The girls woke around 6 a.m. They quickly prepared themselves for the briefing—bathed, donned their uniforms, and gathered several parchments and ink to take notes.

  At exactly 7 a.m., they met Halwen in the meeting room.

  “Now, I’m going to explain what Plan Ewige Schlange entails,” Halwen said.

  “Essentially, you two will infiltrate the province of Castavell, an Imperium territory bordering the Reich. Your goal is to slip into their inner circles. Administrators. Government officials. Even their Caballero order, if that gives you access to intelligence.”

  He tapped the folio before him.

  "There have been several attempts in the past," Halwen said, adjusting the parchment folio before him. "But fortune had other designs. Some were slain. Some defected. But every last of them simply failed to enter the Castavell Inner Circle."

  He glanced at them, calm and unwavering.

  "That is where your Faintborn’s Blessing becomes... indispensable."

  Vierna and Lina looked at each other, puzzled.

  The Blessing? The curse that set them apart, that had carved them into what they were? How could that be any help?

  Halwen stretched out his hand, and in the air a storage rune materialized. From it, he pulled a device that looked like a Scrying Eye. He set it on the table, and a projection flickered into being.

  “This projection will show you a reenactment of an event. It will explain the supposed origin of the Faintborn’s Blessing.”

  Both girls turned their eyes toward the image. A narration accompanied it, making it feel like watching a staged play

  In the Year of the Silver Trine, Arcus Faintborn was born. Since the beginning, childbirth had always been risky. If a baby’s mana far exceeded that of the mother, the excess could leak from the spirit world and destroy the mother’s womb from within. But this did not happen with Arcus. Despite the vast difference in innate mana between him and his mother, he was born safely, and she survived the childbirth.

  After this, he was called the Silver Blessing—or Silbersegen in Reichtounge—both for his miraculous birth and for the silver hair he carried from the day he was born.

  As Arcus grew into a young man, the matter of marriage arose. He doubted anyone could ever match him let alone give him an heir worthy of his legacy. At first, he refused. But as the Arch Imperialness, duty demanded he wed.

  He took an elven woman, Seraphina Valcure. It wasn’t a marriage born of love; she was simply the strongest mage around. At first he treated her with indifference, but as the days went by, his love for her began to grow.

  Despite the vast difference between his mana and Seraphina’s, they still decided to have a child together. Many courtiers in the royal court opposed this, insisting that Arcus should wait until the mana enhancement on Seraphina yielded more desirable results.

  But he didn’t care, and Seraphina became pregnant.

  Fate, however, did not grant his child the same miracle as Arcus’s own birth. Both his wife and child died during the delivery.

  “Herr Halwen, I am sorry,” Vierna interrupt, “So even in the past, there were procedures to increase your mana?”

  “Yes, there were,” Halwen said, pausing the projection. “However, how they were done—or whether they were even successful in the first place—has been lost to time.”

  Vierna lowered her gaze to the floor as she listened.

  “Don’t worry, Vierna. I am sure you can feel it—your mana has increased. We are far more technologically advanced now than we were during the Silver Trine,” Halwen said. “Now, let us continue.”

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  After the incident, Arcus was broken. He withdrew into seclusion for years, leaving the First Reich in the hands of the wizard council we would later know as the Magierkonklave.

  At first, no one knew what he had done during his seclusion. Not until he suddenly reappeared and delivered a grand speech:

  “I will not let magic and mana divide our people any longer. Wizards and non-Wizards will no longer be separated by such things.”

  The Blanks, people without magic, saw this as liberation. They praised Arcus as the bringer of true equality. But we Wizards knew better. This was not liberation; it was vengeance, born of his own stupidity in dismissing loyal advisors in favor of arrogance and hubris.

  At first, all of his loyal advisors opposed him, arguing that magic was necessary to shepherd the realm and the Continent. Others tried to remind him of his love for magic. Some even attempted to challenge him to a duel, for by ancient law an Arch-Imperialness could be legally dethroned by a suitable candidate in single combat.

