight spark, giving him smell yet sufficient sustainance to keep moving and chanting—Almost as if it's the only thing keeping him alive, an anchor to this accursed world he was brought into.

The words formed a rhythm, a heartbeat in his mind. His feet moved, crunching through the ice, one step after another. A part of him wondered if he was even alive, or just an echo of the experiment that had discarded him. Would he vanish if he stopped reciting? If the equation faltered, would he simply cease to be?

He stumbled, falling to his knees. The ice bit into his skin, but he did not feel the pain nor the cold. Only exhaustion. His fingers traced patterns in the frost, sketching out the formula once more. He knew no other way to exist.

Then—a feeling of sudden touch.

It was faint, just a flicker against his skin, but enough to make his senses jolt. His head lifted sluggishly, vision hazy. A light? No, a silhouette against the snow. Footsteps approached, crunching softly, deliberately.

A voice reached him, distant yet unfamiliar.

“Oh gods… You’re alive.”

The voice trembled, carrying something he could not yet name. Reverie blinked slowly, trying to focus. The figure knelt beside him, hesitating before reaching out. A hand, gloved against the frost, touched his cheek gently.

“I found you.”

The words meant nothing to him, yet there was something in them—something in the way they were spoken—that made his exhausted mind waver between consciousness and oblivion.

Then, the darkness took him.

---------------------------------

"Find the boy, the poor thing needs to be saved from those savages."

The sentence rings within Myra's head, as she keeps remembering what she had been sent for in this icy harsh tundra. A soul that barely knows what true life is like, a child that does not have a childhood.

She searched across the trees, and eventually saw a small figure within the distance. She began dashing for him, eventually getting to the boy that looked just like what was described to her—Black hair and blue glowing eyes.

"Oh gods... You're alive. I found you." She mutters, as she looked at the Reverie's poor condition with pure pity, wondering how this child even survived this harsh cold environment with nothing to eat for days.

The boy slowly begun to fall over. Myra panicked as she caught the boy from falling to the snow, thinking she might've been a little too late. She searched him for wounds but none of the sort was found, so she calmed down.

She lifted the boy to carry him back. However, she was surprised to find that a snowstorm had already begun brewing.

I have to take him back, and quick. Myra thought, as she begins walking back towards where she came from—or where she thought she came from.

A few minutes later, she stopped. The snowstorm whipped around her, but the landscape—this wasn’t right. She had passed this way before, hadn’t she? The trees… they were different now. The very ground beneath her feet felt alien.

Myra's breathing shallowed, trying to process what is happening. She looked at the trees, the snow, the ground—but absolutely nothing looked familiar. She turned back, desperate to try and retrace her steps but to no avail.

She decides to continue walking, hoping to at least find a shelter to keep him and the boy from any dangers when night comes. Another hour has passed, and she noticed that there has been no change in temperature for the boy at all, as if the cold did not exist for him.

An hour later, Reverie woke up. He took a look around the area, before continuing his chant about the equation. She was surprised and confused at first. He was reciting like a recorded audio, playing over and over, like it's the only reason he was made for  Eventually, she got used to the sound of his murmurs.

A few moments passed, Reverie's stomach once again grumbled from hunger. "Poor thing, you must be starving... Here, you can have this" Myra murmured, her voice breaking as she handed him a bag of biscuits. Reverie took a quick look at the bag, then tilted his head in confusion. Myra then understood that the boy did not know nor understand the concept of food or hunger. *Of course not. How could he, after everything vile that they've done to him?*

Around a few hours of wandering later, Reverie fell asleep once again, seemingly conserving energy. They then stumble upon an abandoned outpost. *We should stay here for a bit.* Myra thought, before walking in. She looks around for any signs of danger, then she setup a campfire to keep both of them warm.

The fire crackled and popped, its warmth a welcome relief against the cold night air. But Reverie remained still in his sleep, unmoved. 

She looked at Reverie, then checked his temperature, and just as she thought—He was near the fire, but his body didn’t draw in the heat. His skin didn’t even flush with warmth. It was as though the flames had no effect on him—an existence untouched by the forces that governed the world. 

Subject One, the Everlasting Crystal. Reverie was referred to as such, as Myra scanned through the information the Association gave to her. He was neither alive nor dead—he was energy and magic incarnate.

Still, she felt an unfamiliar pang in her chest, but quickly dismissed it. He was an experiment, a tool… but there was something about him—something that stirred the faintest shred of humanity inside her. 

Night has arrived, and the snowstorm is still raging outside. Reverie had already fallen asleep, so she decided to watch over him. While resting, Reverie began stirring around in bed, muttering an equation—this time, different ones.

She began seeing a pattern, perhaps a history of the boy. Forgotten knowledge? Surpressed memory? New discovery? Or perhaps... Something that defines his very existence? She doesn't know, and she feels like she shouldn't. Nevertheless, Myra felt sorry for the boy's existence.

The sun has finally risen, and the wind finally eased, so Myra decided to take Reverie again as they try to find their way out the seemingly constantly changing tundra.

As they wandered, Reverie continued his usual chants, until...

"Summation of purpose... equals zero."

Myra felt a chill run down her spine. It wasn't from the biting cold. No, it was from something that she never thought she would hear. It would seem that Reverie is finally losing all sense of purpose, and she could feel her heart break as the young boy slowly gives up all hope.

We better hurry. She thought, before continuing their journey.