Chapter 16 — Omens

Heidi blinked, seemingly accepting Rebecca's explanation, then shook the notebook in her hand. "With this notebook, a great many things can be explained clearly. It seems this nameless mage, to cure his daughter, set up a magic array of no small scale here—and later even conceived the mad idea of converting both himself and his daughter into shadow forms to prolong their lives. But his conversion ritual ran out of control because of the surging magic, and the result was the great fire half a month ago, the formation of the wraith mist, and what the Ancestor saw in the Shadow Realm..."

"None of that is the point," Gao Yang abruptly cut in. "Whether the wraith mist or the cabin in the Shadow Realm, all of it has a direct explanation in the notebook. What I want you to look at are the two details mentioned in the notebook—one concerning the dark red veins on the sun's surface, and the other the large-scale sunspot eruption."

Heidi noticed the grave expression on Gao Yang's face and grew a little nervous herself. "Ancestor, these two matters..."

Gao Yang waved a hand. "Also, the surging magic the wild mage mentions in his diary—you two, as mages, should have sensed it as well, no?"

Heidi and Rebecca exchanged a glance and nodded together. "There have indeed been several surges of magic around the Cecil domain recently. But magic surges are perfectly normal—all magic in the world comes from the sun, and the sun is in motion and changing at every moment, so earthly magic naturally rises and falls as well. The magic surges within the domain lately have been frequent, but nothing worth troubling over."

Gao Yang looked at the two of them and spoke slowly. "In the year 1736 of the Gondor calendar, reports came from all parts of the Empire of large-scale dark red veins appearing on the sun's surface. In 1738, the largest sunspot eruption in history was observed—nearly half the sun's surface covered in red patches. That same year, twenty-six provinces of the Empire reported widespread magic surges; none was great in scale, yet together they covered nearly two-thirds of the realm. In 1739, a blood sun hung in the sky, and the whole nation was shrouded beneath a dark red canopy—yet no disaster broke out at the time. On the contrary, a great many infants of extraordinary magical talent were born. According to the records, nearly a third of the newborns that day possessed an innate elemental affinity; in various places the agencies that tested newborns even found resonance stones in short supply. The court scholars therefore proclaimed that day 'the Dawn of Magic.' But in that same year, the greatest magic-supply facility near the imperial capital of Gondor, the Well of Deep Blue, suffered a massive explosion. The cause was that the magic focal point beneath the Well had suddenly filled with chaotic and powerful magic; the extraction arrays could not process that disordered force, and in the end the core melted down..."

Gao Yang stopped, but Heidi, her face somewhat pale, took up the thread: "...In the year 1740 of Gondor, the magic tide broke out, and the mightiest human empire in history was extinguished within a few months..."