Prologue

A lone man stood before the newly renovated Hadron Collider. He was marked as a scientist only by the white lab coat thrown on haphazardly over a dirty comic con t-shirt. Directly in front of him sat the recently overloaded propulsion system, capable of sending entire atoms catapulting into each other at nearly three times the speed of light. To the left and right of it were two openings used for loading the unstable device. With untrained hands, he began the process of arming the complex machine.

He brushed the greasy black hair out of his eyes as he picked up a cylindrical object labeled uranium off the floor. After carefully inserting it into the hole seated to his left,he locked it into place, and then repeated the process on the right with a similar object labeled thorium. He chuckled maniacally as he double checked the settings on the computer display behind him, and slammed his hand down on the red button next to it.

As Lights sprung to life on the collider, the large propulsion system emitted a deafening whirring noise that overpowered the triggered alarms. Within seconds, a loud boom signified the near simultaneous firing and collision of both atoms. His laughter started up again as he half skipped around the table that was holding the computer towards the other end of the room.

Looking around one would see the scale of the room rivaled a football stadium. The piping for the enormous collider circled around the outer wall and led to a large steel blast chamber.

The disheveled man threw open the heavy door of the chamber and gazed intently at his new masterpiece. Originally the product of two different atoms, the new element had already replicated itself enough times to form a light blue sphere roughly the size of a fist. Before the ambitious scientist could react, the sphere flew out, collided with his body, and merged within him. It used his body as a medium and began rapidly duplicating itself.

"YES! THIS FEELING... THEY MOCKED ME, BUT I'LL SHOW THEM! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!!"

The shout filled the room as space itself began to warp around the man. As his entire body developed a blue hue, he threw his head back and began to concentrate with every ounce of his will on a single thought. Finally, when his body gave off a bright glow, he shouted out with every fiber of his being. "Rewrite this pitiable world, make it as it should be, MAKE IT AS I SEE FIT!"

He let out a final cry before the nameless element burst from his body and deprived him of his life, as it spread across the globe. It overwrote the existing laws in an instant, forever changed the physical world, and finally earned its name:

Mana.