"The ravenous fire that crackled in your souls was one and the same, stoked by repressed fear and the overwhelming desire to survive in a world that only valued material power."
In their desperate battle to survive the harsh aristocracy, the desire...
Hyunjin set his quill down, turning his attention to the sickly flower whose roots he had severed to examine.
Studying wasn't something he shied from. Growing up, his time was split between Azāri practice and long lectures covering subjects that ranged from mathematics to politics. All to shape him into the perfect heir for House Amaranthine.
He became adept at dissecting the text and annotating pages upon pages of information on his own. If he were to have a tutor alongside him, it would only be a waste of that scholar's time. Hyunjin never thought that he would be thankful for such a skill, yet there he was, tirelessly trudging through the night with his worn-out quill in hand.
Hybrid Types were more technical than the Old Disciplines. In order to wield his magic in a way that mattered, Hyunjin had to study flowering plants thoroughly. As he learned from the book, his Tilt worked by mimicking the ideal environmental conditions for the desired product; manipulating earth, water, and sunlight. To do that, he had to pick and choose the traits he wanted for his creations and determine the correct conditions for said traits to grow. That was why he needed an arsenal of knowledge to refer to.
With enough practice, the process would boil down to simply imagining the flower he wanted and manifesting it. Everything else would become second nature, much like speaking and breathing.
Hyunjin peered at the tangle of thin roots he held between his fingers, checking for the signs mentioned on the page in front of him. The light of the lone candle he had lit swayed with the calm breeze that came through his open window.
"Too dry..." he muttered as a conclusion, putting the roots back and returning to the leather-bound book. They weren't dead, he could determine that much, but the roots weren't nearly as succulent as they had to be.
Hyunjin's palm settled over the small mound of sand on his desk, now surrounded by imperfect blossoms, and tried again. Healthy roots this time, he willed the thought into his magic as he directed it out of his fingers. Just give them a little bit more water.
The flower that sprung in the sand was identical to the tens before it, but what mattered to Hyunjin was the state of its roots.
He pulled them out, running his thumb across the web that provided the plant with life. To any other eye, they would've appeared to be the same as before, but Hyunjin saw the minuscule difference. He felt it.
These roots were healthier, albeit slightly.
He dropped the flower beside its sisters and picked his quill back up, dipping it in ink before scribbling his observations at the foot of the page. Hyunjin knew that he was still far from perfecting his creations, but he was slowly getting better at his magic, and that was enough to stoke his newly kindled fire.
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