The air in that room was different.

  Denser—like the atmosphere expected me to learn how to breathe all over again. I took one step…

  and the sound of the world shut off.

  For a moment, it felt like I’d stepped into the jaws of something alive.

  Every inch forward was a decision, not a movement. The door behind me—that cursed wood that had survived centuries—felt less like an exit and more like a warning.

  And still, something inside me knew there was no going back.

  In front of me stretched a room so ordinary it almost offended me.

  A classroom.

  A chalkboard. Several desks lined up with mechanical precision.

  It was so absurd I nearly laughed.

  After a door made of light—and apparently poisonous wood—what I got was an aula. It smelled like stale chalk and broken promises. The echo of my footsteps died between the empty desks, and for a second I had the strange impression those seats were waiting for ghosts that would never arrive.

  Each desk was different. Carved scribbles. Half-finished symbols. Burn marks. Dust—yes, dust—but also a feeling of… wakefulness.

  “Pick a seat and get ready,” Mr. Toshihiro ordered.

  His voice didn’t just fill the room. It hit the walls and came back multiplied, like the space itself was repeating him.

  What was the point of having more than six desks if I was the only one here?

  I didn’t ask. I didn’t complain. I had no idea what we were doing, I knew nothing—but the masked man inspired a strange kind of trust I couldn’t explain.

  I chose the third desk from left to right.

  The silence in the classroom felt almost reverent. I could hear the faint rustle of Toshihiro’s suit as he moved.

  That’s when I noticed his mask.

  He wasn’t wearing the pug anymore.

  In its place, an owl mask watched from the dimness, empty eyes reflecting the flicker of candles that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  “Most likely… no.” His voice was steady. Certain. “Akuma will come after you again. And I need you ready when he does.”

  I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t.

  His certainty was too sharp, too precise. I barely managed to hold his gaze—and even then I had the unsettling sense that if I stared too long, I’d see something beyond the man.

  “To do that,” he continued, “I’ll open your mind to a new world of possibilities. Maki—tell me. Do you want to learn magic?”

  The word magic spread through the room like a whisper that didn’t need air.

  My first instinct was to laugh—internally.

  Magic.

  Rabbits in hats. Card tricks with stacked decks. Smoke. Applause.

  But then… something shifted. The same word began to echo in my chest, lighting something warm inside me, as if it had been waiting there forever.

  I had gone from nearly drowning to sitting in front of a stranger who offered magic like a glass of water.

  My mind screamed this is insane.

  My heartbeat, strangely, slowed.

  Curious. Expectant.

  There was a part of me that didn’t hesitate at all.

  Curiosity—the dangerous spark—flared hard.

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  Toshihiro tilted his head slightly, as if reading my thoughts took no effort.

  “Don’t worry,” he murmured, and his voice deepened—paternal, distant, both at once. “You’ll be able to defend yourself.”

  He stepped closer. The owl mask made him feel untethered from time.

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes,” he said, “and we’ll start with the basics. Ah—and Maki…”

  He paused. When he spoke again, his voice softened to something almost like a sigh.

  “Please don’t be hard on me. It’s been a long time since I last taught anyone.”

  The candles flickered, as if something unseen passed through the room. The air grew heavier still, like gravity had shifted.

  A faint vibration crawled over my skin.

  And then he spoke again—this time with a solemnity that went through the words and into the bone.

  “Before we begin, you need to understand something.”

  The owl mask seemed to watch everything.

  Even what couldn’t be seen.

  “Magic doesn’t divide itself into light and shadow. You choose… but shadow always comes to claim what’s hers.”

  The sentence hung there, suspended like golden dust.

  Each word felt heavier than the last. Shadow—was it a warning?

  Or a promise?

  For the first time since I woke up, I was afraid.

  Not of water.

  Not of Akuma.

  Of myself.

  And deep in my mind, a voice that wasn’t his whispered with unsettling clarity:

  You already chose.

  Toshihiro snapped his fingers and spoke a word I didn’t understand.

  It didn’t belong to any language I knew.

  It was a living sound—vibration sliding under the skin, resonating inside my bones. Something in the way he said it made me think it wasn’t a command.

