The early spring wind swept across the training field's fence as two girls leaned against the railing.
The blonde girl fidgeted with the new butterfly bow pinned to her hair strand, whispering, "I heard today's magic selection will test elemental affinity again." She tugged her companion's sleeve, her voice tinged with anticipation, "Last year my palms only sparked a little, and Dad nearly smashed the crystal ball."
"Speaking of magic..." The blonde suddenly lowered her voice, pointing at the city wall, "Did you hear that noise last night? The explosion in the Sunset Plains rumbled all night long."
"The patrol said it was the expedition force clearing monsters," the brunette traced her fingers over the rusted railing, "By the way... my neighbor's older sister went with the supply team last year..." Her voice trailed off, "And she never came back."
"This time it's different!" The blonde suddenly turned, her eyes sparkling as she gripped the railing, "It was the innkeeper who said it—our leader is a red-haired genius senior!" She excitedly gestured flames rising, "She's only 22, she can both manipulate three-meter-high magic armor and cast platinum-grade fire magic with her bare hands!"
The brunette gently covered her flushed cheeks, "If only my water magic could be as powerful as hers..."
Distantly, the primary magic academy's clock tower tolled.
"Another annual magic test is about to begin," the blonde girl softly tugged her companion's sleeve.
"Ah, it's the same every year anyway," the brunette murmured in response.
Dew-kissed petals scattered on the stone path still damp from morning mist. Amid the gray-blue tide of academy uniforms, a girl in a black hoodie and fitted gray jeans stood out like a shadow.
She kept her head lowered, the hood concealing the contours below her nose. As she walked, the loose hem of her coat fluttered with the wind. Her black canvas shoes crushed petals between the stones, trailing wisps of grass-scented air that carried her fading silhouette into the morning breeze.
"Please gather all classes at the testing area!" The broadcast startled sparrows from the maple trees. Two girls dashed past the black-clad girl, whispering, "Look, it's that weirdo..." They avoided her like plague, their laughter echoing as they skipped away.
Yes, on this continent, everyone possesses magic power—from octogenarian grandmothers to newborn infants. Although each person's magic differs uniquely, no one is exempt...
[Everyone except her.]
When sunlight pierced the clouds, the girl stretched and yawned, her hood slipping down. Her arched neck formed an elegant swan-like curve. Her slightly disheveled shoulder-length bob exuded effortless casualness, a few loose strands brushing her ears as she adjusted them.
Her raven-black hair shimmered with an icy blue undertone in the morning light. The faint blue shadows beneath her pale eyes hinted at exhaustion, yet the rounded cheeks bore traces of fatigue. The wide-set olive-green eyes, though they should have looked naive, instead carved sharp angles—like a half-awakened wolf.
The silver cat-ear earring on her right ear caught the light as she turned her head, casting fragmented glimmers. She instinctively pressed her lips, her nose twitching slightly, the delicate curve spreading like ripples to erase the weariness from her eyes.
She silently mouthed exaggeratedly to the air: "YET AGAIN WITH THIS USELESS TEST," enunciating each word slowly: "JUST FINISH IT ALREADY!"
This girl's real name was Evea, but the streets knew her as "Blackie." Born into a magical family, she had never shown a flicker of magic since childhood. In this magic-dominated world, she became a living anomaly. The label "Loser" clung to her relentlessly, amplified by her ever-present black hoodie—until "Blackie" drowned out her given name.
Eventually, she stopped trying to prove herself, nor resisted the nickname. After all, her given name "Evea" was a name she had stared at countless times in the mirror, yet never felt familiar.
She liked wearing that black hoodie—not for camouflage, but to escape the "why aren't you like us" stares. She disliked light, especially the dazzling light magic in street lamps, which reminded her of the cold indifference in people's eyes.
Magic is the foundation of this world, the scale that measures a person's talent. In such a world, lacking magic is like being nameless.
[This world had long grown accustomed to her solitude.]
Blackie lost herself in thought as she approached the college gates. The bronze doors, weathered by morning mist, glimmered with patina. On either side, griffins carved from magic crystal stone gazed down upon the thronging crowd.
"Good morning," Blackie waved lazily at the statues. A group of her peers laughed and walked shoulder to shoulder nearby. Freshmen clustered around the fountain, fastening silver admission badges onto each other's robes. Morning light danced across the badges' surfaces — a scene Blackie would never replicate, not even after waiting on the cobblestone path for over a decade.
