In this world of Kings and Queens, dreamers and achievers, a handful of people existed that had the innate ability to absorb and temper their bodies by manipulating the energy of the world called mana. Reinforced bodies, prolonged life and control over the elements of nature were just some of the perks the chosen few were privy to. Among them was a magician named Muriel Jones. An emotionless arcane mage with a questionable reputation attained by dabbling with the matters of one’s soul. He wasn’t always like that. Once, long ago, he was a man with a wife he loved dearly and a renowned reputation throughout the kingdom. When the kingdoms waged wars, this man used his arcane prowess to help his kingdom win the war and thus, earning him many advantages in life.

The achievements and prestige received, granted him a title, land and a position in the royal court - the life of luxury in the upper echelon everyone wished for. The man was also the focus of envy of many that called themselves nobles. The type of people with aspirations and great ambitions, used to trampling over the others they considered lower beings. Muriel was of humble origins and there was no need for a magician in the court in peaceful times.

The said peace didn't last long. A new war was brewing from inside the kingdom. There were inner workings at hand. Conspiracies and scheming within the royal court led to rebellion, then a coup that resulted in many innocent lives taken. The magician's wife among the lives lost.

The man was crushed, broken and bitter, but above all, vengeful! He started seeing the world in a different light. He no longer cared for the titles or fame, or the land he once cultivated. After years of being consumed by the prospect of revenge, the magician distanced himself from people and despaired for many years to come.

The magician was older now. He looked to be in his fifties and the wrinkles started showing around his eyes when in reality only seventy years had passed. He was now a hundred years old. Practicing arcane arts and manipulating mana not only allowed him to exert a strength beyond that of a normal human, but also prolonged his life. The events of the past, however, led him on a path of the bottle rather than practicing magic.

Years passed and the magician knew he couldn’t go on wallowing in self-pity. He gave life another chance and eventually found hope in a woman named Abigail. She bore him two children and he was content with life after a long period of time. The time happily spent together passed quickly in his eyes and after sixty-two years, he once again felt hopelessness creeping up on him. The wife died of illness and disease took his children away. They weren't like him, tempered and blessed by the arcane. He hated that word, "blessed". Watching loved ones die, one by one. It was a curse!

Muriel felt he was going down the same path as before he met Abigail and it scared him. He didn’t want to feel this way anymore. At his lowest point, the magician turned to meditation, trying to find peace within, hoping to rid himself of such emotions and heal the wounds of the soul.

What he found was not an epiphany or peace but something else, something rather sinister and supposedly intangible. The magician discovered he could feel the soul from within him, the source of his very being and the emotions he thought were gone and forgotten, stirred within him once again.

A curiosity, the thrill of new and the need to discover what secrets reside in a person's soul occupied his mind. Meddling with his soul without required knowledge beforehand, however, impacted his emotions in an uncertain way. What started as something positive to take his mind off all the negative past experiences, turned into obsession. Over the years, his emotions erode, leaving only cold blood pumping through the old man's veins.

His ability as a mage dwindled as he got older but his mind, while cool and without emotions, remained sharp. Muriel was no fool and he realized just how much the infatuation with the new discovery affected him. He wasn't going to give up easily though. He looked for an alternative and found his answer in searching for more suitable targets to experiment on. He needed a hand though, so he seeked out help and found it in a young mage prodigy he later made into a disciple.

Present day. Deep in the night, wind was howling and thunder was roaring. The moon was the only light to surroundings. The outline of a tower could be seen in the clearing between the flashes of light surrounded by the forest and mountain chain in the distance, and a single dirt road leading to it.

The tower was made of dark gray stone with a wooden infrastructure and looked very much like a lighthouse that stood tall and guided ships at sea. The tower was three stories high and a home to the reclusive old magician, with a deep basement where the experiments were conducted. On the ground floor of the tower, there was a study room, surrounded by numerous shelves filled with books, research papers and a collection of materials of different sorts. There, under candlelight, two mages could be seen, sitting in lounge chairs, drinking warm amber colored liquor and conversing on a topic.

"The best I could do in my prime was manipulate mana in its basic, raw form and expel it in bursts. You, however, made it into an art! Ahh, to be young again…I would do so many things differently!" The hoarse voice spoke nostalgically.

"There's not much else I can teach you, Sailas. Both your knowledge and the ability to manipulate the arcane surpassed mine." Muriel quietly said, his voice that of an old man. "My strength isn't what it used to be. My power declined as I grew older and I'm afraid I'm going to need your help one last time."

"You flatter me Master."

*scoff* "I stopped being your Master the moment I had nothing left to teach you! And I'll be damned if you'll spend what may be our last few moments on the formalities."

Sailas exhaled and gave his master a bitter smile. "As you wish, Muriel."

Muriel waved his hand dismissively. “It will be fine. I'll be fine! You worry too much, as usual!” Muriel said with confidence but Sailas had doubts. He didn't trust this new type of magic involving formations and rituals. There were too many unknowns and if a single thing goes wrong, Muriel would-

Sailas stopped his train of thoughts, noticing Muriel giving him the knowing look.

“I’m not worrying. I just wish you’d hurry up. I’m rather busy with my own research, you know?” He said, but didn't sound as convincing.

"Hoho, yes I know you've been busy lately. I really appreciate you being here with me tonight. I searched high and low, through numerous books over the years and only found a few entries in regard to Soul Magic. I hoped to find a way to heal, to mend a broken heart but Sailas, I didn't even know if what I was doing was really Soul Magic. If it was my imagination or something tangible. You said you couldn't feel the soul. I had the same thoughts at the beginning! I didn't know if it was real or was my mind playing tricks on me. So I experimented and this…", Muriel looked up, toward the ceiling and upper floors, "...this is the result. I can't mend anything, only break even more."

