It has been fifteen years since magic reappeared on this world, and it once again supplanted technology, this time even more as the people changed all the components of their technology to magic ones. It was all because a mighty seer said that after magic came back this time it won’t ever go away again, with no fear of losing what’s precious to them, society slowly is coming back to its roots.
On the fateful day of Resurrection Day while everyone was getting used to magic once again, the dried Ley Lines - magic rivers beneath the earth - couldn’t hold the new magic within them and explode.
Fortunately, they recuperated after a while but millions of lives were lost because cities were made above the cores of the Ley Lines and they disappeared within the explosion.
The Dark Age was over, “and it is the dawn of a new age, the Golden Age.” Solomon finished reading the book necessary for the history class and returned it to its correct place in Hollowell’s library.
Solomon was a fine man in his friend’s words, both in personality and how he acts daily despite inauspicious silvery-white eyes, the only trait that would cause people to stop to look at him for some seconds before forgetting about it.
His dark hair was tidy and his school uniform was perfectly arranged to fit the rules, with no trace of illegal earrings or tattoos on his body.
He wished other people thought like his friend and left him alone, or even praise him.
But the librarian was disgusted of him or at least thought he was crazy, which the fifteen-year-old boy couldn’t blame them for that in the end, they did see sometimes Solomon talking alone after all.
As soon he got out of the library he saw “them” coming his way.
The nobles that study at his school.
Knowing what was going to happen, Solomon just walked forward without any care.
The nobles merely made him tumble over and continued in their way as if they had better things to do than torment the orphan boy.
Solomon after getting up was beyond surprised with how weak and childish his daily bullying was.
What happened? The let me go with just tumbling over? Are they in a good mood or something? He thought.
Normally the nobles take him to be a test subject of their magic and beat him over and over while degrading him and cursing at him, it happened when they are just slightly irritated with their grades or because the teacher berated them.
Solomon no even wanted to remember what they did to him when they were in a bad mood after the director saw them trying to charm a noble’s daughter.
Miss Olivia was so mad that day…
And it was all his fault that he was bullied.
When the orphanage received the graces of the director of the school, Hollowell Sunrise, and permitted to orphans study for free in the school, it was more than expected that orphan children would draw attention and experience a certain degree of bullying from the other children.
Any nickname in relation to their condition was also sure to exist.
Solomon at first only had his bullying a little harder than the others from the orphanage, he was shy and his natural eyes were strange even to the people after magic came back.
However everything went downhill when he saw of one his playmates from the orphanage be specially picked on, he couldn’t bear seeing his playmate endlessly crying with some bones broken and ran over to protect his playmate despite the fear he felt seeing the more powerful children glaring at him.
The gentle orphanage owner had taught him that he should always protect his friends no matter what endangers them.
“Practice the good and the world will reward you for doing that in form of happiness within yourself,” was the main teaching taught to the orphans of the orphanage Daylight Children.
As expected, he wasn’t a match for the bullies and from there on the bullying was concentrated on him for daring to go against the unwritten rules of the school, and even his playmate began to ignore him to be saved from the bullies’ wrath.
Solomon thought he could endure it without crying but the people of the school ended up discovering one of his “quirks” which he heard voices in his head and talked alone as if there was a person at his side.
It was then Solomon discovered the sad reality in Kuntha, that the world worked in a way that the ones who do the right thing in accord with their hearts and goodness are punished.
And the ones who do the correct thing in accord with the unwritten rules of the universe, bully and despise others, are rewarded with praises and love from their families.
He wept, not only because of his physical pain but also sad to discover how horrible the world that he lives in is.
Solomon desired for…
Change.
Power.
And kindness.
All because the orphanage’s owner, Miss Olivia, fixed his warped vision of the world and let him see that there are so many sides to people and society he couldn’t even imagine.
In her words, the world is beautiful and full of surprises, there is good and bad all around it, we just need to do our best and we will for sure be rewarded with what we deserve one day.
If not for that, he wouldn’t be right now studying to become a merchant just so he could bring comfort to people in need, and even nobles.