The main avenue, paved with 630 slabs of gray stone, exuded a faint floral scent in spring. Students carried textbooks, their footsteps trailing the lingering fragrance as they moved about. Blackie's canvas shoes, however, always followed the right-side path.
Scattered among the stones were fragments of petals swept there by last night's rain. Each step the girl took scattered tiny purplish-red petals. She bent her head and hurried through the crowd.
Campus, scenery, classmates, their laughter — all of it was irrelevant to her. She had learned to ignore what she could never possess, wrapping herself in a shell of numbness. If the Creator had built an invisible wall between her and the world, she would simply plug her ears and cocoon herself in an impenetrable chrysalis.
Blackie's canvas shoes crushed the petals, following this path through two teaching buildings to reach the campus assessment tower.
The pointed white tower's metal dome completely blocked out natural light. Inside, only a grand hall and testing chambers existed. Dozens of inspectors, bearing insignias from various academies, crowded the lobby. Among them were battle specialists clad in robes inscribed with runes. The rustling of fabric and muffled conversations echoed under the dome, forming faint reverberations.
The girl pushed through the surging crowd, sidestepping into the testing chamber and lining up at the end of the queue. As the iron door closed behind her, the hall's noise transformed into a muffled hum, like sounds filtered through water.
In stark contrast to the brightly lit hall, the testing chamber was pitch black, its darkness akin to the belly of a giant dragon. Only the specially made fluorescent vellum used by the inspectors glowed faintly.
At the center of the room, a black crystal ball rested in a sunken depression on a metal table. The four corners of the table bore faint golden patterns. A gray-robed inspector with round glasses observed the crystal ball's reaction to each student, recording magic attributes and types on the vellum — data that would form the students' records.
A towering officer with a beard bristling like a fortress wall stood out: his sunglasses obscured half his face, his sharply chiseled nose exuded menace, and his over-two-meter frame was wrapped in a taut uniform, resembling a mobile fortress.
"Student number 140!" The inspector's shout pierced the noise.
Since their eighth birthday, all children had to undergo annual magic assessments. This test, spanning their youth until eighteen, would be branded with a sense of destiny — "Destiny."
This evaluation would determine each person's future path: those with strong magic would ascend directly to elite magic academies, the next tier would enter magic engineering or scroll research, while those with weak magic would be directed to scribe rooms or alchemy workshops.
Life was to be boxed in by a single test called "Destiny" — how absurd does that sound?
The teenagers in the testing chamber, however, reveled in the novelty:
"Look at that army guy!"
"That girl with the light magic was stunning!"
Amid the rising chatter, Blackie hunched at the back of the line, picking at the unraveling thread on her sleeve. What could the crystal ball possibly reveal? Just another certification labeling her as a "magic-null."
The youths' laughter scattered like silver sand, floating near and far in her ears. Blackie's thoughts drifted like a torn kite, carried by the wind...
"Student Blackie."
"Student Blackie?"
"Student Blackie!"
When the third call roused her, she found herself standing before the crystal ball. The inspector's round glasses reflected her tousled hair. "Miss, are you genuinely named Blackie?"
"Blackie is fine," she replied softly, her tone indistinguishable between laziness and resignation.
Amid the surrounding laughter, Blackie's peripheral vision caught familiar faces — childhood companions hiding their smirks among the crowd. She feigned indifference by tilting her head, though her lashes trembled slightly.
The crystal ball's surface showed not even the faintest ripple, a dead void as if it had consumed all energy. The inspector rapped his fingers against the ball: "Miss, were you not concentrating? Even a toddler's touch would..."
"How can I use magic if I don't have any?" Blackie tugged her hood lower. "Can we just end this?" She longed to flee this place that had reopened old wounds.
"Please try again," the bearded officer's voice struck like an anvil falling, his steel-like beard almost piercing the still air.
"Testing a hundred times would be the same," Blackie spun the crystal ball in circles, "Look, like a scorched pan bottom." She feigned nonchalance, though her palms were damp with sweat — this awakening process had been privately rehearsed countless times. Since her first test at eight, the crystal ball had remained lifeless every year.
The girl refused to believe in fate, secretly attempting inverted meditation, drinking bat bile, even performing rituals from ancient books on full moon nights...
On the night she turned fourteen, she cried until a booger formed from the noodle soup, finally admitting magic had as little connection to her as the beef balls in the instant noodles.