With a tired expression, Muriel exhaled. The dark circles around his eyes, the result of working overnight, highlighted the many wrinkles his age couldn't hide anymore. Muriel was old and past his time.

"Forgive me for taking so much of your time. I appreciate you staying with me all these years and helping me with my venture. I know it hasn't been easy on you.”

“You said that already. I didn’t mind staying. You have taught me a lot and the insights I gained from watching you work is the reason I've been able to broaden my horizons. I will be indefinitely thankful to you for that! My only regret is that I wasn't able to accept your teachings and learn Soul Magic. I just…didn't have it in me."

"Oh, pish-posh Sailas! Probably for the best you didn’t! Others don’t take kindly to that type of magic. You’d be an outcast, like me! Not that I don't mind being left alone, but you're too young to live such a life!” Muriel raised his voice and voiced his struggles. After a moment of awkward silence, Muriel gulped his drink down and prepared to stand up. “Shall we head upstairs?”

Sailas stood up and helped Muriel walk toward the staircase. The old man wasn’t as nimble anymore. His bones creaked much like the stairs they were climbing.

“Is everything in order?” Muriel asked as they passed by the entrance to the second floor. Sailas glanced at the people shackled in cages through the doorway and averted his gaze. “Everything is in order. The prisoners are drugged and shouldn't make sense of what’s happening to them. The formation has been set up according to the diagram but I still think we should adjust the mana output! Just in case something goes wrong! If anything, we can try again…some other day.”

Muriel, hunched beneath the arm of his disciple that supported him, raised his head. Just enough to meet Sailas' eyes.

“I can’t stop now. I don't have enough in me for a trial run!"

“Still, I don’t thi-” Sailas tried to reason, but Muriel's determination to proceed was unwavering.

“It’s too late to change my mind! I have to do this now while I still have enough power and strength to go through with it!”

The rest of the ascent was silent and after finally reaching the third floor and their destination, Sailas asked the important question - what if his Master failed?

“Then that’s all there is to it.” Muriel replied nonchalantly. Sailas didn't like the tone in his voice and reprimanded Muriel almost angrily. “Life isn’t a flimsy thing you can just throw away!”

Muriel scoffed, but donned a rather caring expression, uncommon for someone like him. “My time had long passed. I should've died decades ago. Life is pain and life is pointless, so why bother living if death is all there is to it, in the end?!"

"I don't want to live my remaining years deteriorating while I feebly hang onto what little life I have left. I want to live anew or not live at all!” Muriel stated with conviction.

Sailas was taken aback for a moment but quickly regained his posture. The old man was stubborn and had a really grim view of the world and life in general. Still, Sailas couldn't help but frown and wanted to speak his mind about the ethics of what they were doing but remained quiet. It was a little bit too late for that.

“Ohh I know that look. Don't give me that look! I know what you're thinking! Let me tell you! They were bandits, outlaws and men wanted by law, Sailas. Killers! None of them are innocent! As for the puppets", Murield gestured at the inside of a chamber in front of them, “you know full well who they were and what they've done! No one will mourn the wretch that trafficked human beings! Besides, there's nothing in them anymore, I made sure of that. They're just empty shells now. I know you never liked my methods, but progress required sacrifices! And I had sacrificed enough already!”

“I know! I know." Sailas repeated quietly. "There's no turning back now.“

Muriel nodded, satisfied by his disciple's answer. “Now, what do you plan to do next? Where will you go? In case…and I mean just in case something happens to me and I don't make it, I leave my tower and all my possessions in your hands. Do what you will with them.”” Muriel changed the topic as he began undressing.

“No thank you. No one lives in towers anymore. Ominous looking basements are all the rage now.” Sailas replied with a chuckle, then added that he would like to travel the world. Explore the undiscovered!

”I’m not like you. I can’t stand being in the same place for long periods of time. I wanna visit other places, see different cultures and develop and learn new abilities!”

Muriel nodded in understanding. He never was much for traveling and never traveled beyond the boundaries of the kingdom. He felt a tinge of envy as Sailas passionately spoke of a journey into the unknown.

A six-sided chamber was on the third and top floor and, in the middle of the chamber, a circle was carved out onto the stone floor. Numerous words, intangible at first glance, inscribed the inside of a circle and from the circle, explicit webs of lines reached out. Each line ended in one corner of the chamber where a mana crystal laid on a pedestal. Mana crystals would be used to amplify a formation and beneath the circle, on the floor below, were cages with the sacrifices.

Muriel walked over and stood in the middle of the circle. The look of concentration on his face and an exquisite looking ceremonial robe adorned him.

“Was the robe really necessary? Sailas asked, looking at a tacky, over-decorative robe.”

“Hush…”

The candles flared up and the wind outside gently whistled, giving an unnatural and false calm just before the loud crack of the thunder clap. The sound of thunder stretched and diminished until it could be heard no more, then heavy rain started pouring, giving an ominous and yet fitting atmosphere.

"You know what? Before we begin, you might want to take cover outside the chamber." Muriel said afterthought then quickly added. "Just to be on the safe side because, the amount of mana I'll be handling…"

There was no need to finish that sentence. Sailas understood that containing the energy in a container without a sufficient capacity could lead to…rather explosive results. Once he found a safe place outside the chamber, Muriel began the ritual.