“My birthday was yesterday. Why am I receiving today this present of going back to the orphanage without any injury and so early in the day?” Solomon accidentally said aloud his thoughts and his companions couldn’t help themselves from also saying their opinions.
“I don’t think you should be that happy about it, if any of those guys were happy then it mustn't be for a good reason.” A pale, plump woman said.
Bessy floated next to Solomon and it was possible to see through her because of how transparent she was.
She was a ghost that only Solomon could see and that decided to hang around him, she probably has a regret so deep that she can’t go to the afterlife, and to not be bored she lived with Solomon, the only one that can see and interact with her.
Solomon when younger could only see the ghosts as sparkles, but as he grew older his power got stronger and now he could perfectly see and even touch them.
“Brother, instead of paying attention to these brats, shouldn’t you pay attention to bigger aspects of society? You currently live in a feudal society instead of its true form, a republic. The secretive nature of Magic’s early practitioners has resulted in most knowledge becoming lost. Wars and death are common, and there are monsters to worry about.
“The constant affairs between the annoying gods ensure that philosophical or non-clerical progress is ever made since their energies disturb the thought process of this era’s true sages. Shouldn’t you begin to change the world? Accept me and everything will work fine.” A masculine and childish voice, Asmo, inside of Solomon’s head said.
Since Solomon could remember, Asmo’s voice existed inside of his head and always tried to tempt him with sweet words after talking normally for some seconds.
Asmo also was always going on about society and regal duties which was pretty annoying to hear, he never shuts up after starting as if he had a duty of exposing me to everything I never wanted to know or have something to do with.
Ghosts also are able to hear Asmo’s voice for some reason too.
The worst of living with a voice belonging to another being in his head wasn’t the looks Solomon received when he talked with it, it was the things Asmo did with Solomon when sleeping with the objective of training him.
Asmo had the power of making Solomon conscient within his own dream, making him never truly sleep since, in his dreams, he was always being forced to do something to be able to wake up.
Solomon couldn’t understand how Asmo could control his own dream and make it so frightening. Every day Asmo makes monsters or dangerous situations appear in his dream to train Solomon to be able to maintain calm in nerve-wracking situations.
Solomon at first scoffed at it, no matter how dangerous something can look, it was still a dream. But when the bone dragon that Asmo made bit his arm off, the sensation was so lifelike that Solomon couldn’t anymore ignore what Asmo made in his dreams.
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The only way to escape from his daily dreams was to either clear an objective Asmo made or accept Asmo.
Solomon instinctively felt disgusted by the thought of accepting Asmo so he has to struggle every day in his dreams to not feel pain.
Which makes him wonder, why couldn’t he hate Asmo for the things that he does in his dream?
“Oh... Sol, shouldn't you go to the mailbox now since you got off the hook early?” Bessy said pointing the way to the mailbox in the midst of the bustling city, black buildings all around with crystals at their doors.
“Thank you, Bessy. I had almost forgotten about that.” Solomon walked for some minutes before seeing his destination together with a middle-aged man ghost near the mailbox.
“Thank god, you even came early than promised. Did you bring the letter?” The fat ghost asked.
Solomon knowing it wouldn’t be good to talk aloud, only took the letter from his bag and put it in the mailbox.
It was an anonymous letter containing information about the murderer who killed the ghost’s physical body, Solomon sent it to the police guards and State Magicians. Not helping the government find the murderer was the only regret that the ghost had that was holding him from ascending, so he made Solomon write a letter to make his murderer pay.
“Thank you, young man. I hope for happiness in your life and that any dream you have to be realized.” The fat ghost smiled as he faded into nothing and ascended to the afterlife.
Sol smiled at doing a good action and wondered in his heart. Dream? I have some and all seem unlikely to happen.
He had simple dreams besides the one brought by talking with Miss Olivia, he wanted to find the person that dropped him off in the orphanage after his parents died and thank her or him for that. And he had an even simpler dream that most people wouldn’t even consider a dream.
He wanted to have a family of his own and he would do whatever is needed to protect them if he one day-
“Brother, get out of the way of this man immediately!” Asmo shouted, interrupting Solomon’s thoughts as he walked back to the orphanage.
