Chapter 1: Prologue

"How much longer before the raid?"

The commander looked down at his watch, "10 minutes."

I felt my heart rate pick up as my nerves started getting the better of me. There were fifty of us set up to eliminate a single target. We were surrounding a warehouse towards the edge of the city.

 A cool breeze came in from the ocean nearby.

I looked at the array of points being created near me, a dizzying number of angles and vertices that I would never understand were being meticulously analyzed and deconstructed by our warding division.

I was scared. How the hell could a boy cause such a response?

The captain began going over the mission again, "Remember kid looks like he's in his late teens, thin build, he has black hair, grey eyes. He's a true mage, with no inscription. Specializes in spatial distortion and metamagics. No casting once the barrier goes up unless you want to meet your favorite god." 

Nervous glances were sent among us. Meta magic was only used by those with some type of metamagics inscription, and those inscriptions were known to shut down battalions alone.

The rest of our time ticked down in silence, every one of us going through our own personal rituals. It helped calm the nerves that are usually suppressed through the captain's battle trance. I stared at my phone, watching my idle game tick away until it was time to begin.

The barrier went up; we organized quickly, setting up to breach the building. 

I breached first, getting ready to sweep the room.

Shock and confusion washed over me.

The warehouse was completely empty except for the glow of cobalt light. I felt nauseated. The ground itself swam around me twisted the further in I went, a thick molasses of cold, hard concrete.

My head hurt as I tried to process what I was experiencing.

“Focus up! We’ll have a dispel going off any moment! Brace yourself, spatial dispels are worse than the spell itself,” The general shouted.

I felt the world suck itself away from me. The sky inverted on me as reality detangled itself from a sickening knot. A massive gust of wind blasted me off my feet, from the center of the room as metallic crashing could be heard.

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I sat there, eyes scanning the many pages outlying the process I was setting up. I felt irritation at the back of my head, a passive sense of mine screaming for my attention. The procedure wasn’t stable yet and I knew I still had a few more hours. My mind spun, fueled by basic academic spells my aunt had passed down to me from her days at the academy. Recollection spells handed me the parts too dangerous to write. I wiped the blood from my nose, ignoring my throbbing skull.

I see why only the church of old and the police do uploads, doing this as anything less was borderline suicidal. Yet here I was orchestrating a one-person ritual.

A calm voice called out to me, “Are you sure you’re okay Day?”

A warmth washed over me, quickly wiping my nose again, I tucked my blood-covered thumb into my hand as I spun around, “Yeah, we’re almost done.”

A small smile emerged on Liliac’s face. She wheeled herself over, and leaned in, wrapping a hug around my waist. I smiled, crouched down, and squeezed her.

My chest hurt, I was going to miss her, she was my best friend. Half of me since childhood. I felt dread tangle itself in my stomach and warmth spread through both my eyes but quickly clamped my mind down on the thought.

I let her go and used a spell to regulate my emotions. The pressure on my skull increased, and my head felt like it was in a vice.

I used another spell to regulate the pain.

I continued warping the mana into this alien figure for several more minutes. Finally, I grabbed the binding stone. 

“Liliac, you can come over, we’re ready.”

Liliac made her way into the array, passing through the intersections of mana before arriving next to me.

“Do you want me to cast a sleep spell? I hear it makes the transition easier to be unconscious,” I explained. She nodded slightly in response.

I began carefully casting, making certain my magic didn’t influence the array.

“I’m going to miss you Day,” she whispered.

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“I’m going to miss you too,” I choked out, as my emotions wreaked enough havoc to muddle the influence of the spells on my mind. “Family forever?” I ask, the first half of our motto, our promise from childhood.

“Family forever.” She replied a somber smile etched on her face. At that, I let my spell consume her.

I saw a part of her fight it, instinctively, a combination of nerves and a trained reaction against sleep spells. She quickly snuffed out the urge to resist, allowing herself to fall into a peaceful sleep.

I locked the binding stone in place, transfixed in the air at the center of the array. 

After a moment of focus the spell went off. 

Mana swirled through the room in a blinding blue haze, the sheer power flowing through the air caused mana to blaze to life; even after disabling my mana sight, the glowing formation was bright enough to make me flinch.

I felt something shift in the air as I made my way out of the large study but more importantly, I felt mana sucked out of me at an alarming rate. I felt hollow; fatigue washed over my body and my passive spells failed one by one as my body fought to conserve mana. 

Minutes passed before the drain tapered off. I felt like a husk of myself, a dizzying lack of clarity hazed my mind that I haven’t experienced in years. My head felt like a pike was thrashing around in my skull, and sheer lethargy raked through my body like a virus. 

But then I felt that nagging at the back of my head turn into a ripping sensation. Anti-magic barrier. Panic seized my heart before my mind slipped into my training.

I felt the disruptive mana rip through disrupting the spatial modifications I made. I popped a calculation spell then began rapidly spreading out mana to stabilize the majority of the framework I had set up. It should prevent this building from feeling the effects of space reasserting itself. The array Lilac had been encased in the best counterspells I could make. 

Activating my mana sight again, I watched the tiny ripples of mana harmlessly redirect around it, slightly eating away at the counterspell's edge. 

No matter, it held.

Now I have threats to deal with.

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As I got back on my feet, the blue light was dispelled, a house remaining in its wake. The house was nice, a two-story home that wouldn’t be out of place in any suburb. Then the front door opened.

He matched the description. Unkempt raven hair was tied back into a main bun, even from here I could see his eyes, stark gray with streaks of blue pulsing with power inside them. He was fairly thin, no taller than average.

His steps were filled with exhaustion, I could spot a tinge of red staining his nose and he came out holding his head. His gaze was colored with pained annoyance.

The sharp crack of gunfire rang out from behind me. I watched as the bullets seemed to all hit some imperceptible film, and slowed to a stop. No, some of them were slightly veering off to the side. Space was being distorted. 

“Can y’all fuck off, please? I’m really not in the mood for this.” His voice croaked out. It sounded dry and feeble. 

I saw the bullets quickly curve into the ground almost right where they began to slow; the space was lengthened horizontally, not vertically as well.

My heart rate spiked, I was ready to run but I knew it would do me no good. I shot at him but the bullets all slowed and clanked harmlessly to the ground. I was able to notice the slight twitch of his eye, annoyance. His brow furrowed for a fraction of a second, contemplation. Finally, a nearly invisible sigh escaped from his lips as his shoulders lost a bit of firmness and a slight frown formed on his face, regret.

I closed my eyes as I tried to suppress my perception abilities, clamping down, I stopped my inscription and the world died down becoming far less distinct and more incoherent. I felt tears well up in my eyes right before the tearing pain hit.

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I looked over the spattering of gore as a blanket of sorrow enveloped me. It felt so pointless.

The ground was covered in smattered red blotches, limbs and gore left scattered. There were too many and I was too tired for it to have been painless, but I tried my best. 

Right after surveying the damage, the barrier protecting me petered out, I was too exhausted to maintain it anymore. I felt cool air—remnants of scattered winds from the sea—wash over me as I looked at the tattered ruin I had created out to the city ahead.

I sat there for some time, before going back inside our house, knowing that my best friend, my other half, was gone from the world.

Walking back into the study, her body was limp, as shallow breaths escaped her lips. I picked her up gently, the lightness of her body resurfacing a myriad of memories. I carried her back to her bedroom, laying her there gently before returning to the study to grab the stone, looking at the wisps of energy being devoured inside it. 

She was being projected into the world of demons, no longer bound by this world. I would find her again one day, no matter what it took.

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