Magic Uprising

"Look at you, Yulian! Other than drawing, you spend all day absent-minded."

Leah, wearing twin ponytails, spoke as fast as a machine gun, interrupting the boy beside her as he drew.

"You're... Leah? Oh, no, I mean, what's wrong?"

Yulian raised his head. His eyes were a rare emerald green, like olive leaves after rain.

Without looking at him, Leah gazed toward the poetry and distant horizons and continued,

"Yulian, you're a good person, but I don't want to be your girlfriend anymore."

Yulian's head suddenly went buzz. It wasn't because she'd given him the "nice guy" card. Rather, just now, a massive amount of information seemed to have been stuffed into his mind all at once.

"What did you say? What happened?" Though Yulian's head was spinning, he hadn't lost his reason. He endured the dizziness and replied, "What girlfriend?"

"You only like looking at bugs and drawing leaves, while Kevin can play with me all the time." Leah hadn't noticed anything strange about Yulian. She simply thought her words had dealt him a blow.

"Kevin said we could apply together to St. Louis Royal Middle School later, instead of going to some place in the United Kingdom."

"Kevin said he could pluck the stars from the sky for me."

"Kevin can give me everything you can't."

"So... let's break up."

If those words had been spoken between two adults, they might have been perfectly normal. But between two ten-year-old children, they seemed utterly ridiculous.

"Kevin lied to you. You can't pluck stars from the sky. They'd burn your hands." Yulian's thoughts were hazy, and a library seemed to have appeared in his mind?! He could only answer off the cuff.

"No way! Kevin said you could catch them with a telescope!" Leah stamped her foot. "And he can recite The Little Prince! Can you?"

"I can." Yulian nodded. "But The Little Prince says that what is truly important cannot be seen with the eyes. You have to look with your heart."

"Hmph! Then use your heart to see whether I'm really angry!" Leah rose, turned her back to Yulian, and shouted, "I'm going to tell everyone that Yulian Black is a freak! He even said yesterday that grapevines could dance by themselves!"

The other children burst into laughter.

Yulian wasn't angry, and he had no time to speak. The floodgates of his memory had opened with a roar.

It was September 17, 1990, in Bordeaux, France—Black Vine Winery.

In Bordeaux's Right Bank during autumn, sunlight like molten amber poured over the rolling vineyards. The leaves on the vines had turned copper-red, while the Merlot grapes were plump as purple jade. It was the season of harvest, and the moment for a winery to bask in its glory.

Today, Black Vine Winery had officially been awarded the title of "Premier Grand Cru Classé A."

This meant that on this land once shrouded by war and oblivion, a new legend had been born. It would stand alongside Cheval Blanc, Ausone, and Bel-Air, becoming another of the brightest jewels on Bordeaux's Right Bank.

In front of the manor's main building, several white satin tents had been set up beneath a century-old plane tree.

A champagne tower rose high into the air, while waiters carrying silver trays weaved among the guests. On the trays were foie gras with figs, truffle tarts, and Black Vine Winery's specially crafted 1985 dry red wine. The wine was as deep as the night sky, its edges shimmering with a pomegranate-red halo. Yet it was silky smooth on the palate, with an indescribable coolness lingering in the finish, as though one had drunk a thread of moonlight.

The guests had come from all over the world: wine critics from Paris, collectors from New York, tycoons from Tokyo, and socialites from London. They spoke in hushed voices, their tones filled with wonder.

"Incredible... A family winery rose from obscurity to the highest ranks in just thirty years."

"I heard the owner is British? He only moved here twenty years ago?"

"Yes, his name is Alphard Black. But Alphard is very mysterious and rarely appears. Usually, his wife, Elodie Black, handles the winery's day-to-day affairs."

"Mrs. Black comes from the famous Moreau family. Their business interests are spread throughout France."

"Then this Black fellow of unknown origins really is lucky!"

"Don't put it that way. The winery has actually existed for over a century. It's just that after Mr. Black took over, the quality of the wine kept improving. Look, he's coming over."

At that moment, a tall man in his fifties approached from the distance, smiling with a wineglass in hand as he exchanged greetings along the way.

His hair and beard were slightly gray, but impeccably groomed. He wore a finely tailored, handmade dark-green wool suit, with silver vine patterns hidden in his silk tie.

