The darkness was infinite.

  But Eo was not alone.

  Amidst the void, lights drifted like slow-moving stars, flickering with alien colors. Some pulsed with warmth, others shimmered with a cold so sharp it cut through his being.

  He could not move. He had no limbs, no form—only awareness. A dim consciousness floating in the abyss.

  And yet, his body drank.

  The floating lights—particles of something beyond his understanding—seeped into him, as if drawn by an unseen hunger. They coursed through his very essence, dissolving into his being.

  He did not seek them out.

  They came to him.

  And his body did what it always did—it adapted.

  The particles were not of a single kind. Some carried the familiar weight of mist, cool and fluid, slipping into the fabric of his being like old companions. But others—others were strangers.

  He absorbed them all.

  Amber-like embers dissolved into his form, their heat burning, crackling. The sensation of Fire.

  Granules of dense earthy brown sunk into his being, heavier, grounding him to an existence beyond the deep. The pull of Earth.

  Green grains wove through the mist, fleeting, elusive. The whisper of Wind.

  And still, more came—colors, sensations, forces he could not yet name.

  What were these?

  Had they always been here, lingering in the depths of Tangea? Or had he simply never noticed before?

  It did not matter.

  Within him, the elements collided.

  Fire licked against mist. Earth ground into wind. Foreign energies wove together in ways unnatural, unstable, yet unwilling to disperse.

  By all logic, these forces should have diluted, weakened, become indistinct. But inside Eo, something else happened.

  The raw elements began to thicken.

  Condense.

  No longer fragmented, no longer separate entities. They twisted and fused, merging into something richer, heavier, ancient.

  Magic. But not the magic of men.

  Something deeper. Something older.

  Something primal.

  The elements, once wild and untamed, took on a new form within him. They did not exist as scattered particles anymore. They became one—a dense, raw force that pulsed inside his being like a newborn heart.

  Eo did not understand it.

  But he felt it.

  This was not the refined magic of the surface world, where mages controlled their elements through grimoires and rituals.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  This was something unrestrained.

  This was Old Magic.

  Something within Eo shifted.

  Not in the way he had evolved before—not like the slow transformation of flesh and instinct.

  This was deeper.

  Like a slumbering predator stirring in its den, aware of a coming storm.

  The darkness remained.

  But now, it pulsed with power.

  And Eo, without waking, without knowing—

  Had changed.

  Eo’s body did not reject the power. It welcomed it.

  The floating lights continued to seep into him, not as fragments of individual elements, but as a collective force—dense, untamed, raw.

  His body adjusted with each passing moment, instincts stretching, shifting, weaving the energies into his being. There was no conscious effort, no thought.

  Only absorption.

  Only growth.

  Somewhere in the distant depths of his hibernation, a pulse resonated. Slow, steady, yet powerful—like the heartbeat of something ancient stirring from sleep.

  The deep sea quivered.

  The mist around him shuddered.

  Tangea itself, though unaware, felt the shift.

  And yet, Eo remained still. A silent predator in the making.

  Far from the abyss, in the bustling streets of a city untouched by the sea’s mysteries, a man walked with measured steps.

  His name was no longer Frid.

  Here, he was Albert, a humble historian, a scholar of magic. A man with nothing to hide—or so they believed.

  Albert brushed a hand through his neatly combed black hair as he stepped onto the stone-paved path leading to the academy’s grand library. His posture was relaxed, his expression that of an ordinary teacher lost in thought. But beneath the facade, his mind raced.

  That dungeon… that knowledge…

  Ever since he had stumbled upon the hidden chamber beneath the academy, his hunger for answers had reawakened.

  The historical records were wrong.

  The magic used by surface-dwellers today—controlled, refined, restricted—was nothing like the magic of the past.

  Back then, magic was not something wielded through written patterns or carefully crafted spells.

  It was alive.

  It was raw.

  And it had the power to reshape the world in an instant.

  Albert clenched his jaw as he approached the library doors. He had dedicated years to uncovering the truth, but now, for the first time, he felt as though he had only scratched the surface.

  Was Old Magic truly lost? Or had it merely been buried—hidden away by those who feared its return?

  The scent of aged parchment and ink filled the air as Albert stepped into the library. Rows upon rows of towering bookshelves stretched across the massive chamber, housing centuries of recorded history.

  He wasted no time.

  With practiced ease, he navigated through the labyrinth of knowledge, passing by students hunched over their studies, oblivious to the forbidden knowledge lurking just beneath their feet.

  Albert reached a secluded corner, where ancient texts lay untouched by common scholars. He ran a finger across the dust-coated spines, muttering under his breath.

  "Where is it..."

  Then, he found it.

  A worn, leather-bound tome, its title long faded with time.

  His pulse quickened.

  Pulling the book from its place, he carefully turned its fragile pages. The script was old, nearly unreadable, but his years of study allowed him to decipher the faded ink.

  "The age before men wielded magic as a tool… When it was a force of nature, untamed and absolute..."

  His breath caught in his throat.

  This was it.

  A record of magic before grimoires. Before the concept of controlled casting.

  He skimmed further.

  "The raw elements could not be wielded by weak bodies. They consumed those unworthy, reducing them to ash. Thus, the scholars of old devised a method to weaken the energy—to dilute it, making it safe for human use..."

  Albert’s grip on the pages tightened.

  Diluted...

  The magic of today wasn’t just evolved—it had been intentionally weakened.

  The implications sent a shiver down his spine.

  If true, then what did that mean for the creatures that lived beyond human civilization? The ones untouched by these limitations?

  What kind of power still lay hidden in the world?

  He had to know.

  Albert’s fingers trembled as he turned to the next passage, eager, desperate—

  But the next page had been torn out.

  His heart sank.

  Someone had stolen the knowledge before him.

  Albert leaned back in his chair, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows across his face. His mind was no longer in the library.

  It was elsewhere.

  If the records were true, then there had to be remnants of Old Magic somewhere. Something—someone—who still possessed it in its original form.

  And if such a being existed…

  Then could it hold the key to his immortality?

  His pulse quickened.

  He needed to find it.

  And he needed to possess it.

  Albert closed the book with a quiet thud, a slow smirk creeping onto his lips.

  For now, he would continue playing the role of a humble historian. A simple teacher. A man of knowledge.

  But soon—

  His hunt would begin anew.