Book One – Chapter 9

Ever since Yves commenced his education at Emery Thurm Academy, the world had dimmed around him, casting an ever-growing shadow over his once-potent second sight. The deterioration progressed gradually. Over the months and years, it had unfolded as a slow and measurable process.

He had first lost the ability to see true light fragments — the radiant structures visible to Lightshifters in the dark, which is, not in the Material Dimension but in the Alladharian dimension. In other words, he had lost the ability to discern light fragments through second sight.

Among Lightshifters, this impairment was crippling.

A wizard’s second sight is paramount for all forms of lightshifting. Mind you, not all Lightshifters have the innate disposition for all Lightshifter magic. Even if they do, they generally possess strong potential for one particular disposition, with varying potential for all other abilities on the Lightshifter spectrum. It is rare to find a wizard with two equally potent core dispositions. You generally have one core and then lesser or no potential for the other abilities on your spectrum. With that, it is absolutely acceptable for a master light wizard to lack seer abilities, or for a glass wizard to conjure advanced visual illusions without the ability to materialise them. Yet, despite their predispositions for specific magical domains, every Lightshifter can see light fragments. This ability comprises the essence of their spectrum.

To this day, a small part of Yves hesitated to fully embrace glass magic as his core disposition. What if this classification arose from a simplicity inherent in glass magic, requiring less reliance on light than other Lightshifter abilities? After all, the most rudimentary shards originated from raw Adhar alone, which Yves could still perceive.

Yves had demonstrated proficiency in producing such shards since his early days at the academy, while he had struggled with other facets of lightshifting. Falling increasingly behind, he had pushed himself to the brink of exhaustion to learn basic light and illusion magic, to tap blindly into abilities that eluded him, while his commilita advanced effortlessly on well-lit paths. By the end of his first year, the gap between them had grown into an insurmountable chasm. While others mastered the foundations and finesse of harnessing and wielding light, Yves had struggled with the void, a haunting echo of a world that had once radiated unparalleled geometrical beauty, as it could only be bestowed by true light fragments.