Chapter 16 - Reminiscence of the past.

POV: Tomas

The tower had always felt too big for just two people, even if there were a lot of golems at their service. Its spiral staircases wound upward into shadowed rafters, its halls lined with bookshelves stuffed with half‑burnt scrolls and glass jars of unidentifiable things. Tomas had once thought it was a place of endless wonder—a fortress of knowledge hidden deep in the forest, far from meddling townsfolk and the dullness of farm life.

Seven years ago, when the wizard first took him in, Tomas had believed he’d been chosen for greatness.

***

**Flashback to the past.**

The wizard’s cloak smelled of ash and sage as he held out a gnarled staff.

“Concentrate,” he said, voice dry as parchment. “Magic is breath and will, we know that you have a better connection with the fire element, but if you truly want to control it, you can’t rely only on talent.”

Tomas had exhaled sharply, fingers trembling around the staff. A spark danced at its tip, then bloomed into a flame the size of a candle. He’d laughed aloud, exhilarated, even as the wizard merely hummed in approval.

“That,” the man said, “is the beginning, a matchstick, but perhaps you’ll be worth my time.”

Over the years, Tomas learned that fire answered him more eagerly when he involved his own feelings. Flames curled to his fingers as though they recognized him, and each success filled him with a rush he could never quite describe. He’d stay awake late into the night, practicing in secret, dreaming of the day he’d take the entrance exams for one of the great academies.

He pictured himself walking through marble halls, wearing the robes of a trained mage, far from the tower’s lonely isolation.

But each time he hinted at his dream, the wizard dismissed him.

Tomas had just turned thirteen when he tried again.

“Master,” he said carefully, “what if I applied to an academy? They’d teach me what you can’t—”

The wizard didn’t look up from his parchment. His quill scratched in sharp, deliberate strokes.

“Academies breed mediocrity. They worship rules. They fear the edges of what magic can do.”

“But—”

“You’re here to learn. Not to seek applause from cowards who call themselves scholars.”

The finality in his voice had been like a slammed door. Tomas said nothing more.

The longer Tomas stayed, the more he saw the wizard’s hunger for knowledge twist into something else—something darker. He came to the understanding that the wizard would do anything in the search of knowledge, even if that involves danger for himself or others.

The man began hoarding magical artifacts scavenged from ruins and black markets. Strange crystals hummed on tables. Jars of ash and powdered bone lined the walls. Sometimes, Tomas would wake in the night to hear the wizard muttering in languages he didn’t understand, sigils burning faintly in the air around him.

***

**Flashback – Year Five.**

Tomas stood by the lab door, staring at the wizard hunched over a glowing circle. The man’s hands trembled as he poured a vial of shimmering liquid into the lines of chalk.

“What are you making?” Tomas whispered.

“Progress,” the wizard said, without looking up.

“Is it safe?”

“Safety is for the powerless. Go back to bed.”

It wasn’t that the wizard was cruel. He fed Tomas, taught him, even praised him in rare moments. But Tomas realized that to his master, people were tools. Even Tomas himself was just another promising experiment.

As the years passed, the tower’s wonder began to feel like a gilded cage.

***

That morning, Tomas stood at the high window, gazing toward the horizon. The forest canopy stretched endlessly, broken only by wisps of mist. Somewhere beyond it lay the village—the place he’d left behind as a boy of ten.

He wondered if Sera still kept her herb garden. If Orlen still spent his days hammering metal in the forge, if his parents were happy in that village, or how his sisters had grown up, the last time he saw them, they were just a pair of beautiful babies. He wondered if the rest of the villagers still thought of him, of what he could do after so many years had passed.

He didn’t even know how to think of them anymore. When he’d left, he had been a shy little boy who didn’t know how to express his own opinions. He remembered that at first he didn’t want this life, but he let those around him take the decisions that would mark his whole life.

“Tomas,” the wizard’s voice cut through his thoughts.

He turned to see the man descending the stairs, eyes bright with an almost feverish light. In his hands, he carried a crystalline shard that pulsed faintly, as if alive.

