There are names in history that do not fade.
Not because they shouted the loudest, nor because they won the most battles—but because they altered the course of time itself. Subtly. Permanently. These were the Masters.
In magical scholarship, the term "Master" is more than a title—it is a recognition, etched into the foundation of history. A Master is a wizard whose contributions have fundamentally reshaped the understanding, application, or structure of the magical arts. Aetherion Academy itself was founded by such a figure: Arvian Aetherion, the First Master, whose pioneering work in dimensional expansion, spatial logic, and arcane harmony became the bedrock upon which modern magic rests.
He was the beginning.
But he was not the end.
Each generation since has honored this legacy by recognizing its own Masters—wizards whose brilliance transcended their time, who solved questions the rest of the world hadn't even thought to ask. And with each Master, the legacy continued, their title not fading into obscurity but passed, deliberately and carefully, to a chosen successor.
A lineage of minds so bright, the world bent in their presence.
One such line was the Darion bloodline, descended from Arvian himself. The current Headmaster of Aetherion Academy, Caelus Darion, carried the weight of that name like a storm wrapped in silk.
To many, he was enigmatic, powerful, and impossibly precise. But to those who knew the deeper history, he was something else entirely: the last in a line of Masters who had, generation after generation, reshaped the arcane arts.
Another such line—quieter, more obscure to the general populace but no less monumental—was the Veyl family.
They had never ruled the academy, never stood at its helm, but in the great halls of magical theory, the name Veyl held weight. Master Lirien Veyl, Kaelen's grandfather, was a cornerstone of temporal magic—his contributions to Chrono-Logic revolutionized the way mages understood time not as a linear march but as a flexible tapestry of moments, interactions, and causal resonances.
It was Lirien who discovered the "Echo Constant"—the theory that all powerful spells leave subtle temporal reverberations in the moments surrounding their casting. It was Lirien who introduced the idea that time could be annotated, like text in the margins of a book.
And yet, despite all his achievements, despite his brilliance and age, Master Lirien had never passed down the title.
Not to his sons. Not to his daughters. Not to any of the many students who had studied under him. And certainly—not yet—to Kaelen.
But it lingered.
The legacy. The expectation. The shadow of a name that stretched back through centuries of minds that touched the impossible.
Being born into a Master's bloodline was not a privilege. It was an inheritance of pressure. Every moment in a classroom, every misstep in spellwork, every success—each was observed not in isolation, but as evidence in a quiet, eternal trial:
Are you worthy of the name?
Kaelen had always known it. Not through lectures or scolding's, but through the quiet, pointed silences in his grandfather's presence. Through the way his parents spoke of magic—as duty, not discovery. Through the way strangers in his hometown addressed him: Veyl, with the soft, respectful pause afterward, like the word was its own sentence.
He'd never been told what he was expected to become. But it was obvious he wasn't meant to be ordinary.
And that made his failures feel… louder.
Like the first time he tried to fold time back and missed the tether by a fraction—ending up nearly a week off course.
Or when he stepped too far into a timestream and saw echoes of a version of himself that didn't survive.
Or worse—when he simply didn't feel the magic at all, when his mana flowed sluggish and unresponsive.
Each of those moments stacked like stones inside him. Invisible to others. Crushing in silence.
Professor Alaris's voice echoed in his memory: "To alter even the smallest detail creates ripples that travel through the fabric of reality."
Kaelen had lived in those ripples for most of his life.
And he couldn't help but wonder if his grandfather had seen the waves he left behind and found them wanting.