  It was an invocation.

  The chalkboard came alive.

  It showed Earth—small and bright—hung in the vast black of the universe.

  In seconds the board stopped being a surface and became a horizon.

  I saw the blue of oceans curve. Continents rise and dissolve like ink in water. Something invisible peeled my awareness off the floor. My body stayed in the desk—

  but my consciousness floated among stars, orbiting an ancient story as it took shape.

  The silence was so absolute I could hear the pulse of the universe.

  Then the scene shifted.

  Elements emerged. People. Events. Actions.

  I witnessed an ancestral history from a privileged height, almost as if I were part of it.

  The sages say that in the beginning, the elements were like restless children—running free, creating and destroying on a whim.

  They played to learn their limits. Fire danced over water without going out. Air shaped mountains of sand only to undo them with a sigh. There was laughter in their chaos, beauty in their destruction—divine childhood without guilt or purpose.

  Fire lit the nights… and also turned forests into ash.

  Water quenched cities… and drowned them when it overflowed.

  Earth cradled seeds and offered shelter… and buried those who disrespected it deep in its veins.

  Air carried melodies in spring… and storms in the dead of night.

  Humans, confused, begged the gods to teach them how to command the elements.

  And the gods answered:

  Power strengthens when the spirit is tempered and the heart serves a purpose.

  Fire obeys the brave, but devours the reckless.

  Water listens to the compassionate, but drowns the cruel.

  Air follows the wise, but drives the foolish mad.

  Earth embraces the persistent, but traps the stubborn.

  Whoever wishes to master one of creation’s elements must first learn to master themselves.

  The words echoed inside me with the weight of an oath. Each one sparked an image—fire as courage, water as empathy, earth as will, air as understanding.

  And behind them all… something older. Invisible. Binding them together and pulling them apart at the same time.

  Creation wasn’t a bland harmony.

  It was an equilibrium full of color—balanced by force, not softness.

  When the last words faded, the scene drew away like a tide receding.

  And suddenly I was back in my seat, facing Toshihiro.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I felt the desk under my hands and knew I’d returned, but my mind still hovered in that other place. The line between what I’d seen and what I’d dreamed blurred.

  Maybe that was the true nature of magic.

  An illusion so powerful it remade reality.

  The “lesson” made the message easier to grasp, and a new question rose in me: did I have what it took to become a magician?

  And if I did…

  I wanted to be one of the good ones.

  “Can I choose what kind of magic I learn?” I asked, careful.

  “You already have.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What was the first thing you did when you walked in here?”

  My memory jumped back a few minutes—

  and I understood.

  He didn’t smile, not exactly. But something in his posture loosened, like a lock clicking.

  “I can tell by your face that you get it.”

  “I still think I need a little more explanation,” I admitted. “What’s my… affinity?”

  “You were drawn to the desk that symbolizes connection to the Primordial Event.” His voice stayed calm, like he was naming something sacred. “Like everything, it has benefits. And it has a cost.”

  The room felt colder.

  For a second, I thought I saw a faint glimmer under the desk’s surface—a luminous shape that vanished so fast I almost convinced myself I’d imagined it.

  But his gaze told me I hadn’t.

  He must’ve seen the question written all over my face, because he continued.

  “The Primordial Event isn’t a simple accident, Maki. It points to an affinity with creation itself—with the genesis of all magic.”

  He let that settle.

  “In other words, you have the ability to choose any of the primary elements to begin your path… and if luck favors you, to learn more than one.”

  My breath caught.

  “The downside is the price will be high. It will be hard—sometimes painfully hard—to master what you want.”

  Then, almost gently:

  “But don’t make that face. If you’d chosen a different seat—if your instinct had guided you wrong—we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

  He paused, and the silence fell like a sentence.

  “Because in that case,” he said at last, voice lower and more solemn, “you would have already been exiled from this world you’re only beginning to glimpse.”

  A beat.

  “And believe me—that would be the best possible outcome.”

  One of the candle flames crackled and died without any wind.

  For a second, I thought the owl mask’s shadow moved on its own.

  And I understood immediately:

  from now on, my actions—and my thoughts—would be measured.

  Down to the millimeter.