From then on, she lived more carelessly, her attire becoming a black coat with a hood, gray jeans with canvas shoes, a low ponytail with slightly messy bangs. It was fine to live in the corner where no one cared — at least it avoided those exhausting, meaningless social interactions.
"Please try again," the officer's calm voice pierced the air like ice water, his deep male voice devoid of any emotional tremor.
"Lower your shoulders, tighten your core, imagine magic flowing through your meridians..." The inspector's words were cut short as Blackie rolled her eyes. These instructions were so familiar she could recite them backward to every stray cat in town.
She clasped her hands together in a saintly pose, her expression so pious it seemed she was performing a ritual to exorcise the crystal ball. Three seconds later, she opened her eyes—huh!
The darkness was so thick it could be used as ink for epitaphs.
Muffled giggles rippled through the crowd. Blackie kicked the testing table, muttering, "This crystal ball is picky, isn't it?"
As she flicked her sleeves and turned to leave...
"Fourth attempt," the bearded officer's voice echoed again, "please."
"Hey,sir, is this harassment?" Blackie spun around impatiently, only to nearly collide with a brass button on the officer's uniform. She realized, startled, that the officer had silently appeared behind her.
She stumbled back a step, finally catching sight of his face without the sunglasses—steel-blue eyes, faint lines at the corners hinting at scholarly grace. His usually resolute face now exuded unexpected calm, a strange sense of safety washing over her.
The officer snapped his fingers. Threads of light seeped from the seams of the metallic dome, the gears clicking as the noon sky tore open like crumpled tin foil.
On either side, personnel tugged silver chains, and the black silk drapes peeled away like retreating tides. The scorching midday sun instantly melted the room's shadows.
This provoked some students who hadn't adjusted to the darkness, sudden gasps erupting around her as whispers grew bolder:
"Trash getting special treatment!"
"My mom said being near her brings three years of bad luck!"
Blackie's lips curled into a wry smile. She could recite these lines too.
"Sometimes, the cruelty of youth surpassed magic itself—children from magical families even lacked creativity in bullying."
"Please," the officer pushed a creaking wooden chair toward her with his boot tip, then knelt single-kneed into the shadows, "sit up, relax your shoulders."
Blackie's sentence faltered mid-air. The familiar void in the crystal ball now stirred with an unfamiliar tremor—this scene she'd witnessed a thousand times, yet something was different!
The blackness within the crystal ball suddenly surged. The supposedly lifeless sphere shimmered with fine threads of darkness. Blackie's pupils dilated—under the blinding noon light, she finally saw countless dark energies entwined in bundles, racing wildly through ancient magic runes.
Unrecorded in any magical tome, the dark currents intertwined within the sphere, instantly spreading across all runes. Under sunlight, the runes glowed like obsidian, their intricate patterns overlapping in a strange, beautiful chaos.
"Magic hidden in darkness?" The officer murmured to himself, his steel-blue eyes reflecting the surging dark currents. The runes, meant to function separately, now spiraled wildly, as if plucked by invisible hands.
"Blimey!" The young inspector rushed forward, his glasses slipping to his nose, his face nearly pressed against the crystal ball, "Never seen magic activate all the runes!"
Blackie stood frozen at the testing table. The sudden anomaly left her paralyzed. She had expected this annual test, yet it shattered a decade of self-perception—those dark patterns swirling on the crystal ball's surface were actually magic escaping from her own palms?
Yes, because students' magic was still nascent, often flickering like candle flames. Only in absolute darkness could clear patterns and colors be observed—this supposedly rigorous setting had become a veil concealing the truth.
"You're a special case. I'll report to the school board. I'll contact you if needed." The officer spoke gravely, gently patting her shoulder, "Other students, use the backup crystal balls! Testing continues!"
The murmurs around her suddenly seemed distant, as if someone had sucked the air from the world—she awoke from a long dream, having long accepted her lack of magic, yet...
What feelings should she have? The girl struggled to articulate...
She slowly pulled herself out of the crowd's gaze, letting the whispers dissolve at her ears.
Through the light beams piercing the dome, her canvas shoes finally touched the cold moss on the blue stone. It felt like crushing a string of unspoken questions.
Dusk winds carried gilded leaves past her feet, overlapping with the sunset of her eighth birthday. The girl walked alone on the memory-wet path, the shadow behind her spreading silently.
[The past never disappears—it lies dormant in your shadow]