Prologue: The Evening Before

'The water is beautiful today, as always.' Callum thought, gazing absently into the sky. The great river up there in the distance, showering the range to the west with endless torrents, barely passed by the particular mountain on which Callum and his mother lived alone. Some days it would shift in the sky and let loose on their heads, but that was not often enough to be a persistent worry.

'The sky is also beautiful.' Callum was not one to deny beauty in front of his eyes, especially not when lying exhausted in a field amidst uncountable flowers. Well, "exhausted" may be the wrong word. His breath is steady, and his forehead barely shines with sweat. By looking at him you might call it laziness, but the marks of his effort lay elsewhere. The space around him seems to whirl with energy, sharply cutting through open air, remnants of magic replaying endlessly.

Though he may appear inert staring into the sky, his focus is squarely on the mana around him. It would seem that lying comfortably in the flowers doesn't completely distract him. Maintaining the whirling energy takes a not insignificant amount of mental exertion. This would be a new record, three hours straight of full concentration and maintenance. Years ago he couldn't maintain it for a single minute, let alone three whole hours. And just in time too, tomorrow is…

"Cal!" His concentration is broken by a call from just outside his vision. The mana dissipates almost instantly, as if it was never there in the first place. Callum sits up without much care. As much as it stings to not break a record, he knows he can do it and that's all that matters. His head swirls a bit, but it's not enough to keep him on the ground.

He looks back toward the voice. A woman stands on the porch of the cabin in which they live with her hands on her waist. This is Linnea, Callum's mother. Her hair is strikingly blonde and her eyes are deep forest green, heavily contrasting with Callum's light brown and dark brown respectively. Her ears are sharply pointed and slightly horizontally slanted. Callum's are not. She is tall, Callum is sitting on the ground.

"Dinner is ready, come inside soon sweetie you need to eat a good meal or you won't be able to wake up easily tomorrow." She motions towards the cabin. "You've been training out here all day, I wouldn't be surprised if your body gave out. It wouldn't be the first time."

Callum nods without saying anything and pulls himself to his feet… Or he would have if his legs didn't do exactly what his mom thought they'd do, sending him face-first into the flowers. He looks up to the porch and gives a wry smile.

"Haaaah…" Linnea sighs deeply and turns toward the house. "Just come inside when you can, it's pasta tonight." 

"I won't take long." Callum assures her as she walks back into the cabin, leaving him alone with his thoughts once again. He flips onto his back and stares back at the sky, now tinted orange by the setting sun. The light reflecting off of the river in the distance casts fractals across the landscape below and around it.

'There's nothing like it.' Callum watches the colors dance across the range.

"Tomorrow is another day." He smiles, speaking into the air. "Just a particularly exciting one."

*******

Almost 800 years ago, a great comet struck through the solar system. Path uninterrupted, it pierced straight through the sun leaving it as a crescent. The humans who viewed the astronomical event could only describe the comet as a "Dark Star", a pitch black yet perfectly visible streak on the night sky exploding into golden radiance, and it stuck. When the Dark Star came, it infused the entire solar system with magical energy, which humans would later call mana. 

Every bit of life created after the Dark Star, human or otherwise, was infused with mana. That same magical energy caused changes to the very fabric of their being. It was an extremely accelerated and drastic evolution. The planet changed as well; mountains rose and fell, forests turned to labyrinths, great rivers flowed through the sky, and the seas deepened. The world and all its inhabitants became largely unrecognizable from how they would have been before the Dark Star, save for those who were born before it.

Nearly every kind of explicitly humanoid race is a descendant of regular non-magical humans, who died out shortly after the Dark Star event. From the most "normal" looking humans to the outrageous arachne, their distant ancestors were humans without any additions. I'm sure you can imagine what kind of chaos that would sow in the 13th century, but that is a story for another time.

Following hundreds of years of turmoil and adaptation, the humanoid population which had at first plummeted to less than half, stabilized at around 360 million worldwide. Despite this obvious setback among numerous others, humanoid society has largely advanced to where it is in our modern day. It is a very peaceful time compared to years leading up to it.

Callum lives in a peaceful age.

*******

Warm dawn light streams through half-opened curtains onto Callum's sleeping form.

His eyes slowly blink open.