An Echo in the Night Sky
The night over the imperial capital, Ventalis, was supposed to be serene. The black velvet tapestry sprinkled with gem-like stars should have been adorned only by the soft light of the twin moons. Tonight, however, the sky was a stage for hell.
Hundreds of meters above the glittering palace spires, the air was torn by the screams of magic. Deafening explosions bloomed one after another like lethal fireworks, their vicious light momentarily revealing the silhouettes of five figures dancing in a ballet of death across the firmament.
Four against one.
Kayze was thrown back, his black robes whipping wildly in the shockwave. Before him, a burly man in thick armor—his gauntlets glowing like the core of a volcano—roared in triumph. "You're finished, shadow!" he bellowed. His moniker was Cinder Fist, and every punch he threw carried the force of an explosion.
Before Kayze could stabilize himself in mid-air using basic flight magic, an arrow shot out from the darkness. The arrow was not mere wood and steel; it was a crackling bolt of purple lightning, leaving a trail of ozone in its path as it pursued its target relentlessly. In the distance, a slender woman with a massive bow, Sylph, was already nocking her next arrow.
Kayze twisted his body in mid-air with impossible grace. His hand rose, his gloved fingers weaving an intricate magic sign with blurry speed. A translucent, indigo-colored shield materialized just in time to block the lightning arrow. The impact created ripples in the air, like a stone tossed into a pond, but the shield held.
"Focus! Don't let him cast!" The voice came from their leader, a regal man who floated calmly with his arms folded. He didn't move, but the air around Kayze suddenly grew heavy, as if gravity had been multiplied tenfold. Gravitas. His name was his power.
In this world, true power wasn't measured merely by talent or blood. The pinnacle of power was recognized by the world itself, an acknowledgment that manifested as a "Name" and a "Number".
To be 'Named' was the highest achievement. It meant that Aether, the world's life energy, had acknowledged your existence, forming a sort of unseen pact that granted you authority over the laws of nature. The system was simple and absolute: the smaller the number, the greater the power.
A Name 10, the lowest tier, was an elite mage capable of destroying a battalion alone. A Name 7 could alter the topography of a valley. And here, above Ventalis, were four Name 4 individuals.
Name 4. A power capable of subjugating a rebellious Duchy. A power that could wipe a small city off the map overnight. All four were part of the 'Emperor's Hand', the empire's most secret and lethal black-ops unit, dispatched only for existential-level threats.
And their target... was just one person.
"He's faltering!" shouted the fourth figure, a gaunt man named Echo, whose mouth was covered by a strange metal device. He took a deep breath, and the device glowed. "Dissonant Echo!"
An invisible sonic wave pulsed from him. It wasn't a physically damaging attack, but an assault on the mind. To Kayze, the world suddenly tilted. The sound of the wind became a metallic screech, the moonlight multiplied into twenty, and his sense of balance vanished. A violent vertigo made him nauseous as his flight magic flickered.
Cinder Fist saw the opening. "Now!" With a roar, he shot forward, his incandescent fist ready to smash this masked anomaly into dust.
Behind the goggles of his mask, Kayze's dark eyes narrowed. The world might be spinning, but his mind was a calm fortress in the eye of the storm. Echo's sonic attack was potent, but it was also information. As the wave crashed into him, he didn't just endure it; he analyzed it. He dissected its frequency, its amplitude, and its underlying magical resonance.
Eidetic Mimicry.
As Cinder Fist's punch was mere centimeters from his face, Kayze did two things simultaneously. First, his mouth opened slightly and emitted a barely audible, low hum. The hum had a frequency that was the perfect inverse of Echo's attack, creating a momentary zone of silence around him, neutralizing the dissonant effect and restoring his equilibrium.
Second, his open palm met Cinder Fist's blazing fist.
Not with brute force, but with a deceptive gentleness. The moment contact was made, the magic circuit woven within Cinder Fist's gauntlets—the complex formula for creating and containing a plasma explosion—flowed into Kayze's awareness. He saw it, understood it, and copied it in a fraction of a second.
BWOOM!
The explosion didn't happen in Kayze's face. Instead, the energy was redirected. Kayze used Cinder Fist's own momentum to pivot, his hand still stuck to the man's fist, and aimed the attack straight down into the empty sky. A pillar of fire and smoke erupted towards the city below before dissipating, far enough away to cause no damage.
Cinder Fist froze in shock. "How...?"
He didn't get to finish his sentence. Kayze's other hand, previously passive, now glowed with an orange light identical to Cinder Fist's. He formed a fist.
"Your power is noisy," Kayze said, his voice calm and cold, a stark contrast to the surrounding chaos. "Too much wasted energy."
He threw a punch. It wasn't the punch of a brawler. It was the punch of a surgeon. It landed squarely on Cinder Fist's chest. The resulting explosion wasn't as large or flashy as Cinder Fist's. It was small, focused, and far more devastating. The compressed blast struck Cinder Fist's armor like a sledgehammer, shattering it and sending the burly man hurtling downwards like a dying meteor, unconscious before he could even scream.
The remaining three were stunned into silence.
"He... he copied Cinder's explosion magic?" Sylph whispered, her bow lowering slightly. "That's impossible. It's an innate magic from his bloodline!"
Gravitas, the leader, no longer looked so calm. His brow was furrowed. "Not copied. He perfected it. As if he'd studied it for a hundred years in a single second. Echo, hit him again! Sylph, lay down suppressing fire!"