Solomon used to receive orders from Asmo in his dream, immediately made a short hop to the sides, and avoided getting in the way of a lanky man wearing dark robes with a friendly smile stamped on his face.
The lanky man looked strangely at the kid but ignored his strange actions and continued on his way, with strange eyes like the child has, it is bound he suffers from some kind of mental disease as no one in a sane mind would use silver for their eyes.
“Bessy, go check the house from where the lanky man came and report to us later. Brother, continue walking to the orphanage without looking back. After Bessy comes back I will explain to you what happened.” Asmo said with a serious tone unbefitting to him, making Solomon and Bessy take seriously his orders without complaining.
Some minutes later Bessy came back with a frown on her face when Solomon stopped at the orphanage’s gate with an ebony car powered by Magic Crystals on its front.
“Sol, calm down and listen to me. There were dead people in the house where that man came from, he most likely killed them with a nasty magic from what I saw. The ghosts there were useless, they were the rogue type of ghosts without any reason in them.” Bessy said.
Solomon widened his eyes and thought how close he was to a real cold-blooded murderer, if the lanky man wished, someone so ‘small’ as Solomon could easily disappear without anyone noticing.
With this information what should he do? He must write a letter to the police as he did earlier, right? Hollowell can’t have another murderer walking free without any punishment.
He began to walk back to the mailbox, maybe he is even walking to the house to save someone that could still be there, he doesn’t know, he just needs to-
“Whatever you are thinking, give up. You won’t change anything with your current power and the army won’t be able to help you against that man. Look at that.” Asmo said.
Solomon saw smoke coming from the direction where he had just come from and realization dawned on him.
“That’s right, Bessy didn’t see because she immediately went there after the lanky man left but there was a spell formation set there to burn the house after the distance between the user and the formation grew too big. Everything the lanky man did was burned together with all the clues. Did you notice the emblem on his robe?”
Solomon shook his head.
“If my memory doesn’t fail me it was an emblem belonging to a high-grade State Magician that probably follows the Dragon Empress herself. His status could be even higher than the king of your country, do you really think you can do anything against him or that the army will care about him killing someone?”
Solomon became silent understanding the severity of the situation while feeling frustrated he couldn’t do anything.
“And even if he killed someone, so what? Maybe the victims deserved it or maybe not, who knows? You being a busybody can make the State Magician track you to the orphanage and kill the children here on a whim. Those anonymous letters you send are easy for someone with his status and power to trace and discover it was you that sent them. If even so, you want to do something, wait until you become an adult or accept me now.”
Hearing he could endanger the orphanage and Miss Olivia made Solomon reluctantly give up despite feeling like he should do something.
The world is still so big for someone small like me…
“Sol, this isn’t all,” Bessy said. “The reason I took so long to come back is that I followed the lanky man for a while and discovered that he went to the plaza to meet with your noble “friends” you know so well. They called him Mister Nergal and were quite happy while talking with him.”
Solomon didn’t know why he thought that Nergal wouldn’t kill the bullies, so he wasn’t that worried.
“So that’s the reason they were in a good mood, meeting a State Magician from the Dragon Empress must be a lifelong dream to them.” Solomon decided to momentarily forget about Nergal and enter the orphanage, going to his favorite place where nobody interrupts him.
It wasn’t his room, it was beneath a dark tree.
The orphanage was a completely white building with several rooms which the orphans share and on the upper floor was where Miss Olivia stays with the caretakers.
Existed one discrepancy in this otherwise white place, it had a black tree that nobody goes near, not because of its color but because it exudes an odor that only Solomon and Miss Olivia could bear.
That unknown tree wasn’t until now cut only because of the love Miss Olivia has had for it since being a child.
Before reaching the tree a caretaker talked with him. “Solomon? You arrived early today. Maybe today one of your playmates will be adopted since a rich couple came here. Do you want to see them?”
“No, thank you. I will just stay at the tree and read a little before going to help clean the orphanage.” Solomon answered, sitting beneath the tree with a relaxed demeanor.
Solomon tapped on his golden signet ring, it had a hexagram shape waxed on it and was on his hand since a baby together with being the only clue he has to find his biological family.
