Prologue

The night the stars went dark, Eryk Thorn was born.

Not a single mage in the village of Chishiro could explain it. How the heavens had shuddered at the moment of his first breath. Or how the constellations had winked out like snuffed candles. The midwife, an old crone who had delivered a hundred babes with cores already flickering in their tiny chests, recoiled when she lifted him. Her gnarled fingers pressed against his sternum, searching for the telltale hum of mana beneath his skin.

But there was nothing inside his core.

No pulse of power. No ember waiting to catch flame.

Only silence.

"A hollow child..."

His parents, Kael and Liora Thorn, were not weaklings. Kael's fire magic had once scorched an entire battlefield to ash, and Liora's earth-sense ran so deep she could hear the heartbeat of the mountains. Their bloodline was strong. Their cores were unbroken. Yet when they laid hands upon their son, their magic recoiled as if burned.

"Impossible," Kael growled, pressing his palm to the infant's chest again and again, as if repetition could force a spark where none existed.

Liora said nothing. She merely swaddled Eryk in enchanted cloth, her fingers trembling—not from fear, but from fury.

The world was not kind to the magicless.

So they hid him.

Not out of shame, but for Eryk's survival. In the kingdom of Veldros, where the Grand Magnus Academy sculpted the realm's finest mages and the Council of Magi purged imperfections with fire and steel, a child without a core was worse than dead. He was a mistake. A flaw in the weave.

So they lied.

They told the village elders Eryk was sickly, that his magic was dormant, that the Thorn lineage burned too fiercely for a newborn to withstand. They paid the midwife in gold and threats. They moved to the farthest edge of Chishiro, where the cobblestones gave way to wild grass and the Council's eyes grew dim.

And when Eryk was old enough to understand the weight of his emptiness, they fed him the second lie.

"You are special," Kael told him, kneeling so his gaze was level with his son's. The words tasted like ash for the both of them, knowing they knew what's inside Eryk's core. "Your core is… different. It needs time to awaken."

Eryk, small and solemn, pressed his own tiny hand to his chest. "I don't feel anything, Papa."

Liora's breath hitched. And Kael's jaw was tightened as he looked at his wife, watching them.

"You will," he promised.

But they never said when.

The years passed in a slow, suffocating march, Eryk learned the shape of his hollow core the way a prisoner learns the bars of his cell. He watched the other children of Chishiro—lesser mages, all of them, with cores like sputtering candles—summon flickers of flame or coax vines from the soil. He mimicked their gestures, their incantations, their desperate focus.

But nothing answered him.

The first time he asked why, he was seven.

"Why can't I do it?" he demanded, staring at his hands after another failed attempt. The other children had long since stopped laughing at him. Now, they just looked away.

Liora cupped his face, her thumbs brushing the hollows beneath his eyes.

"Magic is patience," she said. "Your core is waiting for the right moment."

It wasn't a lie, not entirely. It was a hope dressed in truth's clothing. Well, the words came from his mother. And he believed "mother knows best".

The second time he asked, he was ten.

"Am I broken?"

Kael, who had spent a decade swallowing his own dread, gripped his son's shoulders.

"No," he growled. "You are a Thorn. And Thorns do not break."

But even iron bends.

The Grand Magnus Academy was their last gamble.

They sold their home. Their heirlooms. The last embers of their pride. They called in favors from old friends who no longer remembered their names. And when the frost bit the air and the leaves turned to fire, they stood before the Academy's gilded gates with their hollow son between them.

The examiner, a gaunt man with a core like a shard of ice, pressed a crystal to Eryk's chest. A mana resonator was meant to sing in the presence of magic.

But the devise stayed silent.

"This child has no core," the examiner said flatly.

Kael's smile was a blade. "Your resonator must be... flawed."

The examiner looked at Kael. Even though he tried it a few times already to Eryk's chest, the examiner tried to put the mana resonator on Eryk's chest again.

Liora stepped forward, her voice a whisper that carried the weight of a landslide. "Maybe ypu just have to test him differently."

The examiner questioned Liora's suggestion. He wasn't sure of it since they haven't do it their entire life of serving in the academy.

But even the mana resonator believed it has a flaw. Everything in the world have flaws. So the examiner made another way to test Eryk.

They pricked his finger and let his blood drip onto enchanted parchment. They made him recite the oldest spells, the ones that predated language. They even brought in a Seer, a woman with eyes like smoked glass, who stared into Eryk's soul and recoiled.

"There's something there," she murmured. "But I can't tell exactly what it is. It's just that it doesn't want to face me."

That was enough.

It had to be enough.

~○~

The night before Eryk left for the Academy, Liora tucked him into bed for the last time. She smoothed his hair—dark as a raven's wing, just like hers—and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

"You will be great," she told him.

Eryk, who had spent his life swallowing the word broken, nodded.

But he didn't believe her.

Kael stood in the doorway, his shadow stretching like a stain across the floor.

"Remember," he said, "Thorns do not bend."

Eryk closed his eyes, even though he already knew he would.

~○~

The Academy was a maw.

It devoured him whole.

The other students, with their gleaming cores and unshakable arrogance, saw him for what he was: an intruder. A fraud. A hollow thing pretending to be magic. They whispered behind his back, tripped him in the halls, left cruel sigils scorched into his desk. The professors were no kinder. They demanded demonstrations he couldn't give, punished him for failures he couldn't control, and when he begged for help, they smiled like wolves.

"Magic is will," they said. "If you cannot summon it, you do not want it enough."

Eryk wanted.

Oh, how he wanted to have magic in his core.

He stayed up long after the others had fallen asleep, practicing gestures until his fingers cramped, reciting spells until his voice frayed. He pressed his hands to his chest and begged whatever emptiness lived inside him to answer.

But it never really did.