Far from the modest bustle of Shale City and its stone-paved roads, high above the clouds, a shadow moved like a comet across the sky.

  Lord Darius stood atop a massive flying spirit beast - a Silver Skyborne Drake, with crimson-tipped wings and a body scaled in shiny, silver scutes. The wind whipped through his cloak, snapping it like a banner as they soared toward the Imperial Capital of the Red Moon Empire.

  Behind him lay the shattered awakening crystal, secured in a reinforced case embedded with stabilizing runes for transport.

  As the capital’s sprawling walls came into view, Darius tapped the drake’s neck. The beast tilted its wings and descended in a wide, circling spiral towards the city gates. Towers of red stone gleamed in the light, manned by armored guards bearing the crest of the empire: a blood moon behind a crown of flame.

  The gate guards immediately spotted the incoming silhouette. They stood straight with spears at the ready. One recognized the rider and quickly barked an order.

  “Clear the landing zone! Make way for Lord Darius of the Provincial Assessment Division!”

  With a soft but heavy thud, the drake landed just outside the grand gates. Dust scattered while the guards saluted.

  “Welcome back, my lord,” one said, bowing his head.

  Darius nodded, stepping off the beast. His boots crunched against the gravel. “I’m going straight to the Assessment Bureau.”

  “At once, my lord. The gates are open.”

  With a thought, he spread his spiritual energy towards the drake, and momentarily, it disappeared. The looks on the guards’ faces were of reverence. As he walked inside the gates, some of the guards murmured.

  “A contract space! This is exclusive to those who are at the master-rank spirit professions!”

  “When do you think I can unlock my contract space?”

  “You better ask the platoon captain regarding that. He became a master beast tamer two years ago and created his contract space.”

  Darius walked beneath the archway of the capital’s gate. His presence parted the foot traffic as he passed. The case with the cracked crystal popped with wheels as it automatically followed him whenever he walked. Mechanical beeps emitted occasionally by the case, as if scanning Darius movement. Spirit tech-cases like this one were standard for elite transport - half magic, half machinery.

  Minutes later, he arrived at the grand white-stone building that housed the Imperial Assessment Bureau. It was a place responsible for calibrating, distributing, and archiving all known awakening crystals used across the empire. The Provincial Assessment Division where he is a part of is responsible for the spirit awakening of the various provinces in the empire.

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  He strode past the marble steps, through towering columns, and into an echoing hall where scholars, enchanters, and spirit technicians murmured over flashing blueprints in their screens.

  A receptionist at the front desk looked up and smiled at Darius. “Good afternoon, Lord Darius.”

  “I need a replacement crystal. The one from Shale City shattered during the Spirit Awakening Ceremony there.”

  “That’s rare. Right away, my lord. Please head to Processing Hall 3. Shall I arrange for an enchantment inspector as well?”

  “Already brought the remains,” Darius said, gesturing behind him. “Tell whoever is best to meet me there. I want the thing analyzed.”

  The receptionist bowed. “At once.”

  Inside Processing Hall 3, Darius stood with arms crossed as the cracked crystal was carefully extracted from its containment case. A woman with silver-threaded robes and a monocle imbued with analytical runes hovered her hands over the fragments.

  “Hm,” she muttered. “Fracture patterns are consistent with overwhelming resonance. But this was not caused by brute force. The crystal shattered from within.”

  “Caelis, so it wasn’t just a flaw in the crystal.”

  Caelis - a senior enchanter within the department, shook her head. “Darius, if it were defective, the disruption would have originated around the bonding points. This was internal. Like the spirit energy entered with such force that the crystal failed to contain it.”

  Darius brow furrowed. His gaze turned inward, thinking back to the incident.

  The boy who had shattered the crystal… what was his name again?

  He pulled out his tablet and searched for the last recorded person in the crystal.

  Joshua Clementine - he was the kid who shattered the awakening crystal.The crystal had shown a yellowish hue when it shattered.

  The incident had seemed too minor to report. Crystals break. It happens. But this?

  Darius inquired again, “Was the crystal at the end of life before it broke?”

  Caelis tapped her stylus against the edge of her tablet. “No, this crystal is a fairly new one. Also, judging by the energy patterns, it showed a yellow glow before shattering. This means that the potential of the one who shattered it must be greater than yellow, probably blue… or a violet…”

  Darius’ eyes sharpened.

  “Violet… If he is truly a violet, the balance across empires are about to shift.”

  A youth with violet-tier potential in Shale? This would make him the second violet potential in the empire aside from the crown prince!

  He turned off the tablet, hiding the list of names. He called an attendant who, upon entering, greeted, “Lord Darius, Lordess Caelis.”

  Darius commanded, “Track down this name - Joshua Clementine from Shale City. I want to know where he is now, where he lives, who his family is, and if anyone else has tested him since.”

  Caelis looked up. “Should I inform the Imperial Academy Council?”

  “Not yet, I want confirmation first. This might be nothing. Or…”

  He trailed off, his gaze shifting back to the fractured crystal, gleaming faintly under the laboratory lights.

  “...it might be the new dawn that the Red Moon Empire is headed for.”