Interlude. Shaman
The air shimmered around the shaman as she sat in deep meditation. It wouldn't be visible to an untrained eye. Still, they were definitely there, elemental energies pulsing in rhythm with her breath. Among her people, none in the region commanded the Nexus with such finesse—even shamans from distant cities spoke her name with reverence. Her power had been hard-won, forged in the centuries since the ancient crisis that had transformed their world and created the enlightened.
Then, in these ancient days, a great rift formed between the newly transcended enlightened and the humans, changing their paths and destinies forever. Echoes of this divide still lingered in their society, like a faint scent 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 balance in the world.
The shaman was contemplating 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 changed all these centuries 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 weapons, hunting the newly enlightened who barely understood the strange powers awakening within them. Blood and fire had marked those early years. She'd been young then, very young, terrified of the changes in her body, of the way she could suddenly feel the currents of air responding to her thoughts.
Centuries of struggle followed. The enlightened learned to connect with the Nexus, to bend elemental energies to their will, building sanctuary cities with walls that answered only to their touch. They were more impenetrable than stone because they were made with magic. Made of magic. Meanwhile, humans lost their grip on the technological marvels that had once defined them, retreating to simpler ways.
A fragile balance had emerged between the two races—cold distance punctuated by rare contacts, each keeping to their territories.
The shaman pressed her fingertips to her temples, confronting the crisis that haunted her dreams. Enlightened bodies, for all their power, remained barren—unable to 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 transcendence could replenish their kind. A human becoming enlightened. It happened in nature—a mysterious transformation shamans had studied for centuries without uncovering its catalyst. When it didn't occur naturally, they had the ritual. Costly. Painful. And increasingly, insufficient.
Through natural ways, it just happened occasionally that a human transcended. Shamans have argued about the prerequisites of this process since the dawn of their race. Since the moment the caste of shamans formed in their society. But there still wasn't enough information or experimental data to be sure. Luckily, newly transcended had an innate sense of the places of power and were drawn to the enlightened cities. Most probably, they were motivated by this new sense they acquired during the transition, a connection 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 relatives. For others, it was a reminder of the wars of the past, conflicts between humans, and what they called the 'undead,' myths and legends of ancient times. So, not all these newly transcended would reach their new communities. Sometimes, they were killed.
There was another, more controversial way. It was the method favored by most shamans and cities—a ritual at these sources of elemental power that attracted the newly converted so strongly. That power wasn't a simple beacon. 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 consent, as the severity of the process erased all memories and even the sense of self. That new transcendent wouldn't ask the shamans why they were subjected to this torture just because they didn't remember being tortured. And the shamans kept the process a tightly held secret, shared only with the members of the inner circle.
The common 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—screens that still glowed with inner light, machines that could speak across vast distances.
These human leaders always brought payment. Not gold or food, but people. Troublemakers. Criminals. The unwanted. They never asked what happened to these offerings after they were led away, and the enlightened never told them how these humans would wake days later with no memories, their bodies forever changed, their blood singing with elemental energy.
The enlightened artisans were careful to never trade their finest creations—those were filled with magic and reserved for commerce between their cities. The humans received just enough to keep them coming back with more sacrifices.
The shaman smiled with yearning, remembering that old world and its technological marvels. Nowadays, they didn't have much use for these toys, replacing their functionality with magic. But humans didn't have any arcane powers. And they didn't have the ancient production lines either. So, they had to use what the enlightened allowed them to have.
Once unwavering order began to crumble as the years passed, and the world continued to adapt to the existence of two sentient races. It was a slow decay but one that could not be ignored by her people anymore. Where before there had been a constant stream of newly transcendent 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 immune to the passage of time. They weren't immortal. Accidents happened. Not to mention random clashes with humans that were getting rarer and rarer but happened nevertheless.
Desperate to reverse this decline, the shaman and her peers searched for solutions for decades. Each enlightened city took its own approach—some enticing humans with open trade and peaceful coexistence. Others, in contrast, resorted to deception and bribery. There was an even more radical group among them. Shaman hardliners rejected compromise entirely, refusing to accept any newly transcended humans as their citizens. Words like "tainted" or "heretics" had been used. Even though there seemed to be no intent on behalf of any human for them to be transformed.
Overzealous fanatics... This isolationist stance only made their communities wither into oblivion even faster than it happened for the other places.
" There must be a path forward, " the shaman thought, her fingers tracing strange patterns 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 vicinity slightly rose in response to her emotions. " Are we truly destined for extinction? "
The answer came not in words, but in power.
The elemental energy hit her like a physical blow, knocking her breath away. It surged through the air, through the stone beneath 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 knew that only a select few shamans possessed the ability to master two elements. To harness three energies simultaneously and create an artifact or conduct a ritual was considered 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 scorching heat of fire.
" That can't be! " The shaman's eyes flew open, her meditation shattered. She leaped to her feet, the stones beneath her vibrating in response to her shock.
The energy signature was unmistakable, yet impossible—all four elements resonating in perfect harmony, a confluence unseen since the 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 transcended. It is not only humans who need their myths, right? But this energy pattern was undeniable. It pulsated in the air, its distant strength amplified by the shaman's connection 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 hastening her steps. The council must be summoned immediately. If other cities had sensed this too—and they surely had—the race to find this power had already begun.
For the first time in centuries, she felt something alien stirring in her chest. Hope.