Crouched in a bush, Seth carefully pushed a branch aside, an arrow gleaming at the end of his bow. His golden eyes scanned the ground, and with every step, he made sure to avoid dry twigs, wary of making any noise. He couldn't afford to come back empty-handed. Not today. Not two hunts in a row.

  As he inched forward, a soft burbling reached his ears. The sound was barely audible, buried under the rustling of the leaves and the crickets' chirping. , he realized.

  The perfect place to find animals.

  Gradually, the thickness of the foliage decreased, allowing the sun's rays to pass through and reach his black hair, which he kept short to avoid snagging on the undergrowth. The moment he arrived at the end of the cluster of bushes, Seth narrowed his eyes to peer around, looking carefully left and right.

  Nothing. Not a single animal in view.

  He sighed inwardly, lowering his bow. A single catch wouldn't have made much of a difference, but at least he wouldn't have to take from his reserve to eat again—especially with the tax collector expecting payment tomorrow.

  Just as Seth was about to turn and leave, something caught his eye.

  It was right next to the stream, dipping its head to drink at its edge. The small beast's silver fur swirled in the wind, shimmering with jade-like tints that gave it a baffling look—one that could only be conferred by . Only the mystic energy's properties could make something so distinct and beautiful.

  Yet he was miles away from the Wicked Forest. Why would an arcane beast enter an area with almost zero aether density? Sure, carnivorous beasts sometimes came to hunt easy prey, but this was a goddamn hare, not a wolf.

  Seth's gaze drifted past the creature, scanning the bank, and then he froze.

  Two dozen feet away from the beast, a solitary flower bloomed from the mud. Its azure petals pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow that had nothing to do with the sunlight. The air around it seemed to warp and ripple like heat haze.

  Resources saturated with aether were usually found only deep inside the Wicked Forest, where they drew arcane beasts with their nourishing pull. And even there, Adventurers passing through Sunatown always complained how hard those things were to come across.

  Seth glanced back at the hare, then down at his arrow.

  Some arcane beasts had only the same Toughness as normal humans, so theoretically, he could. . It was also possible this creature was far more powerful than that.

  Looks could be deceiving, especially with arcane beasts. Or so he'd heard.

  No one from Sunatown had ever succeeded slaying one… or had survived to share their attempt.

  Running away was the best——option when encountering an arcane beast that ventured forth from the forest. But despite knowing that, Seth couldn't shove the idea aside.

  The flower… it was just sitting there.

  If he could harvest the plant without being attacked by that hare, his life could change forever.

  Sericar had told him that those kinds of resources were precious enough that, even if they weren't the rarest, they could still be sold for copper. Since each of those was worth a hundred common coins, the payout could sustain him for years... or allow him to buy an awakening stone.

  He couldn't let such an opportunity slip by.

  With his current rate of earnings and the suffocating Faertis tax, it would take him at least two more before he could afford even his first stone; three if he counted the fifty percent additional tax to just it. And even then, the odds of becoming a Wielder would be almost nonexistent. Awakening with a single stone was unheard of.

  Yet this was still the chance of a lifetime.

  Being a Wielder would free him of both the endless days of hunting and the financial shackles binding him to this place. After making sure no one in Sunatown would starve again, he could finally embrace the life of an adventurer. Earn a good living, explore the world, and—finally—take it easy.

  Seth knew he had to take some risks to get to that dream. He'd never heard of a arcane beast, but could a little hare really kill him? And even if it tried, he could defend himself—fur coated in aether or not, an arrow should still drop it… right?

  Steeling himself, Seth tightened his grip on the bow but didn't draw and instead crouched lower and stepped forward.

  He moved with agonizing slowness, placing each boot carefully to avoid leaves and dead branches alike. Every rustle of the fabric covering his large bulk against the foliage sounded like a thunderclap to his ears as he advanced toward the glowing flower.

  Ten feet. Five feet.

  He glanced at the hare in the distance ahead; the creature remained oblivious, lapping at the water.

  Seth reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he closed his fingers around the fragile stem. The air near the blue petals felt warm, vibrating against his skin. With a quick, decisive motion, he snatched the flower out.

  The sound was sharp. Seth held his breath, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  The hare didn't move.

  Not wasting a second, Seth delicately put the glowing flower into his pocket.

  Just as a smile began to appear on his lips, the hare suddenly snapped its head toward him. Shit.

  In one motion, Seth nocked an arrow, drew back the bowstring, and released it. The arrow hissed across the clearing, flying straight for the hare's head, ready to drop it before it could attack or bolt away.

  But then, in a flash, a vortex of air appeared around the creature, rapidly expanding into a tornado, shattering everything in its path—rocks, grass, trees… and his arrow.

