The world ended in a silent explosion. Or so I was told. I think it’s still ending.

My mom used to talk about a world with planes flying in the sky and computers that let you talk to friends on the other side of the globe. A world where you could travel miles in minutes, and food stayed fresh for weeks.

That world died long before I was born.

It all started when a scientist discovered an unknown substance and decided to poke at it. The reaction was both instant and slow.

First, there was a silent explosion—or some call it a wave. Either way, it made all the electricity and modern technology suddenly shut down across the world. Only for a couple of minutes, though, before everything came back online.

But in those short minutes, the world panicked. Planes fell from the sky, cars crashed, and people died. When it all came back, everyone scrambled to figure out what had happened. But with no answers, the world moved on.

No one connected it to a scientist in a small town in central Ervea. The scientist in question got scared and decided to hide away what they had found.

But it was too late. Magic had already been activated.

Maybe you’re wondering how I know it’s magic. Magic isn’t real—it only exists in stories or those movies that used to be so popular. But for me, it’s very real.

At first, the world stayed normal after that first incident. Planes still flew through the skies and you could still talk to your best friend on the other side of the globe. Life went on.

Then it happened again, years later. Electricity and technology stopped working across the world, this time for much longer. When it finally came back, the voices demanding answers were much louder.

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I can imagine it was on every news channel, in every paper, and all over the media. Mom was still young when the first incident happened, but by the second, she was older—old enough to have her own phone and old enough to miss technology when it was gone. The second incident scared her more. And the third, even more than that. By the time the fourth came, she was ready.

The world had recognized the pattern, pinpointed the source, but still didn’t understand why it kept happening. They hadn’t realized yet that the world they knew was dying.

What they didn’t see was that this unknown substance—this new source—was growing. And as it grew, technology and electricity died off more and more. As something else was taking their place.

Each incident lasted longer than the one before, until the time with working technology and electricity was shorter than the time without. The world was changing, and it was forcing its inhabitants to change with it.

Relying on technology became impossible, so people went back to basics. Big cities turned dangerous, and people fled to the countryside. Governments collapsed, leadership crumbled, and it became every man for himself. Nature took over the asphalt, and for a while, everything was wild—the people, the animals, all of it.

But, like I said, something was growing.

At first, the signs were small and easy to miss. But soon, they were impossible to ignore. Nature was changing.

Some plants developed magical properties. They started to move, as if with a will of their own. Some had seemingly healing abilities if prepared properly, while others exploded on touch. She knew of a mushroom that could replicate ghostly copies of itself to confuse creatures looking to harm it.

If that was magic, I don’t actually know, but it’s what people started to call it. And with it, the world was becoming an even more dangerous place.

But the biggest thing for humans was that some developed the ability to access this source—this magic straight from the air, using it for almost anything—to heal, to fight, to find.

They called it siphoning magic, and those who could do it were called siphoners.

The cost of siphoning was high, though. Use it too much, and you could temporarily lose a sense—or lose it completely. It could make you deaf or blind. Some even died, though that was rare, at least in the beginning.

Someone—I don’t know who—discovered that siphoners could store magic in containers, making it so others could use it too. The best part? It came with almost no side effects. No one went blind, no one went deaf, no one lost the ability to feel a loved one’s touch. If there was magic in the container, you could use it however much you wanted without worrying about the cost.

There are two major problems with this.

One, using magic this way is incredibly addicting. The more you use, the more you want. And that made magic highly sought after.

The other problem? For it to work, for magic to be trapped in a container, siphoners had to die.

To siphon magic this much, all at once, the cost is always the siphoner’s life—making magic one of the most expensive things out there. And I don’t know about you, but most of us don’t want to die.

Siphoners became a commodity, and hunters started tracking down those of us who tried to hide.

My name is Bennie, and I’m one of those siphoners, currently in hiding.