Threads of Fate

Myridan Lorenthis: Year 300

The world had always been fascinated by the raw power of mana—how it shaped the mountains, how it flowed through the oceans, and how it could be channeled into fire, lightning, and wind by those who studied its mysteries. But to Myridan Lorenthis, these feats of magic were nothing more than children's tricks. To bend nature to one's will was common. To summon storms or shift the earth beneath one's feet was impressive, yes, but it lacked vision. It lacked ambition.

To Myridan, the true potential of mana lay not in destruction or manipulation. It lay in creation.

He had been an apprentice in the Mana Hall of Torenreach, a city known for its scholars, its towering libraries, and its arcane experimentation. The other students had spent their days learning spells to enchant weapons, to harness fire, and to defend the kingdom's borders. But Myridan had always been different. While they focused on the battlefield, he had spent his nights studying the essence of life itself.

He became obsessed with the question: What made life? What was the spark that animated a being? Was it just the flesh? The mind? Or was it something deeper—some fundamental force that mana could tap into? His instructors had warned him against such thoughts. The study of life, they had said, was a path fraught with danger. To meddle with it was to challenge the natural order. But Myridan didn't care about the natural order. He sought to transcend it.

Myridan's curiosity soon turned into obsession, and that obsession alienated him from the others. His peers found his fascination with life unnerving, and the masters began to see him as a threat. He had asked questions that no mage was meant to ask—questions about what mana could create, rather than what it could destroy. Eventually, the whispers of his dangerous ambitions grew too loud to ignore, and Myridan was quietly dismissed from Torenreach, exiled from the academic community he had once been a part of.

But the rejection only fueled his desire.

In the shadow of his exile, Myridan traveled far from the city, deep into the Blighted Hills, where few dared to venture. The land there was scarred, a place of old magic, where mana wells pulsed beneath the earth, churning with the power of centuries. It was a place of solitude—and danger—but it was exactly what Myridan needed. It was there, among the jagged rocks and twisted trees, that he built his workshop, hidden from the eyes of the world.

Years passed in that isolation. While the kingdoms fought their petty wars and mages elsewhere continued to harness magic for mundane purposes, Myridan's research grew ever darker. He experimented with runes, ancient symbols that could control the flow of mana in ways few understood. He studied the anatomy of creatures, dissecting them to understand how their mana flowed, how life clung to their bodies. Every experiment brought him closer to the truth, but still, he was missing something—something vital.

It was during one of his meditative sessions, when he allowed his mind to drift deep into the currents of mana, that he saw it: a vision. The Creation of Life, an ancient ritual, long lost to time. It was said to be the first magic ever attempted by the gods themselves, a ritual so dangerous, so powerful, that it had been erased from the annals of magical history. But Myridan had glimpsed it. The vision was fleeting, but it was enough.

The key to creating life was not just mana alone. It was sacrifice.

The ritual required the caster to give a part of themselves, to relinquish a portion of their own mana—permanently. To breathe life into a construct meant giving up a piece of one's soul. The runes would bind the mana into a form, shaping it, giving it consciousness, but the cost was undeniable. Half of the caster's mana pool would be drained forever, tied to the creation.

Myridan knew the price was steep, but he had come too far to turn back. This was his life's work. He would be the first to create life from nothing. He would be remembered long after the wars of the kingdoms were forgotten. The ritual was his, and he would use it.