The Otherworldly Ballad

/Profanity Warning!/ Orien Wells has always been good at reading people-too good, perhaps. But when he awakens to magic, his empathic abilities reveal far more than emotions: he can see the dark corruptions twisting through spells that others consider perfectly normal. His own magic defies explanation, leaving traces that shift through impossible color spectrum while established wavelength theory insists such patterns can't exist.
In a world where mages bend reality through pure emotion and every spell leaves a measurable signature, Orien's abilities mark him as dangerous-or invaluable. Ancient powers take notice. Enemies emerge from unexpected places. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers fragments of a life that was never his.
As magical society fractures between those who would preserve the old ways and those willing to corrupt innocent people for power, Orien must navigate betrayals that cut deeper than politics and discover what his impossible abilities truly mean. Because being different in a world of wavelengths and frequencies isn't just dangerous-it might be the key to everything.