The seal on the ring was for sure a symbol of a familial heritage if the books he read in the library were right but until now he wasn't able to find any family which uses hexagrams as symbols, normally they use pentagrams since the grand part of spell formations depends on pentagrams.
After years of using it, Solomon discovered it was a magical Artifact that has two books within it and he can summon them by tapping on the ring.
An onyx grimoire - a part graphical and runic book - appeared in his hands.
The title was Lemegeton.
The other book he didn’t summon was a pure silver grimoire named My Key, in its first section explained and gave a lot of directions to any mage to be able to constrain ghosts, turn invisible, gain love, and so on.
It was a general archive about simple procedures to myriads of magics that needed hard requirements in materials and magic power control to work, which both Solomon doesn’t have.
The second section of it was just a bunch of nonsense talking about how black clothes are the fashion of the universe and the number of animal sacrifices needed to meddle with angels, it is all just some nonsense of the author.
Not even Asmo who likes to brag about knowing everything understood from where those books or ring came from.
“This Lemegeton as I thought is missing four sections of it,” Solomon said after he compared the onyx grimoire with how the new history book in the library separates its sections. “What’s strange is that this first section has no relation to the other sections.”
After years of studying and using magic to comprehend and solve puzzles within the grimoire that Asmo or Miss Olivia couldn’t understand, Solomon reached a level he could read the complex book that was written all in antique runic language from ages before the Dark Age.
Probably even from before the Chaos Age.
And he was bewildered by what his most likely family heritage could do, on the grimoire listed all information about Demons, even their weakness, and also explained how to summon 72 beings of a race called Mythical, they were also called Pillars.
The grimoire affirmed many times those beings would be loyal to the conjurer but unfortunately, the requirements to summon them were even harder than the first section of My Key’s magics were.
Solomon doesn’t know if he one day will have to deal with demons to survive but knowing it would be good to at least have some knowledge about them, he decided every day to engrave some information about random demons and the four Demon Kings before doing his tasks.
His memory wasn’t that good, nevertheless, he discovered he could engrave information easier if he stays in a place where he can relax in body and soul, like this tree for example.
Meanwhile Solomon was reading Lemegeton, inside the orphanage there was a big commotion with the small children since when someone comes to adopt they tend to adopt the young ones.
The caretakers were showing the rich couple the children in hopes they would receive a new home to be happier.
The husband was an athletic blond man with protruding muscles escaping from his black suit accompanied by a blue shirt. He had beautiful blue eyes but a weird designed black eye patch covered his left eye - which strangely no one comments about - and an ebony customized handgun, a legendary new weapon that is said to until only exist 108 of them in the world, kept near the emblem that signified he was an official magician recognized by the king himself.
The wife was slender and wore dark purple lecherous clothes, revealing her rich brown skin. She had a new invention coming from the capital, Heartspire, with her, it was eyeglasses with thick, hard plastic lenses that served to correct her problem of vision. She also carried a monster’s tooth as an amulet and on her hips, she had a dark green stick that was most likely her magic wand.
“Mister Jesse and Madam Tessa, did you decide what child you will adopt?” The caretaker said.
“It’s really a hard choice, all of them are marvelous children-” Jesse got interrupted when he saw what his wife was looking intently outside of the orphanage’s window.
He saw a teenager with beautiful silvery-white eyes reading a book with a strange aura around it, but what got him and his wife's attention was the black shadow behind the teenager talking with him, and a girl ghost who also seemed able to talk with the teenager.
The ghost was surprising but not as important as the black shadow that Jesse and Tessa knew too well and thought wouldn’t see it again in their lives. Their suspicions became true and their trip to the orphanage was indeed the correct move for them.
Or so they thought after noticing they were wrong.
Trying to calm down after perceiving that there wasn’t any way the shadow was actually what he was thinking it was since it looked too weak and tame, Jesse said, happy that they found a child that wouldn’t immediately die. “Is that child also available for adoption?”
One hour later a puzzled caretaker came near Solomon and said. “Solomon, go gather your things. You just got adopted by the couple that came here today.”
“What?” Solomon dropped his grimoire in surprise and Bessy hid behind Solomon in fear after she saw the couple.