The air shimmered around the shaman as she sat in deep meditation. It wouldn't be visible to an untrained eye. Still, they were defihere, elemental energies pulsing in rhythm with her breath. Among her people, none in the region ahe Nexus with such finesse—even shamans from distant cities spoke her h reverence. Her power had been hard-won, fed in the turies sihe a crisis that had transformed their world and created the enlightened.

  Then, in these a days, a great rift formed between the newly transded enlightened and the humans, ging their paths ainies forever. Echoes of this divide still lingered in their society, like a faint st of old fire on a breeze. But even after all the hate and aggression they had to endure from humans, the enlightened had persevered and adapted, harnessing the power of the elements to protect their people and maintain ban the world.

  The shaman was pting her position as the leader of this city and the path that led her to where she was now. She remembered well how the world ged all these turies ago. Abruptly. They didn't have any time to prepare.

  Memories of the chaos after the Old World's fall flickered through her mind—humans with torches and makeshift ons, hunting the newly enlightened who barely uood the strange powers awakening within them. Blood and fire had marked those early years. She'd been young then, very young, terrified of the ges in her body, of the way she could suddenly feel the currents of air responding to her thoughts.

  turies of struggle followed. The enlightened learo ect with the Nexus, to bend elemental energies to their will, building sanctuary cities with walls that answered only to their touch. They were more imperable than stone because they were made with magic. Made of magic. Meanwhile, humans lost their grip oeological marvels that had once defihem, retreating to simpler ways.

  A fragile bance had emerged betweewo races—cold distance punctuated by rare tacts, each keeping to their territories.

  The shaman pressed her fiips to her temples, fronting the crisis that haunted her dreams. Enlightened bodies, for all their power, remained barren—uo create new life. Their numbers dwindled year by year. It was a slow process; it was hard to kill them, and their lifespans seemed to have no limits. But still, each death was a wound that couldn't heal through natural birth.

  Only transdence could replenish their kind. A human being enlightened. It happened in nature—a mysterious transformation shamans had studied for turies without unc its catalyst. When it didn't ocaturally, they had the ritual. Costly. Painful. And increasingly, insuffit.

  Through natural ways, it just happened occasionally that a human transded. Shamans have argued about the prerequisites of this process sihe dawn of their race. Sihe moment the caste of shamans formed in their society. But there still wasn't enough information or experimental data to be sure. Luckily, newly transded had an innate sense of the pces of power and were drawn to the enlightened cities. Most probably, they were motivated by this new sehey acquired during the transition, a e with elemental energy.

  But it would have been too easy if that was the end of the story, right? Not all humans were happy to let these people go. Some were horrified to lose their retives. For others, it was a reminder of the wars of the past, flicts between humans, and what they called the 'undead,' myths and legends of aimes. So, not all these newly transded would reach their new unities. Sometimes, they were killed.

  There was another, more troversial way. It was the method favored by most shamans and cities—a ritual at these sources of elemental power that attracted the newly verted sly. That power wasn't a simple bea. It could offer so much more to those who knew how to wield it. And one of the ways to use it was to transform a human into an enlightened.

  They rarely requested the individual's sent, as the severity of the process erased all memories and even the sense of self. That ransdent wouldn't ask the shamans why they were subjected to this torture just because they didn't remember being tortured. And the shamahe process a tightly held secret, shared only with the members of the inner circle.

  The on folk of both races believed the divide between human and enlightened was absolute, but the shaman knew better. Behind closed doors, human leaders arrived under cover of darkness, their eyes hungry as they examined refurbished old-world devices—ss that still glowed with inner light, maes that could speak across vast distances.

  These human leaders always brought payment. Not gold or food, but people. Troublemakers. Criminals. The unwahey never asked what happeo these s after they were led away, and the enlightened old them how these humans would wake days ter with no memories, their bodies forever ged, their blood singing with elemental energy.

  The enlightened artisans were careful to rade their fi creations—those were filled with magid reserved for erce between their cities. The humans received just enough to keep them ing back with more sacrifices.

  The shaman smiled with yearning, remembering that old world and its teological marvels. Nowadays, they didn't have much use for these toys, repg their funality with magic. But humans didn't have any are powers. And they didn't have the a produ liher. So, they had to use what the enlightened allowed them to have.

  Onwavering an to crumble as the years passed, and the world tio adapt to the existence of two se races. It was a slow decay but ohat could not be ignored by her people anymore. Where before there had been a stant stream of newly transdent beings, now only a few trickled in every decade. The situation was aggravated by the fact that while the enlightened were almost ageless, they were not wholly immuo the passage of time. They weren't immortal. Acts happened. Not to mention random cshes with humans that were getting rarer and rarer but happened heless.

  Desperate to reverse this dee, the shaman and her peers searched for solutions for decades. Ealightened city took its oroae entig humans with open trade and peaceful coexistehers, in trast, resorted to deception and bribery. There was an even more radical group among them. Shaman hardliners rejected promise entirely, refusing to accept any newly transded humans as their citizens. Words like "tainted" or "heretics" had been used. Even though there seemed to be no i on behalf of any human for them to be transformed.

  Overzealous fanatics... This isotionist stanly made their unities wither into oblivion even faster than it happened for the other pces.

  "There must be a path forward," the shaman thought, her firag straterns in the air. "The Nexus wouldn't have created us only to watch us fade. Not after all we've sacrificed." The temperature in her viity slightly rose in respoo her emotions. "Are we truly destined for extin?"

  The answer came not in words, but in power.

  The elemental energy hit her like a physical blow, knog her breath away. It surged through the air, through the stoh her, rippling outward in waves that set her senses screaming. Her body tingled as though lightning had passed through her, every hair standing on end.

  As an enlightened being, she khat only a select few shamans possessed the ability to master two elements. To harhree energies simultaneously and create an artifact or duct a ritual was sidered nearly impossible, with only a few recorded instances in history. Yet here, at this moment, she could feel traces of all four elements: cool breeze of air, solid grounding of earth, fluid movement of water, and scorg heat of fire.

  "That 't be!" The shaman's eyes flew open, her meditation shattered. She leaped to her feet, the stones beh her vibrating in respoo her shock.

  The energy signature was unmistakable, yet impossible—all four elements resonating in perfect harmony, a fluenseen sihe earliest days of their kind.

  Some of her peers talked about a prophecy that foretold a person who could wield all four affinities and blend them together. The Omniarc. Typically, she dismissed things like that as nothing more than fanciful tales for the newly transded. It is not only humans who heir myths, right? But this energy pattern was undeniable. It pulsated in the air, its distant strength amplified by the shaman's e to the source of power of her city.

  Her robes billowed around her as she raced down the mountain path toward the city, even the wind hastenieps. The cil must be summoned immediately. If other cities had sehis too—and they surely had—the race to find this power had already begun.

  For the first time iuries, she felt something alien stirring in her chest. Hope.