The Twinsage chief gently waved his staff, and four high-ranking sorcerers worked with him to trace a magic circle across the sky.
There was no ritual, no proclamation, only pure calculation and design. In the sorcerers' hands, precious knowledge became cold and merciless.
An enormous iron ball took shape under the power of magic and crashed heavily to the ground. Its release point was a precisely calculated slope along a cliff, angled perfectly to give the ball its initial momentum.
Under gravity's pull, the iron ball slowly began to tilt, like a drop of water sliding down a blade of grass. It moved slowly at first, then gathered speed, until it crossed a critical threshold and began to roll with a thunderous rumble.
On its first rotation, the iron ball crushed the rocky cliff.
On its second, it reached the speed of a galloping carriage.
On its third, the ancient trees along the hillside snapped and crumbled like matchsticks.
By the time the iron ball reached the plains, it was traveling at 128 kilometers per hour, matching the calculations exactly. The sorcerers watching through their crystal ball congratulated one another.
Stormveil, the commoners' district.
Thops was sorting out the materials for his afternoon lessons.
He was a sorcerer of the Academy, one of the lowest rank. His talent was limited, and his teachers and classmates called him a talentless bluntstone. When the Shattering began and the Academy sealed its gates, many low-ranking sorcerers were expelled to reduce its expenses. Thops was among them.
Most of those sorcerers died while wandering from place to place, but Thops did not. He stubbornly survived. Why? Because he still wanted to return to that sanctuary of knowledge and study the subjects he dreamed of mastering.
When Tarnished invited him over, he had only wanted