The Academy of Quantum Arcane Sciences stood tall at the edge of the city of Velmira, a towering blend of steel, glass, and magic-infused runestones. In its marble halls roamed the brightest young minds—mages, technomancers, elemental theorists. All except one were bathed in light.
Caleb Noir sat at the edge of a lecture amphitheater, cloaked in muted gray.
He wasn't unpopular—just forgettable.
He never cast flashy spells. He never competed in the Elemental Duels.
And he certainly didn't have a family name soaked in ancient magic bloodlines like the rest of the students around him.
Instead, Caleb spent his days buried in the lowest sub-level of the library, poring over books considered either obsolete or too obscure: "Shadow Particles and Light Absorption Theory," "The Living Mirror Hypothesis," "Residual Consciousness in Dimensional Folds."
They mocked him quietly. "The guy studies shadows? What does he expect to do, start a lightbulb company?"
But Caleb wasn't trying to find fame.
He was trying to prove a theory: that darkness is not simply the absence of light—but a living code, a memory field, a force capable of shaping reality just like fire or ice.
But no one listened. Not even his professors.
Except for one.
Professor Malcus Drelthorn was a tenured Technomancer with a face carved from pride. He smiled in lectures but looked at students like chess pieces. And Caleb? He saw him as an eyesore.
A waste of resources.
"You could be so much more," Malcus had said once, sliding Caleb's rejected grant request across the table. "But you insist on chasing shadows.
There is no power in darkness, Mr. Noir. Only absence. Only failure."
Caleb walked alone that evening. Stormclouds hung low over Velmira, and his hands trembled from the rejection. But his eyes burned.
Down in Lab Sector Delta-6, where forgotten equipment was left to rot, he worked in silence.
His invention was crude, cobbled from photon compressors, reflective matrix cores, and a fragment of an ancient mirror he found in an old vault—one that pulsed faintly when touched.
He called it Umbra-0.
His fingers danced across the interface. The core thrummed to life. Bright light split the air—but not white or golden. It was light so sharp it felt like it might cut. And then, everything shattered.
The mirror cracked. The core twisted.
And Caleb fell into the dark..