Quill crossed his legs, sitting on a pile of hay propped on a wooden frame. It was supposed to be his bed.

  In the corner of the cramped room was a candle, flickering a faint light as shadows stretched across the old bricks. The wooden columns supporting the structure were already rotting, and if he were to be honest, they had seen better days.

  Quill had followed the woman through the outer city and into her house, standing alone in the ruins of the outskirts of town. The woman's name was Yereth, this body’s older sister. She hadn't caught on that ‘Fenith’ wasn't as he seemed to be, now serving as the Night Lich’s vessel.

  Quill found himself staring past the windowsill, fixated on the many moons wandering the night sky.

  He sighed before he closed his eyes.

  In that darkness, he manifested his Core in front of him, an imaginary image of a white ball barely the size of his fist. This meditation technique hailed from the strange Eastlands, and he found it very useful in practice.

  His eyes wandered to the crack on the Core’s surface. It was still there, still emanating the Black mana he was accustomed to for centuries. He couldn't come up with anything to explain the phenomenon, and there was nothing about it in any of the books he had read in the past.

  Quill’s eyes then drifted to the White Core itself.

  The White Core shimmered in his eyes.

  Mana existed as a primal resource. It is present in everything that exists in the world, blowing with the wind as Green mana and flowing with the tides as Blue. Different Aspects of mana corresponded with different natures.

  Green and Blue mana were the colors that were most commonly found in the world, followed shortly after by the other six. The White Aspect was the rarest of them all, and only a few people in the entire world had the Core capable of harnessing it.

  Coincidentally, that was now Quill's Core. It had been hiding in the body of this common elf, fully matured and working. If only the former owner of this body had known, then he might’ve been able to survive.

  Quill shook his head.

  If he could master the White mana inside him, then it was only a matter of time before he could rebuild his strength and even his former self. He had always been intrigued by the White Aspect, and now he was given the chance to use it.

  He opened his eyes back to reality before he then raised his hand. He had been waiting for the moment to finally start practicing casting again, and in the isolated confines of this room, he was finally granted the opportunity.

  The Aspect of Creation. The Aspect in which all of the others branch out from. As someone who had devoted his entire lifetime to the ultimate pursuit of truth, knowledge and magic, his excitement was unparalleled.

  He needed to know if he could it.

  At once, he pulled White mana from his Core. He immediately noticed the difference in weight and flow of the mana compared to the Black Aspect he had grown used to. It was much easier to control, almost like flowing water instead of tar, however he couldn't say the same for its weight.

  It was like pulling a metal bucket filled with liquified stone. It took great effort before he was able to move the mana through his mana vessels, but in the end, he was able to gather it into his arm. That was a good indication.

  But now he needed to cast a spell to confirm it. And there was a problem with that.

  Scripting.

  To cast a spell, you needed to invoke the function of the spell through the use of Scripts. This was done to instruct the mana to behave in specific ways, forming a spell through those chains of commands.

  But Quill didn't have that luxury. He had next to no foundation of the magic language used in White mana spellcasting. After all, he had no reason to learn it given his former Black Aspect.

  So Quill had to improvise.

  Instead of writing Scripts, he could just do all of the manual commands right there inside his head for now. It was a large task, but he could do it.

  Now, even for the Night Lich, this was not possible for spells that required even a fraction of complexity. The mind was just not built to handle the large amounts of involvement required. But Quill wasn't here to create a Complex Spell.

  He just needed to cast a Simple Spell.

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  If the books detailing it were right, then White mana had the innate property to contort to any shape and form desired. Quill wanted to test it out by a small ball from nothing.

  It was a very Simple Spell in theory, and this spell was already widely taught to most mages in various forms and terminology depending on the Aspect. At its base form, it was called a Mana Ball, though with the added context of White Mana, it was better suited to be called a White Ball.

  Quill willed the White mana out of his hand. It seeped out as liquid through his skin before pooling over his palm. He then willed it into the shape of a sphere, running the formulas needed for its size. The irrationality of a sphere made it hard to get it right, and his inexperience with the Aspect was already complicating its stability, but he tried anyway.

  And after a few failed attempts, he eventually succeeded. The liquid had turned into a solid white orb on the palm of his hand, warm and hot to the touch, with a strange steam permeating from the surface.