But Kayze was already moving. He didn't fly towards them. He flew straight for Echo, ignoring the volley of lightning arrows from Sylph. A few bolts grazed him, tearing small rips in his robe, but he paid them no mind.
Echo panicked. He opened his mouth to unleash his strongest sonic attack, 'Requiem of Silence', a technique that could rupture eardrums and cause cerebral hemorrhaging.
But before he could make a sound, Kayze was in front of him. "Your frequency is too simple," Kayze whispered. He raised a single finger, and from its tip, a sound wave identical to Echo's own 'Dissonant Echo' shot out.
Echo staggered back, his eyes wide with horror as his own world was turned upside down by his own power. In that moment of confusion, Kayze gently touched the metal device on Echo's mouth and then pulled it away. The sudden silence was deafening.
Two down. Two to go.
Now, there was only Gravitas and Sylph. They floated in the night sky, separated by a hundred meters, with Kayze in the middle. A cold dread began to creep over them. This was no longer a hunt. It was a slaughter.
"What in the world are you?" Gravitas demanded, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and fear. To reach Name 4 required suffering, training, and often, unimaginable sacrifice. One had to find their own 'path' to power—be it through academic understanding, combat enlightenment, or ancient rituals. The process was deeply personal and unique. To see someone casually mimic and even surpass the power they had spent a lifetime honing was an insult to their very existence.
Kayze just tilted his head. Behind his mask, a faint smile might have formed. He didn't answer. Instead, he raised a hand towards Sylph.
A longbow made of solid black energy materialized in his hand. He drew back an imaginary bowstring, and an arrow made of crackling purple lightning—identical to Sylph's—took shape.
Sylph's eyes widened in terror. That was her Lightning Arrow. It was her family's secret art.
"No..." she breathed.
Kayze released the arrow. It shot through the air, faster, brighter, and more ferocious than any she had ever created. Sylph instinctively tried to parry it with an arrow of her own, but it was like trying to stop a tsunami with a bucket of water. The black-purple arrow consumed her attack and slammed into her shoulder, paralyzing her with an agonizing electric shock and sending her tumbling from the sky.
Now, only Gravitas remained.
The leader of the Emperor's Hand stared at Kayze, his breathing heavy. All logic, all experience, everything he knew about magic, was crumbling before this being.
"You're not a mimic," Gravitas said, a horrifying realization dawning in his eyes. "A mimic just copies. You... you steal it. You are a thief of existence."
Kayze finally spoke, his voice resonating with the powers he had just absorbed. "Thief is such a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a 'collector'."
Gravitas knew he couldn't win. But he was a Name 4. He would not go down without a fight. He poured every last ounce of Aether in his body, pushing his power to its absolute limit.
"If I'm going down," he snarled, "I'm taking you with me to hell! [Singularity: Absolute Gravity Prison]!"
The air around Kayze warped. Space itself collapsed inward. A tiny black sphere the size of a marble appeared before Gravitas, but its power bent reality around it. Kayze felt an irresistible pull, as if the entire universe was trying to drag him into that single point to be crushed into nothingness.
His robes tore. His flight magic shattered. He was pulled helplessly toward the singularity. This was Gravitas's trump card, a suicidal technique that sacrificed his life force to create a miniature black hole.
Gravitas smiled a bloody smile. He had won.
Just as Kayze was meters from total annihilation, he reached out his hand. Not to fight, but to touch. His gloved fingers passed the event horizon of the singularity and touched Gravitas's arm.
Just for a moment. Less than a heartbeat.
To Gravitas, it felt as if his very soul was being ripped from his body. The concept of 'gravity' he had mastered his entire life—his understanding, his connection, his authority—was torn away.
Then, the unthinkable happened.
The singularity Gravitas had created wavered, then vanished. And in Kayze's outstretched hand, a new black orb—more stable, darker, and more potent—appeared.
Gravitas's eyes bulged in terror as he felt his own power, now perfected, being used against him. He felt the weight of a hundred worlds crash down on him. His bones creaked, his organs ruptured. He couldn't even scream as his body was folded in on itself by the very force that had once been his.
Silence finally returned to the skies of Ventalis.
Kayze floated alone amidst the remnants of the battle. He looked at the small sphere of gravity in his hand before letting it dissipate. He had achieved his goal for the night: to test the limits of the Emperor's Hand and to 'collect' interesting new abilities.
He glanced down at the vast, magnificent city. Far off in one of its corners, atop a floating island shrouded in magic, stood the Avero Academy of Magic. A faint, unseen smile touched his lips behind the mask.
The night's work was done. Now, it was time to go back to sleep.
The next morning, in the first-year boys' dormitory of Avero Academy.
The morning sun streamed into a slightly messy room.
"Nngghh..."
Arian Von Vallen groaned as he rolled over in his bed, the blankets tangled around his legs. He let out a wide yawn, his blond hair a chaotic bird's nest.
He sat up, rubbing his sky-blue eyes. He stretched, and a dull ache shot through his back and shoulders.
"Ouch... why is my whole body so sore?" he muttered to himself with a pout. "I must have slept in the wrong position again. Being out of shape sucks."
He glanced at the clock and his eyes went wide. "Crap! I'm going to be late for Basic Magic Theory again!"
In a panic, he leaped out of bed, tripped over his own feet, and landed with an ungraceful thud on the floor.