When I was young, my father took me up to the top of Lookout’s Peak early one morning. I honestly just wanted to go back to bed, but my father insisted that there was something I needed to see.

We were not the only ones up on the cliff that morning. It seemed like half the village was gathered, clamoring about some rare and possibly dangerous occurrence. I didn’t really register what they were talking about until we reached the front of the crowd.

I will never forget the sight that greeted me out above the treetops. I had always known that there were massive creatures deep in the wilds, but this was my first time laying my eyes on a true titan.

The beast resembled a fox or a cat, with pale, almost ethereal greenish fur. Even the tallest trees only came up to the graceful behemoth’s shoulder. As I watched the magnificent beast’s four tails wave serenely above the canopy, I firmly believed that this would be the largest creature I would ever see.

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The pair of flying monsters made the gigantic beast from my childhood look like a mere kit by comparison.

The first of the two titans was a bird with feathers like the purest starlight. Its beak and talons glistened like moonlight over calm waters as it slashed at its foe.

The other resembled the idealized form of a drake. Larger even than the mystic bird, this reptile’s wings were wider than the entire length of Sanctuary Valley. Its dark green hide easily repelled talon strikes that could have torn apart mountains.

As the battling behemoths drew nearer, I could make out the transparent shields interposing themselves between the claws of the larger monster and the shimmering bird. Each shield would shatter after a single strike, but it would buy the bird sufficient time to conjure a replacement.

A storm of transparent blades struck fruitlessly against the scaled behemoth’s armored hide. A mere flick of the drake-like creature’s tail shattered most of the magical weapons as they flew overhead.

It wasn’t until a few moments later that the sounds of the battle reached me down below the conflict. The screeching of the shattering magic forced me to cover my ears. I could feel the growls and cries of the battling monsters like a throbbing weight against my chest.

As the battle moved away from me, the volume returned to more manageable levels. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mighty creatures, despite the darkening skies.

As the creatures battled their way closer to the Myriad Cliffs, a strange light surrounded the bird. I didn’t know what sort of magical effect it had, but clearly the bird’s foe was not fond of it. The great horned lizard let out a fearsome roar as fire poured forth from its maw. The light seemed to protect the great bird, up until the scaled behemoth slammed into it.

I looked on with horror as the two enormous monsters descended from the skies, directly towards my home. While the wards surrounding Sanctuary Valley would deflect the attention of mighty beasts away from the valley, they could do nothing to halt the two titans plummeting directly towards the village. The crash of their impact shook the trees as far as the eye could see.

I dared not imagine what sort of destruction had just befallen my home. I held out some hope that the people living towards the edges of the valley would still be alright.

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That hope dwindled as I watched the form of the great drake thrash about beyond the cliff face. After a quarter-span of intense violence, the horned beast once again unleashed a torrent of flames. This time, it didn’t stop.

I stared aghast as flames danced over the rim of the valley. Sanctuary Valley was drowning in a flood of fire, and there was nothing I could do but watch. The very stones of the cliffs surrounding my home began to glow with an inner light.

Tears streamed from my eyes as I watched the mighty cliffs surrounding my home start to crumble and fall. Standing in the middle of the inferno, the great horned destroyer ceased its stream of fire. Of the magnificent bird, there was no trace.

The terrible creature let out a deafening roar of victory before taking to the air once more.

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I do not know how long I would have lingered, staring at the pyre of Sanctuary Valley, had it not been for night’s arrival. Though the calls of the nocturnal creatures were far less numerous than they would be most nights, they still were enough to catch my attention.

Even as I mourned the loss of everyone I ever knew, I couldn’t stay put. I needed to find shelter quickly if I didn’t want to join them in the realm of shades.

Climbing down the side of the knotwood tree, the twisting branches and gnarled shapes took on a sinister appearance. Every small gust of wind left menacing shadows dancing amid the leaves.

By the time I reached the jungle floor, I was jumping at every rustle of the plants around me. It took me a few shuddering breaths to calm the shaking in my limbs.

Of all creatures, humans were amid the most useless when it came to utilizing mana. We could scarcely process it or hold more than a tiny amount of the stuff. When exposed to too much mana, we could even fall deathly ill.

This isn’t to say that mana was completely useless to me.

With a few false starts, I was able to mentally grasp a small flow of mana from the world around me. With a few twists and pulls, I weaved the mana into an arcane pattern. As the magic snapped into place around my eyes, the night filled with color. Mana was no longer invisible to me.

While I still couldn’t make out exact shapes, I now had a much clearer picture of the world. The mana in the air held a different shade than that in the plants around me. More importantly, the magical beasts that stalked the night would have a much harder time catching me unaware.

Fighting off the slowly building headache from my spell, I searched the area for anywhere I could hide until morning. After a half-mark of searching, I stumbled upon an area with an unusually thin amount of mana around a large boulder.

Perplexed, I drew closer. Without my spell, I likely wouldn’t have noticed anything different about the area. The plants were maybe a little less dense and healthy, but that was about it.

Walking around the rock, I spotted a small hole in the ground, barely large enough for me to fit inside. As I deliberated the sanity of crawling into what was likely an animal burrow, something moved through the foliage behind me.

That was all the encouragement I needed to crawl headfirst down into the hole. I was pleasantly surprised to find the passage widening a bit the further in I crawled. The old bones I had to crawl past were a less welcome surprise.

As the passage ahead of me started to turn, I heard something large and probably hungry sniffing at the entrance to the hole. The beast let out a low growl as I wormed my way around the corner.

Had I come face to face with some annoyed animal at the back of this tunnel, I wouldn’t have been surprised. What I wasn’t expecting was the floating gray rectangle covered with words in an unknown language.

To my mana sight, this strange, transparent rectangle was a complex weaving of magic. Even stranger was the human skull the rectangle was hovering above. While I could sort of understand the woven mana from which the rectangular illusion was formed, the tightly coiled mana in the skull was outlandishly far beyond my comprehension.

As I watched, tiny threads of mana wormed their way towards me from the skull. Panicked, I tried backing up, but the narrow passage restricted my movement far too much.

I was helpless as the threads quickly latched onto my head. I couldn’t feel them, but I was under no illusion that they were harmless. I desperately tried to take hold of the mana around me, but couldn’t find my focus quickly enough. Something pressed its way into my mind and a question wormed its way into my head.

THE SYSTEM OFFERS POWER. DO YOU ACCEPT?