  But despite their efforts, Arcus was still an exceptionally strong Wizard, easily defeating anyone who dared to face him.

  By this time, the Blanks had begun to support Arcus more and more. As the days passed, his hall grew increasingly filled with them.

  Seeing that Arcus would not come to reason, the Magierkonklave stood against him, seeking to forcefully make him abdicate. But Arcus could not accept this.

  Arcus stood against the Magisters, accompanied by his army of Blanks. The Magierkonklave however were supported by every Wizards around the Continent.

  What was followed was two months of chaos, the Blanks didn’t amount to much, most of them were subjugated during the first two weeks. But Arcus himself was the main problem.

  He didn’t just hold the upper hand—he dominated. One by one, the original twelve Magisters fell.

  He incinerated one with a word, his body reduced to ash mid-scream. Another was severed by a blade of compressed starlight before he could even cast a counter. One Magister attempted to flee—only to be frozen in time, then shattered into a thousand crystalline shards. Arcus carved through them like judgment made flesh, without hesitation, without mercy.

  By the end of the first month, the original Magierkonklave no more.

  But that victory was not the end of it. Every able Wizard from across the Continent poured into Rangdenfallt, intent on curing the world of his madness. The battle raged for another month, with Arcus never once sleeping as he fought against all his assailants.

  He met them all, day or night, relentlessly as if his mana never exhausted.

  But for every ten he felled, a hundred more arrived.

  At last, his body began to fail. Wounds he could not regenerate. Blood he could not recall. His limbs slowed, vision blurred, yet still he stood.

  In the end, Arcus was not brought low by strength or strategy but by numbers.

  As the battle neared its end, Arcus battered and wounded, like a corpse one step away from its grave, raised his now coarse voice toward the heavens either to reject it or to call his beloved wife:

  "O Seraphina, behold from beyond the veil, a realm wherein our babe might hath drawn breath and known the warmth of life!"

  “SUPREMES RECHT MAGIA: UNIVERSALE UMSCHRIFT” (Supreme Law of Magic: Universal Rewriting)

  As the spell erupted skywards, all the mages who saw that knew, it wasn’t completed yet and that they have time to counter it. and so they did it.

  Preventing a spell with such high caliber was not without cost, the first wave of mage who attempted that died. One burned alive, flesh peeling from bone as if mana itself had judged him impure. Another collapsed screaming as his bones shattered inward, his body flattened by an unseen force. A third fell to his knees, froth spilling from his mouth as his eyes bulged and burst.

  But they didn’t stop, dozens of high mages stood behind them, ready to take the burden when the others failed.

  At long last, the magic circle which Arcus drew in the sky dimmed, and disappeared entirely.

  Some believe the new Magierkonklave succeeded in stopping the spell. Others believe it was only partially undone. But one thing was certain: every year, on the day the spell was said to have been destroyed, a faint silver circle appeared in the sky above Rangdenfallt. They called it the Moon Mirror.

  The projection ended, now showing the credits of the artist who had created the reenactment.

  “This event didn’t divide the Continent into what it was now. The Duel was the final nail in the coffin, but this event is what seeded it.”

  Both girls attention are now on Halwen.

  "There is no definitive evidence linking your condition to that tale. The name—Faintborn's Blessing—was chosen by the populace because it fit, and because it made the defect easier to stomach. The Reich has never acknowledged any connection between your condition and the events surrounding Arcus."

  He paused, then continued with clinical neutrality.

  "But the Blanks of the Imperium see it differently. For them, Arcus is a martyr who tried to end the injustice caused by magic. And that Faintborn’s Blessing is a promised of that.”

  “And since Faintborn have only ever appeared among Wizards, the Blanks see them as something special. To them, the Faintborn were living proof of Arcus’s promise. That is why the two of you will most likely be drawn into Castavell’s inner circle, despite the fact that you can still use magic.”