“It’s nearly ready,” the wizard said, a rare smile curving his lips. “The gateway will open soon. A true bridge between worlds—an experiment worthy of history.”

Tomas’ stomach tightened. “You’re still trying to open that thing? We don’t even know what’s on the other side.”

“Precisely why it must be opened,” the man replied smoothly. “Magic stagnates when we cower before the unknown.”

Tomas stepped forward, anger rising. “You’ve been obsessed with this for months. You don’t eat. You barely sleep. Whatever’s on the other side—it’s not worth it.”

The wizard’s gaze hardened. “You think too small. You’re talented, boy, but you’ll never reach beyond mediocrity if you cling to comfort.”

“What if it’s too dangerous? What if it kill us or we bring disaster to the people who leave near here?”

Tomas was thinking about his family and the people who lived with them back in the village.

“You worry too much, I’m sure that I’m not the only one that it’s experimenting with this kind of portals.”

“Then we can contact them! Ask for help!”

“Shut up!” The wizard seemed enraged at the mention of other wizards. “I took you in and offer you an opportunity, but the only thing that I receive in return is your nagging.”

***

That night, Tomas sat awake in his cramped loft, staring at the faint glow leaking under the lab door. He could feel the air humming with power, threads of mana coiling through the tower like veins of lightning.

He thought of the academies again—their libraries, their teachers, their promise of structured, safe learning.

*I could still go. I’m seventeen now. I could take the exams. I could be more than this.* He thought.

But leaving meant abandoning the man who had raised him. The man who, despite everything, had once been his hero.

Tomas clenched his fists. His heart ached with the weight of the choice he hadn’t yet made.

When dawn came, the wizard emerged from the lab, his face pale and triumphant.

“It’s time,” he murmured. “Today, the worlds will meet and I will be there to see it.”

A chill ran down Tomas’ spine.

He knew, with a bone‑deep certainty, that if he didn’t act soon, something irreversible would happen.

And for the first time in seven years, he wondered if he had the courage to walk away.

***

Tomas had seen his master perform many rituals—conjurings that painted the walls with flame, transmutations that turned air to steel, even one that stitched a sparrow’s torn wing with threads of light.

But nothing compared to this.

The lab was nearly unrecognizable. Every table had been pushed aside, every wall etched with smoldering runes. A massive circle—four concentric rings carved deep into the stone floor—glowed with a sickly green light. The air shimmered like heat above a desert road. Magic pulsed with every heartbeat.

And at the center stood the wizard, arms raised, voice chanting in a tongue Tomas didn’t recognize.

Tomas hovered at the edge of the lab, unease clawing at his throat.

“Master,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You need to stop. It’s not stable. Look at it.”

The wizard didn’t turn.

“This is what I’ve been working toward for twenty years. The boundary between worlds is thin. I will pierce it.”

Tomas stepped closer. The energy made his skin crawl. He could see the distortion—reality itself bending like glass under pressure. The lines of the ritual circle were flickering, splintering like cracks in ice.

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And then it happened.

A tear opened in the center of the circle—jagged and pulsing with violet light. Through it came a scream that wasn’t a sound at all but a pressure, a presence. Shapes writhed on the other side—claws, wings, eyes too many and too wide.

The first creature slipped through.

It was insectile, taller than Tomas, with armor like obsidian and legs that clicked as it moved. It blinked at them—sideways—and hissed.

Tomas raised his hand instinctively, fire coiling in his palm.

The wizard’s voice rose. “Do not interfere! This is still under control!”

The second creature emerged—quadrupedal, barbed, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.

Tomas backed away. “This isn’t a gate that should exist, Master. It’s a wound to the world, and you’re letting them in. Please close it!”

“I will control it,” the wizard snapped, voice crackling like lightning. His eyes were wide with mania, his mouth stretched into something that might’ve once been a grin.

The portal pulsed. A third creature slithered through—no legs, just coils and teeth and something like a crown of bone.

Tomas could feel it now. The portal wasn’t in the wizard’s control, it was expanding.

“Run,” he whispered to himself. Then louder: “Run.”

But the wizard was laughing now, arms spread wide, as if welcoming gods.

Tomas didn’t look back. He turned and fled the tower.