  The very essence of creation, the Aspect only found in the heat of celestial bodies.

  It was right there in his hand.

  For the first time, Quill had practiced creation magic. The very reason why he started down the path of necromancy in the first place was only because of the limitations of the Black Aspect. Other than raising the dead, there was no true way of using death.

  No one had the ability to change their Core’s Aspect. Quill had tried and failed multiple times in the past, trying for creation ‘compatible’ Aspects like Orange, but he had always been stuck with Black. He eventually learned to use it to his advantage despite the forbidden nature of the arts, but this time it was different.

  The White Core was going to change everything.

  “Fenith.” A knock on the wooden door. It was Yereth, her soft voice carrying through the cracks on the boards. “The food is ready, if you're hungry.”

  “Alright.” Quilled sighed before melting the marble in his hand. It wasn't annoyance he felt, but rather a strange feeling of guilt. Why was this woman so nice to him?

  Quill started for the door. He needed to keep up the pretense. Many reasons came to mind why he was actively lying to Yereth, but in the end, he settled on the fact that it was for the best to keep his secret.

  That was it.

  “I made beef soup.” Her warm grin greeted him with the creak of the door. Against the light of the living room, Yereth’s body was all the more thin and frail.

  “Thank you.” Quill followed her to the table. The living room was a humble square with nothing but an old table and creaky chairs, having only one candle lit at the very center.

  The candlelight was nowhere near enough to light up the dark corners of the walls, and Quill preferred it that way. He didn't need to see the mold growing on the edges. The house itself was only a year away from collapsing like the rest of the ruins.

  Even the food was poor and tasteless. One whiff from the bowl and Quill instantly knew–this was poor man’s food. There was hardly any meat, and the few vegetables were dotted with blight. He may have been a skeleton before, but he had an acquired taste, and this food in front of him was befitting a lich of his status.

  And yet, Quill forced it down his throat. He said to himself that he was hungry.

  Yereth sat opposite the table, scarfing down a piece of stale bread. Quill saw it and offered to share the soup. She was the one who made it after all. She turned him down then, saying she made it for him.

  “Mom loved that soup.” Yereth smiled through the wear of her eyes. “It doesn't taste much, but I find it very filling.”

  Quill stared at the bowl with no words to his mouth. Yereth started with a conversation. She was actually talkative. That was how Quill found out that they had a family before.

  They lived in this same house together with their parents.

  Their father was a craftsman mage, imbuing tools and armor with magic for a living. Their mother worked on a landlord's farm. Unfortunately, both had died when giants from the south plundered the city, and that was only five years ago. That was the reason why there were so many ruins on the outskirts of the city.

  Quill took one last sip of the bowl before handing it back to Yereth. She said that there was still some of it remaining, but Quill said that he was already full. If she wasn't going to finish it, then she should just throw it away. Thankfully, she finished the rest of it.

  “You didn't answer me before,” Yereth said. “When did you start learning magic?”

  Quill grit his teeth. This was a test, a trial that was way harder than his fight with Pormor. “I’ve been practicing by myself in the sewers.”

  Yereth finished the last of the bowl before she sighed. “The sewers? Is that why you’ve been disappearing for a while then?”

  Quill only nodded.

  A smile shimmered on Yereth's face. For a moment, a glimmer sparked in her tired eyes. “You could've told me. Magic is a hard study to get into, so you must be really skilled to be able to get a hold of it so quickly.”

  With those words alone, Quill was grinning ear to ear. Yereth was right. Clearly, his sister was right. Magic was a hard field of study to get into, especially when there were so many books and theories to read up on. Only people like him were bound to be great mages.

  “I’m confident in my ability, at least.” Quill said.

  Yereth tittered. “Don’t get a big head now.”

  That was the first time Yereth laughed, and a strange feeling welled up inside Quill's chest. It was similar to the feeling he got when he fed poor, wild dogs in abandoned villages before. That must've been it.

  Quill helped Yereth in the kitchen before he then went back to his room and dropped into the pile of hay. It was a tiresome day. He stared at his hands before exhaustion finally took hold. His eyelids slowly closed, but before he fell asleep, the cold from the window instantly woke him back up again.

  “Damn it.” Quill muttered to himself.

  If he was going to rebuild his strength and magic, then he and Yereth needed a better place to stay.