  The blast of wind spread and hit him, forcing Seth to lean forward and shield his face with both arms. Instantly, a searing pain sank into his forearms, as if thousands of boiling-hot knives were slicing through his skin, slowly peeling it layer by layer. He screamed and dug his boots into the ground.

  The wind battering him, he struggled to stay on his feet, his hands desperately searching for something to grab onto—without success. Teetering on the edge of falling backwards, Seth shut his eyes and braced himself.

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  Then, it stopped.

  The violent and powerful wind vanished, dissipating into the clearing's ambient trees. Hot blood dripped from Seth's shredded forearms, slowly pooling onto the ground.

  he thought, raising his head.

  In front of him, the hare seemed to stand at the same place it had been, but it was hard to sayall the lush grass and bushes around it had been replaced by a large barren crater. The nearest saplings had been knocked down, roots ripped from the ground, and the rocks bordering the stream were now all scattered, some more than a dozen yards away from their initial location.

  What kind of spell could cause such destruction? It would probably be best to leave before—.

  Seth rolled to the left, dodging a blast of wind hurtling his way. As he sprang back to his feet, a thunderous crash echoed, followed by a series of sharp cracks that made him glance over his shoulder—the massive oak behind him had begun toppling over onto the neighboring trees, two-thirds of its trunk completely destroyed.

  Seth snapped his head the other way.

  Dirt was whirling around the silver hare as if it were standing in the middle of a small tornado. The beast's red eyes were gleaming, staring at him from within the spinning dust. Seth's stomach tightened in knots, and intense fear crept up his chest. A single thought drowned out everything else in his mind.

  With a burst of adrenaline, he turned and broke into a sprint. Branches struck his large body, scratching his skin and clothes—but he couldn't care less. Barely a few steps later, a deafening erupted from behind, shaking his bones and ringing in his ears.

  As he dared to look back, Seth saw the silver hare was now only a few steps away, standing amidst a new smoldering crater, surrounded by uprooted oaks and pine trees. The air in front of the beast seemed to blur and condense into a small veil of mist before shrinking vertically.

  Seth dove to the ground, and the wind whipped past him before slicing an enormous rock in half.

  "Holy shit!"

  Without hesitation, he stood up and dashed away once again. Driven by fear, he weaved through the dense forest, ducking down into the undergrowth almost every dozen yards to dodge the deadly blasts. The blurred trees on each side were getting cut or smashed into thousands of tiny pieces left and right. Probably two different spells—.

  Seth kept running for what felt like an hour, the wind lashing his face, and his heart pounding in his ears. With each breath he took, his throat grew drier and his lungs felt like they slowly turned into a desert, scorching and searing upon contact with the air.

  The dull of the falling trees had ceased some time ago, but his body still refused to stop its sprint. Eventually, his legs gave out and he collapsed to the ground, drenched in sweat.

  For several long minutes, he strained his ears, trying to catch any suspicious noise. Yet all he could hear was his own ragged breathing and the sharp gasps each time a breeze brushed against the raw skin of his injured arms.

  The hare had probably concluded he wasn't worth the trouble, which made sense. Even if the arcane beast had been a carnivore, his muscular six-foot-two body still wouldn't have been a tasty meal. After all, it didn't hold a single drop of aether.

  Wincing, Seth leaned against the pine tree behind him, then reached into his pocket with a trembling hand and pulled out his prize.

  The flower was intact. Its petals pulsed with a soft glow and cast a faint violet hue against the dirt-stained skin of his palm. He stared at it for a moment, mesmerized.

  A weary smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

  This single bloom had to be worth a fortune. Surely, it would be enough to cover the cost of an awakening stone—and then some. The agony in his shredded forearms suddenly felt like a fair trade.

  For once, luck was actually on his side.

  Seth rubbed some of the dry blood off his forearms as he emerged from the forest, a quarter of the sun barely visible above the Sunatown's high wooden walls on the horizon.

  He almost never got injured, so showing up like this would draw attention and questions he didn't want.

  The smart move would be to head home and clean up first, but he simply couldn't bring himself to do so. Night would fall soon, and with it, the Wandering Merchants would pack up their stalls. Some would leave for the next town tonight; others might reopen tomorrow.

  Sure, he could wait. But that would mean not selling the flower and getting an awakening stone until tomorrow?

  As Seth neared the east gate, he stopped to turn his cloak inside out, hiding the blood-stained fabric against his tunic, and kept his injured arms tucked beneath the folds. The moment he reached the post, he angled his body to shield the wounds from Rick, the young kid who fancied himself a watchman, and offered a casual smile.