Behind him, the portal flashed violet and the wizard was no longer there.

Tomas didn’t remember running. Only the sound of his boots slamming down the tower steps, the flickering light from the portal casting monstrous shadows against the walls, and the thrum of his heart hammering in his throat.

Each floor he passed felt like it could collapse beneath him.

When he reached his small chamber—just a bed, a trunk, and a cracked window facing the forest—he didn’t stop to think. He threw open the trunk and stuffed what little he owned into a satchel: spare tunic, dried roots for energy, his wand carved from birch, and the old fire crystal the wizard gave him for his sixteenth birthday.

His fingers brushed the corner of a worn book—the first one he’d copied by hand, full of diagrams and his own notes. He hesitated, then stuffed it in too.

Behind him, the tower moaned. It wasn’t made for this kind of strain. The arcane lines that once shimmered with steady magic now pulsed erratically—like veins filled with poison.

A roar echoed up from below, it was the sound of a creature that didn’t belong to this world, none of those that he had seen emerging from that portal belong here.

Tomas clutched the satchel to his chest and turned to the door. His legs refused to move for a breath. His throat tightened.

*Seven years.* The man who taught him how to summon a flame without burning his fingers. Who fed him when he cried through his first winter. Who told him that magic was a language only the bold could learn.

*But he’s lost control,* Tomas told himself. *And if I stay, I’ll die.*

Still, his hand lingered on the doorframe.

“Master,” he whispered, throat raw. “Please… be strong.”

Then he ran.

Out through the cracked stone corridor. Down the hidden path winding through the trees. Past the wards—most of them flickering or dead now—and into the deeper woods, where only moonlight guided his way.

He didn’t look back.

Not until he crested a ridge and saw the tower from afar.

It glowed faintly, black and purple magic licked at the windows. A clawed figure slipped from the top spire like a shadow unfurling.

Tomas gritted his teeth. He tightened the strap of his satchel and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured to the night. “But I can’t save you.”

And with that, he vanished into the forest—guilt burning hotter than the fire in his veins.

***

Tomas pushed through thorn-thick underbrush, hands blistered, legs shaking. Hunger gnawed at him, but he didn’t stop—not when the sky turned to ash before dawn, not when blood howled in his ears. For two days, he ran, walked, fought, and ran again.

On the second night, something large and scaled dropped from the trees. Its fangs gleamed in the dark, dripping venom. Seven years ago, he would’ve screamed.

Now, he raised a hand, whispered “Sear.”

The creature burst into flame before it reached the ground. It screamed, flailed—and then was gone. Ash and silence.

Tomas didn’t even flinch.

The third morning, the trees thinned. The first rooftops of the village emerged behind a pale veil of mist. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. A flock of birds scattered overhead.

*Home.*

He slowed, heart pounding harder than during the battles. The satchel on his back suddenly felt heavier. His boots dragged on the worn path as if the ground itself knew he didn’t belong anymore.

The first face he saw was his youngest sister, Mira, even if he hadn’t seen them for years, he would recognize his two sisters. She dropped the herbs she’d been gathering and stared, mouth open.

“Tomas?” she whispered.

He smiled. “Hey, little fox.”

She screamed from joy. She ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. She was taller now, nearly to his shoulder. He hadn’t expected tears, but his face was wet anyway.

His parents came running moments later, their faces unreadable. Then came the embrace—tight, wordless, overwhelming. His mother whispered prayers into his shoulder. His father just held on as if he couldn’t believe Tomas was real.

But when the rest of the village began to gather, the warmth faded.

Some gasped in shock. Others crossed themselves. Murmurs stirred like dry leaves.

“Is it true?” a woman barked. “The wizard trained you for the last couple of years?”

Tomas turned, still holding Mira’s hand. “Yes, after my family leave me there, I study under him, learning how to become a wizard, but…” he wasn’t sure if he should tell the village what had happened before he decided to run for his life, but after thinking for a few seconds, he knew that the best thing to do was that the villagers were informed about the dangers.

“I need to tell all of you something…”

“What is it, son?” His mother looked worried.