A plain wedding band rested on the ring finger of his left hand. On its inner side was engraved a line of small text known only to his wife: "In vino veritas, in amore libertas." (In wine, truth; in love, freedom.)

"Look at his eyes. They're just like his name, Alphard—the Serpent Star, said to represent loneliness. It's as though his pupils conceal the entire universe." A middle-aged noblewoman spoke dreamily.

Yet no one knew that this "universe" came from a Pure-blood wizard who had been cast out of his family.

In the winery's back garden, far from the noisy main venue, one corner had been enclosed with colorful flags and balloons to create a "children's world." The small tables held juice, macarons, and miniature sandwiches.

Several six- and seven-year-old children were gathered around a sandbox, playing a treasure hunt.

A wrought-iron bench in the back garden faced an endless sea of green—the vineyards stretching all the way to the horizon.

The freshly trimmed lawn still carried the crisp coolness of dew. When the wind passed through the vines, it suddenly grew rich, carrying the sweet fragrance of green fruit mingled with sunlight.

Perhaps the gardener had forgotten to shut the valve tightly after watering the night before. At that moment, a gleaming thread of water slowly crawled along the furrows, soaking the entire hillside until it shone.

The boy and girl had been sitting on the bench beneath the oak tree just moments ago, without taking part in the children's game.

The boy wore a dark-blue suit, his bow tie slightly crooked. His left hand pinched a grape leaf, while his right had been using a pencil to sketch the veins on a page of his drawing pad.

For some reason, however, he suddenly seemed to freeze. He looked at the vineyard before him, then turned to look at the girl. Confusion appeared in his eyes, as though he had just awakened from a long dream.

The girl, Léa Dupont, was Yulian's elementary-school classmate and the daughter of a local Bordeaux wine merchant. Lively by nature, she usually got along well with Yulian and could be considered a good friend.

The boy's full name was Caelum Julien Black. He was ten years old and the grandson of the winery's owner, Alphard.

Because his grandfather came from an ancient family in the United Kingdom, everyone in the family was named after stars. Thus, his father was Altair Étienne Black. Altair was the brightest star in Aquila.

His name, Caelum, was also the name of a constellation. It meant "engraver" and could also be extended to mean "changer." As for Yulian, that was simply a French name added to it.

At that moment, he remembered.

His previous life: Yulian.

His birth name had been Yulian. He had been born in China at the beginning of the twenty-first century. His parents were university professors. His family had been affluent, yet distant.

He had been quiet and precocious from childhood, obsessed with reading, especially astronomy and classical literature. At university, he had practically lived in the library, reading widely enough that some classmates had even called him a human library.

He had studied physics at school, while secretly taking an elective called Introduction to Western Esotericism. It was only because he had read a series of Harry Potter books as a child and had believed ever since that "another world" existed.

1980? No, to him, it was 2025.

That night, he had been working on a paper in the library. Its subject was A Comparative Study of Quantum Entanglement and the Concept of "Sympathy" in Ancient Alchemy.

Thunder and rain had raged outside the window. Exhausted, he had leaned against the back of his chair and murmured, "If magic really exists... that would be wonderful."

A bolt of lightning struck an ancient tree on campus, and the current raced through the old wiring into the library. His final memory was of the book in his hands, Black Family Tree Study—an obscure fan reference collection—suddenly emitting a blinding white light...

When he opened his eyes again, he was in 1980s Bordeaux, in a winery's private maternity room. Amid the sound of a baby's cries, he had become Caelum Julien Black.

For ten years, he had thought he was merely "precocious." He remembered the alphabet, could recite his times tables, and could explain that the Earth revolved around the sun. The adults had simply considered him intelligent. He had never displayed anything unusual—until today.

"So... I really did cross over." He muttered to himself.

That realization crashed through his reason like a tsunami. And at the very instant his emotions surged,

Magic manifested:

The cobblestone by his foot slowly rose, hovering three inches above the ground;

The plastic shovel in the sandbox flipped over by itself and pointed north;

The water in the fountain nearby swirled backward, forming a fleeting lotus of water;

The butterfly clip in Leah's hair came undone by itself, and her long hair rose into the air. She screamed in terror:

"Mom! Yulian cursed me with magic!"