  "Good evening, Rick."

  "Hey, Seth! How was the hunt?"

  "Could have been better," Seth replied without stopping, moving past the wooden barricade before the boy could ask for details. "See you tomorrow!"

  "Better luck next time! Yeah, see you tomorrow!"

  The dirt streets of Sunatown were bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun. In the distance, a group of children chased each other, laughing as they played with nothing more than jagged pieces of scrap wood, pretending they were swords. Further down, a middle-aged woman was supporting her frail mother while guiding her slowly up the steps of their porch.

  That was all Sunatown had left: its people. Their mutual solidarity. They even maintained as a whole a collective fund held for emergencies, which had been entrusted to Marcus—the town's Alchemist and one of its only two Wielders, alongside Vandric the Priest.

  A pang of guilt tightened in Seth's chest as he watched the woman help her mother. For years, he had scraped together every single coin he earned to pay for pain-relief treatments during his own mother's final days, often starving himself just to afford a single vial. But, in the end, the townsfolk had intervened to force him to use the fund—something he never would have allowed himself to do on his own.

  As the old woman disappeared inside the house, Seth saw the daughter pause in the doorway. She rubbed her face vigorously with her sleeve, as if wiping away tears she didn't want anyone to see, before stepping inside.

  Despair was slowly gaining on them all.

  Seth stopped at a street corner, waiting for a group of laborers to pass so he wouldn't draw attention to his injuries. As he leaned against the wall, voices drifted from the open window of the house beside him.

  "We should leave, Elna," an exhausted male voice whispered. "Pack up and settle somewhere else."

  "For where?" a woman replied. "The taxes are almost as high in every noble territory close by."

  "Then let's go far away. Another country?"

  "And what tells you it would be better? On top of that the borders are closed, and the roads are crawling with the king's soldiers. We could get killed before we even make it out of Kastal."

  "No... listen. We could go just to the Surani or Chester territories instead of staying in the Faertis'. I heard a Wandering Merchant say that commoners are more respected there."

  "I don't want respect, John! I want to be able to live! I want to give food to our children without working myself to death!"

  Seth closed his eyes for an instant, trying to ignore the desperate sobbing that followed, and continued on his way.

  It was the same story in every household in the town recently. Ever since the Faertis House had been kicked out of the nation's Twenty Great Houses a year ago for being too weak, things had spiraled out of control.

  Being demoted to a mere noble House was obviously hard for them to swallow.

  Property taxes increased, sales taxes doubled, and forced labor mandates tripled. The officials claimed they were doing everything necessary to raise the coin needed to regain their status amongst the elite. But in Seth's opinion—and the opinion of everyone in Sunatown—they were simply killing their own workforce.

  There was a limit to how much you could push a population before they either fled or snapped. And looking at the hollow faces around him, Seth knew that breaking point would be reached very soon.

  As the distant noise of the market grew louder, Seth sidestepped a puddle of mud, only to witness a young boy digging his boots into the dirt, partly resisting his mother's grip on his arm.

  "Look, Momma!" The boy pointed a grimy finger toward a distant stand draped in blue cloth. "It's the one who sells awakening stones! Do you think I can get one when I'm older? Please?"

  The woman froze. Her shoulders sagged for a fraction of a second before she plastered a strained smile onto her face. "Of course, sweetie," she answered with a voice that could only fool children. "We will get you one. The best one they have."

  Seth looked away with a grimace.

  He had turned seventeen just days ago, finally crossing the physical threshold required to handle the surge of energy from those jagged pieces of crystal that could turn a normal human into a Wielder. Something that could allow him to escape the miserable life of a non-awakened. A life without coin, or any future.

  But one stone was rarely—if ever—enough. On average, a person needed seven or eight attempts to succeed, and for those dreaming of greatness, the clock was already ticking.

  They had to awaken before eighteen.

  The elite academy of Kastal had no seats for late bloomers; if one failed to ignite their Well within that single year after turning seventeen, the doors to upper-class education slammed shut.

  Trying to avoid the gaze of the few people still in the marketplace, Seth moved closer to the stand. His eyes weren't drawn to the balding man standing behind the counter, but to the fist-sized orb resting on a velvet cushion: an awakening stone.

  Next to it sat a small, dusty parchment Seth easily recognized as an Identify spell-scroll.

  Merchants always tried to push them on people buying their first stone. The spell, which was dirt-cheap, was supposed to show a Wielder their attributes and class, but what was the point? The odds of awakening with a single stone were practically nonexistent. Most people saved for years just to buy one; spending extra coins on a scroll they would likely never get the chance to use was just throwing money into a fire.

  Seth rolled his eyes as he stepped up to the counter.