“The wizard open a portal in the forest, one he can’t control. Creatures are spilling through.”

“What?!” Someone screamed in terror.

“You brought this on us,” another man said. “You should’ve never gone with that madman.”

“I was ten!” Tomas snapped, fire flickering in his eyes. “I didn’t choose him, but there was nothing I could do at the time.”

The crowd went quiet. Even the birds above stilled.

“I came to warn you,” he said, voice lower now. “You don’t have much time. The Emberwood is bleeding magic—and it’s only going to get worse.”

His mother looked up at him with fear and love tangled in her gaze.

“You came back to us,” she said, voice trembling.

Tomas nodded slowly. “But I don’t know if I still belong here.”

And behind him, the forest groaned with something ancient awakening.

The village square felt like a tightening noose.

After Tomas’ warning, the people buzzed like a disturbed beehive. Voices overlapped. Some demanded action. Others shouted for the chief. But no one moved.

“If we flee, the lord will think we’ve rebelled,” one of the older men muttered. “He’ll send soldiers after us.”

“And if we stay,” someone else said, “those things in the woods will tear us apart.”

No one had a real answer.

But across the square, Tomas saw motion—decisive motion.

Sera and Orlen stood by a small cart piled with food, water barrels, and tightly bound satchels. Blankets and talismans were already tied to its frame. Eirian stood beside them, owl mask at her hip, her eyes sharp and strangely calm.

They had been preparing, not just tonight, not just this week.

*They knew that something was going on and decide to escape.* He thought.

Tomas took a step toward them as angry voices rose again.

“Wait—how did they get all that packed?”

“They were planning to leave!”

“Without warning us?”

Eirian met their gazes with something between pity and finality. She didn’t say anything.

She climbed into the cart. Orlen took the reins. Sera looked once over her shoulder at the villagers she had tended and healed for more than a decade—and said nothing. Then the cart turned, wheels creaking, and began to roll down the northern path.

Tomas’s heart kicked into motion.

He turned to his sister—Mira. “Where is Luma?”

“She is in the house, Eirian’s family told us to prepare everything necessary so we could run with our parents,” she whispered to him, she knew that the villagers would get enraged if they ever found out about it.

“And if our parents refuse to run?”

“They told us to go with them if that ever happen.”

Tomas took his sister’s hand and run to their old house, his parents run after them when they noticed.

He saw his sister when he stepped into the house.

“Luma! Come with us. Now.” There was no time for a celebration for their reunion.

“What about—” Luma began, glancing toward the village.

“No time,” Tomas snapped, grabbing their hands. “We don’t need anything but each other.”

He broke into a jog, pulling them behind him, his sisters took some things that Luma had prepared before start running, but his parents stood before them, trying to stop them.

“Wait!” His mother screamed. “What are you doing? You just got here with us!”

“There is no time, mom! We need to run.”

“Why?” This time it was his father who questioned him. “You said something about a portal, but I’m sure that the wizard will solve everything.”

“He can’t! Please trust me, I had seen the creatures that are coming through the portal, and the village won’t stand a chance against them.”

“And the wizard?” His mother asked.

“I don’t even know if he’s still alive, we need to run, please.”

For a few seconds his parents were silent unable to leave everything behind.

“What about this? If we hear that nothing happen when we reach the town, we can come back.” Tomas proposed a new plan for his parents.

They looked at each other.

“Alright.” His father finally said.

They moved like a group outside the village, carrying only a few things with them.

The village fell away, voices growing distant.

The wind carried no monsters—yet—but the trees were too quiet. Even the crows weren’t calling anymore.

As they caught up to Eirian’s cart, Orlen glanced down with a single nod.

Behind them, shouts began to rise.

Some villagers were shouting to stop them.

Others… were preparing to follow.

But not all.

Tomas looked back once as they crested a low hill. He saw the rooftops of the village where he’d been born. Where his life had once been simple. Where people had blamed children for the sins of magic and runes they didn’t understand.

They’d stay, some of them. Clinging to land and fear and the illusion of safety.

But he—and the ones who moved—would live.

Tomas turned his back on the village.

The forest opened before them.

And somewhere beyond the trees, the future waited.